Adventure Seeds

[Michael Barratt]

Title: "When the Captain's Away..."
Setting: Starship in orbit of a resort colony, or in spacedock where there are no other ships...
Era: Any

The ship is up for a minor refit, or an upgrade of some secondary systems, or something similar. The Captain, XO, and whoever else is higher rank than the PCs, take this rare opportunity for shore leave, likely with some pushing and shoving from the Ship's counsellor or CMO.

They're not at hand - either spelunking in a cave where transporters don't work, or they've shuttled to somewhere else, when the ship, in stardock, gets a fairly routine request for assistance from a ship with a failure in its warp drive. The starbase commander OK's the ship going out and tugging the damaged ship into the starbase, as they are the only starship on hand.

Of course, the others are playing possum, and try to take over the PC Crew's ship, which suddenly has junior officers in charge during a very real crisis... overpower them, and then they'll find they're at the hands of a fairly hostile race - but it doesn't want to kill the junior officers, they want to steal something from the Starbase - and now they have a way to do it...

So they have to overpower their invaders, and then retake their ship, and warn the Starbase that the ship they're "tugging" is armed and dangerous!

The Doc

[ghosty]

TITLE: A Board of Inquiry
ERA: Dominion War

At the height of the Kalandra Campaign, reports arrive of a "mutiny" on the USS (insert name) a Mecred-class escort.

Two officers are being charged, the Executive Officer and the Conn Officer. The CO is the accusser. The mutiny occured during a (insert nautral disaster) when the Captain apparently vacilated and the XO was forced to relieve him of duty under a rather obscure article of regulations and took command.

The Captain has been ordered to head an emergency Board of Inquiry and complie a report for Starfleet JAG. The crew are drafted to assist with the investigations.

It emerges that the Captain of the USS (insert name) may have been "crazy" and has acted like a petty tyrant, punishing the crew for offenses (real or imagined) using the very letter of the regulations causing great discontent among the officers and the crew. Many of the stories told by the crew are fantastical but their is a kernel of truth in everything they say. The key is to shift through all the evidence to determine if the Captain was insane or at least mentally unstable and whether the actions of the XO and Conn were justified. Had they acted in the interest of the ship and crew or did they commit a act of mutiny? That's for the PCs to determine.

[Sho-sa Kurita]

Been watching "The Caine Mutiny" there ghosty? Great movie and could make a great investigative episode with flashbacks and everything. Very tough to pull off.

[ghosty]

Originally posted by Sho-sa Kurita
Been watching "The Caine Mutiny" there ghosty? Great movie and could make a great investigative episode with flashbacks and everything. Very tough to pull off.

True. But it will be a challenge won't it. The PCs will have to piece all the clues together sift the truth from the lies and embelishment and establish whether th Captain was really crazy or just misunderstood.

[ghosty]

TITLE: Codename Omega
ERA: Post Dominion War

The ship detects the use of the Omega particle coming from a world just inside the Cardassian Union.

Under the Omega Directives, the Captain summons Team Omega the team of specialists trained to implement the Omega Directive. The leader, Captain Shaun Dupuy is a little on the arrogant side, as are most of his team they are equipped with a souped up Yorkshire-class transport, strikefighters, compression phaser rifles the lot...

Suffice to say the Omega Team gets decimated during the assault on the planet which turns out to be a secret Obsidian Order project to develop a new weapon to restore Cardassian power only Dupuy and one of his junior officers survives. The Captain is forced to disclose details of the Omega Directive to the crew in order to complete the mission.

But before they can do anything complications arrive in the forms of a Romulan Warbird. The Commander demands that the Cardassians turn over the Omega particle research to him and a tense stand off ensues when the Cardassians bring in reinforcements in the form of two Galor-class cruisers and a pair of captured Breen fighters.

Its obvious that neither side wants to surrender. The Cardassians and Romulans are determined to keep the particle and of course Starfleet's orders are to destroy the particle...so lets see how they get out of this one.

[Dan Gurden]

Name; Time and Again...
Type; Action/Adventure, Time Travel, Movie Tie-In.

Note; Perfect for a beginning group of non trekkie roleplayers that have watched the films occasionally, but you want to convince...

Dr Sorans old Study Buddy has also studied the nexus, only instead of grief, his driving force is revenge. Now he knows how to direct the Nexus he heads out into borg space 'herding' the Nexus as he goes.

His plan is simple, somehow get the borg absorbed into the Nexus where they will either see their drive for perfection completed, and the rest of the collective will rush in to join this illusion. Or they will be disconnected from the collective and live their fantasy lives as individuals...

