JAG Officers to my Ready Room

[Ergi]

My last adventure was about a moral dilemma. A group of archaeologists from the future had beamed aboard the players' vessel and asked for help. Since the group was holding back some information it took my players some time to find out what was going on. Now the PCs had to decide whether to help that small group, and allow them to alter the time-line even further, or to no longer support them, leading to the groups' inevitable death. The XO is an NPC and wasn't on the ship at the beginning of the adventure, so was the XO, who couldn't attend, and therefore wasn't available, either.
This left the Chief of Security in command. She was the only character that wanted to take the group to safety, even against the requests of one group member. The three other present PC officers wanted to put an end to it. They didn't exactly oppose the CoS, but weren't too entusiastic to help, when the Chief Engineer (Vulcan PC, the player didn't make it that evening, though.) temporarily shut down the engines, which effectively killed the group. He also ignored a direct order by the officer in command.
So, what consequences can the characters expect?
I thought there migth by one PC who will want to help, but I didn't think it would be the officer in charge, so I didn't anticipate this outcome.

[ghosty]

The likely thing that would happen is Starfleet will conduct a Board of Inquiry using officers from another command or even a JAG investigation. Given the "time travel" aspect of the scenario, the DTI would also be involved.

Have the Committee interview each character and have them describe, in their own words, their reasons for the actions they took and their personal feelings and intentions throughout.

This will give you an insight into the reasons for their actions and determine if they f@@$%* enough that the only choice would be a court martial.

[Lowly Uhlan]

During my series ,the crew had to rescue an SCE team from some pretty nasty aliens after a coup turned the Engineers into potential hunting trophies.The PC's pulled off the rescue but a large number of aliens were killed after the fact by several cases of energy weapons set to overload and beamed to the planets surface by the not so intrepid crew.

This was after a tremendous effort by Starfleet Interplanetary Affairs and the Diplomatic Corps to maintain relations (it took 20 years for the aliens to agree to any UFP presence).SF Intel was allready interested in the situation due to Orion Syndicate involvement.

Since the overload was a bonehead manuver and the PC's lost their ship in combat acouple of episodes later(so they cuold move to a better ship) ,I slapped them with a board of inquiry.The board consisted of the Interplanetary affairs head of the sector (since they had the biggest greivance),the sector's JAG officer,and the local Admiral (the ranking officer).

The purpose was to determine if the charges brought against the Crew had any merit,and a Court Martial is what Interplanetary affairs wanted.I put the loss-of-a-good-ship charges in to make them sweat-easily dissmissed.Each crewmember involved spoke in their own behalf and tension was quite high by the end of the session when they were cleared of all charges.It was a fun episode -the JAG officer was played by the CO's girlfreind who sat in for that one session and she kicked ass.SF Intel ended up being an ally after several instances of that department being a thorn in the side of of a freighter crew with the knack of getting involved in adventures.The guidelines in the SOM were good enough to provide a framework for the Board.

Thats how I did it-hope its helpful.Sorry about the long post.

[Ergi]

No reason to appoligize. Long posts are highly appreciated.

I imagine that most characters involved could get out of a court martial found not guilty, or at least not to such a great extend that it would prevent them from pursuing their career. However I am not sure what will happen to the Chief Engineer. Did the circumstances justify ignoring direct orders?

[Lowly Uhlan]

It's your call on what happens to your engineer.If it were my game ,he would have to have a really good reason to disobey a direct order ,as opposed to doing something stupid in the heat of battle.And if a court martial stuck it would take him out of the game.

Maybe you could have your inquiry prove the charges are valid ,giving him the loss of renown and permanent black mark, move on to a court martial,and have him cleared at that time. No matter what,make him sweat.Have a smartass NPC discuss where he'll be doing his criminal rehabilitation ("..the weather on Tantalus is nice this time of the year..."), disappointed letters from mom, whatever.Stretch it out over a whole session.Maybe over two.

[Ergi]

I will probably do that. Just in case you haven't noticed, that player didn't show up on that evening, so I decided that his character would do all this.

"Had better things to do, didn't you?" Muahahahaa
Maybe I should mention this in the evil GMs' support group thread.

But what I would really like to know, considering the circumstances, with the commanding officer violating Starfleet directives, is it still a crime to not follow his orders?

I mean, a soldier mustn't participate in killing civilians should his CO tell him to do so.

[Owen E Oulton]

Sounds like you got a serious problem here - from a GM's organisational point of view.

Under no circumstances should you punish a PC for actions taken while he was being played by the GM. Bend game logic if you have to, but do not railroad the player. That is the one cardinal sin that no GM should ever commit.

