TOS era Borg Adventure...?

[Cessna]

Okay, here’s an idea:

As anyone who has read my posts knows, I am a TOS-era chauvanist. Sorry, folks, but the TOS era is where it’s at for me.

But I’m thinking of throwing a curveball at my players. I’m considering an adventure in which they - through an accident - meet the Borg; or, at least, the TOS era Borg.

I ‘m thinking of putting the players in a pretty standard “role-playing dilemma” situation; “Do we try to wipe out the Borg, knowing that they’ll become nasty in the future, or do we admit that we shouldn’t know the future and leave them alone?”

Here’s the twist: My idea is that the Borg in the TOS era are not the huge, monolithic monster they become by the TNG era. Remember, their technology is based on assimilation; I’m going on the idea that 100 years prior to TNG they’re still relatively small and low-tech; their ability to assimilate technology gave them a meteoric “rise to power” by the TNG era. In fact, the Borg are going to be pre-warp technology. And trying to destroy them would completely violate the Prime Directive…

And here’s the really nasty twist. If the players really screw up, they’ll be the ones who gave the Borg warp drive…

Any thoughts, comments, or input?

[mactavish]

The way you describe the Borg during the original Star Trek is more like the way they were 900 years ago (see Star Trek: Voyager's "Dragon's Teeth").

When I was in college, we ran a GURPS Trek game in which a Starfleet vessel encountered the Borg via time travel approximately 1,000 years before the present and found them to be far less threatening and "invitational" in their assimilation techniques...

"Gee, that's a nice, advanced starship you've got there. How'd you like to join your minds with ours and give use your knowledge and technology?"

The crew managed to beat the crap out of the Borg ship (not a polyhedron, by the way) and make their way back to the future, but not before one of their junior officers (an engineer) transported himself to their ship and joined the hive mind.

It was the introduction of that character's knowledge of the future and of "futuristic" technologies that allowed the Borg to evolve into what they eventually became.

You could try something similar in your game: time warp leading to the past where the characters encounter the early Borg, interact with it, and cause the changes that make the Borg what they became in the future.

Just a thought.

mactavish out.

[Jake]

I really like the idea. I suddenly thought of an idea from the Borg Sourcebook (Didn't you make it Mactavish?). Have the crew arrive at the point were the alien race that the Borg assimilated the Warp technology from is considering allow their crew to become apart of the collective. A Borg who is friendly and asks people to join the collective. How would they react? Would they stop the exchange? Would someone of the crew join the Borg, alterating the timeline even more? Would they interfer with the natural development of the species all together?

[Robert Lai]

What if the Borg of the TOS timeframe have not even formed a rudimentary collective consciousness? They wouldn't be asking anyone to join anything, but would engage in an open and honest dialog for an exchange of technologies.

You're going to have to ignore elements of TNG and VGR as far as 'first encounters' go, but that doesn't seem to be an issue for your game.

Perhaps it is the core government that is the collective as we know it. The landing party deals with an aide or an assistant, who routinely goes behind closed doors for an answer ... and the mystery becomes what's behind that door.

Or the government is visible and accessible, but already wired together. Decisions are made with surprising quickness (and opposing security forces can be mobilized with equal speed). Portions of the society, perhaps a certain section of town, are extremely drone-like, barely capable of responding to a direct question.

Sell Utopia to the crew. No crime. No wants. Everyone has what everyone needs. (Those needs and what constitutes fulfillment, of course, are defined by the proto-collective.)

On a food-for-thought basis, given that TOS is perhaps 100 years before TNG, within one century, the Borg become this relentless machine. What kind of technology was absorbed to make this possible? For example, assimilating the entire Federation would provide a median level of technology, and the social memes that make member worlds distinctive would be filtered out.

At the same time, if you start sucking up great minds like Hawking, Einstein, Feynman, et al ... without the moderating influence of conscience, morality, or philantrophic urges ... might you achieve the dramatic leaps in scientific achievement necessary? 1000 cyborged monkeys with 1000 supercomputers, so to speak?

Bob

[Cessna]

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by Robert Lai:

You're going to have to ignore elements of TNG and VGR as far as 'first encounters' go, but that doesn't seem to be an issue for your game.
</font>

I've always ran my TOS era campaign as if the TNG/DS9/VOY canon did not exist. After all, that's the future...!

This thread has given me lots of ideas. Please keep 'em coming!

[mactavish]

Well, if you're going to totally ignore the TNG/DS9/VOY canonical material anyway, why not completely rewrite the Borg to suit your campaign?

An idea that I had toyed with was the formation of the Borg as the result of the El Aurians meeting up with the artificially intelligent servants of an extinct race (perhaps the Iconians, perhaps not). The androids (or whatever) needed direction and discipline, and the El Aurians (some of them, at least) were more than willing to provide it.

