I Apologise for this being an over 5-minute read but it was a classic of a session.
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
What can I say? Expectations were high due to ending the last session on an awesome cliffhanger. Yeah, we didn’t get to do the episode with the Captain missing, but it did mean we were all hands on deck to deal with the cliffhanger which was pretty cool.
Are we going to fight our way out? Will we all end up in prison? Can we rescue something from the situation due to actually being in contact with Klingons in a way few Federation members ever have been in our universe?
Exciting.
Key points
The summary of the session is below: –
- We start the session where we left off surrounded by Klingon warships after they destroyed the Dominion ship that was about to destroy the Paladin
- The Paladin is a busted flush and isn’t going anywhere
- If the USS Guardian fought her way our, she would leave the Paladin behind with the Klingons
- Captain McCallister suggests the situation is an opportunity, and agrees terms to parley with the Klingons.
- The accommodation is the command crew will be held responsible
- The command crew are split between Rura Penthe and a Klingon court
- The Klingons allow for repairs to be conducted on the Paladin
- Kern and Matrix go to Rura Penthe with Captain Rosemount and his command crew
- McAllister, Dr Laker and Th’Shra go to the tribunal
- McCallister, Dr Laker and Th’Shra persuade the tribunal to ally in this moment against The Dominion
- A strange Klingon group detect Cpt McCallister using her empathic ability during ‘negotiations’
- At the end of the tribunal, it is announced The Dominion is preparing a wormhole at Praxis
- Kern, Matrix and the command crew incl Rosemont escape Rura Penthe and make their way back on a stolen ship
- Kern and Matrix also discover that Cpt Rosemount engaged The Dominion out of a sense of competition with Cpt McCallister
- The Guardian and a Klingon fleet engage with The Dominion
- The Klingon fleet is to engage while the Guardian finds a way to stop the wormhole cycle
- Kern and Matrix return in their stolen Klingon vessel
- A plan is hatched to ram the stolen vessel into the key control node
- The Temporal Drive is used; giving each a view of their Mirror Universe selves
- This involved Matrix staying on the stolen vessel until the last second
- Kern transports Rosemount directly into the brig
- The battle is successful and a Dominion fleet does not arrive
- Cpt Rosemount goes into a rant about McCallister being an attention-seeking ego-maniac
- A cut scene reveals the Betazoid ambassador from Khitomer talking to the Klingon group about the need to control psychic powers
To be continued…
The session
I think the session was a master class of a session. It was fantastic. If this was really appearing on TV it’d be listed in the top episodes along with the opening two-part story.
The splitting of the crew allowed for two situations to be addressed with fewer protagonists in each situation so the need to solve them was directly pressing for all characters. This meant the session felt really natural in terms of distributing the spotlight time and also very cinematic as we switched between the escape and the Klingon tribunal and everyone got to contribute in cool and dramatic ways.
I must admit, getting to do a version of the Star Trek VI Klingon court case scene in which there was an opportunity to bring the Klingons around and treat it as an ‘opportunity’, due to the larger Dominion threat, was amazing and also very Star Trek. It was particularly cool as it allowed me to use Presence of Mind (extreme focus on what’s important under pressure) to re-roll, then pile in Prestigious Ambassadors Daughter (it was her career direction), Betazoid Ancestry (subtle empathic reading of the chamber) and Face of the Federation (she’s projects confidence at least) to get us past the first gate. It felt like quintessentially who my character is, using every facet of her dramatic self at that moment alongside the speech.
I played a starship captain in a previous Star Trek game and it was good, but I don’t think the leader diplomat thing fully landed. I got to do it, but it always felt like the action was more important. It never felt like it was as rewarding as it could be. So this was really cool.
The escape from Rura Penthe might have felt slightly abridged – but apparently needing so many successes against a target number of 4 isn’t as challenging as we originally thought! The dice did go really well. I’m stretching here as it was amazingly well done. The use of the Klingon vessel to bring down the wormhole generator was also brilliant.
Obviously, the campaign is heavily influenced by Star Trek VI, not so much in terms of actual events being the same but in the sense it’s more like Picard series three which is very much a serialised series in the mode of Star Trek as a political thriller.
