Welcome to the game notes for our Star Trek campaign. The aim is to provide a diary of the experience from a player’s perspective. The notes will follow a similar structure each time discussing the session itself as well as thoughts on the next sessions and things the players discussed post-session.
The Setup
This is a Star Trek campaign that ‘sort of’ takes place in the Kelvin timeline immediately after Star Trek Beyond. Temporally it IS the Kelvin timeline I only say ‘sort of’ as I’m pretty sure it’s sort of an amalgamation in everyone’s heads between Strange New Worlds, Discovery season two and the Kelvin films.
Basically the modern interpretation of The Original Series era.
In the parlance of today, it is a private game and is homebrew, so basically just a regular old role-playing experience. It’s played online via Roll20.
We’re using Fate Accelerated rather than Star Trek Adventures to run the game. Why is that? It’s simply because Fate Accelerated has a much lower ‘effort cost’ in terms of setting up and running it online. I think most of the players really like Star Trek Adventures, including myself, but I tend to agree Fate Accelerated makes life easier on the GM without much being lost.
The sections
The pre-game
I was really looking forward to the session as things outside the game had gone in an interesting direction. We added two new players giving us a fuller bridge crew!
These characters were hashed out between sessions and it was fantastic. I found an image for my character as did the two new ones and it kept everything fresh and new. It was like proper old school, like back when part of the experience was actually discussing the game between sessions as if it was worth more than the transactional 2-3 hours online!
Key points
The key points (primarily from the GM’s session summary):-
- The injured alien is Resus, a Bajoran, travelling with his family to Bajor for the Kh’lan festival
- He confirms sorrowfully that his ship was attacked by ‘The Dominion’ and destroyed
- Dr Laker started an autopsy of the Dominion drone, but it reanimates.
- Th’Shra blasted it with phaser fire but it is resistant; Kern electrocutes it remotely.
- Sensors detected a larger Dominion fleet in the nebula, splitting between a collision course with Yorktown and Bajor
- In a fateful decision, McAllister decided to defend Yorktown and leaves Bajor to its fate, hoping she can get back in time
- Matrix needs speed and successfully goes off his own beacon path to fly the nebula ‘raw’, emerging on top of the Dominion frigate
- USS Guardian’s new systems proved too much for the Dominion ship, as her tractor beam move stops it from ramming Yorktown, before destruction
- Commodore Paris orders the Guardian to wait 30 minutes so she can come onboard for a debrief. McAllister refused and warped for Bajor!
- In transit, Dr Laker and Capt McAllister put things together and realise that the destruction of the star was the energy that created the wormhole, and that was where the Dominion came from!
- Upon arrival, they see the Dominion fleet bombing the planet from orbit
- Other Dominion ships are erecting some sort of platform around the twin stars of the system. As the Guardian arrives they fire and the Wormhole creation process begins.
To be continued….
The session
I find myself contemplating that a part of my ancestry believes sometimes common understanding is impossible. That a telepathic species can never find common understanding with those whose minds are silent to each other.
So, the message on the beacon haunts me. Will the Dominion represent the first culture we have encountered that we might never be able to reach a peaceful accord with?
Excert from Captains Log, Cpt Kaitlin McAllister, USS Guardian
I was enthralled by this session from start to finish. I was totally engaged and listening intently to every moment and if anything defines the success of an online session it’s that.
One of the great things I liked about it is how it’s now introduced four protagonists who have been established sufficiently that interactions with them can be unique to them. You’re going to find me saying this numerous times across this experience but this is enhanced by Aspects both because we can read the Aspects on the characters’ sheets and because they are put into play. So we now know and have seen the Doctor’s predilection for ‘war stories’ based on the fact he has seen more space than you can possibly imagine and the engineer’s belief he knows best about The Guardian’s limits due to knowing nothing is standard Starfleet issue here, etc.
All these things enhance future interactions.
Ultimately, the session felt more like a face-to-face one. I often feel on-line gaming can have a transactional feel and it reduces the impact and richness of the game as conversation. This one didn’t feel like that at all.
The post-game
One of the best signs of a great game session is how much you’re thinking about it after the fact. Like a well-written TV show leaves you thinking.
The quality of the conversation
I like to view role-playing games as an adaptation, but the difference is you’re not adapting a specific piece of fiction you’re adapting the form.
Key to this is where the ‘act of writing goes’. Since you’re playing to find out, to one degree or another in a role-playing game the ‘act of writing’ unfolds in the conversation at the table. So you want that conversation to have meaning.
Cmdr Mwanajuma: Is that a wise decisions?
Cpt McCallister: I don’t know if it’s wise, but it’s the right one.
This can be in small moments as well as whole scenes. Like the above brief exchange between the first officer (an NPC) and my character after I chose to disobey orders to try and save Bajor. I love in the flow interactions like that, especially ones you can see ‘filmed in the moment’, rather than just being passively observed.
Go for the scene. Go for the moment. Elevate and enhance the conversation. Give space for that to happen and make decisions to support it happening across the table organically.
Damn, I love Fate
Strictly speaking, there isn’t anything that happened in this session that could not have happened within any other system, but that doesn’t preclude the fact Aspects in Fate drive it to happen. Numerous compels really added to the characters in interesting ways.
Let’s use an example though, my character was faced with prioritising saving Yorktown station or saving Bajor. The drama of that decision would have been true in any game as the decision had to be made. Why is the Aspect important? Since I used my Haunted by the loss of the Dauntless aspect as a decision compel in making the decision we now know, in the fiction and conversation at the table, the decision in the character’s head was made in part out of the pain of past experience.
That is fantastic. If I’d used my Face of the Federation aspect (arrogance?) or Rapidly Promoted (inexperience?) Aspect instead the whole internal fiction for the decision would have been different.
I do understand other games I like use similar mechanics, Cortex Prime and Star Trek Adventures, both have elements that are ‘sort of’ Aspects, but they both take a much softer approach to it. There is something about the compel that really delivers.
Stars and Wishes
At the end of each session, we can list stars (things to keep doing) and wishes (things we want to see).
We had quite Stars and Wishes after this session.
The Kelvin Universe. I was keen to point out how much I liked the Kelvin Universe, straight after the third film and go set-up of the campaign. While my encyclopaedic knowledge of Star Trek is not as strong as it used to be it’s still pretty big. As a result, the play to find out factor of how our Star Trek universe unfolds as an Elseworlds experience works really well for me and is a very intriguing element of the experience.
Spotlight time management. We also discussed how we manage time between the characters. This can have an extra wrinkle in Star Trek campaigns due to the characters being in a command structure and specific roles. I think the scene time across characters will resolve itself once we get out of spotlighting elements of the system.
Personal scenes. There was a request for more personal scenes to focus on the relationship between the characters which is a great call. It’s obviously a function of us having only played for 4-6 hours so far and for half of those two of the characters were not present. I’m looking forward to it happening.
The starship action economy. We also discussed how we might manage individual character actions on the ship while starship combat was taking place. It’s the whole intersection of how the multiple actions in our ship interact with one action from the other.
It was a very interesting set of discussions which was also great.
Plans for the next session
Any thoughts for the next session are purely about the cliffhanger. Do we flee Bajor or try and stop the destruction of the system? To what degree, if any, can we save Bajor despite the presence of the larger Dominion fleet? And what will be the consequences of the Captain disobeying orders?
Personally, how will the Captain process her decision to prioritise Yorktown over Bajor?
I mean, that’s enough to think about?