r/startrekadventures

I love a bit of roleplay, and I have been playing D&D for about six years now. I love telling stories with friends, and I love Star Trek, so why not combine the two loves? Here is a bit of a story about the time that I joined a Star Trek roleplaying discord server. I hope folks will find it an interesting read.

Years before I discovered D&D, I joined a Star Trek roleplay community on Discord. It wasn't quite a West Marches. There were multiple servers, each representing a different starship. Each ship had its own captain, who also acted as the GM. You'd interview to join a crew, pick a position on the ship, and roleplay weekly missions.

I joined the USS Odyssey as the least original Starfleet officer imaginable: a Klingon security chief. His name was Vindakh.

Look, I watched a lot of TNG. You should be glad his name wasn’t Blorf or something.

Anyway, my ex who got me into Star Trek in the first place joined as the communications officer, and we were both excited to finally play through some proper Star Trek adventures.

Our first session was... odd. Apparently the crew was in the middle of some conversation with mysterious aliens. At the time I hadn't watched Deep Space Nine, but looking back I think they were supposed to be the wormhole aliens from the show. Before I could really figure out what was happening, the scene just... stopped. Suddenly we were docked at Deep Space Nine.

We transferred aboard the Odyssey, got introduced to the crew, received our assignments, and were briefed on our first mission. We were heading into the Gamma Quadrant to investigate an alien species another crew had created. The captain even sent us PDFs full of lore about them and told us to come up with ideas before next week's session.

Fantastic. I was so excited! I had something to sink my teeth into! As the security chief, I spent the next week actually preparing. I planned tactical contingencies, thought about how we'd respond if negotiations failed, considered sensor modifications, shield frequencies, weapon adjustments... I was ready.

The captain gave the order:

"Set course. Warp six."

End of session.

The following Thursday arrived. We were...

...still at Deep Space Nine?

Apparently another captain needed to brief us first, so we'd quietly retconned leaving the station. Fair enough. The briefing finished, we finally departed, and then one of the ships in our fleet suddenly broke formation and locked weapons on us.

Red alert!

Raise shields!

To be continued...

I was hooked. Next Thursday couldn’t come fast enough.

When it did, we were… travelling at Warp 6! What?

It was as though the previous week's cliffhanger had simply never happened. We spent the session cruising through space.

At this point I wasn't really sure how much narrative control the players were supposed to have, so I asked the captain privately if I could introduce little events.

"Sure," he said.

So I reported an unusual sensor reading and suggested we divert to investigate. The captain agreed. The session ended before we reached it.

The next week, we were back on our original course! My anomaly had gone the same way as the attacking starship. Then came the best cliffhanger of the campaign.

You remember the rogue captain that targeted our ship from a few sessions before? Well, he remembered that he was meant to be attacking us, I guess. He hailed us, mocked our captain, somehow beamed aboard despite our shields being raised, snapped his fingers… and revealed himself to be Q, the all-powerful trickster god that loves to torment starship crews. Seriously. He’s a nightmare.

This was brilliant. My security officer immediately drew his phaser. My ex alerted the rest of the fleet. We finally had a proper Star Trek situation on our hands.

Before the next session I even messaged the GM.

"I can't wait to deal with Q."

His response?

"Q?"

I reminded him about the previous session’s cliff hanger.

"Oh right! It'll be great."

The next session started. Q taunted us for about thirty seconds. Snapped his fingers. Disappeared. Nobody seemed particularly interested in finding him. The captain simply ordered us back on mission.

By this point I was so desperate for something to happen that I literally tried creating my own mystery. I roleplayed finding a spoon on the floor with an ensign's rank insignia engraved on the handle. The implication was supposed to be that Q had turned somebody into cutlery. Nobody bit.

Meanwhile, the first officer disappeared into the ready room with the captain. The same player also controlled the science officer, so while her science officer had been chatting with me moments earlier, she was now roleplaying a quiet shoulder massage for the captain instead.

It wasn't explicit. It was just... happening in the main roleplay channel while the rest of us sat there waiting for the adventure to continue. Meanwhile, my ex and I were on the phone with each other, dying of cringe.

Eventually I realised something. I'd spent a week preparing for a mission we'd never reached.
I'd investigated mysteries that ceased to exist between sessions. We'd been attacked by ships that forgot to attack. Q had appeared, forgotten he existed, and then left. If only Picard could have been so lucky.

Every session felt like the cold open of a brand-new Star Trek episode, except nobody remembered how the previous episode had ended.

That was the final straw for me. I transferred Vindakh off to a Klingon vessel and left the campaign. Ironically, that was the only plotline in the entire campaign that actually had continuity.

To this day I still think the format has potential. I have now been playing TTRPGs for a few years, and I have even GMed quite a bit. I keep wondering if I could run something better, but I am just a tad too scared to try it.

I just hope, wherever the USS Odyssey is now, they've finally made it to the Gamma Quadrant.

