Why didn't your borg assimilate the Federation

[Liz Not Beth]

This message has been removed on request by the
poster

[Dan Gurden]

Well. As Narrator I wanted to have a playable game universe, and as has already been said. Getting all your players to play souless, emotionless, personality-shy drones slaved to the will of the greater collective...

...Is immediatly obvious as a REALLY bad game concept.

Which leaves the Borg as the Bad Guys. And there you then have to decide if you will use the true Borg, or the Borg that can be beaten (we have been calling them 'Pussy Borg' for some time now).

While the first is an unbeatable foe, truely scary, and eventually invulnerable to any attack.

The other appears to be, except for one blatant flaw. So obvious its like painting a target on it.

I prefer the former, but have to give the players a chance, and so usually end up with the Hybrid as seen in First Contact. However my players have a chance.

They have assimilated Federation Tech, and so the 'no interest, no threat' clause applies. Put simply a Federation vessel (unless testing a new piece of tech) is beneath the collectives notice. They could fly in formation with a Borg ship, and as long as the Borg do not perceive you as a threat, they pay you no mind. Put simply they ignore you.

Fat lot of good to the Federation ship that feels it has to place itself in the way of a Borg assimilation of another group!

Basically, the Borg are a Plot device, like the Q. They are big, bad and dangerous to know. But unlike the Q, if you want to avoid them. Go the other way. I use them as a test of morals, to see if the crew are still 'Starfleet'. Or as a big fat Stop sign indicating the current path is wrong.

Sure you can still go one on one with a Borg Cube. But unless you have a cunning trick to pull out of your arse, you ARE going to die. Basically you have to surprise me as GM with this trick. Do not plan on remodulating phasers, using projectiles (real or holographic), or even going hand to hand... And when you do surprise me, dont assume the trick will work twice.

They will adapt. They will keep coming. They will always use the same plan, using sheer weight of numbers to its advantage. Its not nice, its not fair, and there are plenty of built in flaws to the rule above to save a creative player. But if you want to play with the bear...