His plan backfires and the players arrive just as the Borg cube is absorbed. But the nexus turns Borg green, as the collective mind allows the Borg to see through the illusion... Which could bve even worse if they discover the ability to leave at will and at any time they choose.

The players must enter the Nexus and stop the plan from occuring, trying to avoid the Borg within the fantasy, and retaining focus... Can they do it, and in doing so, can they save the universe???

[Michael Barratt]

Title: "Narrow Streets of Cobblestone..."
Setting: Any, really
Time: Any, really

("Roswell," is inspiring this...)

A telepathic crewmember is murdered, and one of the PC Crew is the unfortunate recipient of the last telepathic contact just as the murder victim dies.

In a desperate attempt for help, the murdered crewmember telepathically "downloaded" their personality - which is telepathically there, and visible to the PC Crewmember. The episode becomes a kind of murder investigation, where the personality of the murder victim is present, and trying to figure out why he was murdered in the first place.

The telepathic impression of the victim will fade over time (or just be quieted after solving the crime, s'up to you). Basically the plot requires a "shot in the back" sort of death.

The Doc

[Flamestrike]

Title: Shadowland
Setting: Ship-based
Era: mid Dominion War

Since it's getting near Halloween, I thought I'd dust off this one I posted a year or so back. It's a one shot, possibly leading into a full campain, depending i your players like it or not:


The PCs are in the midst of a heated battle in the Dominion War when their ship (an illustrious vessel with a long history- an Excelsior or Ambassador would be perfect) gets hit by a stray torpedo. The crew see a brilliant flash of light and then they wake up to find their ship a semingly ruined hulk with minimal life support.

They find that, unexplainably, the ships systems all work despite the massive damage, and that about over 85% of he crew is missing,even those who were in undamaged areas of the ship, while those who should have NEVER made it (They were in sections that are now exposed to space) woke up in their quarters or at duty stations.

Sensors then detect an Olympic-class medical ship coming ou of warp nearly on top of them. It scans the ship for a while, as if searchig for survivors, and then warps out.

Just as the crew is piecing all this together, the turbolift door opens and a famous former captain of their ship from 50 years ago steps out. He/She convinces the crew to calm down and then explains the situation: They did't make it through the fight at all. They are dead, stuck between our universe and whatever afterlife exists....

Bare seconds before a TOS era Roulan BoP sends a plasma blast across their bow and smehow sends a tranmission over their ship's PA, demandin that they surrender their shp and bodies over to the Stygian Federation.

[Flamestrike]

Another Idea!

Title: In the Belly of the Beast
Setting: Ship-board
Era: TNG and beyond
Type: Mystery

A mysterious event is occuring in Federation space: Starships re becoming self-aware, ejecting their crews near starbases (in lifepods), and are headng off towards some common destination somewhere in the delta quadrant

The only link between the renegade starships is that they possess computers of the type developed for the Galaxy-class project or better. Smaller vessels, such as runabouts seem to be unaffected, and garbled reports seem to be coming from the Romulan Empire of simlar occurances. The Klingon empire mysteriously cut off all communications a week ago and all attempting to enter have been met with a blockade of B'rel and T'Kinga class vessels.

The PCs are assigned an older vessel, possibly a museum piece or Centaur type, and ordered to find out exactly what the hell is going on.

[Captain Zymmer]

Title: Snow Job
Setting: Starship or Starbase Crew
Era: Any
Type: Rescue
Description: The players are called upon to perfrom a rescue mission of a downed diplomatic shuttle. Add in some pirates and you have your reasoning. Because the ship has gone down in a nuetral terriotry the Federation has recieved permission to send in one shuttle.

As the shuttle appraoches the snow bound planet, they come under attack by superior pirate forces and are forced down, crashing on a mountain in a blizard.

As they get a reading on the pirate camp near the bottom of this mountain, they come under attack by a bunch of Mountain Primates, every bit as scary as a Mugato or Gorn

Either the players will think of it, or have an NPC suggest it, the only way to reach the pirate camp before they leave with the prisoenrs, is to use plating pannels fromt he crashed shuttle/runabout as sleds to slide down the mountain in record time, avoiding the "snow monsters" etc...

With a nice fire fight at the bottom and having to steal a pirate ship, this one could be great fun.

Treat the slide like a video game with loads of rolls to avoid shooting of into crevaices etc...with th players always having an option to ditch off instead of fall to their deaths

[Michael Barratt]

Title: "Corridors,"
Setting: Starbase, Starship, either will do
Era: Any

This one takes a bit of a deft touch, and is based on "House of Leaves," which is an awesome little novel...

