Space Seed II: An Early Harvest

[Grendelwulf]

Falconer:
"I plan to start a thread (or you can) about the roleplaying potential of Khan and his supermen from Space Seed as a continuing threat à la The Wrath of Khan"

Okay, I'm in.

As Spock said to Kirk, "It would be interesting, captain, to return to that world in 100 years and learn what crop had sprung from the seed you planted today."

But, what if Khan didn't give up on his goal of conquering space. Sure, he could make do with ruling in Hell than serving in Heaven. But, he knew the Federation was still out there. And that other starships and humans and aliens were still out there.

Would he just settle for Ceti Alpha V? Would he simply wait in exile?

Perhaps with the supplies given to the Botany Bay survivors, Khan was able to send a distress signal of some type. Might some other Federation starship or even merchant ship respond?

Khan would learn from his misjudgements aboard the Enterprise. He would still have Lt McGivers to assist him with knowledge of the Federation.

Comments welcome...

Ciao!
Grendelwulf

[Falconer]

That’s a good way to handle it, and more or less along the lines I was thinking. Another thought is what if Space Seed played out completely differently, and the Botany Bay is discovered by a different starship other than Enterprise (either the PCs, or it just happens off-screen), who fail to stop Khan and his supermen from taking over the ship and TPKing its crew? Or the PCs get marooned on Ceti Alpha V. Or they defect to Khan. Either way, Khan then proceeds to carve out his empire and become a recurring villain for the (new) PCs (rather than a once-off “the PCs must stop him” episode).

[Grendelwulf]

Again, you prove simpler is better...

I suppose this is an Enterprise-free universe? Or rather, one where she isn't the only ship in the quadrant afterall!

Ciao!
Grendelwulf

[chgowiz]

I would go with the rigging of a distress signal and answered by a non-Star Fleet vessel. One can imagine Khan setting up a portion of the Triangle as his own demesne.

[Grendelwulf]

It could be interesting to take some of TOS/TAS episodes and convert them. Hey, there would be 94 adventures right there! However, it does present the problem of the fan players being able to plan ahead if they know the episode & its particular challenges. And what ST player hasn't seen all of the episodes several dozen times at least.

If you change too little, its not a challenge. If you change too much, why use the episode at all and not just make it a whole new adventure? And some players may like their established canon. Afterall, it gives them some thing to strive for. Who can break the Enterprise record for (whatever)? The big E's legendary crew should be NPC's to be met on rare occasions at best. Of course, that's just the purest in me.

As for Khan, and any Trek adversary that the Game Master may want to bring in, it may be best to let his reputation precede him for the player. Yes, they know who he was, what he did in the series, and now its their chance to go head-to-head with him! It makes the brass ring a little more shiny...

Ciao!
Grendelwulf

[finarvyn]

Jan 8, 2010 21:05:58 GMT -5 Grendelwulf said:

It could be interesting to take some of TOS/TAS episodes and convert them. Hey, there would be 94 adventures right there! However, it does present the problem of the fan players being able to plan ahead if they know the episode & its particular challenges.

This is a wonderful idea. My players are familar with the basics of Star Trek, but mostly the newer shows. I'll bet I could throw TOS situations at them and they wouldn't recognize them, or at least would be slow to pick up on it. Particularly if I change a few names and the like.

One of the toughest things to play out or plan out, in my opinion, would be the puzzle/solution aspect of Star Trek. For example, in the show much of the drama occurs while McCoy is trying to figure out what causes the ailment of the week. It would be nice to have some format in place whereby players could do more than just roll a die every 8 minutes to see if they can figure out what is happening. Another example is that of Scotty fixing something just in time to avoid disaster. Not so dramatic if done as repeated die rolls.

One somewhat cheezy option could be giving the players something like a cryptogram or suduku puzzle, with the notion that when they figure it out they produce the antidote or fix the ship. I'm not sure that plays well, even though it could force the players to puzzle something out, becaise it takes one or more players out of the role-playing part of the game so that they can solve something.

