Why walk when we can beam!!?

[Scarecrow]

I ran my first Trek session last night and my group seemed to like it. It was Pime Directive violation scenario set in the early movie period (TWOK) The players had to right some wrongs without making contact with the indiginous population.

All well and good but something I noticed was that they did very little walking about, prefering instead to beam from location to location. Now whilst this is perfectly legitimate and to be fair it was mainly so that they could avoid being seen, I could forsee it causing problems - Door locked? Beam to the other side? Guards on the bridge? Beam to the other side. Surrounded by bad guys? Just beam back to the ship! I tried to limit it by suggesting that the local minerals were interfering but I don't think I'm going to pull this one off every week.

Anyone else have problems with their group beaming all over the place and how do you generally restrict it, if you need to?

Crow

[Ergi]

Next time they beam up a nasty transporter accident could happen. Of course beaming is perfectly safe in 9,999,999 out of 10,000,000 cases but that redshirt with his organs inside out should be hard to ignore.

Other restrictions are range and time. TNG transporters have a safe range of 40,000 km, older models have probably less. If the officers on the ship consider it necessary to get a detailed scan of the orbiting moon they could decide to fly closer to it. This might be problematic since the safety of the away team should be a top priority. Another possibilty to get the PCs out of range is to make both the sun's radiation and the planets magnetic field very strong. That way the vessel will have to drop shield every time before beaming, putting the vessel at risk. If the radiation alone isn't that strong you can use the planets rotation cycle against the players. A planet's magnetic field protects the surface from solar radiation by diverting it around the planet. This creates two zones of intense radiation on the side facing and on the side opposing the sun. This picture shows earth magnetosphere:

The bean-shaped areas, actually they are disc-shaped, of course, are called Van Allen belts. Russian cosmonauts received radiation burns inside their vehicles when passing through the belts in high orbit. The Lance Armostrong and his colleagues, BTW, must have been REALLY lucky to cross the Van Allen belt unharmed.
There is one last transporter limitation I can think of, the 30 seconds it takes between transports to clean the buffers (or something like that). If you have only one active transporter and either a big away team or multiple teams scattered on the surface beaming may not always be possible to escape an imminent threat. "Okay, 30 Nazis are about to come through that door. We can beam 6 of you up, that would leave 2 of you down there." This should make it harder to request an emergency beam-out.

[C5]

What I usually did when my players wanted to do things like beaming through a door is rule that it requires fine tuning of the transporter. After all, I don't think we ever heard the transporter being precise to the meter, so when players want to beam specifically in the bad guy's closet or in the Intendant's jacuzzi (no, this never happened so far but who knows ), I request a transporter roll.
So if they keep transporting whenever they need to pass through a door, they'll end up risking failure after some time (results being left to the Narrator's discretion... )

[KillerWhale]

I had the problem in our earlier days. I invoked some technobabble reason like C5 says (I invoked the transporter taking up much energy that should be saved, I think), but most importantly, I did something I seldom do: I sit with my players and told them "Hey guys, this is Star Trek. We should try and get the ST feeling." This worked.

I also think of reasons to avoid transporter usage when I specifically want my characters to go from A to B on foot. Generally that involves having to land on the opposite side of the planet because transporter energy would be picked up, or the use of dampening fields (such as in closed rooms with important contents ).

[Tobian]

In extremelly specific circumstances the players could do that - to STS all the time, but if the players are not in command, then their commander should give them a lecture on energy conservation - Transporting is extremelly energy intensive! While it is handy, just because something is 'easy' doesn't mean you should do it all the time because there are other costs involved. The transporter chief coult tell them to get off their lazy ass and walk too!

There are plenty of non technobabble reasons why the players can't just beam out all over the place. One is stealth. In any society with a reasonable level of technology, they will be able to detect the transport. On a stealth mission that wouldbe a big no no - they would have to beam in outside the area and walk in or other transport method available!) The ship may also have to move out of range to avoid detection (behind a moon or above a magnetic pole) which means they are on their own.

Even in primative cultures what would happen to the prime directive if suddenly people started 'magically' appearing and disapearing. Even if they didn't actually see them it would create problems. Examples would be players escaping froma Prison Cell, or bypassing the chiefs armed guards at the gate etc. You can't do these sorts of things without creating ripples.

