The Way To Eden

This post will discuss a subject that, though I will try my best to address adequately, I make no pretenses to my ability to truly do it justice. Please note, this is a long one.

You see, if there is one thing I've learned after running Star Trek campaigns for almost 30 years now, it's that you can not ignore and must always treat with care the single most important NPC in your game...



Once more I want to preface this post by noting that I am talking about a Star Trek campaign emulating the gist of the various TV series and movies set on a Federation Starfleet vessel assigned to explore outer space and battle hostile powers. If you want to set your campaign on a Space Station, the ideas in this post should be easy to translate over to that. If you want to play a campaign set in the Star Trek universe where the party is a bunch of nomads on Nimbus III living a Mad Max type existence and trying to survive roving bands of mutants...well...good luck to you. This post, heck this entire month, will probably be a little use to you. Might I suggest purchasing Mutant Future? OK. Cool.

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In the game of Dungeons & Dragons, the PCs are usually a travelling group of adventurers who rarely stay in a single town or city for very long. Often, only enough time to stock up on supplies, weapons and armor, check out a few rumors and learn the location of the next ungodly hole in the Earth where someone thought to bury a lot of junk, a few pieces of true treasure and where the denizens of monsterdom seem to be able to find affordable housing. D&D characters seem to have no real home, no base of operations and often no support network behind them. This is not always the case of course (nothing is always the case with everything and everyone - there, there oversensitive D&D fan) but it does seem to be more common in that genre then in say, Superheroes.

In a Superhero game, the PCs are usually members of a team and that team often has a headquarters. Some campaigns actually deal with the PC Supers secret identity and therefore there are heroes that have a home or apartment, while others seem to live at the groups 'Watchtower'. A support network is often in place, whether consisting of other heroes or a government owned anti-supervillain organization (such as Marvel's SHIELD or UNTIL from Champions) or both.

Science Fiction in general has a very different approach to the issue of where do the PCs hang out when not adventuring and how to they get support for specific missions they may not be able to easily handle on their own. It is an old spacefaring Sci-Fi staple that the heroes live onboard their starship.

This is especially true in Star Trek. The PCs all live in a gigantic, starfaring megadungeon that they call home and which travels with them to their various adventures. In addition, this massive RV, which transports them on a cross-cosmos sight-seeing tour of the galaxy, comes complete with food, equipment, honest to goodness bathrooms and shower facilities and a bunch of extra bodies to help move things.

In many of the Star Trek games I've run, the ship is not just a bus with Phasers and
Transporters but a part of the team. It's home and it's family to the PCs after a while. Now it doesn't always start out that way but I've seen it happen time and time again. The Players do not want to see their ship destroyed, not just because the PCs onboard would go up in flames right along with it but because it is the place they're characters live.

This effect is greatly enhanced by personalization. Now, what does that mean in the context of a Star Trek game? How much can you personalize a Starfleet vessel before Starfleet Command sends you to mine Borrite for the rest of your life?

Let's start with small scale personalization. It happens by accident often enough, especially in Star Trek, though some players like to make a point of doing it. Little things like souvenirs from missions, gifts received from that attractive diplomat from Cygnus who visited the ship last session, family heirlooms or good luck charms, all brought aboard and on display in the PC's quarters.

It moves up to medium scale by having the players name the shuttlecraft and specify some details about the vessel's internal layout (in one TMP era game my players insisted the ship had an Astrometrics lab similar to the one seen on the Enterprise-D in Star Trek: Generations, albiet smaller and not quite as holographic.).

It moves up to the majors by improving or altering the ship's weapons and defenses or adding an extra tractor beam projector or maybe customizing the science labs on Deck 6. I have a house rule that allows the players to pool experience points to buy such enhancements. For those who say such a concept isn't quite in fitting with canon, I direct your attention to the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Galaxy's Child" which confirms field modifications made to the Galaxy Class Enterprise-D by Chief Engineer Geordi La Forge.

The process is not unlike that of the PCs in a Dungeons & Dragons game getting to build their own castle and customizing it as they begin high level play. They get quite attached to their keep, even more so if they had and continue to have a direct hand in its design.

My good friend, fellow Star Trek fan and Star Trek gaming nut Nelson would design the bridge layout for every game we ran, often making dozens of sketches or alterations to a single sketch to get it just so.

What I mention above are elements that contribute to more then just a greater need and desire to protect the ship and it's crew. By allowing the ship to develop as the characters develop, the vessel takes on a grander role then simple conveyance. It is a character itself but it is also a community.