Now, as to how you can work around it, take the Engineer's player aside and explain what you had his PC do and your reasoning behind the actions. You can retcon in justifications - perhaps he'd found out something about the time-travellers which would have led to disastrous consequences had he not acted immediately - in other words, make him right. In Trek, being right trumps every other consideration.

[Evan van Eyk]

Well that one is difficult. First of all that Vulcan disobeyed an order, with the result of several dead people. However the effect could have been worse. With the warp Engine shut down, it usually takes hours to restart them, therefore the ship was left vulnerable. At best I would demote the character to Ensign, worst, expell the officer from Starfleet and put him into prison.

Of course the Time-Directive also is a major point here, the question is justifies it killing. Although having this Temporal Prime Directive introduced in some comical episodes ( see. Trouble with Tribbles in DS9 ), you should decide if it really exists, if so the characters actions where right. The Prime Directive outweighs any other Order and General Order and is the only single one which the CO cannot surpass, no matter if lives are at stake - thus assuming this counts for the Temporal Directive as well, the character could have prevented further catastrophes, e.g. whole civilisations wiped out.
So even if the character decided right, it still leaves the risk for the ship with shutdown engines in such a situation, which should still cause a reprimand.

If you decide to have harsher punishments, you could do another episode where it is revealed that the character was in deed a clone of the character, a doppelganger, an illusion or somehow controlled by an alien power, maybe by adversaries of the previous aliens, to give the player a chance to 'redeem' his character.

[Owen E Oulton]

" First of all that Vulcan disobeyed an order, with the result of several dead people."

First rule of GMing - don't screw the players over. It's your mess, not the player's - you have to fix it in a way that does not penalise the player. Period.

Now, remember, this is Trek - there are a multitude of ways out of any situation. One way that comes to mind is the ol' switcheroo. Make a deal with the player - for the next couple of sessions game out the court-martial proceedings, but have him play slightly out of character in a way that the other players should notice - maybe he has a ham sandwich (Vulcans being vegetarians).
During the investigation, have another character find a temporal/subspace/special-lucky-magic technobabble-of-the-week anomaly aboard the ship. When it's checked out, the REAL Vulcan engineer is in some sort of temporal stasis. Let the player play the substitute as he tries to get away, the more evil and maniacal the better, and award any experience to the actual player character - yes, you're buying him off.

I reiterate, no matter how much you try to justify it, punishing a PC for actions take by you as GM is grossly unfair. Your duty to the players in your game supercedes your duty to game logic.

[Ergi]

I never really intended to let that player suffer for what happened during this episode. I wouldn't have him make this decision if I hadn't been convinced that it was the right one. And the ship was only vulnerable for a few minutes and the ship was never in any danger during that time.
My reason for abusing that player was that he was the only option left to stop the group from further interfering with the time-line, except for Timefleet. And since I wanted to prevent a deus ex machina solution at any cost I thought it would be better to find a way of ending the adventure without outside interference.
And I was proven to be right, based on the reactions of my players.
I, being prosecutor and judge, will probably rule that the actions of all officers were justified.
I don't know how much I've been influenced by it, but the day before we played I had watched "Crimson Tide". And, as those of you who have seen the movie might remember, both officers were found not guilty.

[Capt. K. Vaughn]

I agree with Owen all points. Furthermore, you have a senior officer that is clearly disobeying directives regardless of his or her reasoning, that puts the officer at fault so choosing not to obey an order by them would be waved under such a circumstance as it was the senior officer that was in the wrong.

If it were me, I'd make the Security Chief sweat through a fairly rigorous inquiry, let the CEO off with a verbal warning (no permanent marks in their record) while the Security Chief may end up with a temporary reprimand while they take a refresher course on the temporal prime directive.

Regards,
CKV.

[ghosty]

One point, there is no "crime" in disobeying orders which are illegal. The crime may be in obeying an illegal order.

The most poignant example was of course the Nazi war crime trials which followed WWII. The defence that "I was only following orders" was not accepted as a defence for the horrific crimes the Nazis committed at Hitler's orders.

[aelius]

Actually the Temporal Prime Directive only applies backwards not forewards. If someone comes from the future and informs a starfleet officer that something horrible is going to happen the officer may if he wishes try to avoid it
Picard himself said to Berlinghoff Rasmussen "Your past is my future." Also the LUGTrek Time Travel book says that Starfleet officers are not required to comply with requests from people from the future.
Thus I can only conclude that the TPD is designed to protect history to the present, whatever your present is. Asking people to protect someone elses future removes free will from people, and Star Trek always holds up the freedom to choose as sacrosanct.
I can't think of anything right off hand that would honk off my players more than being told they had to do something because someone from the future told them they did it in the history books.