Along with many hundreds of others no doubt, I recently picked up the Star Trek Adventures bundle from Humble Bundle and Modiphius. Based on their 2d20 system, this was an opportunity to pick up a huge volume of reading material as well as the rules for a new campaign I'm kicking off.
One of the great things I really enjoy about starting a new game or, hopefully, a campaign, is the time I get to spend designing the background set dressing. Locales and non-player characters really let me get into the 'design' space and fashion things to my liking. For established franchises like Trek this can seem more restrictive but far from it. Here I get the chance to design and name a new ship as well as important crew positions that need filled. I got the players to give me a couple of lines of character ideas so that I knew specifically what gaps would need a fillin'.
Then with classic Next Gen episodes running in the background thanks to Netflix, I was able to grab a cup of tea (Earl Grey, hot - obviously!) and set to work.
The Players' Characters
In an effort to ensure that the characters still had the spotlight, but also avoiding them from being directly in control of the ship, I asked for some input so I could build around them. If someone was super keen to play a Vulcan xeno-medical specialist, I wouldn't want to then have a Vulcan CMO to steal their thunder. In this way I'd have a captain and first officer NPC but allow the characters their own agency whilst still being able to guide in certain directions.
The first to get back to me stated they were always playing aliens so really wanted to play a standard human engineer type. Within ten minutes this had changed to Denobulan... Absolutely no problem.
Second was a human science officer. They thought specialising in Archaeology and Anthropology would be something they'd like to try out. Again, no issues.
Our third player knows they are leaning heavily into security but undecided on whether to play standard human or go with Caitian. They played a bit of STO and had a similar character as part of their bridge crew. I'm never one to shut down player choices but was wary that my background knowledge was a sketchy here. Still, a perfect excuse to do more reading and on the face of it, nothing which would cause any conflict.
The fourth player, being fickle as they are, is still undecided. This isn't a problem in Trek as in all the previous iterations, I've ran it much like the TV shows, and games are episodic. Characters can duck out, and join, more easily between games as they're on leave or stationed somewhere else for work that week to help out. It's also a neat trick to allow characters to gain skills without needing lengthy downtime. I didn't know that science officer was such a good shot? Sure, they spend a lot of time in the holo-deck running classic spaghetti western programs. You just didn't know it because we hadn't reached that episode yet...
The Ship
Ah, probably the best part; the ship!
For early(ish) period Next Gen games, I'm thinking around 2365, my default is always the Miranda class. Apart from looking cool, its big but has a small crew complement. It's heavily convertible with examples of troop carriers, escorts, and long range science vessels in canon. It ticks all the boxes for me running a Star Trek game. I can stat out all the important ranked crew and then introduce specialists that are on board as and when needed. This isn't Enterprise or ToS era so I don't need a hefty number of bland red shirts to expire to highlight the danger of what's occurring!
The concept of xeno-anthropology or archaeology got me thinking and I settled on the idea of naming the ship after a notable scientist in that field. The difficulty then becomes narrowing down the choices. I do like throwing in some Scottish flavour into my games when I can and James George Frazer, author of the Golden Bough ticks both of those boxes. The tone of their work doesn't really ring with Roddenberry's vision of the Trek future though so discarding the Scottish influence, I was able to find a much more suitable candidate in Franz Boas. With this, the USS Franz Boas was commissioned. (The full registry can come later...)
Despite a low crew complement she's a hefty vessel with a displacement in the region of 150,000 tonnes. I've decided to keep the iconic roll bar look as well as the four main decks. Converted to support, principally, anthropological and diplomatic missions, the USS Franz Boas will have additional support personnel to draw from and well equipped labs and research facilities. Capable of a top speed of ~ Warp 9.2, she'll also have an experienced team of engineers to keep everything running smoothly. Whilst internal security is maybe not the first on the list of critical features for such a vessel, diplomacy isn't always easy and in carrying out long range missions, a good, solid, tactical mind and overseer of such things means that player will still have lots of input.
For those of you interest in such things, I'll put up a copy of the full Star Trek Adventures stat block for the USS Franz Boas when I've worked it all out. I'll also add up here some of the NPCs I come up with and try and keep a wee log of how the game progresses. They can either serve as inspiration, or more likely warnings of what to avoid!
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