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 players 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
Ahead of the game, we were given an advanced warning about the narrative setup of Kai Winn asking the characters about the nature of their faith. Faith in the broadest sense. What gives them purpose, belief and a drive to move forward.
Key points
The official write-up is quite long so it’s becoming harder to repeat them here and I probably need to summarise them further.
- The USS Guardian is escorting the fleet of Bajoran vessels to a new home
- The Bajorans attempt to follow a traditional, potentially lethal coming-of-age ritual on a child
- After deliberation, it is decided Dr Laker can analyse the poison while Kai Winn enquires about matters of faith within the Federation.
- Th’Shra explains the four-sided nature of the Andorian faith, how it came about and the repercussions for that society. Moreover, he talks about how he rejects it, despite acknowledging that their God exists.
- Laker’s position is one of straightforward scientific atheism.
- Matrix denies God because he believes that a just God would never give children cancer, for example. He also believes in his own abilities.
- Kern impresses Kai Wynn with a display of the miracles of engineering, and the sheer faith that is needed to travel through space in an artificial energy bubble at multiples of the speed of light
- McAllister states she believes in people as if her mother, a powerful empath, can believe in people so can she – Kai Wynn states that on this ship and beyond, she is worshipped as a God. McAllister denies it, but it is pointed out that people will die on her word, children look to her as an icon etc.
- The USS Guardian enters a minefield on entry into the system
- It also becomes apparent the old mining platform is occupied
- Rhade Chance the leader of the pirates manning the platform resists pressure to vacate the facility
- It was discovered the mining platform was leaking particles and slowly killing the pirates this was used as leverage to persuade the pirates to leave
- Dr Laker discovered Bajoran’s had built immunity to the poison on Bajor and that the poison was limited in supply
- It was decided to genetically modify the remaining doses of poison and let the ritual continue
- Ensign Matrix began his counselling sessions with Nurse Janowski
- Cmdr Radcliffe clashed with Kern
- McCallister ordered Th’Shra to look into the missing data thus investigating himself
- Post-credit the station at the Klingon border reported the energy spike of the Dominion Wormhole generator
To be continued…
The session
I think this was the first session that had an official a-plot and b-plot. I think a minor challenge with the session was it felt like there were really two b-plots. There wasn’t one driving the session forward with risk and danger and the other percolating as an undercurrent. The primary plot opened excitingly with the minefield but that de-escalated quickly.
I’m also very wary of the whole players defining the solution approach to presented situations in role-playing games. I’m not against the concept, but it’s a delicate balance. It can’t just be ‘present the problem’ and then as the next step ‘solve the problem’ there sort of has to be something in between that involves effort, scenes that add value or present antagonism risk. If you go from presenting the situation to players resolving it directly it tends to feel unduly procedural.
I think these two elements are what resulted in the feeling the session lacked jeopardy which came up in the Stars and Wishes.
The character stuff driven by previous events and one of the b-plots was ace. As the GM knows I’m a big fan of reality TV and documentary-style structure informing narrative structures. So the premise of Kai Winn questioning the primary antagonists in the style of a talking head interview was intriguing. I’d have probably not worried about inserting them into the on-going events, which proved odd to do, but had them take place on a specific set. As that would have given more control of the atmosphere. They could have also then been flashed to as necessary framed by the primary events. They were really good though and interesting and revelatory.
Anyway, as I’ve said, I do love that sort of thing.
The post-game
We’ve hit a milestone so we have a chance to shift our aspects around, shift some approaches and also add +1 to an approach. It’s probably worth considering aspects here as these are the elements that I don’t feel are fully working as well as they could and I’m also one short.
My high concept aspect was Rapidly Promoted but then the whole concept of her being a minor celebrity and the Face of the Federation was introduced (not by me!) but I ran with it and it became an aspect. I think it makes sense to just fully run with Face of the Federation as my high concept and collapse rapidly promoted just as part of that narrative.
That leaves Loss of the Dauntless and Betazoid Ancestry which I am going to keep.
This leaves two which had to have two goals: have more general applicability and give the character a wider set of narrative permissions. It seems a number of the characters have one or both of these.
I’ve gone with Presence of Mind, essentially one of those cool under-pressure deals that can be used in dangerous or tense situations, I just didn’t want to call it cool under pressure! Then I added Renowned Ambassador’s Daughter. I think the last one is pretty cool for representing her skills from a life not taken as well as a way to bring in all sorts of trouble and connections from the escapades of a flamboyant and egotistical ambassador. I guess it’s a bit like Jadzia Dax having Curson Dax but it’s her father rather than a past host.
I’m going to go with that I think.
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 really should note these down as I never feel I capture them all a week or so late.
We all thought it was great how people had put some thought into how they would approach Kain Winn’s questions. The first session, of what I assume will be a few, between Ensign Matrix and Nurse Janowski was great. The usual liking of the characters having more scenes together. I also noted how I liked the purposeful interview question setup.
It was noted how having more jeopardy in the session was a wish.
Plans for the next session
Bring on the Klingons! I don’t really have any specific plans for the next session just abstract feelings and thoughts spurred by the awesome previous events.
I think from a character perspective Kaitlin’s sense of presence (more of her story than I originally thought but great now it is) is going to make keeping the truth of events at Khitomer challenging without her feeling like she’s in control of it. So I need to find a way to be more proactive with that at the moment I’m letting myself be contained and restrained by it and just waiting it out. Who wants that?
While it was introduced rather randomly (no idea how it entered the GM’s head as I didn’t indicate it) the whole Faces of the Federation (if wasn’t called that maybe it is now) holo-vid thing is fascinating. I now think of it as one of those longitudinal shows that cover people’s lives at periodic intervals – so there is probably footage of her as a young teenager in her father’s shadow and an assumed to be ambassador, a young officer and maybe one before she became a first officer of the USS Dauntless.
While it wasn’t my idea at all it now makes me wonder what would happen if they chose to check in on all of its participants again.