Many cultures (of a technological level) may be extremelly sensitive to people beaming about. Often in epsiodes of trek we have seen people asking to beam down only to specific coordinates only and are then escorted about the place. Voilations of that could cause problems. Even if you just take the approach of 'transporter trafic controll' planets may have strict guidelines due to the volume that goes on (examples could be Earth or Tiboron)

If you start taking technobabble into the equason the worlds your oyster. Commonly societies use transporter inhibiting fields or sensor dampening fields in sensative areas to stop just that. As KW said you have certain types of mineral formations which cause havock with the transporters. There's all manner of weather pheonomenon you can use, from Plasma storms in the upper atmoshpere, even energy life forms which float about up there. You can always have an ion storm show up, which will barelly give the people down below more than a pretty aurora borealis, but play havoc with the ship above. maybe all those stone timed huts just happen to be tiled in unusual quartz which happens to refect transporter beams

I also agree that simply asking the players to respect the theme of the show helps, but probably not in all cases, so that's why you have backup plans!

[Owen E Oulton]

If the culture is equivalent to the latter half of the 20^th century, there's the ever-present danger of detection. As noted as far back as TOS, radar and other "primitive" sensors can detect their orbiting starship, and while the ship's defectors are enough to prevent such detection, they also prevent the use of transporters while up. Further, there's the actual risk of the natives detecting the transporter beam itself if they're in a city or a government complex. The natives may not be able to figure out what the beam is, but any unidentified energy beam going into a city is going to be investigated. Perhaps a sidelobe of the transporter frequency interferes with the local cell phone transmissions...

If the captain is an NPC, just deny them the use of the transporter for routine movement. Remind the that they're here to "explore new worlds" and that you can't do that without walking around the block.

As noted, the transporter is a line-of-sight beam with a safe range of only 40,000km. Unless the ship is in geosynchronous orbit, it's not always going to be available to beam the away team through a door. Remember, this is a scientific expedition - the PCs are not the only away team on the planet (presumable), and there are other things the ship should be doing, like charting the system's asteroid belt, or collecting samples from other planets in the system, etc...

[Sarge]

If the PCs want to be beamed to a specific location, I'd make them specify exact co-ordinates, calling for a roll on whatever skill seems appropriate at the moment (Transporter, Sensors, Tricorder, Surveying, etc). The first time they get shafted by the dice, they ought to realize that Bad Things (TM) can happen every time they transport.

Another possible problem is that people, animals, or vehicles could move across the transport site at the moment the characters materialize.

[Owen E Oulton]

Also, make 'em very, very familiar with the phrase "Transport window available in 5 minutes..." This is especially useful when they're 30 seconds away from being discovered.

[KillerWhale]

Oooh Owen this one is excellent! I'll have to remember, and abuse it

[GnarleyWoodsman]

Owen....You took the words outta my mouth bud. Good Call.

[capnhayes]

I like that one my self. Sometimes its difficult to hamper the characters when they think of the obvious ways out. But you have other ideas.

[Aldaron]

Originally posted by Sarge

Another possible problem is that people, animals, or vehicles could move across the transport site at the moment the characters materialize.

Hmmm...I was under the impression that the annular confinement beam was designed like a force-field to both hold the subject in place* while their molecules are scanned and disassembled, and to prevent things landing on the transport spot

(I can't remember which one, but there was an episode of Enterprise where someone got beamed up in a wind-storm and had leaves and debris embedded in him - when I saw it, I remember thinking: "Cool...they don't have an ACB!")

* This is, of course, despite the odd blooper in Trek where someone is wriggling around inside the ACB...that would have to really piss off the poor transporter chief trying to maintain a lock!!!

[Ergi]

Originally posted by Aldaron
(I can't remember which one, but there was an episode of Enterprise where someone got beamed up in a wind-storm and had leaves and debris embedded in him - when I saw it, I remember thinking: "Cool...they don't have an ACB!")

ACB technology must have already been part of Enterprise transporters, since otherwise it would only be possible to beam people into a vacuum. Even air molecules should be enough to instantly kill you if fused with your body's atoms. I suppose the storm just prevented the transporter from working properly.

[Sarge]

The ACB may protect you from materializing with things embedded in you, but if the transporter puts you in a crowded hallway, people are likely to bump into you. Or if you materialized on a freeway, drivers might not be able to avoid a person who appeared in their lane.

[Njxt]

I ran my first session Saturday night, with my usual gaming group but composed of "not so fonded on Star Trek Guys".
I was worrying about that "beam mania" but their first attempt for beaming was in a very difficult situation (being attacked, bad environmental conditions etc ...)
So I asked for a System Ops (Transporters) roll and the operating player rolled a double one (a critical mess in my game ) so ... it ended up with 2 dead PC, 2 new character sheets to fill and a lot OF caution in subsequent transporting actions
Why beam when you can die ?