The Star Trek Adventures Starter Set

 

I got this a while back and I felt like I really should post about it. While I have some quibbles with the rules themselves this is a really good starter set. It contains the expected basics for something like this: intro rules, intro adventure, pregen characters, a ship sheet, some map sheets, tokens, and dice.

The most recent starter box type products I have used are the Starter Kits for the various Star Wars games from FFG/whoever is doing it now. Those have similar contents - clearly an influence here and I have had good experiences running the Rebel set and the Jedi set for my players. I thought this would be an easy way to start my crew with the new STA game if the opportunity arises and I was pleasantly surprised as I read through this one.

First up the rules booklet is more thorough than I would have expected. It gives a solid presentation of the main rules, covers combat in a separate section, and the starship rules are in a separate section as well. You could certainly run the game with what is presented here. The only major mechanical element missing is character advancement - not really unexpected in a starter set.

The pregens are fine and representative of what you would find in a typical federation bridge crew. The ship is a Galaxy class so it should be familiar and fans will have a feel for what it can do under normal circumstances. 

The dice in this set are the same ones they sell separately.

The adventure is surprisingly good. There are three parts here and the first starts off fairly mundane - scan stuff. Beam over and check systems on another ship. Some basic combat. But that's alright here as this is very much a "learning the system" situation. It made me think about some of the old D&D Basic Sets in that way, although it is assumed a GM is running the game - it is not programmed self-instruction. This section is still decent as it introduces a mystery involving an old antagonist - one that is not over-used.

The second section involves further exploration of the mystery and brings in some familiar races. This time it expands to planetary exploration and action. 

The third section has a ton of potential as it brings in some major lore nuggets, space combat, and puts the PC's into position to make some major choices that could have a significant impact on the setting - much more so than a typical starter adventure.  This is not low-level characters in a starter dungeon type material - it's big time Trek and actually made we want to run this to see what my crew would do.

So yes, if you are considering checking out the game this is an excellent starting point and even if you already have the big core book a) the adventure is good and b) the small rulebook would be a handy player reference at the table. You could easily run this with a newly generated crew instead of the pregens and with experienced players that's probably the best option as we all know no one likes pre-gens. At 20-25$ most places it's a great way to start your campaign.

Terminator RPG

 

So there's a kickstarter running right now for a Terminator RPG. It is past its goal so it should happen but it got me thinking about the whole concept. I was playing RPGs for years before the first movie and I don't remember a Terminator RPG before now  - how has it taken this long for someone to make a game out of this concept and universe?

First up, I have loved the movies since the beginning - the concept, the look, the hows and the what-if's ... it's a great idea. Loved the first and the second, really liked the third (and it took them around 20 years just to make 3), was not as big a fan of the 4th, was OK with the 5th though it had some problems, and I'm roughly ok with the 6th though it has some problems as well. There was a TV series too and it was interesting.

Now it appears they only have the rights to the first movie and the ... comic books? In the comments they mention that each of the movies is a separate license which probably explains why no one has tried this before. Sure the first movie sets it all up but for an ongoing RPG not being able to use the other 5 movies seems pretty limiting. I've never read the comic books so I have no idea where they take the story and I bet most of the people interested in the game haven't either. That said I like the approach:

In ‘The Terminator RPG’, you play resistance fighters struggling against the machine onslaught of Skynet in an alternative and post-apocalyptic version of today—the once "far future" of the 2020s. You can take the role of rebel time travellers sent back to various points in time to stop Skynet from altering history. You can even play natives of any historical time period, targeted by Terminators and trying to stay alive as a future hell is unleashed around you. 

The book is designed as a toolbox to allow the Director to create their own campaigns or one-shots, including detailed multipage campaign arcs, campaign seeds, mini-missions, NPCs, weapons, detailed locations, and enemy characters.

You have the option to play either pre-generated characters or to create your own—tailored to your preferences, weapon choices, and role within your team. If your character is killed, a new one can be brought in from the future, past, or present. That new character can be many things—including even an alternate you from a divergent timeline.

They are using their own in-house system which I have not read or played but I'd bet it will be perfectly fine if they're betting on it for a very visible game like this. 

Thinking about what I would actually run with this, well, I think it would be tough to run a long term campaign here. Between the one-way time travel, the lethality of the terminators, and the high-stakes nature of the source material - I mean, they either kill Sarah Conner or they don't - I would be aiming for a limited run, finite goals type of campaign. Something like a plot-point campaign in many of the Savage Worlds books and even there I'd be aiming for 6-12 "chapters" that would not take all that long to play through. 

Think about the basic scenario: Skynet sends a terminator (or three) back to Time Period X to eliminate someone important to the future. Are the players playing resistance fighters who are also making that one-way trip back? Are they playing "natives" to the destination time period? Does a mix of the two make sense?  

At this point it effectively becomes a Superhero scenario: The villain has a plan, the heroes must become aware of this plan, figure out the specific goals or targets, then they must undertake various actions to stop it. Unlike a superhero campaign though, once you stop it, that's pretty much the game. I suppose you could come up with some kind of Torchwood-style organization to deal with future time-traveling threats but that seems out of step with the source material where it's left to the crazy people and their therapists to watch for a return.

This is why I think it's best as a limited campaign and while you could play through a few different incursions - as happens with the movies -  I don't know how many times your players are going to want to play Man vs. Machine. You could certainly change up the time periods and the scenarios to keep it interesting ...

• A Terminator drops into Germany in 1945. How does the basic scenario change in an active warzone? Plus, maybe this time he needs to keep a particular scientist -alive- to ensure the future goes a certain way. Could give your party a nice moral dilemma.
• Maybe Skynet decides someone's grandfather is a better target and drops a cybernetic Austrian into the 1960's ... in Vegas ... and the target is a celebrity ... or a mob boss ...
• Change up the location and make it more of a fish in a barrel scenario by having a T-whatever target someone on a cruise ship. Maybe it comes on board at one of the stops, or maybe your players think they are playing an entirely different kind of game until they find a spherical section of the ship is missing and things start to get dangerous ...
  

Those are just a few ideas for running something like the traditional Terminator movie scenario. 

I think a more practical use in a lot of ways is dropping a T-scenario into another game. 

