Earlier today I ran a REALLY good session of my STAR TREK mini-campaign adapted to GURPS.

If you saw my update to that character & name thread - then you know the premise of today's game session.

The players are the command crew of a Starfleet Destroyer. (Saladin-class that beem "Arams-ized") Their mission was to determine if a newly discovered intelliogent race qualifies for membership in the Federation or not.

First off, it turns out the natives are only around a Tech Level 6 in their devlopment (About 1916 to 1920s level of Tech ...if that). The ship detects very primitive flickering Television images being transmitted between two points on the planet.  The Communications and science specialists figure out that this invention of 'television' only likely happened because the people on the planet studied Federation technology that might have crashed on the planet.

The Crew decided to beam down in two  groups and to disguise themselves in  hooded cloaks that approximate the native clothing that they saw on TV images. The 2nd group is mostly security personnel thjat beams down 30 minutes after the first bunch.

They get a response radio signal from a leader of the P'Chenqa named Chirneg, they meet up with him and then are taken to the main large village/"city" by way of a steam-powered open top wheeled vehicle that mostly looks like a wooden van with no roof.  (VERY noisy steam-powered vehicle it is)


The Starfleet characters have a slightly- out-of-date Universal Translator that gives them a slight edge on communicating with The P'Cheqa and it helps figure out who the 'Tenq ' are.

It turns out the Tenk or P'Chenqa Tenq are a servant class or slave group that is sometimes treated badly by the majority of the population. It also winds up being determined that much of advance in the local technology is because of stuff scavenged and studied from a crashed Federation starship from 20 years earlier. The natives even have an old Stafrleet Uniform pinned to a wall as a shrine or tribute to 'The One Who Fell From The Sky". (Imagine that blue type uniform that Kirk's Dad and Captain Robeau wore in the new movie - that vintage )

The game session was scheduled from 2pm to 6pm at a local game store. Around 5pm the playershad the majority of the info they needed and many suspicions confirmed. They also had ddecided that there HAD been an accidental violation of the Prime Directive because of the crash of the earlier space vessel.
They basically told the local leaders : "WE are NOT Gods. " and "If you wanmt to ever join the Federation , then NO Slaves or slavery , and you can't be warring with each other."
Then they beamed the heck out of there and got out of Dodge.

 For their last aqct - they had the ship's engineer start a local thunderstorm with a trick of the ship's phasers, then made a phaser beam appear to be a lightning bolt that - that took out and destroyed thenative-built tower that had the subspace transmitter. That way no other ships could stumble across  the pre-warp civilization.

 Here's the Horrible Realization thought I had later:

From what I've read about the game Dogs In The Vineyard, the player characters going around investigating towns and their populations in the old west and then pass judgemenbt on them in some fashion. Sometimes that judgement is harsh and dramatic.

The situation in my game session kind of parallels that idea - the players pass judgement on a location - whether or not the people deserve to be in the Heavens or travel in the Heavens above (be a part of an Interstellar Federation).


 Yikes!, what a thought !!


STAR TREK could be run with DITV as a constant 'judging planets and their peoples" campaign.

Am I right ?
 Or am I full of shit on this ?

- Ed C.

Quote from: Koltar;363709STAR TREK could be run with DITV as a constant 'judging planets and their peoples" campaign.

That was the second re-skin I did of Dogs. 2006 or so. The critical points of contact for a DOgs re-skin seem to be:

* episodic
* characters judging people/communities
* community with a deep flaw

Obviously TOS is a clean fit.

Quote from: Halfjack;363711That was the second re-skin I did of Dogs. 2006 or so. The critical points of contact for a DOgs re-skin seem to be:

* episodic
* characters judging people/communities
* community with a deep flaw

Obviously TOS is a clean fit.

Still strikes me as a very horrible thought.

The Premise to DITV always seemed annoying to me.

 Then again - the TREK version doesn't involve burning towns or passing a religious judgement.

 That planet on its people were put on a 'hold' or caution because they still have a form of slavery there. No members of the local population were killed by Starfleet personnel. Hell, the ship commander even gave the local leader a warning that a small army was heading his way from a northern competing city-state.

- Ed C.

Yes, it actually is a close fit. But what makes DitV and why you would probably never use it for Trek, Ed, is that if you followed DitV practices...

No Starfleet regulations could ever be set in stone by the GM; the only thing keeping a player from declaring that the Prime Directive required dropping Elvis records and the blueprint for an A-bomb on the planet would be the other players. If they were okay with it, no Federation court-martial could say otherwise.

Players would have enormous control over the consequences of losing an argument, a fistfight, or even getting shot. (The rules could still declare death but short of that, it'd be up to the player, pretty much.)

