Does your "Captain" give Captain's Logs?

[Ensign Sears]

I have wondered how a Captain's Log would work in a game. If there is really a need to have one or not. Have any of you tried this, and how well does it work?

Thanks

[Sea Tyger]

Well, I think it's sometimes too much to ask of your PC captain to make him come up with his own log, especially since the log is a sort of narrative of the episode.

One suggestion is to actually write it up yourself and print it out as a handout for the players. Don't actually make the PC captain read it out...I've tried that, and it just doesn't work.

Of course, if you have an NPC captain, you can read it.

All-in-all, captain's logs are a good way to give the PCs an idea of what's going on...or to sum up what happened in the last session before you start playing.

[Lowly Uhlan]

In the last game I GMed I would tell the captain player "give me a captains log", give him the stardate and 5 minutes to come up with it. It worked.

I'm playing the captain (finally I'm a player character!) in a series now and the GM does the same with me withouit the 5 minutes. That works too.

[Publius]

I use an NPC Captain with my PCs as a stable "Away Team" clustered about the XO. As a result, I generally use the Captains Logs as a kind of "warm up" for the Adventure, to get PCs notified. It is especially useful for starting stuff in media res. I have also been known to use the logs of other officers (Chief Medical etc.) on their ship and from other ships/bases.

The last time I used it was for a Convention (which was woefully under-attended so none of the games -- mine or anyone elses -- went off) and I used a truncated Log entry as a "teaser" entry for the printed game schedule. Here is an example:

Captain's Log, Stardate 55010.52 (TNG), The Federation Ambassador to Thelia has been taken hostage and the Lockheed is en route to Thelia Prime for negotiations. We do not know how or why they have been taken, we do not know who is behind it and we do not know what the hostage takers want. Wasn't diplomacy supposed to supply the answers rather than the problems?

[Yuber Okami]

I once had a PC captain... i always explained him the situation before starting the game so he could make a Captain's Log open... but it was of no use, he simply said the other players "hey you, FOLLOW MY ORDERS!!!"

There was a time when the GM handed over to me a few Captain's logs for me to read at the start of the sessions, as i was the temporary commanding officer, but then i had to go into GMing and the Captain became an NPC, so it was the end of it all...