Start with one PC taking a little longer than he or she thought they'd need to get to the bridge, and over the next little while, have the same occur. As time goes by, the crew starts to notice that sometimes, corridors and rooms are larger on the inside than they are in their external measurements. Something has gone a little bit confused in space/time in their ship/station, and it's only getting worse. Then new corridors and rooms appear where they've no business being, and NPCs start to go missing. They went down a new corridor, and when the PCs get there, the corridor isn't there anymore. Where are they?

You could play with this however you'd like: temporal/spatial anomoly mixing this ship and a future version of this ship once it is refitted and upgraded, with living material only going forward, not backwards. Alien race playing with the crew telepathically, they're actually still in their own ship, but if they wander too far from the "real" ship, they just pass out into comaville, having pushed the alien 'telepathic cage' too far. Etc etc.

The Doc

[Captain Zymmer]

Or...for potential crossover effect, what if The Master has discovered the player's universe and is trying toc onvert their starship into a Tardis?

Then the good Doctor could arrive to help them out

Cool...Diamond, you seeing this?

[Michael Barratt]

Title: "Infinity's Children,"
Setting: Any
Era: Any

The crew in any setting (maybe Risa or the like), witness a man being attacked and brutally killed, then robbed of something. The thieves race off, and despite a good chase, make it to their warp ship. The body, however, vanishes.

The crew run into the body a little later, alive and well. He's terrified at first, but eventually learns to trust the crew. He's an immortal, like Flint and Robin Lefler's mother - and he is also a trained genetecist. Through interaction with the very few others of his kind, he has learned - and isolated - the genetic sequences that grant him his ability to survive death, and live forever.

The item stolen from him has this information in it, and he realizes that it may be possible, with genetic resequencing, to mimic this ability to at least some level of effect. This cannot fall into wrong hands (and already has - that of Section 31).

A few double-crosses and some intruigue on this trip. Often the PCs will ask, "Why the hell did you write it down at all, moron!" and at the end the immortal uses the information in the way he had always intended: to resequence himself and allow himself to die.

The Doc

[Sarge]

Type: Exploration
Era: Any

The PCs are observing a pre-warp civilization with roughly late 20th Century tech. One of the planets superpower nations test-launches a nuclear missile, but the test goes awry and the missile heads for a rival nation. If it hits, they will launch their own missiles and wipe out the planet's civilization.

Start a stopwatch and tell the PCs they have ten minutes to decide what to do. Some options would be

a) Strictly follow the Prime Directive and watch as billions of innocent people die.

b) Screw the Prime Directive, phaser the missile out of space, and tell the nations to make love, not war.

c) Nudge the missile off course with a tractor beam so that it falls in a desolate area, let the natives think it malfunctioned, try to keep alien involvement hidden, and hope for the best.

d) Whatever bizarre scheme a typical group of players dreams up.

Whatever happens, there will definitely be an investigation by Federation VIPs. The players will have to justify their actions in a courtroom/interrogation scene. Whatever position the players took, the investigators should take an opposing view.

[Sho-sa Kurita]

Note to Sarge: I like the Prime Directive dilemna / stop-watch idea. I'll be remembering that one.

Title: Phase Two
Style: Exploration
Era: 24 Century

Needed: One unstable singularity and one unexpecting ship just passing by. For some technobabble reason, the ship causes the singularity to destablize. The succeeding explosion results in the entire ship being thrown out of phase (like Geordi and Ro in "The Next Phase").

Key systems such as propulsion are down for a while -- this is important because you want other ships to come to the scene of the accident. Communications are up, but no-one can hear them. Because the whole ship is out of phase they don't realise it until other vessels arrive on the scene of the accident, obviously searching for the "missing" ship.

I would try to keep the players from figuring out what's up until something really scary happens, like a Galaxy-class ship flying through them. In addition incidents like that, the real key is that the singularity was unseen until too late because it was inside a pocket of space-time that was also out of phase. It became unstable when deprived of it's normal source of incoming matter/energy. The ship passed into the pocket (insert odd effect of choice, if any) due to an interaction of it's warp field with the pocket. After the explosion the singularity and pocket are destroyed, but luckily the ship escaped.

Like Geordi and Ro, whenever they touch something, a chroniton signature is left. You would think with the ship's tech, they could reverse the process, so I'm thinking the deflector should be damaged in some way that prevents them from using it. Also, to dephase a ship, it would probably take something as big as the Remmler Array (from "Starship Mine") or perhaps directed beams from multiple other ships.

On the other hand, imagine the missions you could carry out in enemy territory in such a condition... Might be good for a couple adventures.

- Daniel