• One night the Super-base sensors pick up a temporal disturbance downtown and investigating heroes find a naked human fleeing the scene ...
• Hanging out at a club in Night City gets a lot more interesting when a big guy walks in and triggers all of the security scanners then tosses the bouncers aside with ease ...
• A group of people who normally wear primary-colored uniforms are doing some field research on the life of an important scientist via the Guardian of Forever when BLAM! A new mission to preserve the timeline ensues. 

I'm mostly ignoring the ridiculous 80s-centric crossovers you could have here too with Robocop, Predator, Transformers, GI Joe, and all of that ... then throw in a Stargate for good measure. I mean, once you make time travel a thing you open up a lot of possibilities.

The final main way I could see to running a Terminator campaign is the one where you might be able to do a long-term game: Human Resistance Wars. It's pretty much Twilight 2000 with robots ... shiny killer robots ... with lasers ...

Anyway I felt a need to ponder and ramble on this topic - more to come. 

2020 RPG Contemplation - The Science Fiction Options

 

Earlier this year I was running a Pathfinder 2E campaign in a homebrew setting, exploring, tinkering, getting to know the system with my players. Then "2020" happened and it all ground to a halt. Finally though there have been some murmurs in the group and it's time to contemplate what we might do for the last part of the year. So after setting my RPGs aside for the last six months  I've started diving in and reading through a bunch of rulebooks and a pile of old notes for many of them to determine my best options. I'd kind of like to have a fantasy game and an "other" game going and playing at different times. I'm not sure exactly how it would work so that's all a little fuzzy but we will figure it out. Thinking out loud ...

Star Wars

I have way to many ideas for Star Wars campaigns, covering all editions. Before the shutdown I was discussing a Republic-era game and I still like that idea a lot. I just see it as a longer campaign and I kind of want to start with something else before diving into that. A warm up game to get back into the groove sounds like a good idea. 

Traveller

I discovered Traveller almost 40 years ago and I've played or run every version other than Traveller 5, Mongoose 2nd Edition, and d20.  I like the system  have some ideas and most of them are tied to the setting and I'm not sure I'm in the mood for 3rd Imperium stuff right now.

Jovian Chronicles

Serious left turn here I know. It's an easy pitch as "The Expanse with mecha" and that had me fired up. Humble just had the whole set of books up for not too much money so I dove in and started learning the Silhouette system. I really want to like it and I do think it's good but it gets fairly crunchy when it comes to vehicles ... and there would be vehicles everywhere in this game. mecha, fighters, bigger ships ... it would be a serious commitment to learn this. Thoughts started creeping in ... Mekton seems both simpler and more cinematic than this ... if I'm going to need a full on complex vehicle design system I already know Battletech way better than I'm going to know this ... so it's on the back burner for now. I still like the system and if I knew someone that already knew this system and I could play a while to learn it I would but I do not.

Mechwarrior

Well, sure - after the thought process above the military mecha campaign was a solid idea in my head and this is familiar territory. I have the first 3 versions of the RPG and I've played and/or run all of them but I thought I would take at the later version "A Time for War" - it's terrible. It reads and looks like it was designed by engineers and the system is shoehorned into a small box mechanically because of the overriding design goal of "make it work seamlessly with Battletech's system for pilot and gunnery skill and wounds. Bought it, read it, disliked it thoroughly. So, back to MW 3rd edition! Look - I have a whole starting campaign written up! House books, Mercenaries book, Rules Companion ... this is totally do-able. So this is one very much on the list. 

Dark Conspiracy

I don't know why but I do have a soft spit for this weird 90's game. Something made me drag it off the shelf and skim through it again. I have an adventure I like for it but it would very much be a one-shot at this point. The system is easy enough but I'm not sure I want to spend time setting up the universe for what would take us maybe 3 sessions to play through. Still thinking about this one. Conspiracy X kinda falls into the same pit - "90's secret conspiracy X-Files type game" is almost as unknown to people today as the "post-apocalyptic" game that doesn't involve zombies. Speaking of those ...

Gamma World

I love this game. Pretty much any version. Many people think it's a joke game but if you just play it straight it's amazing and it supports long campaigns just as well as early D&D did. Anyway it's always made for a fun game and here again I have at least one adventure I really like that my players have never experienced. Beyond this I would really lean more towards running Mutant Crawl Classics just because there is more system stuff to play with and it has a string of really fun adventures too. This is still on the list as well - actually both of them.

The 40K RPG - yeah that new one, not the old one

Interested of course, and it's not like I don't have the miniatures or know the setting, but this feels like a "later" kind of game. I don't have a solid campaign idea yet either so the fire is not quite as strong. we will get around to it but it's not a priority right now. 

Cyberpunk 2020 - because third edition was a mess

I know there would be some interest because of the computer game that's coming out and I have always liked the rules but anytime I start seriously thinking about adventures and situations and NPCs for this game I can't help but think "this would be cooler in Shadowrun" and then the whole thing kind of short-circuits. 

Aeon Trinity 

I've always wanted to like this game but the background feels ... preachy. The PCs are heavily tied to particular agencies because of their powers and it just feels like the metaplot is so heavy handed it gets in the way of letting the players do their thing. Now I've never run it so that's just my feeling after reading the new version again. It seems like a cool concept mixing near-future sci-fi with super powers but I think most of the pure space games and the pure superhero games do it better. 

Stars Without Number

Every time I read this game I am blown away. It's uncomplicated but not really "simple". It covers a wide range of options but doesn't really lock the GM or the players into anything. The advice is dead-on with how I feel about running games these days and the tools it provides are clearly a product of actual play vs. theorizing about the perfect RPG. Who would have thought that a fusion of Traveller and 70's-80's D&D would work so damn well? I have a set of ideas for this one, some adapted over from Traveller notes, that I think would run well and make for a fun campaign. It's definitely an option. 

So after weeks of research and contemplation my leading candidates are

• Mechwarrior
• Gamma World/MCC
• Stars Without Number

So there's a chunk of what's been going on here this month. More to come!

Greatest Hits #21 - Trek Tuesday - Decipher Trek

The most recent Trek RPG - until recently

Getting back to the big glossy editions of Trek RPG's, it's time to talk about the Decipher years. The genesis of this one is a little strange. Last Unicorn had been publishing their edition of the game for a couple of years when in 2000 the announcement came out that they had been purchased by WOTC. Within a few months WOTC/LUG lost the Trek license, supposedly because there was a clause against the same company having both the Star Trek and Star Wars licenses which WOTC now had.

