Star Trek Adventures

[virgil]

I've got a player interested in trying out the fairly new Star Trek RPG that's come out, which uses the 2d20 system. The mechanics are, ironically but not surprisingly, less than stellar - but they're more serviceable than the last time I've seen an RPG try to handle Starfleet.

The real question I'm asking is advice for kinds of campaigns or backdrops to use for a TNG era Starfleet game? The system has a pool of communal grogs/ensigns to handle times when the party is split up, but it doesn't give much advice for how handle the command structure.

[angelfromanotherpin]

In my own alternate-Enterprise-era-Star-Trek-With-serial-numbers-filed-off game, the command structure was much closer to pirate than military, with a lot of voting involved, because the consciousness of global thermonuclear war was much more recent and Starfleet was working very hard to appear as non-militant as possible.

Obviously, that's not really an option by TOS-era or later, so you run into issues. It's cool drama when Sisko orders Bashir to make him contraband medtech and Bashir demands the order in writing; or when Jellico and Riker have different entirely-valid values that clash. It's bullshit when Amy has her character order Betty's character to be confined to quarters to ratfuck Betty's ability to play for whatever reason.

I think the best approach is to draw a hard line between character-on-character authority and player-on-player authority; so Amy's character is in command of Betty's character, but you establish some sort of meta-level dispute-settling structure to keep the interplayer dynamic from going toxic.

As for campaigns, my own game combined a planet/problem-of-the-week approach with a couple of overarching longer term plots (Klingon-alike first contact and Vulcan-alike secret research) and it was very successful. As long as you plan ahead and tie the POTW subjects into the longer-term stuff, there's a lot of possibilities. I'd start by polling your players on the kind of ST content they most enjoy, and follow that lead.

[Zaranthan]

I think the best approach is to draw a hard line between character-on-character authority and player-on-player authority; so Amy's character is in command of Betty's character, but you establish some sort of meta-level dispute-settling structure to keep the interplayer dynamic from going toxic.

You could also dodge this by making the Captain an NPC, and the players are the other senior officers. Picard defers to Worf's judgment on tactical decisions or Geordi's on engineering all the time. That way the players are still steering the ship, but nobody has meaningful veto power over anyone else (other than the GM, who could of course simply declare that a course of action doesn't work, so we're not really giving him more power).

Depending on the tone you wanted, you could also have the captain be the equivalent of world event cards like in Arkham Horror or something. You draw a card, it says the captain wants to do X. The players either try to make it happen or run triage in the aftermath.

[angelfromanotherpin]

An NPC captain doesn't really address the problem. Starfleet has a proper chain of command, so there's still a first officer, second officer, etc. and abuse of authority is still an issue. Sure, you can appeal questionable orders to the NPC Captain, but that's not going to manage the root issue of interplayer contention. The only way I can think of to get the sort of equality you're looking for is to give each player their own ship to command and have an NPC admiral who stays on a starbase. That could be pretty interesting.

I will add that having the command figure be essentially a puppet isn't great. I've seen it before, it creates incentives for the PCs that are very out-of-genre for Trek.

[Mord]

An NPC captain doesn't really address the problem. Starfleet has a proper chain of command, so there's still a first officer, second officer, etc. and abuse of authority is still an issue. Sure, you can appeal questionable orders to the NPC Captain, but that's not going to manage the root issue of interplayer contention. The only way I can think of to get the sort of equality you're looking for is to give each player their own ship to command and have an NPC admiral who stays on a starbase. That could be pretty interesting.

I will add that having the command figure be essentially a puppet isn't great. I've seen it before, it creates incentives for the PCs that are very out-of-genre for Trek.

You could make the threat of court-martial for abuse of authority a serious one, but that's functionally just another stick approach like the NPC admiral or NPC captain. Plus, that won't be a credible threat when you go through some spacetime distortion and get catapulted into the Gamma Quadrant.

I don't think it's clear that the way authority works in Starfleet - or any other armed force - is that you have the ability to shit unilaterally on everyone in a lower pay grade than you. Even if Mr. Spock is first officer and has the command while Captain Kirk is planetside, Bones and Scotty are still ranking officers within their departments and have a fair amount of leeway to oppose orders that they disagree with. A number of TOS episodes revolve around this exact type of conflict, where the different department heads bring their own perspectives to a situation, they all clash, and Spock tries to get his way by right of rank and everyone still opposes him. Even the Captaincy isn't at all sacrosanct in TOS anyway, since I seem to recall at least one episode that hinged on whether or not Spock would mutiny against Kirk for issuing an order that Spock considered to be illegal in some way or other.

I wouldn't try to totally quelch this kind of conflict by implementing a blanket "no rank fuckery against other players allowed" rule in the form of some kind of almighty punishing NPC, but rather try to work this into the fabric of your social conflict minigame. Having the actual rank to pull is one thing, but being the subject matter expert is another and having the loyalty of the Security goons or the engineering department is another yet. Spock could probably have had Bones thrown in the brig for one reason or another, but Uhura and Scotty would probably have had something to say about it. Not to mention Kirk would probably be pissed if/when he got back from wrestling the Gorn.


