Academy

[Lonoto]

Has anyone done an academy campaign using CODA? If so, do you have any useful stuff like character sheets for cadets and course times etc... that you could post here?

Or you could e-mail them to demmilog@hotmail.com

Lonoto

[Chris Landmark]

Well, I'm currently running an Academy based game, so while I haven't "done" and Academy game, I am in the process of "doing".

I don't really see the need for Cadet-specific character sheets; I mean, if we can use the same character sheet for a Starfleet officer, a Ferengi confidence man, and a Cardassian diplomat, why do we need one for a Starfleet officer-in-training? It's not like there's any new stats or skills or traits which need to be listed or anything. I'm just using Don's PDF sheets, found in the sticky thread on this very forum.

As for course times, I don't think that level of detail is really what you want. Waking up in time to make it to their 8 AM basic Self Defense class, then spending 2 hours at the library before an 11 AM Ancient Philosophies class, a quick lunch, and then Classical Vulcan, Introduction to Warp Propulsion, and Federation Law in quick succession in the afternoon, day after day, isn't the sort of thing exciting RPGs are made of. Trust me, I've been in college long enough. Your players are much more likely to be interested in the fact that this week they have a survival trek exam at the Venusian terraforming station for their Planetary Survival course, and by the end of the month they need to perform a simulated level 1 diagnostic on the EPS system of a Galaxy Class starship in order to pass the course, and find a date for the Sadie Hawkins dance which is happening in November (which will be disrupted by a strange energy lifeform which has been brought back by a visiting lecturer in exoarcheology in one of the artifacts from his latest dig, but they don't know that yet).

Now, I did manage to locate a copy of the Starfleet Academy boxed set which Last Unicorn put out for the ICON version of the game, and I have found it to be a pretty good resource for adding the "college student" flavor to the game, and it contains some useful aides, like a map of the Academy campus (useful for getting the players to visualize sprinting across campus to the transit station for their weekend pass) as well as selected course listings (for getting the Narrator's neurons firing about the sort of college classes that 24th century students can chose from), and the ICON game stats are relatively easy to convert to Coda if you need them. So if you can locate a copy in the half price or used bin at your local gaming store, I think you'll find it useful as well.

I modified the "starting with no Order" rules from the LotR RPG to create cadets in my game. They get their standard Personal Development package, and they can allocate their "Pick 5: +1 to any Professional Skill" part of the Professional Development stage, but they do not yet have either the Starship Officer basic Profession or any of the Starship Officer elite Professions. In addition to a few points of experience, I'm handing out the additional 20 picks of Professional Development slowly, at the end of adventures. They can assign them to skills based on the classes they are taking and the actions they had to perform durring the adventure. Should they accumulate enough experience to gain an Advancement, their courses will determine what skills are bought at the Professional cost, and what are bought at the "Non-professional" cost. They'll enter the Starship Officer basic Profession for the purposes of accessing its Professional Skills and Abilities with Advancement Picks sometime around the end of their first year, and they'll probably get Starship Duty after their second or third year (it sounds like a good summer assignment) and enter their Elite Professions at that time.

If I come up with anything else particularly clever, or of you have any other questions, I'll post here again.

-Chris Landmark

[Lonoto]

Thanks for the idea, I will have to modify the char sheets (stupid me gicing them proffesional development) but other than that, this will work pretty good.

My only problem is I don't have a local gaming store, the nearest opne being 2 hours away, and I am 13 so I can't very well go their unless my parents do, which really sucks.

Well, I do have one question, could you post the classes here to give me an idea of what classes to use in my game?

[Chris Landmark]

Well, I won't post the list of classes straight out of the book (which, depending on how much I give out, might constitute a copyright violation, and they don't like that around here), I will post a list of the various Academy departments. From these you should be able to invent some classes, either on your own, or with the aid of a course catalog from a college or university (which might even be available on the web).

Just keep in mind that these are Star Trek classes, so you have to include strange alien lifeforms, histories, cultures, and technologies into your classes.

The departments (listed) are:

Anthropology
Biology
Chemistry
Classics (old literature and languages, and how they shaped society, basically)
Communications (reading, writing, public speaking, etc.)
Computer Science
History
Linguistics
Material Engineering
Mathematics
Medical Sciences
Philosophy
Physical Education (including sports and self defense)
Physics
Planetary Sciences
Political Science
Propulsion Engineering
Psychology
Sociology
Space Sciences
Starfleet Sciences (this is basically your Military Sciences stuff: rules & regs, shootin' phasers, command and leadership)
Systems Engineering
Tactical Sciences
Vehicle Operations
Zoology

Each department will contain a variety of classes covering different topics, starting with general, broad, but not terribly in-depth material and progressing to highly advanced, in depth study of a subject which will probably only be of interest to someone majoring in that area. So while every cadet probably takes Systems Engineering 101, in order to know how all those things on a starship work (communicators, transporters, replicators, sensors, life support, weapons, etc.), it's only going to be the cadets going into Engineering who will be terribly interested in taking Systems Engineering 452 where they will study the latest cutting edge theory in systems design.

Note that Starfleet Academy wants characters to have a broad, liberal arts education, not a narrow, technical education. So your Engineer character shouldn't be just taking lots of Propulsion and Systems Engineering classes. He should also be studying History, and Sociology, and Communications in order to work well with others in Starfleet. He should also know some Physics and Space Sciences, so he can deal with those strange phased tachyon phemomena that tend to crop up when traveling through space. And he should of course know how to shoot a phaser and throw a James T. Kirk Flying Side Kick[tm] just in case he gets into a bar brawl with a bunch of drunken Klingons.

-Chris Landmark

[Lonoto]

Thanks for the info. I really appreciate it, it will help me out a lot.

[Doug Burke]

Another thing you might want to check out is in the Lord of the RIngs Core Book. They have a good set of guidlines on "Starting with No Order". (Orders are directly analogous to Professions, BTW).

[Sho-sa Kurita]

I modified the "starting with no Order" rules from the LotR RPG to create cadets in my game..

Chris, I just wanted to say that I like the thought process you put into this. It makes sense and has good flavor.