What could happen on this planet?

[Lancer]

I need some help from you guys brainstorming an episode I am working on.

Right now the crew are in the middle of a confrontation with some renegade Klingons while transporting a Federation ambassador and his staff to a planet that has requested membership in the Federation.
I expect the players to need less than half our next session to deal with the Klingons, so I need to flesh out the arrival and activities on Komarek (the prospective member world).
My overall season planning calls for the crew developing a friendly and cordial relation with the Komari so I can put them in a bit of a dilemma when they discover later that the Komari have a bit of a shady past.

The Komari had diplomatic relations with the Federation for some years now. Their culture and government is structured around a meritocracy based on academic and engineering achievements. They are fascinated by technology but are themselves more craftsmen/repairmen than true engineers (I.e. their tech developed in leaps and bounds, just as they needed it. Otherwise it's "don't fix it until it's broke").

Now what could happen to the crew while on Komarek? I can work out the large receptions and diplomatic stuff, but I need some "filler" scenes, featuring interactions with the "Joe Average" Komari.

[C5]

Hey, I'm just finishing a veeeery long mission (more than a dozen game sessions) which just a setting like that (players on a diplomatic mission visiting the planet).

Apart from the reception and diplomatic pleasantries, here's what the locals offered :

- Visit of the capital and its most famous areas and monument
- Visit of the greatest museums of the planet
- Visit of a well known archeological site (think Egypt)
- Attendance to a typical show or sport event (for instance, on my planet the locals were very skilled at holography, so the players were invited to a holographic show)
- Visit of leisure facilities (beach, ski, etc - depending on the climate)
- Visit of some factories, hospitals and universities (for instance the exobiology class)


If some of these ideas are to your liking, I can offer a few exotic ideas I came up with if you are interested.

Hope this helps

[Lancer]

Originally posted by C5
- Visit of the capital and its most famous areas and monument
- Visit of the greatest museums of the planet
...
- Visit of some factories, hospitals and universities (for instance the exobiology class)

If some of these ideas are to your liking, I can offer a few exotic ideas I came up with if you are interested.

Sure, let's hear some of those exotic ideas.
I am especially interested in what you can come up with, concerning visits to factories and universities.

Hmmm, universities... The way the Komari are ruled by a meritocracy higher learning probably places high values on self-study. And the teachers, being highly accomplished in their fields themselves, might be political leaders too, placing them in a position to influence who becomes the next leaders and who doesn't. Must think this through...

[C5]

Well most of my ideas were tailored for my planet (a pacifist race with a taste for elaborated manpulations and a very advanced sensor and holographic technologies). Here are how some visits happened :

- The capital : The players visited an artistic area (with lots of galleries and streets artists), some known monuments, and a "tourist area", with lots of souvenir shops, well known restaurants and the like.

- Museum : A huge building, shaped as a semi-buried diamond (built for the commemoration of the planet's unification), with every technological discoveries displayed along some explanatory text (a holographic guide was available as well). They also had a visit at an archeological site that had the distinctivness of having never been abandonned, but continuously built upon, thus offering archeologists an opportunity to access some very old buildings... as well as a puzzle to determine what parts of the monuments are original.

- Factories : Not much here, the players were given a guided tour of the facility (speech from the manager of the facility, then visit to critical areas).

- Universities : The player visited a huge university, wich encompassed every school grades. Hence, they started with the young children who were pointing at them and at their ears (there were Vulcans in the delegation), and ended with students who were fascinated to meet aliens, since for some it was the subject of a thesis. Of course, given your planet's special view on education, this might not apply.

I also created a few exotic sports (like whirlsurf, or surfing on a vortex in the water) and eating customs.

Another good idea to have your players befriend with the locals is to have regular attachés being assigned to them. With locals accompanying them in each of their visits and always here to help, some bonds are bound to be formed (something I had to skip for the scenario's sake).

[Lt Cmdr Matt]

Maybe have your players "live" with a 'Joe Average' familty, to get an idea of the customs.

[Sheliak Bob]

Little things go a long way in establishing a setting. I'd start with blocking out an average day for an inhabitant, then fleshing out the types of things that would be encountered during that day.

For instance, if they are an "early to rise" kind of species, they could be pestering visitors to be up and around earlier than some Federation types would prefer. for flavor: What does the sunrise look like? What kind of sounds go with it? Smells?
(EX: A seaside engineering retreat/town--You have a bright orange dawn with shades of red. The sky is a pale peach color when the sun is totally up. You can hear the whine and clank of various types of machinery well before sunrise, coming from the various workshops and research buildings. All of this stops around sunrise as the local devout take time for dawn prayer rituals, soft murmurings and occasional bells sound, and the more secular have a quick meal of tart citrus-like fruit and fiber-heavy bread, sort of like Shredded Wheat crossed with pita bread.
The air smells of salty sea breeze, a pungent local flower that opens at sunrise--imagine a patchouli-esque earthy arouma, and the nostril stinging acridness of industrial solvents & lubricants.)

You can do this sort of thing for the whole day. Just describe what is around someone at each meal and during each major change in the schedule. Think about all five senses and jot down notes.
Once you have all of this, which probably seems like a lot, you can feel more free to just let players roam about and see the sights. Involve them in activities depending on what time of day it is and what the folks around them would be doing at that hour.

AND! You need A) A bar or other night spot where off duty personnel can get into trouble. describe the type of drinks and decor in use.
B) at least one potential love interest/sexual adventure character MUST be encountered.
C) One weird local bit of alien life/physiology that can lead to massive misunderstandings.

With that, you can keep an average party busy on one world for a month or more of sessions. trust me.

[Ineti]

If you wanted more of a plot with the Komari, you could do something where one group of scientists/engineers are about to/want to make the "next step" in some sort of techno area, but another group wants to hold back and wait, or maybe insists the data is wrong, or something.

There could be a little tense undercurrent on the planet when the crew arrives. Might spice things up a bit.

[pesterfield]

How will the crew be expected to get around? Public transport, loaned a private vehicle?

Visit natural wonders longest active volcano, tallest waterfall, etc.

See a crafts fair and let the crew buy things, maybe something can turn out to be of use later. "That old book you bought had the hero facing a problem like this."

Hold a parade to welcome the Federation ambassador.

Eating: Check old National Geographics and international cookbooks for what some people consider a good meal.

These people will like puzzles, and being engineers the more complex the better.

Have the head of security invited to watch, or participate, in military exercises.