This unholy union led to factionalization of El Auria and the emigration of a significant portion (10-25%) of the populaiton, who left in the androids' fleet of starships.

Several centuries later, after the two races had combined to form a single civilization of hive-minded cyborgs (the Borg), the prodigal children of El Auria returned and decimated their world of origin.

I am sure that you could work the whole TOS angle into this setting rather easily.

mactavish out.

[This message has been edited by mactavish (edited 06-15-2001).]

[Diamond]

Instead of totally ignoring established Borg continuity if you need a TOS threat cyborg race to fit your story, do what I did and make up a new one.

Things worked really well... they were like the borg but lower tech. Unfortunately, I made one mistake. Because they were alien cyborgs who did not use verbal communication (rather, they used machine-language burst-radio transmissions) there was no way to communicate the name of this race to the PCs. So they promptly nicknamed them "Cybermen." Moral of the story: provide a name for your creations or else the PCs will.

[Robert Lai]

Without dropping the giveaway line of, "... we will assimilate your technological and biological distinctiveness and add it to our own ..." -- make it happen.

The ship arrives at a peaceful, advanced world with perfect shore leave facilities. Arrangements are made, and people go off duty. Several leading citizens or governmental representatives come aboard for a tour.

But the tour group 'steals' things. Not necessarily physically, but possibly there are people in the group functioning as a set of 'eyes'.

And on the ground below, various crewmen are having their minds sucked empty.

So the mystery is 'why is the Chief Engineer a vegetable, and how come the replicators don't work anymore?'

Bob

[Cessna]

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Instead of totally ignoring established Borg continuity if you need a TOS threat cyborg race to fit your story, do what I did and make up a new one.</font>

The only reason I wouldn’t do this is because the Borg have such a high level of fear attached to them. The players would know the Borg may be relatively benign now, but are going to grow up to become baddies – but the PC’s wouldn’t know this, and this will place the players in an interesting dilemma. This could be presented like the “would you kill Hitler in 1930” question…

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Without dropping the giveaway line of, "... we will assimilate your technological and biological distinctiveness and add it to our own ..." -- make it happen.</font>

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">So the mystery is 'why is the Chief Engineer a vegetable, and how come the replicators don't work anymore?' </font>

A very interesting idea. My only “twist” would be that the PCs meet the benign alien cyborgs, start to like them, then the mysterious events you describe start happening. Just as the players/PCs start to figure it out, I hit them with the fact that these are proto-Borg.

Coooool.

[Aedh Rua]

I have often thought that the very origins of the Borg posed an interesting period to visit. Of course, we don't really know exactly how the Borg originated, so this leaves the field rather open.

Seems to me that the Borg Queen provides an interesting point of departure. Suppose that your crew go through a time and space warp, and arrive somewhere A Long Time Ago, Very Far Away. They go into orbit around a class M world. The planet is partially ruined, the result of a war much like Earth's World War III or Eugenics Wars.

The tech level is comparable to the WWIII era, except that the cybertech is better, basically cyberpunk.

In the most powerful nation on the planet, a new leader has arisen. A female messianic dictator is is preaching the unlimited use of computers and cybertech as part of a new, rather Hegelian philosophy of history and evolution. This philosophy urges that the planet be unified, and a new era of universal peace and cooperation created by conscious will.

The proto-Borg version of WWIII has completely discredited the traditional religions, philosophies, and governmental systems, so this leader has almost no opposition.

Another wrinkle is created by her personality. She is a genuinely admirable, and brilliant human being, witty, charming, and inspiring. It may seem to the PCs that she is the planet's only hope. Killing her will be hard to justify.

To make matters worse, the players may figure out that this is the Borg homeworld, but their TOS characters will not know the difference. They will have to deal with the planet as they find it. It should not be easy to even figure out that this is the Borg homeworld, though a few clues exist, notably the use of cybertech, and the pale, bald, appearance of the local humanoid race.

Still, except for these rather generic traits, the locals should not call themselves Borg, nor look like Borg, nor act like Borg. They are a lot more like 21st century humans.

If the Narrator is skilled enough, the players should figure it out only at the last moment, as they leave the planet, in a sort of Lovecraftian moment of hideous revelation.

Just as they go to warp, the dictator, who has now conquered the whole of the planet, with the inadvertant help of the crew, makes a broadcast to her now-unified world: "Peoples of -----, now that world is unified, a new era is dawning. The lives that you have lived are over. Our glorious new movement shall unify all the peoples of the world. We shall add you technological and cultural distinctiveness to our own...."

Roll credits.



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Slan agat!

[This message has been edited by Aedh Rua (edited 06-16-2001).]