Many ships, based on the style of their commanding officer and bridge crew, form a personality all their own. Certainly some starships in the fleet have a notoriety for having crews that are rough and tumble or by-the-book and no-nonsense or easy going and relaxed. The type of ship may reflect itself on the crew's personality and vice versa. A Scientific Survey Vessel exploring the Crab Nebula will have a crew and customized capacities very different from those of a Military Frigate patroling the Klingon-Federation border.

In conclusion (at least for now) do not ignore the potential drama, humor and personality of the PCs' constant companion...their starship.

Treat her right and she'll always bring you home,

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Barking Alien

The Paradise Syndrome

There is a good deal more I'd like to say regarding player characters in a Star Trek RPG but for the time being I am going to plot a different course and discuss the heart and soul of Star Trek...

Exploration

I have some strong feelings and opinions on this subject and how it is often portrayed in gaming (to my experience that is) and I apologize if at any point my attitude on the matter becomes a rant or if negative vibes are directed at any particular other game or genre. I will try to keep my ire, should it arise, to an absolute minimum. I don't think you will notice it much.

So to continue...

A few weeks ago, Noisms posted an entry on his blog wondering if Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, as well as those that followed so closely in their footsteps, had picked the right 'pseudo-era' for the implied setting of Dungeons & Dragons and it's many like minded embellishes and imitators.

Essentially, Noisms proposed that the pseudo-medieval period of an Anglo-Saxon feudal Europe was not, in truth, the best time to be an adventurer and explorer.

I concur whole-heartedly. The more I learned about world history and especially the history and culture of 'medieval times', the less logical the Dungeons & Dragons default set-up seemed to be. It is a fantasy game though after all and certainly some elements are more fantastic than others. In reality it would seem, at least to me, that D&D is not intended to resemble the medieval period of Western Europe so much as the fantasy worlds of Lieber, Tolkien and their ilk.

Now Star Trek is a different story...

Using Noism's criteria for the type of society that would produce the kind of adventuring soul that would join Starfleet to participate in its mission to go where no one has gone before, we encounter some interesting variables.

"Historically, adventurers have mostly been fostered by a mix of variables - relatively high poverty (the motivation to escape), relative lack of opportunity for advancement (another motivation to escape), relatively high chance of glory (discoveries of new areas of the globe to explore), breakthroughs in travel technology (e.g. ocean going vessels that could make it all the way to China from Portugal) and relatively large numbers of young men with nothing to do (big pool to draw from)."

Starting from the last element and going backward, the United Federation of Planets definitely has large numbers of young men and women with nothing to do or, more accurately, nothing pressing. Life is grand in Star Trek's future, with little to no disease, no poor or homeless and endless opportunities for education and the chance to follow your dream...assuming you have one. My idea for the near-utopia of the Federation is that, day to day life in the close-to-perfect 23rd* and 24th centuries can pretty boring and even unfulfilling if you don't have an innate talent, chosen goal or you are not inheriting a business from a previous generation. Those who want to do amazing things but don't know what amazing things they want to do make up the bulk of Starfleet's Enlisted personnel. They believe Starfleet will give them discipline, direction and purpose, not unlike those who joined the navies of the past and present.

Breakthroughs in travel technology abound. Be they the NX-01 from Enterprise, the newest, fastest vessel and first to break the Warp 5 barrier or the Starship Voyager with its Bioneural Gel Packs and Emergency Medical Holograms, each advancement in technology brings with it the excuse to test said advancements out in the final frontier.

In Star Trek, a relatively high chance of glory is not so much about the glory itself but it is definitely about what Noism suggests the glory is for. New alien species, strange stellar phenomena and the remains of long lost civilizations are out there just waiting to be found.

Now, if Star Trek's setting differs from the traditional motivators that Noism notes, it is in the first two elements he mentions, "relatively high poverty (the motivation to escape), relative lack of opportunity for advancement (another motivation to escape)".

These elements do not really exist in the standard canon of Star Trek as principle conditions of the Federation. No one is poor, even if not everyone is rich. Lack of advancement depends very much on personal talent, skill and determination. Assuming these two factors start everyone from a Vulcan Monk to a Human Orphan to an Andorian Farmer on the same footing, what better way to prove to yourself and those who know you that you are something special then to show them you are Starfleet material?