My mother taught me never to kiss a fool!

[Harshax]

officer actions that takes place aboard a starship is done to advance the current crew goal: fight the Klingons, cure the Alien plague, Xeno/Enigma discovery, Repel the boarding party.

In episodes, there’s always scenes of commands given between the captain and the departmental engineer. These scenes are expositional only, to heighten a sense of tension, because we as an audience need to know that Engineering is trying to give the ship “Everything’s she got”.

In an RPG, the captain is actually just the plot. The actions the characters perform advance or hinder the the players goals and it should be assumed that the ‘Captain’ is constantly in the exposition scenes saying, “make it so”. But in actual play, the characters are discussing how each department head can best contribute to solving the problem at hand.

So what I’m trying to say, is no character should be the captain. Collectively, the party’s sum skill set and actions are the commands of the Captain. So really, no-one character should be a ‘Captain’

Just spit-balling.

[Krusk]

If your captain isnt heavily influenced by zapp, your pcs will probably feel overshadowed.[/img]

[Hicks]

As someone who played a captain in the new star trek rpg... the point is to utilize your subordinates to advance the plot. They have skills I don't, and are better in in situations I'm not. When the going gets tough, Picard holds a staff meeting, listens to what his experts say, and then defers to the expertise of his experts.

Pulling rank is either a thing bad managers do because they are bad at management or something done because a subordinate doesn't actually want to contribute to the goal they agreed to accomplish. But a good manager never needs to pull rank, especially since all the players are literally right there taking and coming to a consensus as to what needs to be done to advance/survive the plot. A problem is introduced, i get the other players to discuss what can be done, and whatever is the best idea that everybody wants to do gets rubber stamped by me and we're off enacting the plan. The part where one of the players ignores their duty doesn't happen unless they're an NPC or secretly have a mind controlling parasite or whatever and the goal is actually stop that NPC from fucking up the ship, but that is using executive power against an NPC enemy and nobody really cares how I abuse my captainancy while helping actual players continue to survive the situation.

Most games have the social contract of "don't screw with party members", and in a cooperative setting like Star Trek you the player only get to play the captain as long as everybody wants you to be the captain.

Do these weird, punitive, and power tripping captains actually exist out in the wild? Like, doesn't the game just stop if captain Dave is being a dick to chief engineer Terry, and then Dave and Terry and the rest of the group talk it out like reasonable adults?

[Harshax]

@Hicks: the way you described playing a Captain sounds awfully similar to the role of Mr Cavern.

[angelfromanotherpin]

Do these weird, punitive, and power tripping captains actually exist out in the wild?

Quite a lot of people have authority issues, and IME, those people have a heavy overlap with the roleplaying demographic. A person doesn't have to be a full-time jerk, they can just have a bad day that becomes everyone's bad session. It doesn't help that a lot of Trek material is about controversial stuff that people can disagree strongly about.

Like, doesn't the game just stop if captain Dave is being a dick to chief engineer Terry, and then Dave and Terry and the rest of the group talk it out like reasonable adults?

Ideally yes, but not all players are always reasonable or adults. Establishing clear player/character distinction and conflict-resolution procedures ahead of time is a lot better than just assuming everyone's going to be mature all the time.

[deaddmwalking]

@Hicks

Rubber-stamping the best idea works if it is someone else's. Most people have ideas of their own, and they get pretty invested in them.

There's one Star Trek episode where the Enterprise is caught in a time-loop and Data sends back hidden messages to determine which plan will work - evacuating the cargo bay to 'rocket' the ship out of the way of an asteroid or using Phasers to deflect it. At least, if I think. The point being that there was Data's plan or Riker's plan and nobody REALLY knew what would work. If you have two options and they both seem reasonable, the 'captain' is going to pick one (probably his own) and that can be deflating for the other players. It's equally bad, though, if the Captain always favors Crusher because they are attracted to each other. Fiction written by a team of writers can ensure that Picard always acts reasonably, but a real Picard might be too easily influenced by his emotions (which was also probably an episode).

[Thaluikhain]

There's one Star Trek episode where the Enterprise is caught in a time-loop and Data sends back hidden messages to determine which plan will work - evacuating the cargo bay to 'rocket' the ship out of the way of an asteroid or using Phasers to deflect it. At least, if I think.

It was a Federation ship caught in the time warp from many years earlier, and the options were decompress the cargo bay or use the tractor beam. Oddly, they didn't try both, and they sat there looking at it coming for a while before deciding.

Generally, though, the decisions in Star Trek tended to be moral ones, and the whole point of the show, which probably wouldn't translate well to a game. Players are unlikely to care if they have to violate the Prime Directive for the fourth time this week.

At least in TNG, in TOS it was more about Bones arguing with Spock and being wrong all the time.

[Username17]

My experience doing Star Trek was that the command structure really didn't make much difference. Nominally people had ranks, but since characters had really different skills and areas of expertise, people rarely noticed or cared. The big problem we had was that the game system was extremely terrible and we ended up in a fight against some primitives in former Dominion space and oh my fucking god the game dragged to a stop.

-Username17