Cadet Cruise

[Lowly Uhlan]

I have a question concerning cadet cruises.There's a space for this in the service record section of the personnel jacket in the Ops Manual.My ICON TNG rulebook and I have long since parted ways due to a pissed off girlfreind who decided to lose some of my stuff for me.I seem to remember that the cadet cruise was part of character generation.I'm thinking that I should assign an advancement package as part of professional development.How would this translate to CODA ?Could be that the designers have intended prof. development to cover this and its part of character conception that is up to player and GM to devise ,further fleshing out the character without affecting starting skills and edges.Feedback?

[RaconteurX]

That's up to you to decide although, in theory, a newly-created character could be considered fresh out of the Academy (or a comparable professional school), without even a cadet cruise under his or her belt.

[Lowly Uhlan]

Yeah.I could tack on a year's worth of advances.I was kind of curious how it was handled in LUG Trek.

[Hadley]

When my players were creating their characters for the USS Dauntless campaign I ran, I allowed each of the Starfleet characters to take 1 Advancement to reflect their experiences during their Cadet Cruise. However, I did limit these Picks to Professional Skills only, assuming that Cadet Cruises would be the first opportunity for newly-minted Midshipmen to put their classroom and simulator skills into practice.

The sole exception to this was the Ferengi smuggler turned 'Strategic Advisor' (don't ask ...) who I simply allowed an extra Advancement to.

[Sea Tyger]

Personally, I feel that Coda professional development for starship officers reflects their Academy and Cadet Cruise experiences, and that a character with no advancements would be one ready for his/her first real assignment.

My theory behind this is that the cadet cruise is integral to the training process...that simulators and classroom learning only teach so much, and midshipmen must get hands-on training to complete the cycle of learning before they're ready to move on to the field.

Just my thoughts on the subject.

[Lowly Uhlan]

Good point S.T..3 of the characters in my game started as raw ensigns and I went by the book in their creation.This has worked fine.Seeing the cadet cruise entry on the Ops Manual service record got me to thinking about it though.For my current series I'll use it as a fluff entry, letting the players pick the ship or starbase(they've allready submitted lengthy backgrounds to me anyway).In future games where I'll probably be giving advancements to new characters I'll assign 1 years worth specfically as the cruise.