Boldly, We Go...
Boldly, We Go... is a proposed Star Trek themed RPG set in the time immediately following the end of Star Trek: Enterprise, in an as yet unnamed area of space. This game would use the Constitution NX-04 ship as its vessel. The crew interaction and motivation will be what sets this game apart from others. This game is a slightly altered version of Coming Of The Federation.
Contents
The Premise
After the end of Enterprise, the Federation was being formed. The Humans, Vulcans, Tellarites, Andorians and many other races banded together for mutual advancement throughout the galaxy. But in the beginning, as was evident in Enterprise, the peace was at the very least tense. Each race, while desiring a truce and cooperation above all, also had personal agendas that colored their desires in the early days of the Federation.
When the Federation announced the launch of the Constitution, and its mission of exploration into the unknown, each race vied for the most important appointments aboard the ship. The best negotiators in the galaxy got together in a room and developed a plan to staff the ship, as well as ensure the safety and success of the mission.
The Plan
The senior officers would be appointed by the Joint Council of the Federation. This would ensure a multiracial representation, which would convey the Federations message of peaceful cooperation between member worlds.
The core line officers would be chosen via an open competition. The Joint Council would prepare a list of tasks, tests and interviews to choose the best candidates. The results would be judged by the Joint Council, as well as a mixed representative board consisting of minor worlds and races which were not represented in the Joint Council.
The junior officers would be chosen by the senior officers, with input from the core line officers and a strong suggestion to abide by racial quotas. The junior officers will also be invited to participate in an open competition similar to the above, but they will also be allowed to be chosen from those who do not attend these tests, and also their service records and accolades will be more heavily weighed.
Characters
Feel free to put character ideas here, even if they are not the same as the ones discussed Friday. If you wish to start a discussion about characters, use the discussion tab of this page. Be sure and include a link to start a character page of your own. If you need a tutorial, click the help page to the left, click edit on any page and view the formatting, or email me for guidance. The Constitution NX-04 ship linked above will be the ship for the game, and the list of officers on there will be the crew, with the PCs taking the appropriate spots on the roster. You do not need to be a division head if you dont want to! You can keep the names I used if you wish, or change them.
Tharra th'Dani Andorian Security Chief
Garret Porter Human Chief Medical Officer
Ethan Mitchell Human Captain
Important NPCs
Admiral Ma Starfleet Exploration Command, liaison to the mission.
Colonel Manchester, commander of the 1st MACO regiment.
Diplomatic Attache Sevok
Sub Primarch of Tellar Prime Griblek le Denh
Senator Shras T'Ke-Lek
Goals
Each character (and possibly many NPCs) will have goals assigned to them by their government. These goals will be the primary goal of the race on the mission besides the success of the mission itself. In other words, no player should interpret these goals as an excuse to sabotage the mission. All of the races want the mission to succeed above all else, for the glory gained by completing such an auspicious endeavor will easily outweigh potential gains made by individual races in the collaboration. These racial goals are ostensibly secret, but will likely be easily gleaned during play. Characters should strive to never directly reveal their ulterior motive, for fear of losing face.
The purpose of these goals is to give an extra level of politics and intrigue for characters and players to enjoy, and hopefully to enrich the interactions. This can find an organic means of differentiating the characters while also keeping them on task. I would like for the characters to develop camaraderie, while also often feeling tension toward one another.
Department Aspects
During our first character generation session we decided to try an experiment where each player randomly chose a department and defined a positive and negative trait for each.
Command
Captain Ethan Mitchell
Commander Torek
Lieutenant, Junior Grade Sue Lassard
Ensign Gral lek Binh
Senior Chief Petty Officer Amarja Limaye
Negative: Political Appointees
The main difficulty faced by Captain Mitchell and his command crew is that they were all appointed by the committee more for political reasons than for merit. In fact there has been speculation (voiced on several occasions to the captain by the Chief of Security) that more than one of the appointees is an intelligence operative for their respective governments with their own agendas. Commander Torek, for example, has been "proven" to have ties to the Vulcan Isolation Movement. While both Amarja Limaye and Sue Lassard served on Starbase 14 which is well known for its connections to a variety of Starfleet Intelligence Ops. Finally, Ensign Gral lek Binh is a virtual blank slate. Which has raised red flags from the overly suspicious th’Dani. The Captain has acknowledged these concerns and has done his best to integrate his command. They are rough around the edges but he believes that he will be able to forge them into a well oiled machine once they learn to trust each other.
Positive: Highly Experienced Team
One benefit of the way the crew was selected by a committee is that, aside from ensign Gral lek Binh, they are all highly experienced. Normally, most ship’s complements would have far fewer veterans and that experience can be a great asset. Especially with a command team that been tested and proven in the field.
MACO
Positive- Tactical Excellence
Negative- Itchy Trigger Finger
Science
POSITIVE ASPECT
The Science division of the Constitution is a VERY advanced combination of tech from all contributing members of the fledgling Federation. The astrometrics array alone is one of the most advanced mobile observatories built in the Alpha Quadrant to date.
NEGATIVE ASPECT
Though the blending of technology is mostly a benefit it has inevitably led to various glitches, including random memory wipes, power surges and ghosting images during the more detailed scans. Also, due to limited space, there is only one very small lab, with various other science stations shoehorned into deflector control, engineering, infirmary and armory. This leads to staffing difficulties when the whole science team needs to meet, usually forcing Lt. th'Zarath them to "borrow" any vacant briefing spaces.
Medical
Medical Staff
Lieutenant, Dr. Garret Porter
Lieutenant, Junior Grade Dr. T'Luminareth
Senior Chief Petty Officer Thylek k'Torah
Chief Petty Officer Neil Stanwick
Aspect: Quiet
Thanks to a quirk of the ship's design, the harmonics of all the on-board equipment cancel each other out in Sick Bay. As a result, these rooms are remarkably peaceful and quiet. There's no persistent hum or throb from the warp engines nor noise from decks above or below. It's far easier for the sick and wounded to get quality rest in sick bay.
Trouble: Poor Layout
Unfortunately, the design of sick bay was done by an engineer with more familiarity in designing science areas than medical facilities. As such, when sick bay is busy, the medical staff occasionally get in each others way. Additionally, some of the more sensitive medical treatment equipment is situated such that providers have to stand in inconvenient places to operate them. It would work well as a research area, but it's not designed as an area for hectic medical emergencies.
System
I am strongly considering either one of the two Fate Star Trek writeups, or HERO for this game. I would like to also find a way to 'reward' goal achievement in game. There are obvious carrots, such as fate points, experience points etc, but I am not sure they are the appropriate currency. This will be up for debate among the players and GM.
Fate writeups: https://www.dropbox.com/s/qub0ovuk16inyw4/star_trek_fate_2013.12.12.pdf?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/8j4h8zb869zlyif/To%20Boldly%20Go%20v2.pdf?dl=0
Emotional Empath
For a Fate point you can read a person’s emotional state and get a general sense of who they are using the Empathy skill, without having to interact socially with the target at all. Most often, you’ll use this to assess the aspects on another character’s sheet, but sometimes you’ll also be able to create new aspects, especially on NPCs. If the target has some reason to be aware that you’re trying to read them (usually a target will not know what you are doing), they can defend with Will or Deceive.
Setting
The game will be a mufti-branched, pseudo-sandbox, where there will often be multiple mutually exclusive choices for the next mission. This is deliberate, to give the racial goals an opportunity to be an important story driver. Choices should have consequences, and risks should deliver rewards.
