S8 – To Boldly Go pt2

Insert another apology for this being over a 5-minute read again! It’s the finale, so I don’t feel guilty.

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
• Key points
• The session
• The post-game
• Stars and Wishes
• Plans for the next session

The pre-game

Let’s be honest, this was like old-school Star Trek: The Next Generation on BBC2 when you’d have an episode and then the next episode was delayed by the snooker for four weeks or something. It had been a while since we last played. I fully believe one of the testaments to the quality level people see in the game is despite the big gap everyone just hit the ground running.

If there is ever a metric for how engaged players are this is it.

Key points

Things start with a flashback of Captain Phillipa Jennings, mentor to McCallister, giving Starfleet Command a briefing. This is used as a nifty way to get the group back up to speed after the break with us being able to ask questions as if we’re its intended audience. The mission is to deliver a payload of Carbonium bombs to a Dominion hub, a deterrent against them attacking again.

• The USS Guardian enters the wormhole – it’s a rough ride, but they make it through
• Long-range scans show three prospective targets: –
  • A research station orbiting an Earth-like planet,
  • An industrial station guarded by a Dominion frigate
  • A vast invasion fleet gathered by a wormhole portal.
• The Guardian goes to the research station: –
  • Various species are on the station that could be rescued
  • They witness cyborg drones moving around the station
  • At a medical centre, they rescue those set to be harvested
  • The drones are Dominion that are unable to be genetically improved
  • These drones are Borg and exist throughout the Dominion
  • They take one of the Borg back to the Guardian
• The Borg reveals The Dominion seek genetic perfection like the High Dominion, their mysterious leaders
• The crew turns off the control circuitry and heals The Borg of his pain
• The Borg vows to help the Guardian release the rest of The Borg and names himself Jeffrey
• Utilising the deflector dish the Borg circuits are shutdown causing the The Borg to rise against their masters in the Research Station
• The Guardian goes to the industrial complex: –
  • It’s a station that ‘Borgs’ those that cannot be genetically improved
  • The station is blasted with the deflector freeing The Borg
  • A space battle with the Frigate is cut short when The Borg help after Jeffry asks them to rise up
• McCallister asks Jeffry to lead The Borg; he opts to stay on The Guardian
• The Guardian warps to the fleet with the intent off using their wormhole
• The temporal drive is showing them alternate timelines: –
  • McCallister chooses not to rescue the USS Paladin and the Klingon Empire is overrun
  • Laker never performs his feat of cybernetic strength and the Bajorans become extinct
  • Matrix never rammed the warp gate and the battle is lost
  • Ran never stole the wormhole generator intelligence and this mission never happened
• The Guardian drops the carboniun bombs disrupting The Dominion fleet
• The subspace mines collapse the wormhole on the pursuing Dominion
• The Guardian arrives near Jupiter, sends a mission accomplished
• We then had epilogue scenes: –
  • McCallister becomes an envoy to Betazed to bring them back to the Federation
  • Matrix recruits Ran to get vengeance on those who exposed his partner to Cabonium
  • Ran moves to another ship and another intelligence mission
  • Jeffrey looks out into space – so much to see, so much to learn, so much to assimilate…

Alas potentially not to be continued.

The session

It was a great session. It felt like one of those season finales from the Star Trek: The Next Generation days. The only thing that didn’t cap it off was a cliffhanger but it could have easily gone that way depending on the dice rolls. We could have ended up stuck decades from the Federation or even shunted to the Mirror Universe due to the crazy results of the temporal drive.

The best bit was the integration of this universe’s version of The Borg, albeit not currently networked, as the cyborg underclass of The Dominion. It made releasing them feel like the right thing to do but also, at least in my head as a player, I was constantly thinking we’d just unleashed a future enemy of the Federation.

All signs are this is not the case but it was fascinating going on that journey.

It was also fascinating that The Dominion remained an enemy we could not negotiate with, which is what the fear was at the start. A species of religious zealots who are hellbent on genetic improvement at all costs led by the mysterious High Dominion who we did never get to meet. An enemy in the classic vein of The Borg and to a lesser extent The Founders. I’d even say The Dominion in this campaign were worse than both those as even the traditional Borg had moments in which they could be tactically negotiated with due to the Borg Queen.

The post-game

It’s the final episode so the logical thing to do for the post-game is to discuss the campaign as a whole from a few angles.

If this was a TV series

If this was a TV series my episode ranking would be: –

1. To Boldly Go Pt1 & Pt2 (S7 & S8)
2. Enter The Dominion Pt1 & Pt2 (S1 & S2)
3. Escape From Rura Penthe (S6)
4. Point of No Return (S5)
5. Matters of Faith (S4)
6. Khitomer (S3)

It’s a hard choice between the opening and closing two-part sessions I suspect I could easily find myself switching them around depending on what mood I am in. I think the order of 3-6 would stay pretty consistent.

