Here's an idea I've been kicking around. The characters ship is exploring an area of Federation space that is rarely travelled and come across a generational ship. Its pre-warp so the Prime Directive would normally forbid contact with this society.
However sensors reveal a spatial fracture (or similar techno-babble) that only advanced technoligy can detect. Unless the ship does something five thousand people will perish.
The whole ship can work together to make sure the generational ship (nick named the Close Call) reaches safety.
Science can locate a suitable world, engineering can work out a way to get the Close Call around the spatial fracture and any other dangers, security can go undercover to make sure people are not hurt during the shift in course.
Further complications include technical failures aboard the Close Call, Ferengi traders who want to sell items to the Close Call and natural obstacles such as meteor showers.
This could be a single adventure or a short campaign, playing unseen guardian to the ship. The important thing is that they Close Call is very near a habital planet but is so old it won't make it there without support.
Anyone have any thoughts or foresee any problems?
1 - Does the society that sent the ship now have Warp Drive? If so, then there is no problem, this has been covered in the series.
If not the Prime Directive applies, and according to the strict letter of the law its goodbye to the people aboard.
Next question. Does this ship pose a potential threat to ANY other world at some point in the future projected course after contact with the spatial fracture...
This is where captains discression comes in on the Prime Directive. In the exact case you suggest, both avoidance of future problems, and humanitarian aide as reasons for helping 'Close Call' out.
But a streict captain would simply stay out of their sensor range and consult Starfleet Command first!
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Dan.
"Hi, I'm Commander Troy McClure, you might remember me from other academy training holo-simulations as, Abandon Ship, the quickest way out, and I sense danger, 101 things you dont need a Betazoid to know..."
Good points.
I think the main idea behind the adventure is that the Prime Directive would indicate non-interferance but that would lead to the death of five thousand people when they are so close to reaching their destination.
The Starfleet officers must help the Close Call without being detected. All the ship should be doing is making sure people won't die.
I see it to a similar situation to "The Paradise Syndrome" where they protect a pre-warp society from an asteriod collision.
It would be interesting if the people on the Close Call had become very aggressive, confined for to long. Would the Starfleet crew doom them to death because they didn't like them?
I ran a modified version of this with my crew tonight. How it happened was that the ship was leaking Thermonic Radiation and was passing thoruhg a system with a planet with 4 billion people on it. The crew had to beam in and fix the radiation leak without getting detected or they would have to destroy the ship before it killed the planet (needs of the many etc)
They had to take s huttle over since beaming in wasn't an option (too much radiation) and they couldn't have phasers since the radiation made them useless. In a smart move they rigged Orion Needler pistols wioth a tranq so that if they got caught they could have a non-lethal option.
Unfortunately to do the repairs they would have have to shut down their engines for 10 minutes. A 5 man team went over and of course something went wrong.
The fixed the problem, and all were able to be emergency beamed (10 to 30 seconds of transport time) except the Chief Engineer who was captured and tortured by the ships security division.
The XO (the Captain off at Starfleet command for a briefing) approved a return assault to get back the chief engineer, but only with nonlethal force (the rest of the ship was safe).
They hacked into the computer of the ship and downlaoded its database. What they didn't know was that many millenia ago the Security force had taken control of the sip and refused to let the occupants land on a new homeworld. They were in power and liked it just fine. A resistence of sorts rescued the Chief and then when the others found them, they asked for help. Heading abck to their ship with a representative (and his two guards) they entered into a "What are we going to do, we broke the Prime Directive but if we help these people then we are breaking it further" situation.
Powering over their records to see if they wer ever warp capable they learned that they were not, but they did learn that in 5 encounters over the years with aliens, the security force killed the aliens and did not implement the captured tech.
This allowed them to make a case that the race was stagnent and since Captain Kirk had shown 100 years before (Using the Vaal incident as reference) a stagnent civilization could be assisted if the assitence allowed them to continue advancing.
I am doing a horrible job of describing it, but then end result was they pulled it off and after getting a commendation for saving these people, their JAG officer warned them that they got lucky and that they had to remember that the Prime Directive may not always allow for the Moral choice.
It was really good roleplaying by all involved.
Thanks for a great idea Ether that got me a A+ for the entire group who felt it was really a Star Trek adventure that could have been an episode.
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Aslan Collas
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RPG_Trek; http://groups.yahoo.com/group/rpg-trek
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Ferengi Rule Of Acquisition #76: Every once in a while, declare peace. It confuses the hell out of your enemies.
[This message has been edited by AslanC (edited 07-21-2001).]
Sounds like an interesting adventure Aslan, plenty of plot-twists and some solid action sequences as well.
I agree with the Players take on the Prime Directive myself. This ship's society was a stagnant society, and if nothing else a hazard to navigation (consistantly killing off alien 'first-contacts' in addition to the situation the players had to be called in to fix). The writers of Trek used the Prime Directive in a much more haphazard fashion than your players did here. Kudos to them. Kudos to you as well for having the JAG officer give them a warning speech. This was also entirely appropriate: it reinforces what goes on in Trek storylines in that the Prime Directive is brought up, considered (i.e. a pain in the rear and a complication in the story) and yet not enforced strictly/stupidly. Then again, I am a adherent of the Kirk method of dealing with the PD: "Break it and justify yourself later"
In retrospect I should have made the ship controlled by a "caretaker" computer or something, but hat may have made it too straight forward for the adventure, and I liked the ambiguity and moral questions the adventure raised
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Aslan Collas
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RPG_Trek; http://groups.yahoo.com/group/rpg-trek
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Ferengi Rule Of Acquisition #76: Every once in a while, declare peace. It confuses the hell out of your enemies.
Plot Idea: Close Call
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