Regardless of the details a new Trek game appeared in 2002 (roughly a one-year gap) from Decipher of all companies. Decipher had been known only for card games up to this point, so it was a surprise. Considering they already had the Trek license for card games, it did make some sense. One interesting thing was that quite a bit of the design team from Last Unicorn made the jump to the new edition - take a look at the credit pages below:

Last Unicorn credits page

Decipher credits page

There is a lot of overlap there. So you might think "lots of continuity there" right? Well, not so much. Despite having invented a whole new system and written multiple books on Trek just within the last 5 years, the design appears to have looked more at a different system that was popular at the time.

The stats shift to six familiar-looking basic attributes plus some others. Task resolution also looks familiar (and I don;t mean Traveller) being 2d6 + modifiers (lots and lots of modifiers) to beat a target number set by the difficulty of the task. It's shifted down about 5 points from the d20 difficulty numbers but it looks very familiar. This was during the height of the d20 boom and the system for stats, skills, and task resolution is very similar to d20.

Characters have a Species which modifies attributes and grants some special abilities. They also choose a Profession which designates some skills as professional skills and grants some special abilities. There are also Elite Professions which can be taken after meeting certain criteria.

Action Rounds are 6 seconds long and characters can take movement actions, combat actions, free actions, and full-round actions - not really trying to hide it at this point were they?

There is a some chrome here. There are Traits which are like Advantages/Disadvantages, there is a hero point mechanic and a reputation mechanic, combat uses a damage track as well as simple hit point type damage to introduce some damage effects,  and of course there is star ship combat as well.

So it's very much a d20-styled Trek game. You might think that would have taken off bigtime in that particular time. Well it didn't. They produced very nice full-color hardback books, six of them and a narrator's screen from 2002-2003 and then it got quiet. Considering the ready availability of these books in bargain bins and overstock deals circa 2005 I think it's safe to say this did not do well. It's not hard to see why:

• First, despite having the same design team this is a very different game, mechanically, and having spent significant money to acquire the previous rules, there was not a huge incentive to turn around and spend money all over again a few years later.
• Second, I don't think fans of LUG Trek felt that the system had run its course and so there was no great outcry for a revision or new mechanics and Decipher's version didn't cover any new ground that the prior version had not.
• Thirdly, while it was like d20 it was not actually d20. This closed it off from the exploding ecosystem of d20 games that were cross-compatible to a degree, and from gamers who were extremely d20-focused.
• Finally, there is timing - when this was released Voyager had just ended, Enterprise had just started, and Nemesis released and was not particularly well received. Trek was petering out in a lot of ways. I suspect that among casual players and fans there was not a lot of interest in starting up a new game and the die-hard fans already had FASA or LUG Trek (or one of the many, many homebrews) and were not terribly interested in something new. Contrast this with Star Wars which was in the middle of the new trilogy after a long gap and was all over the place.

Looking back I think if the design team had taken this as a chance to refine the ICON system, or if they had gone full-on d20 system, then it probably would have sold better as at least there would have been some built-in audience for the new game. Given the timing of its release I'm not sure it would have mattered but I can't help but think it would have helped in some way.

Personally I've never run a game of it. I tried - twice. We never got past character generation in either one. I tried selling it to my group once many years ago and it never took off. I tried it a bit later online and that never got off the ground either. I don't blame the system for those but that is the extent of my experience with it. Hey, I tried ...

If I was going to start up a campaign now I suspect Decipher's game would be several notches down the list even though I have the complete pile of stuff. It's fine and has plenty of material in the books to support a campaign, but so do most other Trek RPG's (official and unofficial). I see stuff in the other versions that I like better. I don't see much support for it online and I suspect it's just not as popular even now as the other options.

That's about all I have to say on Decipher Trek. Next week we will see what else is out there.

Greatest Hits #20 - Trek Tuesday - Where No Man Has Gone Before

Another fun trek game - and it's free!

In contrast to the big glossy production I revisited last week, there are other approaches that are worthy as well. Where No Man Has Gone Before looks to me to be an ICONS type take on a Trek RPG - not in mechanics but in staying light and loose. Here's the introductory quote from the game:

This is a game about a five year mission, a world where

special effects never progressed beyond painted

Styrofoam blocks and cheap double-exposures. The 70's

were still The Future and Klingons had smooth

foreheads. The idea of a Star Trek movie was a

laughable proposition and nobody thought twice about

planets full of Nazis and space hippies.

I'm thinking you either read that and think it sounds cool or you laugh and close the browser.

Assuming you're still reading the game can be found here. It uses the Microlite d20 system so it is broadly compatible with d20 stuff that is already out there. Significant differences:

• You only have 4 stats: Strength, Dex, Int, and Charisma
• There are only 3 classes: Blue Shirt, Red Shirt, and Yellow Shirt Classes are mainly a silo for Talents. There is a set of general Talents and then a list for each class. 
• There are only 6 skills: Communication, Engineering, Knowledge, Medicine, Physical, and Subterfuge. Each character is trained in one skill.
• Task resolution is the same as any d20 game - stat bonus + skill bonus + 1d20 vs. a DC

The Talents are great and capture the spirit of the original show perfectly and are thematically appropriate to each class. There are chapters for personal combat and starship combat that look like they would work well. There is an equipment chapter as well. Some stock NPC's and aliens, common ship designs, and lots and lots of random charts to help a DM run things on the fly. 

Notable fun-ness: The "God" section in the Enemies and Allies chapter: 

• God, Almighty
• God, Irritant
• God, Metal
• God, Petty

Plus a list of godly powers.

There is also an appendix on figuring the ratings for your series which can lead to unexpected complications like the dreaded "Monkey Sidekick". 

All of this is packed into just 45 pages! It's certainly enough to run a few one-off sessions and likely enough to run a mini-campaign. I think the limited list of enemies and ships might become restrictive over a long campaign but there is an expansion, "Controlled Implosion" which adds more goodness - and more random charts - in another 18 pages. There are also paper mini's (shown above), multiple character sheets, and a lifepath generator. It's an amazing little package.

All in all it's a very different approach to Trek than the Last Unicorn version. Where LUG Trek takes it straight and serious this is completely tongue in cheek but does have some ways to reward good setting-appropriate roleplay with Action Points and the expansion has more advice on running it straight as well. If you're at all interested it is definitely worth a look.