I'd be interested in hearing what style folks use when they run (or play in) a Star Trek campaign.

[chgowiz]

Jan 9, 2010 9:05:49 GMT -5 finarvyn said:

One of the toughest things to play out or plan out, in my opinion, would be the puzzle/solution aspect of Star Trek. For example, in the show much of the drama occurs while McCoy is trying to figure out what causes the ailment of the week. It would be nice to have some format in place whereby players could do more than just roll a die every 8 minutes to see if they can figure out what is happening. Another example is that of Scotty fixing something just in time to avoid disaster. Not so dramatic if done as repeated die rolls.

I don't think this is any different than things done in certain original fantasy games - you have to find different components, take the time to put them in different ways, perhaps go find additional components, etc. You don't have to have dice rolls for that, but lots of playing going on for the rest of it. The show had the drawback that you couldn't expand the scenario like that. However, with us roleplaying...

[finarvyn]

Certainly a Trek adventure could turn into a component quest kind of thing, but so many scifi adventures (not just Star Trek, but certainly heavily found there) seem to focus around the scientific discovery part of problem-solving and not just the acquisition of materials.

I suppose one could simply leave the scientific part to the NPCs left aboard ship, but it seems like we lose a certain element of excitement if we do so.

[chgowiz]

Jan 9, 2010 11:49:57 GMT -5 finarvyn said:

Certainly a Trek adventure could turn into a component quest kind of thing, but so many scifi adventures (not just Star Trek, but certainly heavily found there) seem to focus around the scientific discovery part of problem-solving and not just the acquisition of materials.

I suppose one could simply leave the scientific part to the NPCs left aboard ship, but it seems like we lose a certain element of excitement if we do so.

Perhaps - but a puzzle where you have several materials and you challenge the players to use their science instruments and roleplaying (and possibly rolls) to put those elements/materials together - along with the adventures to attain them - I dunno, I think it could work.

[Grendelwulf]

Sometimes I would allow my players to use their PC's to do real-time studies. I would drop a few key words here and there in passing from NPC's or describing some of their in-game computer analysis. The cunning player could then search and find data online that could be developed into solutions in-game.

For example, one game had my players taking a shuttlecraft down to a planet colony due to the slightly high amount of ion-particle discharges in the atmosphere. The planet was known for such storms, but here and there scraps of weather related references, magnetic poles and ion-particle intensity, etc put the science players onto studying weather-related info and they worked out how to fine-tune their analysis. They eventually found a cloaked mercenary ship hiding in the atmosphere (rather than on-planet or in orbit) that was the cause of several shenanigans with the colony.

Ciao!
Grendelwulf

[michaeltaylor]

Jan 9, 2010 9:05:49 GMT -5 finarvyn said:

Jan 8, 2010 21:05:58 GMT -5 Grendelwulf said:

I'd be interested in hearing what style folks use when they run (or play in) a Star Trek campaign.

This is pretty much the same problem as Cyberpunk games have with computer hacking. How do you make computer hacking interesting? What do other players do while the Hacker is hacking?

The most common solution is to make hacking a kind of "fight" that may or may  not allow the other players to "jack in" to help. 

In the case of Star Trek I think it would be really fun to create some kind of technology charts like the ones in Gamma World and have the player go through that to determine the quality of their efforts. 

For myself, I just use Fate Points. You want to pull a save out of thin air? Spend a Fate Point and it's done.

[michaeltaylor]

Jan 7, 2010 18:31:05 GMT -5 Falconer said:

That’s a good way to handle it, and more or less along the lines I was thinking. Another thought is what if Space Seed played out completely differently, and the Botany Bay is discovered by a different starship other than Enterprise (either the PCs, or it just happens off-screen), who fail to stop Khan and his supermen from taking over the ship and TPKing its crew? Or the PCs get marooned on Ceti Alpha V. Or they defect to Khan. Either way, Khan then proceeds to carve out his empire and become a recurring villain for the (new) PCs (rather than a once-off “the PCs must stop him” episode).

I would pay a Kickstarter to see this as a module!