Starfleet Academy: Restorations

[Dandelionhead]

Ha ha ha!

Tonight was was the first game of our new campaign, our first in five years! Oh, we played a few other things in between there, some D&D and a little GURPS, but nothing like the big Star Trek campaigns we used to play.

Man, it went great! It was our first time with CODA but that was very smooth. It was also the first time I had only two players, as opposed to four or five, and it made quite a difference: much easier on everyone's nerves, with much more time spent on the game instead of goofing around.

I put in all the time I needed to work the kinks out of the plot ahead of time and it showed. I used to crank out a game every month, but we all had lots more free time back then. I'll be shooting for a game every two months instead now.

The game itself turned out pretty close to what I intended, with a little mistery on board the ship that was taking a bunch of new cadets to the Academy on Earth. Both PCs got involved with one of two spies trying to kill the other and wound up having to work with the other PC in order to piece the whole story together and avoid a murder.

I went a little heavy on the exposition as I tried to tie in the backstory of many NPC fellow cadets, who will be recurring in the rest of the series. There were maybe a few too many 'first ever' cadets (first female Ferengi, first holographic life-form, first Cardassians) but the players didn't seem to mind since they all had interesting personalities with plenty of plot hooks for the PCs.

The highlight of the game came when the Trill PC (using up all his remaining Courage points) managed to smash a small insect-like killer robot that was skittering up on the wall, using a mess hall plate as a discus. As the twitching remains of the robot fell to the floor, the Vulcan PC piped up: "And I'd like to introduce everyone to our very first Academy Cadet from the little spider-robot species...".

It's good to be back!

-Dandelionhead

[rasiler]

Thanks *very much* for posting this first game wrap-up! I very much enjoyed reading it. My game will be starting mid-February, and I'm very nervous, but very much looking forward to it as well. I've never GMed before, so I'm not sure I have "the right stuff," but I'm going to give it a go. I hope our first session turns out as well as yours did!

You're only going to be gaming over other month? Wow, I wish I could get away with that! I think ours is going to be every two weeks. Which I'm fine with, I think.

Again, thanks for posting. And congratulations on a great first game!

Alan

[JALU3]

LOL! Gotta love First Degree Murder . . . California Penal Code 187. Sentence Life imprisonment just North of the Acadamy @ good old SQ in the spacious Marin County.

[Dandelionhead]

Ah... I'm not sure what you're saying here JALU3:

LOL! Gotta love First Degree Murder . . . California Penal Code 187. Sentence Life imprisonment just North of the Acadamy @ good old SQ in the spacious Marin County.

Is this one of those scary American things?

Anyways, I've started putting together the second game, where the PCs go through Orientation Week and get introduced to the various little cliques running around the Academy, trying to find somewhere to fit in. The "feel" of this campaign should be something like Star Trek as a WB show ( Smallville, Buffy, my players are big fans ), a bit like what "Series V" was rumored to be before it craptastized into "Enterprise".

I'm trying to figure out what kinds of extra-curricular activities are available in the 24th century for my PCs and NPCs to join. So far I've got:

-Drama Club ( including putting together Holonovels )

-Marching Band

-Regular Band ( like the one in "Nemesis", and were those Cadet Dress Uniforms? )

-Parrises Squares Team

-Vrex Ball ( from the LUG Starfleet Academy box set )

-Marathon Running ( kind of dull, though )

-3D Chess Club

Does anybody else have any good ideas?

-Dandelionhead

[Owen E Oulton]

The band in Nemesis were wearing enlisted dress uniforms.
White tunic with white shirtfront = CO
White tunic with grey shirtfront = Officers
Grey tunic with grey shirtfront = Enlisted

[Dandelionhead]

The band in Nemesis were wearing enlisted dress uniforms.

Thanks for the tip.

I guess they did look a little old for Cadets, but where did you get that information?

Also, all I have on Vrex Ball is the name ( p. 31 in the Handbook ). I guess I could base it on Bajoran Springball ( which at least has a ST Encyclopedia entry ) but I kind of need more team sports than head-to-head ones... For that matter, where could I find more info on Parrises Squares, besides those armored outfits in that "11001001" TNG episode?

-Dandelionhead

[Chris Landmark]

Originally posted by Dandelionhead
I'm trying to figure out what kinds of extra-curricular activities are available in the 24th century for my PCs and NPCs to join.