Building a Star Trek Adventure

So I feel like DoD had a great core concept and then lost its way.  We can build a new adventure using some of those same concepts and make it even better. One notable change from the original idea: I am resetting this to the Next Generation era to enable some specific things I like and want to do with this scenario. Let's start with the core:

• We have an inhabited planet threatened by a natural disaster.
• This disaster is not something we can alter with a reversed polarity tachyon beam. It's going to happen. The point of the adventure is dealing with the event and the consequences, not stopping it. Right now I'm thinking the star may be going nova.
• This disaster is a short-notice event. We have days or weeks of notice, not months or years. This keeps the tension up. I'm thinking maybe two weeks from the kickoff.
• The Federation is going to evacuate the population of the planet - because that's what the Federation does.
• The population is not technologically advanced and has been under a no-contact policy due to the Prime Directive. That is being waived now in light of the looming extinction of the species. There was some debate within the Federation Council but the decision has been made. 
• A rag-tag fleet of all available ships is being assembled at the nearest starbase. The PC's will lead this fleet to the target system. It will probably not be adequate to save 100% of the population but it is the best they can do within the time available.
• I'm sketching out that the players are running a Galaxy class. There's at least a Nebula class available too, maybe an Excelsior, probably an Olympic class and an Oberth class too. It's really up to the GM as to how they want to compose the fleet to emphasize the scale and importance of the operation.
• I'm going to go off-canon here and assume that large scale disasters are something that happen more frequently as your area of controlled space grows larger. I'm also going to assume that the enlightened Star Fleet of the 24th century is going to have planned for such things and that each starbase keeps some "Evacuation Ships" on some kind of low-level readiness at all time. 
• Modern cruise ships can carry 2-3000 passengers on average while largest can carry 5-6000 so I don't think it's unreasonable to think that a 24th century purpose-built rescue ship could carry 10,000 passengers in tight but livable conditions. Something Nebula/Excelsior sized - Size Class 7 in LUG Trek terms.
• In a disaster scenario speed is important so these can't be slugs. I think a cruising speed of warp 6 with a max of warp 8 is pretty reasonable. The ships of the fleet typically top out at warp 9.xx so this is hardly cutting edge.
• That said I'd have them steer like drunken whales at sublight speeds - they're built for passenger capacity and warp capability, not racing or combat.
• Lots of 20-man transporter pads and lots of shuttlecraft or else they need to be able to land on a planet.
• Finally, let's say there are ten of these ships available at the starbase.
• The refugees will be delivered to the starbase temporarily. Finding a suitable homeworld could be the focus of a sequel adventure. Especially if the best world is inside Romulan or Tholian space ...

OK, probably not the Dreadnought but the rest are good

Being called upon to lead a fleet of roughly 15 ships on a heroic rescue mission should make the players and their characters feel pretty good. Let them enjoy that moment as the entire fleet gets underway and goes to warp speed with appropriate whooshing sounds. It's a pretty big deal.

***The baseline assumption for this adventure is that the players begin at the starbase, lead the fleet to the system, make contact with the locals, inform them of the danger, rescue as many of them as possible, then evacuate the system before the event.***

While that would be somewhat interesting we can do a lot better - we need to decide on the complicating factors.

• Complication Zero: The population has strong spiritual beliefs and not everyone wants to leave. There is a prophecy about a time of "ascending" and many sects consider the news that the sun is about to explode the beginning of that time. 
• These sects - the ones who want to stay put - will vary in  their reactions. 
• Some will graciously thank the rescuers as heralds of the change. 
• Others will see them as heathen interlopers interfering in the holiest event in the history of the race and may become hostile rather quickly. If things start to drag go ahead and send in some assassins to give your security teams something to enjoy amidst all the talking. 
• As the event approaches, the more fanatical sects may start attacking the heretical fools who are trying to escape the planet to the point that the player characters may feel the need to provide significant security. This is the most likely source of personal combat in this adventure so if your players are looking for that let it develop. 
• Other sects, in a somewhat more literal interpretation, believe that the Federation fleet is the means of "ascension" and are ready to leave their world behind - enthusiastically so. These believers will view the rescuers as higher beings come to enlighten the lesser life forms that live here. Cue the counselor!
• A small group is completely unconcerned about the religious implications and just want to live. They provide the panicky hysterics as they beg, plead, and threaten to be evacuated first. They're not evil, they're just scared. Should be a very different set of conversations than the prior group.

Let this unfold for a couple of days. The players can negotiate, threaten, bribe, call a mass-meeting, impose some kind of evacuation plan, let the locals decide who leaves first - it's a fluid situation so let your players drive the agenda based on how they interpret their mission and how they perceive the different local sects. Likely problems to solve:

• Who gets evacuated first? The old? The young? By lottery? By location? 
• Are the rescue ships going to make one trip or is the starbase close enough that a kind of warp speed bucket brigade makes sense, with a continuous flow of ships departing as they fill up, returning when they are empty?
• Are the normal starfleet ships hauling passengers too or are they on watch? The Galaxy, Olympic, and Oberth ships might stay in system while the Nebula and Excelsior haul a few thousand more passengers out and provide an escort at the same time.
• How much effort will you put in to trying to convince some of the uninterested sects? Do you have enough capacity to evacuate all of them anyway? 
• How can you save more people? Let your players really strain themselves here as it is the point of the whole operation. Let them use their knowledge of Star Trek, spew technobabble, any contacts they have, and favors they can call in - anything. Saving a hundred thousand beings is really the minimum here given the transport capacity available. Can they double that? Can they save 500,000? A million? Reward creative thinking at the table in-universe with promotions and medals. 