If this was a TV show it would be Khitomer people would be calling the slow one or the ‘dud’ compared to the others – probably people would have created YouTube videos about it. Not that we didn’t enjoy it but relative to the rest and, well, the internet.

What made the game for me was getting to make bold choices, sometimes I think unexpected, especially in the very early phases. Taking the decision to turn around and go back to save Bajor at the end of Enter the Dominion Pt1 was probably a surprise it also helped set the tone for me personally in terms of the character and the campaign. While rushing to save the Paladin in Point of No Return was probably more established due to how I was using the Loss of the Dauntless aspect.

Despite being at position four one of the best moments in the whole season was the Klingon courtroom scene in Escape from Rura Penthe as it was probably the single moment where my character got to be everything she was intended to be when Dr Laker, Lt Th’Shar and herself got to persuade the Klingons to help fight the incoming Domion. The individual arguments were great from all three characters, the visuals were awesome and getting to use Face of the Federation, Betazoid Ancestry and Prestigious Ambassadors Daughter in one go just summed everything she was meant to be. It also just summed up her psychology of having the boldness, ego, ability or some combination of all three to see the dire situation as an opportunity.

It was slightly redemptive

It’s a bit of a theme in the gaming group that was that I end up playing characters in a leadership position or with some level of overall responsibility. Sometimes it doesn’t work out that way but there is definitely a trend of it working out either by my choice or it happening anyway when it wasn’t intentional (circumstance or the GM’s ‘fault’).

Playing a starship captain in a Star Trek game has been something I wanted to make work since the 80’s when I was persuaded to do it in a FASA Star Trek game and then everyone hung me out to fucking dry with every pedantic setting point to make me and the character look like an idiot. This is one of the negative gaming moments that informed my approach to role-playing games alongside the let’s have young IT professionals be prison escape geniuses in Traveller.

I wanted to have a go at it and feel like I’d enjoyed it. Well, I enjoyed it and hopefully I added to the fabric of the game overall rather than it just being some selfish need for gaming redemption. Especially since the group was trending to an NPC Captain until I suggested I’d be willing to do it.

It was filled with meaning

At least it was for me and I think it was for others. This is what I want out of a role-playing game: moments large and small that are woven with meaning. It’s all too easy for role-playing games these days to be about making choices and using the system to work your way through a set of structures be they skill challenges, combats, playing with dials, loyalty or reputation scores, etc. There is nothing wrong with any of these things but it is true that it’s all too easy for these things to become all there is to the experience when really the true experience is about something else – the meaningful outcome they generate.

I can’t comment for any of the other players but, for me, the way things kept getting thrown at my character in ways that forced her to consider how other people saw her rather than how she saw herself was brilliant. It was a perfect example of how player and GM interact in a little microcosm that potentially neither fully understands but the mutual journey is great (hopefully).

This game had meaning and choices with characters hitting upon issues of concern and changing as a result. This made it great.

The players and characters were great

It was a new group, a new game and a new system for some so these things take a moment to shake out but the group was great and everyone really went for it. This also made the campaign great as I was perfectly happy when things were focused on others to just listen and enjoy what was going on.

The strength of the characters is in the fact that despite a core of them having conclusions to the season we still want to see where their journey takes them next.

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 didn’t do official Stars and Wishes which I must admit I don’t miss. We did say how much we liked the game and described multiple reasons and how we would like a season two.

I think the one thing we all have as a wish, which is weird as it’s really upon the collective onus of the players to make it happen, is to try and ensure all the character interactions aren’t with NPCs or situations but between each other. We did hit upon a bit of that, but I think we all agree we could have done it more. I take a bit of personal responsibility for it not happening, which is stupid as it’s not anything to do with me alone, but the Captain position is potentially a facilitator of that and I probably didn’t do as much as I could – I started doing it early on but then it slid down the agenda a bit.

Whether we will see a season two or not is probably highly variable for reasons that aren’t mine to get into here – let’s just say season two has some production issues.

Plans for the next session

Alas, there are no plans for the next session as it’s the end of the season and season two is in production hell. Even if it eventually goes ahead in some fashion it is very likely to be after at least one game that the group might slide into.

If I was to be entirely honest, knowing some of the variables and suspecting some of the others that may be completely wrong, I suspect what was being called season one may well be it. It’ll be like one of those shows that has a season that burns so brightly and then for random reasons is never seen again.

Much to the annoyance of the GM, possibly a bit like Firefly. I end this by apologising for the inside joke.

Live long and prosper.