Does anybody else have any good ideas?

The one great Trek game that I ever played in was a Starfleet Academy game, so I'll give you some of the extracurricular activities we engaged in.

"Intercollegiate" Sports: From Lacrosse to Ice Hockey to Track & Field to 3D Chess to Paresies Squares. Give those characters who dumped points into Games and Athletics and Sport and Gymnastics a way to earn glory for themselves and the academy, as well as interact (and beat) people from USC, or Yale, or whatever universities you want to throw into the mix. Those with Armed, Unarmed, and Ranged combat could even compete on the academy martial arts or marksmanship teams (hmm, biathlon with phaser rifles?). My character (Alejandra Romero) was a champion middle distance runner for the academy team, and actually medaled in the 2368 Olympics. We had a couple other characters who did the marksmanship and martial arts things, one of whom was a Klingon.

"Intramural" Sports: Just like the Intercollegiate stuff, just within the academy community. A great way to build up rivalries and foster esprit de corps within your little PC group as they take on other groups of cadets. Our group (Grey Squadron) was pretty competitive, and took a perverse joy in antagonizing those snobs in Red Squadron (see TNG's "The First Duty") at every pass.

Cultural clubs: At my college there were all sorts of these, everything from the Japanese Students Association to a traditional Scottish dance group. While many of them served as a community for a particular minority group or collection of foreign students, most also welcomed "outsiders" interested in their culture and issues. We saw no reason for the Academy not to have such institutions (the Klingon character showing up for Kal-Toh night at the Vulcan Student Association meeting was great fun, especially because he was serious about the game).

Discussion/interest groups: Whether it be philosophy, comparative religion, or subspace physics, people of like interests may very well want to gather together and talk about the latest developments, bring in guest lecturers, or debate things that weren't covered in class.

Fine Arts: Band, Orchestra, Chorus, Dance, Theater. Our characters weren't that involved in these areas, but that doesn't mean you don't have characters with the Perform skill who want to use it.

Honor Societies: a way for the "best and brightest" within a particular field of study to gather together, for both academic and social activities. Have Alpha Omega Alpha (medical) and Tau Beta Pi (Engineering) survived to the 24th Century? Activities can range from simply gathering together for pizza and a few glasses of synth-ale after midterms, to intercollegiate design competitions (at my university we had a solar car team which competed every year), to academic outreach encouraging high school students to consider entering the discipline when they went to college.

"Other" activities: the non-organized, non-official type. Perhaps there are still a few gamers around in the 24th Century and they get together on the weekends to play a little Truncheons and Flaggons in the holosuite. Perhaps a few Squadrons have gotten together to form a Suicide Frisbee league. My character had a passion for rock climbing and mountaineering, and would use the occasional weekend pass to take off with like minded individuals for a little fun in the wilderness (and on extended breaks from the Academy, dragged some of the other PC's up some of the tallest mountains on Earth). Our group had a couple characters who "made book" for the entire Academy, taking bets on all sorts of competitive events, from the 3d chess championship to which Squadron was going to take Freshman Honors.

Hope that offers you a few more options.

-Chris Landmark

[JALU3]

For what I was saying . . . I know during post WWIII America is different . . . but if the US area kept its Federal System of Government . . . each State still has its own system of law that differs from the National System or Planetary system.

California Penal Code 187 is the Penal Code for Murder. Thus, if Murder did happen it would be under the jurisdiction of the local Police . . . in this case SFPD and Starfleet Security.

If convicted of Murder . . . he would be sent to San Quinten in Marin County, which is just on the other side of the Golden Gate Bridge.

I use to live in the Bay Area, San Bruno to be exact. So I consider myself a Local.

I remember those mornings where the Fog would wash over the Golden Gate Bridge and cover the city like a grey blanket, only to melt away and bringing a sunset that would cast golden rays upon the East Bay with all the mirrors like little beacons reflecting the Sun.

Exploring the old World War II Battery sites in the highlands of Marin . . . Muir Woods . . . on the Peninsula driving down to Stanford and enjoying the grounds in the Summer while the Student are a way. Or hiking up the trail at the End of Sneath Lane to the little nown Sweeny Ridge just south of San Francisco's San Bruno County Jail.