• Complication #1 - An Orion freighter arrives somewhat quietly on Day 2 after the initial contact and lands on the surface
• This ship is captained by the most jovial Orion captain your players have ever met. I envision him being played by John Schuck  channeling some of his Klingon Ambassador role in the TOS movies, some of his Draal role from Babylon 5, and a sprinkling of Cyrano Jones from Trouble With Tribbles. He's a loud friendly guy. He says they came as soon as they got word and they want to help in any way they can. They just need to make some repairs on the ground first. Let's say they land in the largest/capital city.
• The Orion crew immediately begins offering exotic food ("the Earthers call it pop-corn") and trinkets to the natives to enjoy their last few days before ascension in exchange for precious metals and cultural art objects. After all, this culture is about to become extinct just as it becomes open to offworld contact. There is serious money to be made here and if the locals think it's a fair deal, who is the Federation to judge?
• The next day another Orion ship arrives. Then another. Then one leaves. If questioned, the Orion captain, in full Draal voice, answers 'He's going to get more parts'.
• It becomes evident pretty quickly that something suspicious is going on but Captain Drall (see what I'm doing there?) always comes across as a somewhat put-upon guy who really wants to help and admits to nothing untoward. 
• These Orions are not suicidal mercenaries - they're here to trade. They don't pull disruptors on Federation crewmen just for dropping by, they don't start massacring locals, and they don't try to sabotage the fleet while twirling their mustaches. They are about as straightforward as it gets for an Orion merchant operation. The players could certainly run them off if that's what they want to do but they are not a threat to the operation. 
• The goal of this set of events is 
• to inject a little humor into the otherwise pretty serious situation
• to give the PC's someone else to talk to
• to let security/intelligence types have something interesting to do while the diplomats try to talk some sense into the natives
• future NPC hook!

• Complication #2 -  An optional side quest:  Day 3 a Klingon bird of prey decloaks in orbit causing a bit of a panic in the rescue fleet. 
• The Klingons are a small party looking for signs of an old exploration ship that was led by a legendary warrior and lost long ago. They have tracked the path of the ship to this planet and though surprised by the presence of a Federation fleet they have no quarrel and simply wish to search for clues on the planet. The coming nova fits perfectly with some prophecy they have about finding the legend so they are are very excited about what's going on. 
• The commander of the ship is an older, cannier Klingon warrior, not a hot-blooded battleth-swinger. Think someone more like General Martok from DS9. In my mind he is best played by Brian Blessed in a slightly subdued manner who then goes full Vultan in our big finale - if called upon to do so! 
• The signature scene here is "Klingons in a library" 
• They are looking for historical records from 100+ years ago in a culture where data storage is still "books". Let's assume this is in the capital/largest city on the planet.
• I figure as the end of the world approaches, people are going to walk off of their jobs. This means shops and factories and farms become increasingly empty as world spreads and the end draws near. This also means there are no librarians or professor-types to help them so picture a team of Klingons set up with translators and library computers desperately trying to figure out the local language and filing system as the clock ticks down. 
• I picture lots of swearing in the background, angry shouts as books and cabinets are thrown across the room, and dak'tahg's thrown into walls as frustrated Klingon battle-scholars engage in glorious and challenging research. Give your players a reason to call them a few times - "Gah! (clang) Captain, why do you interrupt us?! (crash) MUCH SHOUTING IN KLINGON TO SOMEONE OFFSCREEN - Time grows short and we have many volumes to scan! (slam)"
• Don't tell the players what the Klingons are looking for. It doesn't matter. It's a secret. That's the Klingons' mission, not your players'. If the players want to help let the warriors ask them if they have seen/heard of/scanned for some random unrelated things - a ruin shaped like a battleth/a tower made of red stone/a legend of a talking tree. Keep it mysterious, At some point, they're probably successful and make preparations to leave to continue on their quest. Plus I have no idea what it is right now and it only matters if we come back to them sometime in the future. Wait until you have a good idea for what a group of Klingons might be looking for that might require aid from the Federation and then have them show up again.
• This could be simple background color or it could become a big side mission of the crew depending on how much interest the players take in it.It's also a nice hook for a future adventure as a distress call from someone you know is a lot more interesting than one from a stranger. Or, if this is too much to have going on at once, just drop the idea and leave the Klingons for another time.

• Complication #3 - About 5-6 days after First Contact a Ferengi Marauder arrives in-system and begins offering transport out of the system for a price. 
• The Ferengi see this as a real money-making opportunity. They begin by broadcasting their offer on the same frequency as local radio.
• The captain is greedy but clever and not a complete coward. He's willing to take some risks as this is a once-in-a-lifetime to collect the wealth of an entire population.
• Ferengi "consultants" beam down and appeal to the more well-off natives, touting their personalized luxury evacuation packages. 
• This could very likely upset whatever system the players have put in place to determine evacuation priority. "No thanks, we're going with those guys"
•  If challenged they claim to simply be offering a service and begin spreading rumors that the Federation fleet cannot hold everyone who wants to leave. This should force some interesting conversations and confrontations between the natives, the Feds, and the "entrepreneurs". 
• If attacked in space it would certainly be in-character for them to run and not return but it might be more fun if they come back with two more marauders (3 total now) and announce that they intend to honor their previous bargains and offer a discounted rate to new applicants. This also livens things up for the finale. I'd say let it play out based on how your players deal with them. 
• They are not connected with the Orions or the Klingons or anyone else in the system. No conspiracies here.
• If one of the PC's has a background tie to the Ferengi then naturally he should be the captain of one of the ships. Familiarity, tension, the personal touch - all of these just add to the rich stew we're mixing here.
• There's a chance for some humor in this but there's also a chance for some good old fashioned moral debates as well - who's to say the Ferengi are wrong here? Plus they are helping to get even more people off of the planet - people who clearly want to leave.

If you're running this across multiple sessions this is probably the best place to stop if you haven't already. The rescue operation should be in full swing, there have been some unexpected complications but it looks manageable with some work. Starfleet should be pretty pleased with things assuming your players didn't start shooting everything in sight.

There is a fair amount going on but I've tried to keep the three "outsider" elements fairly simple to make it easier to run. Beyond the size of the fleet conveying the importance of the operation, the presence of multiple alien groups with their own agendas helps emphasize that the player characters are in the middle of a very important situation.  I would suggest keeping a separate piece of paper or notepad file for each faction and keeping notes on how the players interact with each faction as you play. The Klingons and Orions land in the same location while the Ferengi mostly stay in orbit so there is a chance the aliens on the ground might cross paths if you want to go that route.

Remember that there's no wrong answer here. There's no set way this has to go. The star is going to explode and that's about the only absolute.  If the PC's blast the Klingons as soon as they decloak well, at least the tactical officer got to have some fun. Your players may figure out a way to combine all of these elements and save everyone who wants to be saved. They're tricky like that. If so, awesone! Everybody wins, drinks all around! The concept I'm working with is "here's an interesting, complicated, dangerous situation that your PC's are thrown into - let's see what happens" not "here's a detailed plot to follow to tell a particular story - make sure your players follow it". There's a story to be told here but it's driven by your players - their actions and decisions could make them heroes, villains, scapegoats, or legends.