The GM also wouldn't enforce the plausibility or difficulty of most challenges; as long as the "most critical player" had no problem with a proposed course of action, its effectivess would be determined strictly by the dice used by the player. Granted this does work pretty well for technobabble solutions.

Edit: Also, yes, you as GM would be encouraged to develop scenarios based on messed-up sexual premises, the players would be encouraged to solve things by shooting people in the face (and then feeling bad about it), and the GM would also be encouraged to develop scenarios that presented increasingly tough moral conundrums for the players, based on your observation of what gets under their skin.

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;363715Starfleet regulations

What regulations?

Wow, this actually kind of makes me want to play Dogs in the Vineyard.

Quote from: ticopelp;363717Wow, this actually kind of makes me want to play Dogs in the Vineyard.

BLASPHEMER!!!!

Don't Be-smirch the Great Bird of the Galaxy that way !!
(Shut up Jeff)

Actually, thats a double in-joke. My Uncle, Aunt, and all my cousins are Church of Latter-Day Saints. (Also known as Mormons)

One of the many reasons I'm never likely to play DITV (Or as I call it PITS)


- Ed C.

Quote from: Koltar;363718Actually, thats a double in-joke. My Uncle, Aunt, and all my cousins are Church of Latter-Day Saints. (Also known as Mormons)

One of the many reasons I'm never likely to play DITV (Or as I call it PITS)

Good thing the game has a section for adapting the Faith to other religions/value-sets.  It acknowledges not everyone is going to dig Mormonism or Utah.

Quote from: Koltar;363718BLASPHEMER!!!!

:eek:

Hey, I only said kind of... besides, my group would never go for it.

Quote from: Koltar;363718BLASPHEMER!!!!

Don't Be-smirch the Great Bird of the Galaxy that way !!
(Shut up Jeff)

- Ed C.

You know, you become more like this guy every day...

I don't care if you masturbate over the corpse of Gene Roddenberry. I just don't want you to hurt anyone when you rob convenience stores while doing your Klingon cosplay.

Quote from: Peregrin;363716What regulations?

Yes, well, that's the problem with translating something from book or TV to RPG. In the TV series, Kirk is a cool dude because he finds ways to get around regulations and proves himself right in the end. The regulations have "weight" earned by the writer and sold to the audience, which makes Kirk's approach all the more courageous, clever, and/or asinine depending on your perspective. In an RPG, the DitV approach blends author & audience in the person of the player, and the decision to override the letter of the law carries no risk and no doubt. (Edit: because the law is completely insubstantial.)

You might as well say that since the TV series never sees death for a member of the bridge crew, the game should similarly have a known 0% chance of a PC ever dying. I'm not saying that's an utterly invalid approach; however it does significantly remove the player from thinking in terms that the character would. That may not matter to the group, in which case: fine. But if it does, then something needs to be done to maintain that sense of risk & danger.

Quote from: ticopelp;363721:eek:

Hey, I only said kind of... besides, my group would never go for it.

The group today loved the game session.
 At one point, I actually said something sort of like "Sorry, if there doesn't seem to be much combst  going on ."  I said it half-jokingly.
The players response ? : "No, this is great I'm enjoying this stuff. "

 One of my long-term players is part of this group, in the past she has said about my game sessions: "Ed often does a mystery that has to be solved and thats a big part of the fun. "

They had a good time investigating the situation and trying not to start any conflicts. They were very prepared and there were instances of a player saying "Okay, I get my hand near my phaser ...just in case." For most of the game the characters were wearing cloaks or robes that hid their uniforms, weapons, and tricorders.

Heck, the main GURPS stat they rolled against most often was probably Perception.  There was one instance of Stealth used, and a diplomacy skill rolll when an NPC was on the verge of being shocked /mind-blown by what one of the players was saying.


- Ed C.

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;363727Yes, well, that's the problem with translating something from book or TV to RPG...

It was just a joke, dude.  

Quote from: Koltar;363713The Premise to DITV always seemed annoying to me.

Then again - the TREK version doesn't involve burning towns or passing a religious judgement.

Maybe not in your game, but I recommend a close review of The Omega Glory.  Starfleet at its finest.  

!i!

Quote from: Ian Absentia;363741Maybe not in your game, but I recommend a close review of The Omega Glory.  Starfleet at its finest.  

!i!

I've seen it.
have the DVD.

 Not one of their better episodes.

 In the campaign I'm running the players & I are trying to do the whole thing as "What if it were done right with this look and trappings?" (as in the ABRAMS-verse style of ships and uniforms)

Prime example: The women officers wear the dark gray pants, NO mini-skirts on this ship for the main characters. (Unless she is off-duty and thats what she considers a comfortable garment)


- Ed C.