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Post by theredpriest on Dec 30, 2009 0:40:49 GMT -5
So as not to clutter the primary threads.
Falconer, how do you feel having a Prominent NPC thread? It would include famous personages (good, bad & neutral) that any Fleet crew could encounter.
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Post by Falconer on Dec 30, 2009 12:14:33 GMT -5
Yeah, go for it. Maybe don’t include the term “NPC” since some people might want to use some of them as PCs!
Or did you mean sub-forum rather than thread?
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Post by theredpriest on Dec 30, 2009 14:10:10 GMT -5
Yes, I meant thread, just like your races and classes threads. Also, I posted it as NPCs before I read that you intended for players to be able to use the well-known characters.
The only problem I see with playing a ST game where the characters are actually in Star Fleet, is the chain of command. I mean, whoever plays the captain, or highest ranking officer, gets to make all of the decisions, but yeah, they get all of the blame too when they get the entire away team wasted. How do you get around the higher ranked PCs being the real stars of the game?
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Post by Falconer on Dec 30, 2009 15:34:15 GMT -5
I was just thinking about this. Do you not play with a Caller in you OD&D or AD&D games? I always have, and I imagine it would work the same with a Captain in a Star Trek game. The rest of the chain of command seems pretty inconsequential: in the show, Kirk is almost always around, and when he is, you rarely see Spock or Scotty issuing commands. You just see them doing their jobs. Of course, if Kirk isn't there then Spock or Scotty becomes the “Caller”.
Of course Kirk is the main character of the show, but that doesn’t stop Spock or McCoy or Scotty or the leading-lady-of-the-week from being an important character.
Personally, I find it funny that people protest the inequality of the Caller or Captain in relation to the other players. After all, the Referee/DM is already very unequal in comparison to them! In my AD&D games, I have always relied upon the Caller to keep the game moving, and I as DM could sit back and make impartial rulings. I have found in games that didn’t have a Caller that the DM had to do “double duty” and also function as Caller in order to keep the game moving.
Well, that’s one solution. It really depends on your group’s size and dynamics. I am used to having 5-9 players, some of whom are real attention-hogs, some who really would rather just go with the flow, and some who are somewhere in the middle. The Caller tends to be chosen from among the middlers, since the attention-hogs will gather plenty of attention anyway, and the quiet ones don’t want the job anyway.
Does that makes sense?
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Post by theredpriest on Dec 31, 2009 0:26:01 GMT -5
No, I don't think a Caller is the same as a Captain. I don't use callers now, but have in the past, and occasionally a player would disagree with a course of action proposed by the Caller and perform some other action instead. That's not a big deal amongst a band of fantasy freebooters, but it's a court martial offense in Star Fleet. Of course, I've never read a ST rpg, so I don't know how the chain of command is handled to keep most of the players from being mere tools of the ranking officer. I mean, maybe you can rely on the common decency of the ranking PC's player, but how reliable is that? I don't want to pooh pooh playing Star Fleet officers and crew, but I do not have a solution for eliminating the starring role issue.
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Post by hedgehobbit on Jan 5, 2010 10:49:30 GMT -5
I've read most of the Star Trek rpgs and I don't think they ever really address the rank issues. A Star Trek crew pretty much acts like a D&D adventuring party.
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Grendelwulf
Lt. Commander
Second star on the...no... To Infinity and..no.. Ah-ha! Never give up, Never surrender! THAT'S it!
Posts: 147
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Post by Grendelwulf on Jan 7, 2010 11:26:21 GMT -5
In lieu of a decent roleplayer as Captain, who can appreciate his officers' input and initiative, I often had my players start as common crew. In my ST games, the Captain & senior officers did NOT go down to the planet ALL of the time. Sometimes it made a good plot to have the Captain or 1st Officer captured, etc.
Eventually, players received their promotions and moved up the ladder. Many had several characters throughout the ship so everyone had a chance to play a character in any given scenario.
Ciao! Grendelwulf
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Post by slortar on Jan 7, 2010 15:23:15 GMT -5
I liked LUG's advice on playing captains--basically whenever a big decision came up, the players would pause the game and talk over the best course of action. Then, when everybody came to a consensus, they'd unpause and the captain's player would roleplay giving a decisive order.
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