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
Captain Phillipa Jennings of the Dauntless, my commanding officer, mentor and friend once told me: “you will one day sit in this chair and you’ll feel like you’ve made all the best decisions you could but you’ll feel many of the outcomes still landed wrong.”
– Captain’s Log Excert
Last session we ended up on a cliffhanger with the destruction of Bajor and the spinning up of the Dominion’s wormhole technology which would destroy the star and the solar system.
A tense situation with no clear ‘everyone wins’ outcome.
So, let’s discuss what this means for what happens between sessions. I’m sure for many it would mean going that was cool and then not thinking about it until the next session comes around a month later. That’s not how it goes for me. I spent time thinking about, scenario planning and playing through how it might play out in my head. Not obsessively, but in a similar way as you might think about a good TV show between episodes.
Is some of this influenced by the fact my character exists in the Captain’s chair? I don’t think so. I do it for any game that I’m really engaged with. I also want the game to go well, so I like to not be the one contributing to a lot of confusion. I know, maybe that’s a responsibility I shouldn’t have or don’t need to put on my shoulders, but I do.
Key points
The key points (primarily from the GM’s session summary): –
- Before arriving, the command staff discuss using the Temporal Drive to jump back in time, avoiding any blast wave momentarily
- Arriving, sensors show the following: –
- On the planet Bajor, almost total destruction of the population, except for a gathering at an untouched temple, and a fleet of small ships, searching for a window of departure to avoid the Dominion Frigates and Battlecruiser around the planet
- On the star of Bajor, a structure is being erected which was building magnetron energy, a surefire sign of an artificial wormhole.
- Dr Laker suggests using modified photon torpedoes to create phantom ships.
- Distracting one of the frigates and opening a window of opportunity. USS Guardian engages the Dominion in a punishing battle that allows the small ships to escape, and then realising the Dominion ships cannot operate in the atmosphere, plunges into the lower atmosphere
- Meanwhile, the Dominion ships peel off, joining more ships emerging from the Necro Cloud Nebula
- USS Guardian sets about trying to beam up the survivors from the temple, but they are purposefully blocked.
- An away team of McAllister, Dr Laker and Ran heads down to get them out. Dr Laker identifies that the teleport block is technical.
- The Bajoran representative, Kai Wynn, refuses to leave, believing that the Prophets will protect them, and Bajor would never explode.
- Dr Laker suggests that they are emissaries of the Prophets and uses his disguised cybernetic arm to produce a feat of strength, convincing the Bajorans. They are beamed from the temple with only moments to spare.
- Matrix guns the ship and with some skin-of-the-teeth flying, they escape the blast wave of the collapsing wormhole. All of the Dominion ships have escaped, and the Bajor system is destroyed.
- Accompanying the small ships, USS Guardian uses the beacons to return to Yorktown Station
- McAllister is contacted by Commander Finnegan, warning him of his impending showdown with Commodore Paris, and the strikes that the Dominion have made in their absence – kidnapping samples of Klingon, Vulcan, Betazoid and Trill from outposts and penal facilities.
- Dr Laker correctly identifies that the telepathic potential of some of these races could be linked to these abductions.
- Commodore Paris contacts USS Guardian and orders Mwanajuma to take the ship in – utterly ignoring McAllister.
To be continued…
The session
We don’t know what we will find at Bajor but based on our investigations so far this ship and the ingenuity of its crew may well be all that stands between The Dominion and the destruction of a people, culture and civilization.
– Captain’s Log Excert
These tense ‘no real win scenario’ situations are hard to do. There is a method to it though, you sort of have to lay out the parameters of the ‘problem crucible’ otherwise everyone gets confused due to self-doubt and too many possibilities.
All this worked great. Not many Bajorans left but there is a fleet that could be rescued and a small amount of Bajorans on the planet. The wormhole device is also ramping up and…go. That is a narrative crucible that protagonists can make decisions on and it worked.
I proposed a flashback because I wanted an opportunity for a Star Trek briefing scene where we outlined the ingenuity that Starfleet crews come up with in these situations. I really liked it, but then I would as it provides a framing for me ‘do to Captain stuff’.
It really felt like the second part of a big opening two-part episode that is one long resolution of the set-up in the first episode. This did mean a lot of the episode took place within the context of a space battle which does tend to put characters in defined ‘bridge roles’ but it was very exciting. I think it’s easy to forget how exciting afterwards because it’s not decision-based excitement but potential ship combat outcomes.
Some of the ship combat rolls in this session could have left us in a very dire situation and sent things spinning in a completely different direction.
The post-game
The ship combat was even better this time due to the introduction of ‘popcorn initiative’ and the larger ships having multiple actions. This gives things a better flow and meant we couldn’t action economy to death the enemy vessels.
It did seem a bit challenging to keep everyone involved in the space battle, especially the Doctor. This is an outcome of the space battles putting people into more defined department roles. That will shake out over time and also this was a particularly intense space battle episode which probably won’t be that frequent.
I did like the flashback, but it was mentioned it played with time and established events in a slightly jinky manor. I didn’t realise this at the time but it’s probably true. I was going to limit it to things we would use once current events progressed but this possibly did get lost a bit. Still, the reason that happened was entirely due to player exuberance and the flow of ideas which is a good thing!
It was a very tense narrative situation which impacts the game as you are constantly aware of everything that could go wrong (in a good way). This is great but does create a bandwidth challenge which results in little impacts on the session – I noted I didn’t add as many directing flourishes as last time and at times character and player chat sort of merged.
Stars and Wishes
At the end of each session, we can list stars (things to keep doing) and wishes (things we want to see).
I don’t think we explicitly called for any but we discussed the game as we’d all had a great time. I think the general vibe of looking forward to a slightly slower character-driven episode was mentioned.
Plans for the next session
I don’t have any, for all I know I could be being court-martialed. Who knows, possibly I’ll be thinking through my arguments over the next two weeks.