In a way, this post, meant to discover exploration as an important part of a Star Trek Role Playing Game campaign really turned out to be about PCs anyway. Well, at least in regard to their possible motivations. Huh, whaddaya know?



Lots more to come, ahead Warp Factor 5!

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Barking Alien

*The 23rd Century of The Original Series and the movies set in that era was not nearly as utopian as the universe that is depicted in 24th Century (The Next Generation onward). This is one of the many reasons I prefer to set my campaigns in the TOS and TMP periods.

 

The Menageries - Part II

Star Trek Troupe Play

I intended to bring this subject up as the second part of my initial foray into Star Trek gaming but it seems a number of the commentors on my previous post beat me too it.

Although I have yet to actually use this method myself in any of the Star Trek games I've run, I am really intrigued by the idea of each player playing more than one character. More specifically, I think having players play a Command Crew/Bridge Character as well as a Junior Officer/Lower Decks Character is a great way to split the difference between what is cool on the Star Trek TV Show and what makes sense.

It is also a great way to explore alternative character types.

It seems (from what others who enjoy Star Trek gaming tell me*) that most players prefer to play Humans by a large percentage. A smaller though still notable group will play the more well known Federation, allied and even enemy species** such as Andorians, Vulcans, Klingons, Romulans and Orions. The lesser known aliens are rarely played, even by those very familiar with Star Trek lore and new, original aliens hardly see 'air time'.

Since your special effects budget is your imagination and therefore pretty much limitless, why not play a Human or Vulcan main Bridge Officer and then a wild alien Lower Decks character. Even better, your Lower Decks Ensign is Human but the Chief Engineer is an Arkenite, a Xelatian or a Zaranite! You've got two characters dude, experiment a little.

Another idea regarding player characters that has come down the Jefferies Tube is the concept of The Prime Team. Yes, it sounds like a superhero group but the truth is it's a pretty good idea.



Originally created for the Star Fleet Battles connected RPG 'Prime Directive', Prime Teams are groups of specialists who serve as the 'Away Teams' or 'Landing Parties' for a Starfleet vessel. The concept was created to facilitate a more traditional RPG adventure format and get rid of the unlikely cliche that saw the commanding officers and highest ranking personnel as the ones aboard the starship who constantly risked their lives and put themselves in danger.

Now, as most people know, I love a good cliche and have no absolutely no problem with a universe that simply excepts that the bridge crew leave their positions to explore hostile planets, derelict spacecraft or ancient alien ruins as a matter of course. Heck, why not? It's more dramatic no? I think so. It works fine for me (I also don't stare at the issue too closely).

What's your preference?

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Barking Alien

*My experience, as usual, seems to have been unusual. I get the smattering of token Humans here and there but our crews seem to be where all the weird extraterrestrials in Starfleet are hiding.

**Why is it that with tons of undeveloped and cool looking aliens in the Federation to make your own, everybody and their brother wants to come up with some crazy backstory so they can play a Klingon Starfleet Officer. Geez.

The Menagerie - Part I

Space...The Final Frontier...

Welcome to August, a very special month for me as it contains the day each year that commemorates the first time I ever played a role playing game and began my long time love affair with this hobby.

August 25th, 2012 marks 35 years that I have been involved with RPGs. Wow.

I'd like to take the opportunity to reflect on my favorite RPG subject and setting and make this August the month of Star Trek Gaming here at Barking Alien!

To begin, I'd like to get a few opinions on who the PCs are in terms of rank and position and what it means to your campaign.
For the sake of this discussion (and most of those going on this blog for the month), let's assume we are talking about a Star Trek RPG campaign revolving around a Starfleet vessel, full of Starfleet officers (and perhaps others as well), doing Starfleet things (exploration, defense, transporting dignitaries, etc.) in service of the United Federation of Planets.

Why yes, you can play a campaign in which you are mercenaries and smugglers stealing and conning your way across the galaxy as you try to get away with murder and more then your fair share of credits in the Star Trek universe. You can also use a screwdriver to hammer in a nail. I personally tend to prefer that my crazy scroundrals trucking across outer space do so in Traveller or Star Wars. If you're going to play Star Trek, why not focus on the element that makes Star Trek uniquely, umm, y'know, Star Trek.

Now then...

Traditionally, I have run nearly all my campaigns with the PCs playing the bridge crew of a vessel of at least 125 people. That is, the PCs are the Captain, First Officer, Chief Engineer, Chief Medical Officer, Chief This and Head of That. The 'party' is responsible for the safety and well being of a starship load of NPCs. While we have run campaigns with smaller craft as noted above, the average campaign vessel has around 250-300 crew members.