Or spending the day walking along the quiet beaches in Linda Mar and stopping by the Thriftys there and enjoying Thrifty's Ice Cream by the Square Scoop that use to sell for 25 cents as a kid (it's now only 99 cents).

Or going to Treasure Island and watching the Sunset over the Financial District.

I guess you have to be a local to know what I am talking about.

But I tell you there's a place called stacks over there in Burlingame on Burlingame Ave. on the Peninsula just South of the City Great place for waffles and what not. Only open in the morning . . . so go ahead and skip a class and enjoy a lazy morning breakfast with friends.

Or better yet torture out of towners with a walking tour of San Francisco starting from the South of Market area of Yeuba Beuna Gardens then along Market St. past Union Square and to Grant St, Chinatown. Walk through North Beach past the park on Columbus Rd. And end it all up @ Fishermans Warf & Peir 39. The USS Pompano should still be there and imagine how they would feel walking into an Old WWII Gato Class SS.

I do miss that place.
http://www.kpix.com/images/cam20.jpg

[Dandelionhead]

Wow, thanks for all the material there, Chris!

I can certainly use a lot of this: Intercollegiate sports is something I hadn't considered, but now the PCs will be going on the road ( either as fans or team-mates ) to UCS ( either Smalldale or Sunnyville ) for a sports game and a run-in with a Kryptonian Slayer and some Kryptonite-powered Vampires! The female Ferengi cadet will definitely try her hand at being a bookie since the opportunity's there, and the Andorian Cultural Club will try to popularize the double-date. Sounds like you guys did have a grat game running... Feel free to post some more flavor material here anytime.

And thank you for clearing up what you were saying, JALU3. I'm just a little skittish about ANYTHING from States-side these days.

All your reminiscing is now grist for my gaming mill now, though... for when the PCs go out on the town!

-Dandelionhead

[JALU3]

If you need any more local info. Please, feel free to contact me. I'd love to help put that personal realistic touch on it.

[Dandelionhead]

Well.

Our second game of the Starfleet Academy campaign was last week and it went even better than the first one. Some adjustments were made to the campaign after gauging their reception last game. One NPC, a human Lt.-Commander who was meant to mentor the PCs a bit, got shipped out when the players didn't take to him as well as I'd hoped. I had him volunteer to host the rogue Trill symbiont that they exposed in the first episode, masquerading as another cadet, as it was now beig transferred back to the Trill homeworld to stand trial. To take his place, I had the Bajoran Commander who gave them a hard time during their investigation get transferred to the Academy staff. I think the players will enjoy that relationship a lot more, even if the PCs don't.

I introduced the rest of my main cast: a New Arcadian (genetically enhanced human offshoot race) rival for the the Trill PC, after he showed a romantic interest in the holographic life-form cadet Li Ying Fa. A few bungled rolls on the Trill's part allowed his rival to show him up in front of his crush, which worked out great as the player really has it in for that NPC now.

We had a great time with the female Ferengi cadet NPC taking over a kissing booth at the Orientation Fair and turning it into a synthehol lemonade stand (Authentic Bootleg Ferengi Synthehol!). Her twin idiosyncracies of getting alien races all mixed up and her complete lack of understanding Hyu-Mon humor are lots of fun to play.

The final main NPC was actually a hold-over from a previous campaign: The disaster-prone son of the main PC (not one of my current players) who's now about the right age to attend the Academy. To my players' consternation, I had him get into an unpleasant argument with the Cardassian trio of new cadets that my Vulcan PC was trying to befriend. The idea was to go 180 degrees from the Star Trek standard of using the one outsider alien in a crew of humans to explore humanity from the outside, and instead have the lone human (as both PCs are alien) reduced to minority status in a group of aliens and see how he likes it!

Actually, one of the big themes of this campaign is to use the Breen bombing of Earth, and the Academy in particular, near the end of the Dominion war as a parallel to the 9-11 atrocity. The same way the DS9 pilot riffed off the L.A. riots or STVI played on the fall of the USSR, I want to run the current situation through the Star Trek buffer and see what I can come up with. For instance, I want to run with the ST humans= Americans equation and find out what other echoes I can raise up. If Cardassians= Muslims, what kind of issues can I reflect on from the real world? Can I turn initial conflict and prejudice into understanding and cooperation? Can the cast? Any suggestions?