[Byteninja]

Well, actually, if you keep the TOS cannon, Kirk and then DID meet the borg, in the form of Vyger (or how ever thats spelled). In one of Shatner's *cough cough* Star Trek books, Spock is nearly assimilated, and they stop because they find a part of the probe in his mind, and see it as their own. Which leads them (Kirk, Spock and Picard) to the Borg home world were Kirk flips a switch (must have been the part that Shatner wrote) and kills them all -and himself.

[Aedh Rua]

I think there is a rule somewhere that everything Shatner wrote about Kirk is non-canon by definition.

Hehehehehe

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Slan agat!

[This message has been edited by Aedh Rua (edited 06-18-2001).]

[Calcoran]

Now where was that link again ... a Voyager script that didn't make it ... saw it on the boards not that long ago ... ah, here:
http://defiant2valiant.tripod.com/voyager.htm
So, there, your scenario! You just need the PCs to call them "Cyborgs" (nudge them in the right direction when describing Luva or other security officers), and there you are, they take up the name and call themselves "Borgs". I really like Aedh Rua's ending too ... it's probably possible to make a mix of both.
HTH ...

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Sometimes it's better to light a flamethrower than curse the darkness.
-- (Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms)

[Aedh Rua]

Yes, indeedy, that was a good Voyager episode. Must be why it did not make it to the screen. Of course, the whole sex angle probably scared the network execs to death.

Here's how to combine it with my own ideas. The "Scientech Corporation" is the "World Cybernetics' Council", with a a grown-up Tali, aka the Borg Queen, as its head. Its public agenda is the advancement of science and ofthe evolution of the species. There has been no nuclear war.

This lack of a corporation is just because the evil corp has become such a cliche. So, instead, the villain in this case is something no one would suspect, essentially a philanthropic organization with lots of money and power.

The disappearing children subplot still exists, but they are not rogue collective drones. Rather, they are being used to further Tali's secret agenda, the attainment of collective consciousness and perfection by assimilation of all that lives into a single mind. To put it another way, they are being made into drones under Tali's control.

The probe has been programmed to assimilate a nearby world, with the full knowledge of the WCC's leadership, including especially Tali. This buys into the "conspiracy at the top levels" cliche, but is just more plausible to me than the idea that a few rogue children could assimilate a planet.

The are two elements opposing Tali and her plans. The Naturalists are more or less as presented, but have a more sinister edge. Their philiosophy is all about using biotech to attain perfection. In addition, there are standard national security police, who are finally catching on that Tali's technogifts to them come with a price tag after all.

The plot is essentially that a TOS ship ends up in the middle of all this. Tali and the WCC will try to present the Nats as terrorists, and their efforts as purely benevolent. Remember, Tali herself is charming, charismatic, and visionary. She may well be able to convince the PCs. The Nats will try to steal Federation tech to use against the WCC, and will try to sabotage the probe. The security police will try to bust everybody up, and take everybody's tech for their own purposes.

Depending on how this goes, the probe either launches or its doesn't. We can even include the two security guards as bit players to help the PCs, no matter what side they are on. Tali's experiments with drones are about to succeed. The role of the security police in spying out her plans may cause her to move faster, and take control of the planet, leading to that hideous revelation at the end.

And then the probe launches, leading to the first assimilation.

Another angle on all this would be to have the ship that travels through time be TNG-era. This crew knows who the Borg are, though they may still have trouble figuring out that the vibrant culture they have just discovered is ancestral to the Collective. Once they figure it out, they may well try to interfere.

If they do either a) it turns out to be the cause of what really happened, in a wonderful example of a snake swallowing its tail, or b) they get back to the present to find the Federation fighting the evil race of biotech-using Nats, who are otherwise a lot like the Borg.

Either way, it could be a lot of fun. We could make it LUG/Decipher canon by moving it back in time to the 17,000 BCE-ish origin of the Borg as presented in "All of our Yesterdays".

Whaddya think?

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Slan agat!

[This message has been edited by Aedh Rua (edited 06-19-2001).]

[Polanski]

Well, everyone seems to think that the Borg started as the Borg. Bit of a chicken and egg paradox, what was first?

My view is that the Borg are either successful or failed (take your pick) experiment of a sentient race who became the Borg on their quest for perfection.

First they were experimenting with the cybernetic implants on a low level, perfecting them in one way or the other, and after some time they simply became so fascinated with improving themselves ... they have lost themselves.

Now diabolic as I may be I would "not" consider introducing a twist to the whole Borg thing by making them a Humans from Earth but from parallel universe who have fallen into a quest for perfection...

And to all my players who are reading this post, no this is not the subject of our campaign, our campaign evolves around one thing alone ... your complete assimilation

Commander Alexandra Polanski
Acting Captain, USS Avatar