This is, to me, the default way of playing Star Trek. Why? Primarily because it's the way we are used to seeing the TV shows. We do not tune in week after week to watch Ensign Jones and Crewman Rivera clean out the waste disposal units and refill the ship's stores. We watch Captain Kirk or Commander Data or Chief O'Brian meet up with the hostile aliens from a planet that is trying to develop a weaponized warp field or some such craziness.

We want to play the decision makers whose decisions effect the lives of hundreds of people on their vessel and untold billions throughout the galaxy. We want to be the movers and the shakers and the people who deal with them.

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Now another way to play, one that was incidentally strongly suggested by Last Unicorn Games in its awesome ICON System Star Trek RPG,is to play the 'lower decks' Starfleet personnel such as cadets, enlisted or junior officers.

  


Playing younger and less experienced officers is less Star Trek-like but it is more RPG like, with your PCs starting out low ranking and not especially skilled but having the potential to rise up to high ranks, position and maybe even command of their own ship. This is the equivalent of being the game at 1st Level with the hope of one day building your own castle. Got to think long term for this kind of character.

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Which option do you prefer? When Capt. Picard, Dr. Crusher and Exobiology Specialist Alexandrov beam down...who do you want to be? OK, maybe that example is a bit weighted...

One option I have tried was to have the PCs as low to medium level officers in a small craft. Imagine a ship around the size of the Mission Class Courier, set up for the PCs plus a half dozen other people (NPCs). The ship's commanding officer has the rank of Lt. Commander perhaps. Everyone else is under that. This provides a low ranking, less experienced crew but one that has considerable leeway as it is essentially in command of the vessel it has. Normally such a ship, considering its size and capabilities, would be assigned to a group of ships exploring or defending a particular area. It is also possible that the vessel is attached to and deployed from a research outpost or similar Starbase.

More on the nature of PCs and NPCs as we continue forward...bearing 8-0-2 mark 12.

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Barking Alien

Approach Vectors

I don't know if I actually implied it or if it was merely the perception my last post gave off but the ever inspiring and cross-pollinating Blacksteel has noted an interest in a Star Trek themed month and by Andor I like it!

As August 25th is my 35th Gaming Anniversary and Star Trek gaming is my favorite pastime within a pastime, I do hereby decree that August is Star Trek RPG Month here at Barking Alien. All hands to battlestations!

Get up man! Didn't you hear? It's battlestations!

 Now before we get to our month of fun and phasers there are a couple of things I want to talk about first. Let's begin with system, atmosphere and the different approaches to gaming Star Trek.

Originally and certainly throughout most of my experiences with Star Trek RPG campaigns, there was a singular approach and while systems differed in mechanics, they shared the approach that your PC and his or her adventures took place in a fictional though functioning universe. This was not a simulation of TV Show. Within the confines of your game, the United Federation of Planets, Starfleet, Transporters and all the other Star Trek elements existed.

The versions of the Star Trek RPG created by FASA, Last Unicorn Games, Decipher and others support this kind of play. They tend to be a bit crunchier, paying more attention to the details many true Star Trek fans live for like phaser settings and their effects and specifics on starships.

In recent years however, especially in the time since there has been no official Star Trek RPG on the market, many games emulate Star Trek as the TV Show as opposed to an existing universe.

The excellent MicroliteD20 based Where No Man Has Gone Before is most definitely a Star Trek RPG but quite camp in many places. Its tongue planted firmly in its cheek, WNMHGB has a chart for TV Ratings Results that can saddle you with a monkey sidekick if the episode/adventure didn't go over so well with the Nielsens.

Now these are two very different approaches and can create very different feels to your game. For me, I've always played it more or less straight, our campaign assuming you are people who live in the universe depicted in the Star Trek shows and movies but clearly it is real to its inhabitants.

At the same time, I do have the Captain repeat the "Space, The Final Frontier..." speech after I intro the session's scenario and I do call each adventure an episode. I give bonuses to PC activities if other players hum the appropriate background music and other such things.

I suppose in someways I combine the two approaches I mention to some degree.

What do you do? Is your game occuring in some flesh and blood universe or does it take place on a set at the Paramount Studios? Do you feel the choice of system effects your thinking on the matter of the game's atmosphere?

More as we approach August...two days away at our present speed...

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Barking Alien