This one was written really late after spending two weeks in Alaska. I’ve done the best job possible!
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
Since the last session closed off the larger opening arc with us providing the Bajorans with a new home but established the potential of this episode with The Dominion signals in Klingon territory there wasn’t much going into the pre-game other than what the hell might happen next.
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 returns to Yorktown to find more ships present
- The senior crew are invited to a security briefing
The Federation is assuming the Klingon Empire is intent on war and Starfleet has to be ready to defend itself. This is complicated by the presence of The Domion in Klingon territory. Federation vessels are assigned to patrol the other side of the nebula and the Klingon border but the USS Guardian and USS Paladin are sent into Klingon space to investigate what The Dominion are doing
- McCallister and Commodore Paris have a bristly meeting discussing the risks of the mission
- Th’Shra meets Federation Intelligence contact and the setup a Batezoid member of the ground crew
- McCallister contacts her mother and asks her to learn what she can about Betazoid intentions and it is revealed the Batazoid ambassador at Khitomer is hard line
- The USS Guardian has a refit adding subspace mines, an experimental cloaking device
- Travelling to the Klingon Neutral Zone, Matrix has another short therapy session with Janowski
- After splitting from the USS Paladin, USS Guardian and her crew penetrated the Neutral Zone and found a Klingon listening post, with a Bird of Prey in situ, to monitor, after a stealth approach
- The station was attacked by two Dominion Battleships. They beamed something onboard the Bird of Prey, who then raised their shields. The Dominion then destroyed the station.
- On the Bird of Prey, the comms channel was open, and the Guardian could hear the sounds of fierce battle and the last defiant speech of one of the Klingons. After the fighting stopped, the Dominion broadcast was heard again, they beamed back what they had sent, and left.
- The crew beamed onto the Bird of Prey and found a battleground, with hundreds of dead Klingons.
- They discovered two new types of Dominion warriors – Shock Troops (showing signs of Klingon biology) and Seers (showing signs of Vulcan biology)
- They also found a survivor – someone Dr Laker knew from a previous life. After scraping as much data as they could from the Bird of Prey, they beamed everyone (incl the Survivor) back to the Guardian and returned to the rendevous point.
- En route they received a Mayday signal from USS Paladin
- USS Paladin was waylaid by The Dominion and suffered a massive systems failure. They have lost their engines and are claiming a rupture on their temporal drive. MAYDAY! MAYDAY! To help them would go against orders, but to leave them would be a dereliction of duty to another officer and crew
- Naturally, McAllister went in all guns blazing.
- In the middle of the fight with the Dominion, five Birds of Prey warped in and decloaked
- They blew the Dominion ships out of the sky and announced that everyone at the scene are now prisoners of war!
To be continued…
The session
It’s always a bit weird when your orders are not to be observed. This created a situation where we had to go somewhere and then wait and hope something would be introduced externally to ourselves. Then when things did happen in order to obey orders we had to observe events. It was all interesting but it does create that small voice in your head if you should be being bolder or more pro-active somehow.
We did use the time to discuss what The Dominion might be up to and once we had a ‘crime scene’ to investigate it gave us something to pick apart and the snippets of information that were revealed were very cool.
It was also great to see the fabric of the campaign include more Starfleet in motion. Different ships appear, and another Captain in charge of Guardian’s sister ship. All cool. It felt like things were widening out and growing in scale.
The post-game
Awesome cliffhanger situation but I’m on a coach in two hours, enjoy. So long suckers!
It was a weird post-game as at the point the session ended I was setting off on a long journey to Alaska two hours later so the next session would not feature my character.
As usual, potential events change due to how we navigate through situations. I think the goal was to have us back at Yorktown so McCallister could be charged with being a bit flexible with standing orders which would take me out for a session, but instead, we ended up on the cliffhanger in Klingon territory.
In all honesty, I’ve always loved the opportunities that are presented when a player character in a position of authority vanishes from the drama be it The Slayer in a Buffy campaign or the Captain in a Star Trek campaign. It offers up opportunities to shake up dynamics. Obviously, since I am writing this late I know that session didn’t happen due to player availability but at the point it actually ended I was thinking about what that session may look like.
Mostly because the one that happened in our Buffy game when my Slayer was absent was amazing so there is a bit of nostalgia over such things and seeing the potential in it when it happens in TV shows.
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 have no idea. I had to write this after spending two weeks in Alaska and way too long after the session.
Plans for the next session
There were very few plans for the next session as there was every chance I’d not be part of it.
What is true is I love how the character keeps making decisions, that while existing within the band of the defensible, are being made because of the loss of the USS Dauntless. It creates this interesting dynamic where the character isn’t making grossly stupid decisions because of her aspects but is still letting them unduly influence her. Great stuff.
I think, if I have a multi-session goal at this point, it is to resolve the Loss of the Gauntlet aspect in this season of episodes somehow and replace it – though I’m not sure what with currently.