I'm trying to come up with anime inspired species who found a bunch of manga and developed a society based off its ideas similar to a species who created a mafia world

So, I was playing around with the ship builder one of these days, and I ended up noticing something really awesome. I tried making a custom Integrity Class starship from the fan movie Pacific 201, and I did everything that I could to make it accurate, give it nuclear weaponry, phaser cannons, focus more on science to showcase Starfleet’s growing interest in that area.

But then when I went to export it, it actually had the Integrity Class silhouette on the picture! An actual version of the Pacific was on my ship sheet! So, I wanted to ask, are there any more of those Easter eggs? Like, say, if you put the name of a class in a custom ship, the portrait will actually look like that class?

Hi guys, I have written a campaign set in the late 22nd century. One of the Major Antagonists is an organization called Earth Front (a splinter group of Terra Prime). I want to adjust the campaign for the TOS-Era (2260-2270). WHich organization/faction could be used instead of Earth Front? The Main goal of Earth Front is a new war with the romulan star empire and a militarization of starfleet.

I would to play Star Trek Adventures one day with my nephew once he's old enough. Have any of you found that there's a good age for kids to start playing tabletop role-playing games?

Attention Star Trek fans!

Are you a fan of the Voyager era of Star Trek? Do you enjoy collaborative creative writing? The USS Vanguard (NCC-76381), a Nova class science vessel, is a brand new play-by-post sim and we're looking for players to join our crew!

Most department head positions are still open, including Commanding Officer. We're looking for an experienced player for the CO role, but all skill levels are welcome for other positions. If you've never done play-by-post before but love Star Trek and enjoy writing, we'd love to have you!

Come check us out at http://www.aerth.org/Vanguard and if you're interested in joining, hit the Join Sim link and we'll get you started.

The adventure begins soon — come be part of it!

I have a fleet engagement coming up at some point and a campaign where mass battles / conflicts with multiple factions might occur regularly.

The prospect of running long space battles doesn't exactly fill me with excitement and so I've got the germ of an idea for a way to resolve the conflict with a more narrative bent. Thought I would post here for discussion / help beating it into shape.

Conflict is altered to become an Extended Task so we step away from a more simulationist resolution to an abstract resolution. You can use this for any battle, arbitration, fleet engagement etc.

So the base idea is that each faction has a Progress Track. Progress starts at 0 and at the end of the track is the victory condition ("Neutralise the enemy ships", "Capture the opposing general", "Negotiate terms for a treaty").

Determine the difficulty of the extended task (1 through 5). The progress track should be 5 x the difficulty rating. The Difficulty is basically the number of rolls you think it should take to win the conflict (so 1 per enemy ship, 1 per term of negotiation etc).

Resistance should be an abstract number rated from 1 to 5 depending on how tough the various elements. If it is a small skirmish with nausicaans, they might have a high resistance, conversely a raid on a borg cube might increase the resistance every time there is a roll.

Putting it together should look something like this; if are lots of little opponents, then it might be a long track but little resistance, conversely, if the opponents are a small number of very tough starships, then it might be a relatively short track but with a higher resistance.

There are Breaches at every 5 on the track. A Breach represents some concession, disadvantage or loss for the other side (be it a ship, a concession in a negotiation, etc).

Every roll is an opposed test. Whoever wins, advances their track by the Impact. Impact will vary depending on the nature of the conflict. Its an abstract number rated from 1 to 5, based on the effectiveness of the lead actor for the roll. This could be their department rating or some other thing.

Any applicable traits affect the difficulty of the dice roll (a nebula might increase the difficulty of tests by 1).

Any party which rolls no successes always suffers a Breach.

A Breach can damage ships, kill a side character, cause stress 9, force a concession, create a negative trait or some such.

A success of at least 1 adds progress on the track equal to the Impact. Additional successes improve the Impact by 1 per success.

A player always makes the roll. They must narrate how they intend to impact the conflict in some way (it can be by directly fighting someone or helping the negotiations by reading the opponent's emotions or by rerouting power from the engines to shields). This determines the roll to be made.

The GM could even give a narrative prompt to the player and ask them to narrate their reaction / their part of the conflict / engagement.

This is really abstract, so it could be that the Doctor is in sickbay treating the wounded and that's how they contribute to the battle.

They can also narrate how they get support, perhaps its just using the ship's system to support but it could be that they see an NPC drop down behind an enemy and so on. As long as it narratively supports the action, it should be good.

Whatever you use to support your roll will also be damaged on a Breach. So be careful what you employ in your narrative!

The conflict concludes when one faction reaches the end of their progress track.

Any feedback, assistance (even if it is just telling me how awful it is!) would be helpful.

I live in Canada, but I'll be heading over to London in a few weeks for some vacation. While I'm there, might I be able to pick up some books & materials right from the UK source? Are there reputable game stores folks here might recommend?

My group is letting me GM a session and I've been wanting to do a Klingon adventure. I was stressing about this a little since I wanted my first time to be, well... perfect. So I was searching for the quintessential Klingon mission. There are many excellent adventures, but not one that sratched my admittedly very subjective itch. "Under A Bluer Sun" in the "These Are The Voyages" compilation looked promising, but it's Starfleet specific. So I adapted it to Klingon.