The Big Complication: 

A few days after first contact, and after the Orions are discovered, the optional Klingons arrive, and the Ferengi begin auctioning off lifeboat seats,  three borg cubes warp into orbit, spacing themselves at equidistant points around the planet. Instead of attacking they announce that they offer everyone on the planet the chance to join the borg. They beam down a focal point, like Locutus or the Queen, to make a personal offer to the inhabitants. One of the "ascension" sects on the planet immediately declares that THIS is the true path of ascension and agrees to join the borg. Another ascension sect - one of those rescued by the Federation - begins to question their decision and requests a meeting between their leaders, the borg, and the Federation to make a decision. 

I am assuming that borg transporters and assimilation facilities are much faster than the other races and that those cubes have room for a lot of new borg drones. Far more room than all of the other ships in the system combined.

This should complicate the lives of the player characters more than enough to make for a memorable adventure. How do the players react to a)the arrival of the borg, b) the strange approach of the borg - voluntary assimilation? and c) having to debate the merits of joining the Federation of Planets vs assimilation with a bunch of primitive aliens who have no prior knowledge of either group. Also:

• What do the Ferengi do? 
• What do the Klingons do? 
• What do the Orions do?
• What does Starfleet do?  Do they allow the borg to become stronger by assimilating potentially millions of new borg?
• Prime Directive? What if people want to be assimilated by the borg? It is saving lives that might not otherwise be saved, and they are making their own choice. If the UFP is willing to let the locals choose to die in a stellar catastrophe shouldn't they be willing to let them be assimilated if that is their choice?

As the initial group of refugees is assimilated the borg start sending down minor focal point characters created from the natives to convince others they need to join, just to up the pressure. 

Direct combat against the borg is not an option - or is it? If your players really want a huge fight then maybe the Klingons could be convinced to call in their house fleet, the Ferengi could be bargained into calling in their own reinforcements, the Orions could call in some "friends", and Starfleet sends in a bunch of Akira/Steamrunner/Defiant reinforcements and a massive space battle fires up on the eve of the star going nova. It's not my first choice for a resolution but if that's what your players want then give it to them! 

If you think this is likely it might make more sense to reduce the borg down to one cube as I made it three to ensure combat was not the first response. Perhaps once the fight begins it launches a sphere that continues assimilation operations - not all of them voluntary -over the planet while the fight goes on, giving a more interesting situation than  a straight-up fight. Maybe it goes for the rescue ships, assimilating the crew who then cause the rescue ships to warp out for later assimilation of the passengers - calling for a rescue mission within a rescue mission!

Without a fight, you could easily end up with an uncomfortably tense situation of refugees streaming onto the Federation rescue fleet, the Ferengi, a few onto the Orion ships, and a bunch onto the borg ships as the star stutters and staggers to its end.

Finale!
Eventually, we have to have our nova. I would keep this uncertain until a few hours before. You can ratchet up tension by noting increased instability in the star without sticking a number on it until you're ready. It could go from 'we have days" at the beginning to "we have hours" when you're ready to up the pressure.  Give the players a final window of definite time - maybe 3-4 hours - and let them scramble to make any final evacuations or pleas to the people. Then let nature take center stage for a few minutes.

• Here's a video that might work (I am open to additional suggestions if anyone has a good one). 
• Boston's "The Launch" is an instrumental piece would make a good soundtrack if you can time it right and if you don't mind some guitar in your Trek finale.

Let your players think about what they've accomplished, all the souls they rescued. Maybe they get caught up in the number they failed to save - that's OK too. Maybe they develop a lasting hostility towards Ferengi or the Borg (well - a more personal hostility now). That's ok too - heck it's one of the reasons we play the game, right? To see characters change because of the experiences they have had. Other outcomes:

• They're probably famous
• They might be up for promotions. 
• They might be up for court-martial proceedings. 
• They probably made some new allies and/or enemies among the NPC's. 
• They may have fought the Borg in a grand alliance
• They may have died to the last man trying to hold off a Borg assault as their crew is assimilated all around them. Hey, not every story has a happy ending.

So - this is the general flow of the adventure. I have notes on the local aliens as far as how I would present them and some additional side plot options I will share in a separate post. 

I need a name for this thing too. Right now "Operation Starlift" is the leader in the clubhouse but it feels a little generic.  Feel free to share some ideas if you like this thing we're creating.

 

Denial of Destiny - The Star Trek RPG Adventure

I don't see any reviews or discussion of this adventure anywhere online via my googlematic and that's a shame. I played through it way back when it was new and it has had an influence on my thinking on adventures, particularly Trek adventures, ever since. Well, my experience playing it has had a huge influence, because I never owned it - until now! How does it hold up 30 years later? Let's talk ...

My memories of playing through this adventure were that it began with a distress call that a planet was threatened with destruction by a natural event and that the mission was to evacuate as much of the population as possible - simple, right? The complication is that once you get there there the people don't want to leave! It's a big religious thing and the one thing all of the different sects can agree on is that it's important to stay put for the big event. This is not a technologically advanced species so they wouldn't be leaving on their own anyway, but when we offered them the chance we mostly got a polite 'thanks but no thanks"! I remember a weird mixed feeling of being denied the opportunity to save the day, respecting their racial beliefs, and still making our best effort to fully explain the danger. I thought it was brilliant at the time and felt completely true to Trek. There were no Klingons or Romulans, no godlike aliens, no super-computers, and combat was not the high point of the adventure. The only combat that even occurred was that as we kept on trying to talk to the inhabitants about the danger we eventually ticked off one of the more radical sects and they sent some assassins after us so we did get one action scene in.

We managed to convince one group to come with us. The planet got pasted and our passengers became the only surviving members of their race. The hastily-assembled fleet we had thought to be way too small ended up being more than capable of holding them all which was a weird feeling, especially after they became the only survivors. We transported them to a starbase and petitioned to be part of the mission to find them a new homeworld but we never did much follow up on this one. We tended to have a very episodic game back then and with no obvious recurring villain springing out of this run there wasn't as easy a way to drop it back in. I can see plenty of ways to do it now, but things were different then.

So, 30 years, 4 TV series, 11 movies, and many games later I have acquired my own copy. That back cover text is probably too small to read so here it is:

He's stealing my soul!