-Dandelionhead

[Owen E Oulton]

"Actually, one of the big themes of this campaign is to use the Breen bombing of Earth, and the Academy in particular, near the end of the Dominion war as a parallel to the 9-11 atrocity."

I don't see the connection. The 9-11 attacks were terrorist attacks against civilian targets (except for the Pentagon which was a military target) during peactime. The Breen attack on Starfleet Headquarters and the Academy was a purely military attack against bona fide military targets during a war - that doesn't even place it in the same league as the attack on Pearl Harbour.

Personally, as a GM I would try to avoid this sort of heavy-handedness, espacially when the parallel is spurious, as it is here. I'd play the attack straight. Make it personal for the characters. Earmark specific NPCs to be friends and rivals of the PC cadets, and have them die in front of the PCs, maybe gasping out last words as the PCs attempt first aid. Have the PCs learn who lead the Breen attack, then they're on their Cadet Cruise have their ship go up against that of the Breen responsible for the deaths of their friends.

[Diamond]

Good points Owen. BUT the Breen also clearly attacked civilian targets as well. At least, they did if one accepts as cannon the information in the Steve Long's excellent Dominion War Sourcebook (free download). I believe the stuff actually said on DS9 is slightly vague and open to enterpretation

Strategically speaking, considering the distance travelled, the strategic gains, and the risks taken, the Breen would probably consider the Doolittle raid as a better analogy. Earth would rather see it as the Blitz by Germany against London. The Founders would sooner enterpret it akin to Allied strategic bombing of Berlin. A sarcastic Tellarite might say, "more like the strategic bombing of Dresden. As GM you have control of which enterpretation you present to the players.

But I agree with Owen that you can be too heavy handed. In particular, portraying anything bad done by an enemy, even things that are significantly different from 9-11, to be akin to 9-11, trivializes 9-11 which should be avoided. On the other hand you'd have a lot of company in doing so.

[Dandelionhead]

Ah.

Possibly I didn't provide enough information, and so was mis-read.

The campaign takes place a year after the end of the Dominion war. The physical Academy has mostly been rebuilt but the toll on the human soul is still being felt. What I'm interested in is looking at the social repercussions of an assault of this magnitude on a culture that never expected it, could barely understand it.

The title of the campaign is Restorations. If, as Sisko put it, Earth is a Paradise then how did the people living there react when the bombs started coming down? Never mind the niceties and conventions of war terminology, I believe the emotional impact to be similar. In my campaign, I make it similar.

As to heavy-handedness, I imagine the proof will be in the pudding... The parallels will never be stated overtly in the game, mind you. The theme is to inform my arcs and storylines, not the plots themselves. As an example, the payoff in last week's game came when the PCs discovered a still-active Breen biotechnological weapon of some kind buried under the Academy Parade Grounds (at least they THINK it was Breen...). It was to evoke festering wounds hidden beneath a placid exterior, not to draw direct comparisons to any sort of actual warhead hypothetically buried anywhere!

Not to wander down the path of forbidden political discussion, but from up here, outside the USA, the American zeitgeist is looking increasingly alien. In my game, the aliens are the players, seeing humanity/America as the "other". Where they played humans interacting with strange aliens in previous campaigns, now they ARE the aliens, and humanity's looking very strange.

The same way TOS looked at Vietnam through Neural in "A Private Little War" during a time when it couldn't be done on TV, I want to get behind my players' prejudices and preconceptions and find a way to look at the situation happening around us today with some distance.

In no way do I mean to trivialize 9-11, Hiroshima or any other of the waking nightmares Diamond mentions. Please forgive me if anyone is offended. Especially Owen.

Dandelionhead

[Owen E Oulton]

Oh, hell no, I wasn't offended by your scenario. It is, after all an historical event.

If anyone has ever come up with a way to quantify when it's too soon or has been long enough to use an event as a pattern for a fictional treatment (and I regard an RPG session as much a valid form of fiction - on a much smaller scale - as a book, or a movie, or a TV show), I've never run into it.

It's just that I'm leery of tying a game too closely to an event which really has completely different underlying themes, whether it be 9-11 or Pearl Harbour. As Diamond points out, the event is much closer to the London Blitz or the Dresden Firestorm.

A biogenic weapon would appropriately evoke on various levels the Hiroshima/Nagasaki A-Bombs or more recent land mine concerns.