I FINALLY get to game again!
First off, after two years of having to put most of my hobbies on hold, I've finished my Master's Thesis. Finally, I can get my fix again. I'm starting up a new CODA Trek group on Saturday. Woohoo! The withdrawal symptoms can now go away!
The plan: I'm going to start the players off as Fresh Faced Cadets[tm] at Starfleet Academy, late TNG era. If all goes well, and the game lasts long enough, they'll get a year or so of being young officers before the Dominion War breaks out, and they'll end up as senior officers by the end of it.
The characters: I know one person is planning on making a Human-Bajoran hybrid, but everything else awaits the weekend. I'm planning on adapting the LOTR rules for "Starting with no Order" for character creation. They'll all be assigned to the same "squadron" (or whatever the propper term is), ensuring that they all live in close proximity and do all sorts of activities together.
The Plots: I've got a few ideas percollating for things they can do while in school; along with character creation I'll start them off with a little Academy Orientation and some light "basic training" type stuff (so that senior cadets can yell at them for not saying "aye aye, sir" and so forth) as well as try to set up some friendly/rival NPC cadets. I've got a few things from an Academy game I played in a while ago which I can adapt. I'm also planning on stealing some plot seeds from my Dad's old "Tom Corbett, Space Caded" books (though none of the "dinosaurs in the jungles of Venus stuff, of course).
Why I'm Sharing This: I'd like to solicit a few additional ideas from the crowd which would work for Academy-based games, either as things that could happen within the Cadet Corps (depending on the dates I finally settle on, I might throw them into stuff from "The First Duty"), or excuses to get them off-campus (or off-planet) and into trouble; at the very least I can cap off each academic year with a big set-piece sort of thing, some sort of course-related excursion with complications, leading up to the Cadet Cruise (which will involve prospectors, pirates, and a rich Dilithium strike).
So anyone got any good ideas for Cadet plot hooks, or sources I can go to for Academy information (asside from the LUG boxed set, which I haven't got access to)?
-Chris Landmark
"Was entstanden ist, das muss vergehen. Was vergangen, auferstehn." -Klopstock & Mahler
"Only liberals really think. Only liberals are intellectual. Only liberals understand the needs of their fellows." How much viciousness lay concealed in that word! Odrade thought. How much secret ego demanding to feel superior. - Heretics of Dune