It has a time dilation storyline that puts modern Klingons face-to-face with TOS-era Klingons in a high-stress battle of wills and a mystery to be solved. Please find the link to the PDF below. If anyone wants to give it a whirl, please do. I would love any suggestions on how I can massage it to make it truer to a Klingon sensibility. Qapla'!

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cFPDmumvY-f-1Xn1s3oNm23OmfI6zEVm/view?usp=sharing

Hi

I am running a post-Dominion War game. A joint Starfleet/Klingon taskforce are being sent to the Gamma Quadrant to negotiate a neutral zone.

We're into session three and it's time to get into the meet of the matter: the negotiations.

Now I am running a Starfleet which is reeling and rebuilding from the end of the war.

A lot of officers are young and fast tracked into command positions purely because of a shortage of manpower.

Starfleet have also resurrected a long neglected officer exchange program (the players are a Klingon, Ferengi, Kzinti and Cardassian all in the program).

My difficulty is that they are not going to be involved with the negotiations. So what do I do with them instead?

The negotiations will break down as they get caught in a Dominion rebellion but I need something for the crew to do while the captains are in the negotiations.

The negotiations will take place on an uninhabitable neutral world, so that has some potential.

Any to thoughts / suggestions welcome!

I am looking to run the Celestial Algorithm one-shot to kick off a 23rd century campaign for my players who are all new. When we did our session 0, a few of my players made their main characters not be a bridge crew character. What is the best way to incorporate non-bridge crew characters into a scene or will my players just need to make supporting characters for the missing bridge roles?

I also had one player make a character whose background was being a civilian scientist and not a Starfleet officer or enlisted in Starfleet. My knowledge of Starfleet rules on who can and can't be a chief officer is lacking, can their character serve in that capacity for the captain?

Thank you for any and all advice!

I was making a new character for a game and was thinking of a Telepathic Betazoid Security Officer in the TNG era and then I went looking through the Esoteric Talents and saw Telepathic Projection, which reads as:

>Your telepathic ability is more potent than most, and you are accustomed to projecting your thoughts into other minds. You can send your thoughts into the minds of other creatures—other than those immune to telepathy—even if those creatures are not telepathic themselves. You can ‘hear’ their responses by reading their minds. You are also capable of using this ability offensively, overwhelming a target’s mind with pain-inducing psychic noise. This requires a Presence + Security task with a Difficulty of 2 (increasing by 1 for each range category beyond Close); success inflicts a Stun or Deadly Injury with Severity 3 and the Piercing effect.

This got me thinking of all the times we've seen Telepathic types on the shows and how the telepathic abilities are portrayed. In most cases, the races have a reverence of some sort for the powers. I know Luxwanna Troi would engage in Telepathic conversations with Deanna, but that was family members. All the times I remember telepathic 'crimes', like the TNG episode where the telepath was forcing people to relive memories against their will or the VOY episode of underground black market of violent thoughts.

So, the attack portion of this would probably be a worst case scenario for all but the antagonists. Reading the 'inflicts a Stun or Deadly Injury', would you say that is up to the intent of the Telepath to decide if they are just trying to knock out or kill the person?

As for the initial part of it, how 'accepted' would a telepath reading the minds of people, even just the 'surface thoughts' to have a conversation with them.

PLEASE WHERE ARE THE GAMES!!! I've been looking for 3 months just to find an open game and it feels impossible.

I'm new to this system so I never played, but I do have experience with other ttrpgs such as dnd, coc, and mm. I've read the core role book so that's my basis so a game that welcomes beginners will be perfect. My time zone is cst and I can play weekends in the late afternoons. Pls comment or dm me if y'all would be interested in me joining your game. Thank you.

For those of you playing (or have played) Star Trek Adventures solo, are you using the core rules along with something akin to Mythic GME, or are you using the Star Trek Captain's Log rules? Why did you make that choice, and would you make the same choice again?

I'm torn between which route I want to go. While the streamlined rules for Captain's Log may be nice, I worry about missing something (though I have no idea what it would be!).

Thanks!

I'm running a campaign right now where the ship was tossed into an unknown area of space with no Federation, few if any raw resources, and no help in sight. I want to give the crew an opportunity to fix the ship as they go.

I'm thinking of increasing the ship's complication range to the max and letting the crew spend "supplies" to reduce them. This will also include morale, increasing everyone's complication range by 1 across the board while replicators are offline.

The supplies would be given at the end of each session depending on choices the players make (ie They help the aliens and get X supplies or steal from the aliens and get Y supplies). They can then use them to permanently reduce the complication range for a specific system.

Is this too complicated or would a different rule set work better? My goal is to make fixing things feel hard won and give their ethical decisions real weight

Saw it at the game shop the other night and picked up the starter set really excited to find people to play with. Was just wondering how complicated it is, my only other Table top experience is Stormlight and DnD