While strolling down the street the party comes upon a beggar who appears to have only one leg. You may wish to put some Kopas (local currency) into his bowl at which the beggar will smile genially.
The medical officer decides to carefully scan this individual since he has not seen any other Alerian who does not seem totally fit.

As the tricorder is turned on it begins making its normal whining sound. The beggar hears the peculiar noise, sees the device and begins shouting in mortal terror. "Ayak! Ish Bendanaada ju erada megeni kra kra Johopo!" Which translated will turn out to mean "Help! This off-world swine is trying to steal my soul!"

The local merchants, who have become quite attached to this fellow as he knows just about the filthiest stories ever heard on Kembali, will come running to his aid and will insist that the party leave him alone. They won't become violent since after all, he is only a beggar and no one fights over a beggar.

The tricorder reading taken by the medical officer indicates something peculiar about the beggar's missing leg.

Remember, this adventure starts with "we need to evacuate a planet" - does it seem like they're missing the big picture a little bit there? These adventures used to come sealed in an envelope-like package so there was no way to flip through it - the above text is all you get. Does that sound particularly interesting? For an Edge of the Empire adventure this might be a reasonable hook but for a Trek adventure? Where the planet is going to be destroyed in a few days?

Part 1
The first part of the adventure is still good. A message comes in that the planet Aleriad is going to be wiped out by a collision with a debris cloud moving through the system. The PC ship is to head up a task force now being assembled with the goal of saving some of the population. There's a line in the message about only being budgeted enough resources to save 1% of the population - that is not a phrasing I would use, even in Star Trek as it sounds like some kind of corporate/government meeting note, not the introduction of a heroic rescue mission. There are also notes that

• There's nowhere else in the system to settle them
• There have been reports of Orion activity in the area
• Ambassador Robert Fox (from "Taste of Armageddon") is going along to help

I don't remember Fox being a big part of our adventure so I'm not sure if he was dropped completely or renamed and de-emphasized, or if my memory is incomplete. He's supposed to be an annoying ally type NPC in this mission. I don't think we missed him much.

So the first part is pretty much as I remember - get to the system with a rescue fleet, meet the Alerians, educate them on the situation, and get as many of them off the planet as possible. The Alerians are divided into hundreds if not thousands of religious sects and do not want to leave. In fact none of them want to leave, and pushing the issue gets angry mobs surrounding you and potential assassins attacking while you sleep. The only group that might be interested in leaving is led by an undercover Orion operative who doesn't want to die and quietly pushes his people to volunteer. The rest of the population views the coming devastation as a religious event and figures they will finally get to show all of the other sects who is actually right. So they are not only unwilling to leave, they are looking forward to it!

As written, there's not a lot for the players to do here. They can get to know the Alerian people, learn about their culture, and then watch their planet die! There is the one faction who can be convinced which seems disappointing to me as even that one has the hidden offworlder influencing things from the inside. There is also a mystery sub-plot involving Orion tech smuggling but honestly the whole planet is about to die so who cares if the Orions have been sneaking illegal tech onto the planet? Why does it matter now?

The destruction of the planet is thoroughly described. The inhabitants really thought some of them were going to survive as they were the chosen of their god and the non-chosen would be the ones to die. The sect that takes the players' offer accepts it with the understanding that they will return to the surface after the danger has passed. Instead the planet gets pounded by space rocks, the oceans and landmasses move around. and much of the atmosphere is lost so what's left is baking in much stronger solar radiation and is no longer Class M. 

It is suggested that if you're going multi-session with this adventure that this is a good place to pause. It is.

Part 2

Part 2 of the adventure is what to do with the refugees. There is concern that if they find out the destruction is total they might riot and most of the ships in the force do not have adequate security to control them. There is room for debate on whether to tell them up front or make a run for the starbase and let them get the full update their once they are off of the ships. There are also dietary, atmospheric, and gravitational concerns with keeping the Alerians healthy so there is a lot for the players to consider. It's a little bit of a Battlestar Galactica feeling as the officers in charge try to keep a shocked and unsettled civilian population happy and healthy until they can get where they're going. This kind of scenario does seem like a cool thing for a Trek adventure and I like a lot of it.

Then it gets really stupid.

The refugees, manipulated by the secret Orion, take over the ship. These aliens have a tech level similar to 1900 AD on Earth. They have steam power, basic radio, and single-shot projectile weapons. Yet they somehow manage to out-think the crew and learn how to run the ship -in 2 days-  and use the anti-intruder knockout gas to take control. The author seems to know it's ridiculous and spends some time justifying it to the GM:

... but I freely admit I have a hard time buying it and I would have a hard time buying it as a player too. "Suspension of disbelief" is a poor reason include something in an adventure and it could be used to justify literally anything. It's not even that these people would try to do it - it's that it's tough to believe they could do it! The Orion supposedly doesn't remember a lot of details of his former life but as this happens is supposed to start remembering how ship systems work. His limited knowledge is supposed to be a big help to the takeover. Seems like we're wanting to have it both ways here and even if it's not the biggest hole in this adventure it still seems weak.

The stated goal is to take the ship then go off and find a planet they can settle on. Of course, this only covers the refugees on the main PC ship. There's really not much discussion of how the rest of the fleet reacts other than it can only sustain Warp 2 and the rebel refugees go to Warp 4 to get away. Do the on-ship refugees realize this? Do they care? how about those left behind? I didn't see any of this addressed in the text.

The big finale of the adventure, is the struggle to retake control of the ship. This is complicated when a distress call comes in from a ship full of cadets under attack by a pair of Orion ships. The players need to retake the ship and also rescue the cadet ship in a less than 100% state as the untrained Alerians have managed to crack some of the dilithium crystals and generally screw up various ship systems. The advice here is that if the PC ship starts to really lose then have a Loknar class frigate show up to help. A previously unmentioned Loknar ... that might have been useful in transporting more refugees ... that surely would have picked up the distress call as well and could have picked up a call from the players ship too theoretically. Sigh.