The post-game
I’m obviously gaining the benefit here of being in the same gaming group as Vodkashok for over two decades (Christ!). This means we are very familiar with each other’s style and what we want out of a game so we can sync very quickly, especially in a system that signals what to sync on explicitly.
He knows I don’t so much create a character designed just to be played but a story they are intended to tell – however that pans out. I signal that out and while there is a capsule background it exists to serve future events, not the past. This means he will sometimes take what I’ve signalled and max it even further – which happened in this case with ‘Rapidly Promoted’ suddenly becoming Face of the Federation and my character being a minor celebrity in her first scene! That literally wasn’t present at all (I’ve not asked if he thought it was – but it really wasn’t).
What this does mean is the signals continue and they build on each other and it’s been fantastic. We essentially have three things going on that map to aspects.
The Loss of the Dauntless: I’ve been presented with two critical command decisions that have allowed me to compel The Loss of the Dauntless. As mentioned before this is great as it signals what is behind her decisions. While it looks like the character is making bold, heroic and ‘turn out right’ choices she’s to some extent making them because of trauma.
Face of the Federation: You know, I was a bit ‘what the hell, but let’s run with it’ when the whole Face of the Federation thing was upped from rapidly promoted but it was the right thing to do. Why? Because Rapidly Promoted was probably too weak in its wording. Go big or go home, right? There is a whole dynamic going between how the character sees herself and obviously how a bunch of other people see her and this is absolutely fascinating. It’s also great because it’s not an event-driven plot but a complex network of character dynamics and I love that!
Betazoid Ancestry: In our universe, the Betazoids are extremists who don’t believe telepaths / empaths can get on with those whose minds are deaf to each other. As a result, the fact we may have some extremist branches manipulating galactic politics to their ends is great. It’s sort of a background thing at the moment. Unless something huge is going on, based on the direction of the final two sessions, I can’t see this being resolved before we close out this run.
That’s pretty fantastic, right? It could be said that all the core ‘story signal’ aspects are covered as Presence of Mind is my default can use it in most cases Aspect and I added Prestigious Ambassadors Daughter later. This is why I love Fate, you signal what the story is with the Aspects and then if people are going with the flow subtle signals and not-so-subtle signals are sent and responded two in both directions, Aspects are compelled, dice are rolled, etc, and personal narrative or otherwise unfolds.
This is what the whole role-playing experience is about for me.
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 said any stars and wishes specifically, just that we thought it was great. Keeping it simple.
Plans for the next session
We know we are going to be sent on a mission through a Dominion wormhole. No idea how that is going to happen but I’m assuming at this point the Federation has a prototype or something. Who knows. How isn’t important, but it does dictate the shape of the finale. It’s not going to be ‘Federation space based’.
This is all very exciting.
When it comes to TV shows I’m often a big fan of the episode before the finale, whether the finale goes on to be one or two isn’t important, there is often an episode before it that allows the protagonists to clear the decks. I guess what’s whirling around my head is that. These are often classic episodes in any particular season as outside of the main story lots of personal, more intimate arcs and issues get resolved as a transition into the big, final events.
I guess I am wrestling with is how to bring Loss of the Dauntless and Face of the Federation forward before the season is out.
The thoughts running through my head are how to close Loss of the Dauntless and replace it with something else though I have no idea what. I think a whole season and two crazy command decisions made because of that Aspect are enough to bring it to a resolution in some way so something else drives her primary trouble (it’s not like Face of the Federation can’t be used to represent her getting into trouble through boldness rather than trauma!). This is also the Aspect that makes most sense to lose / around doing something as crazy as taking the ship through a Dominion wormhole!
Face of the Federation is different. I think it is still core to the character and has more to play out, but I need to find a way to bring the conflict between how she sees herself and how others see her to some sort of conclusion or maybe an accommodation rather than it just being something that just hangs around. Is she right? Are her contemporaries right? Is it a combination of both? She literally saw the ultimate negative version of herself when we turned the Temporal Drive on! There is a lot wrapped up in it and it seems worth unpacking without losing it as a dynamic.
As for Betazoid Ancestry and the Betazoid conspiracy? Well, I’m just letting that run to see where it goes. I suspect it’s a season two thing assuming that arises unless it gets really pulled in cleverly in the final two.