Other Elements
One of the sort of hidden factors in this is that the Alerians are psionic and a good part of their communication is tied up in the mental part of their exchanges and not the verbal. This allows them to plot to take over the ship without having to discuss it verbally  and yes the Orion secret agent is psionically active as well which is why he was chosen for the mission long ago. The problem here is that it's fairly typical to have at least one psionically active player character in a Trek game, particularly the FASA Trek RPG, and this seems like it might be a problem. Here's the author's advice on that:

OK, seems like we have it handled well here, right? Wait, there's more:

What?! I'm supposed to sideline a PC because their abilities are inconvenient to the plot of this adventure? You call that advice? These are from the designer's notes on playtesting the adventure which tells me that's probably how they handled it! It's like people complaining about having Paladins in D&D adventures that depend on a secret evil plot that could be revealed with a simple "detect evil". Hey, if your plot is that weak in a world where "detect evil" exists then it's probably not going to work there. Same idea here - if one halfway competent psionic PC blows up the whole second half of your adventure in a setting where psionic PC's are not uncommon then you need to rethink your adventure. It was bad advice in 1983 and it's bad advice today.

If things play out as projected your players will sail in, largely fail to convince the doomed populace to evacuate, watch as the planet gets destroyed, head back to a starbase with the few refugees they did manage to rescue, lose control of their ship to them, struggle to get it back, then attempt to fight off some Orions in a damaged state possibly needing help from another smaller ship to succeed.

Wow, that looks like your crew is incredibly incompetent. It should get your captain fired and possibly court-martialed. The rest of the crew should be broken up, reassigned, and some of them should be demoted and possibly court-martialed as well. There's no super-powerful alien life form at work here like with Kirk and the Enterprise. There's not even a comparably-trained and equipped force like the Klingons at work here - it's a bunch of primitives! Could a group of Amish refugees take over a modern aircraft carrier? Even if one of them was an amnesiac former Soviet sailor?  Allowing that to happen would (and should) end careers and destroy reputations.

Looking back ...
Clearly my GM back then took the parts of the adventure he liked, made something of them, and dropped the awful parts. He was a smart guy. Unfortunately this means my memories of this adventure are way better than what it is in print. I picked this up expecting to be able to showcase it as an example for someone who doesn't know what a Trek RPG adventure might be (besides shooting Klingons) and I just can't do that. It starts with a great concept and then the whole thing falls apart.

Star Trek RPGs deserve better and we can do better. I love the basic concept - confronted by an unalterable natural disaster what does your crew do?

So in the next post I'm going to start writing up my concept of what this adventure could be. More to come.

Starfinder

The big announcement over the weekend was Paizo's new game: Starfinder There's more information here. It's more than a year away (August 2017) but I have some early thoughts.

As a player/GM I am interested but not bowled over. A new game from Paizo is a big deal as they are one of the major players in the hobby and with the built-in player base this game will instantly be one of the bigger games in the hobby, but I am not sure I am looking for "D&D in space". Paizo isn't calling it that, but since it's still at least lightly tied to their Pathfinder setting and is supposed to be backwards compatible as far as monsters, I think they will have a hard time escaping that label at least.

As a long time gamer I have also seen this before. Mixing tech and D&D goes back to Gamma World and Boot Hill and the AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide in the 70's. We played around with some of that way back when. Expedition to the Barrier Peaks is a well-known example too and was usually a pretty good time even after playing through it more than once. Starfinder seems to be a pretty close in concept to Dragonstar which was a d20 boom RPG from FFG that took all the elements of 3rd edition D&D and expanded them into space, including an empire ruled by dragons. We played a little bit of that and having wizards and elves running around with spaceships and robots using 3E mechanics was a little weird - but fun - even for a veteran of Shadowrun and Rifts.

People seem to be getting worked up over the mechanics assuming that it will either be straight-up Pathfinder as we know it or that it's a sneaky way to create a Pathfinder 2E without alienating the current player base. This aspect of the new game does interest me as so much of PF was constrained by legacy concerns. While I assume the base mechanic will still be "roll a d20 + mods, higher is better" the skills, feats, and class designs could be radically different. Seeing how they approach an alternate version of their core game will be interesting.

From a business perspective it does make a lot of sense. They are heavily dependent on Pathfinder as a universe or IP even with an RPG line, a miniatures line, and a card game line spreading things out a bit. Creating what is effectively a separate universe for a new game line potentially doubles their prospects even beyond the announced RPG. There's no reason we couldn't see a Starfinder card game or a miniatures line down the road too. Having a fantasy line and a sci-fi line that share some concepts and mechanics makes them look a little bit like Games Workshop in the late 80's and that worked out pretty well for them.

The potential downside is that there really hasn't been a dominant science fiction (and by that I mean spaceships, planets, robots, and lasers) rpg in a long time - really ever. Traveller was the big one for a time in the late 70's and early 80's because it was the only game out there. Star Frontiers, Star Trek, Space Opera, and Star Wars all popped up in the 80's to fragment things. Dragonstar was well supported for a year or two but was never one of the "big" games. Rifts does some of the same things but is a post-apocalyptic game largely focused on one damaged planet and even it is not as popular as it was years ago. I see two mitigating factors: 1) Having it tied in some way both mechanically and in setting to a game as popular as Pathfinder is a plus as D&D even at the height of its popularity never tried a direct connection like this and 2) The field is pretty open right now with FFG's Star Wars games the most popular from what I've seen. Star Wars is a very specific campaign compared to science fiction/science fantasy in general and there is an audience who has little to no interest in playing that game. Paizo is excellent at supporting material so in short order there will be a nice universe of adventures and supplements to focus on a campaign on different styles of play. I would bet that there will be cyberpunk, transhuman, and psionic supplements out fairly early in the game's life.

Best case scenario: it takes everything Shadowrun did well and adds the best of Traveller and Star Wars on top of that. That's probably aiming too high but it would be a great thing to see.

Worst case scenario: it takes enough resources to create and manage that it damages the main PF game, splits the player base, but is not successful enough to stand on it's own and fails a year or two out of the gate crippling Paizo and PF. I can't see the team at Paizo failing at this level but it is the worst case.

Personally I am interested but it's not an instant "awesome!" in the way that say Savage Rifts was.  I'm sure I'll pick up the initial core book when it arrives but I'm not planning any campaigns just yet. I'm not sure my players and I are looking for this game. The Iron Gods Adventure Path we plan to play at some point is probably enough to cover that for us, and if we want a more "pure" SF game I think Star Wars or Star Trek or Traveller will be on the list.

This is the kind of thing I worry about when the kitchen sink DM gets carried away ...

I am sure this game will spend the next two years shaking up the hobby during the build-up and the initial release and will definitely be worth following during that time.