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View Full Version : StarTrek Adventures: the Captain as PC or NPC?



Zombimode
2018-02-26, 10:25 AM
I told my players that the Captain will be an NPC. It would avoid the classic "why is the Captain part of the Away Team?" question and removes the obvious authority figure from the Player Group.

But now that I've started preperations for my very first Star Trek Adventures mission in earnest I'm not sure if that was actually a wise decision. It seems I would have jump through quite some hoops during the Mission design and the NPC design to make this actually work.


Any suggestion for the personality of an NPC Captain?

Or opinions on this matter in General?

Pleh
2018-02-26, 11:04 AM
Well, I feel like I need a bit more information before I can be truly helpful. Let me put a disclaimer down right now to say that I'm more a fan of TNG than TOS, even though I like both (just so you know where I'm coming from).

First off, "why is the captain part of the away team" makes more sense in Star Trek (at least in the GOOD episodes) than it might in any other franchise because generally speaking the Captain wasn't on the Away Team unless their particular set of skills could prove invaluable or if the activity on the mission was expected to involve speaking on behalf the Federation or the Enterprise. Also, most Star Trek made the point of demonstrating that most of the entire crew COULD do anyone else's job in a pinch, though everyone also had a specialty that made them the best at what they were assigned to do. Finally, much of their adventures were more or less peaceful, meaning there was less reason to suspect a need for constant vigilance against hostile forces. So there's no reason a Captain COULDN'T go on every away mission.

On the other hand, you haven't totally removed the "obvious authority figure" part of the game just by making the Captain an NPC. Even on an Away team, each member will have a Rank, someone will have the highest rank, and they will have the responsibility of making decisions for the Away Team, even if the best choice is often to communicate back with the Captain to request further instructions. The most important thing to remember is that inter-personal conflict was never the best parts of Star Trek. In the best Trek episodes, it was about seeing how WELL people could manage to work together when they set aside their differences. The characters should not be having problems with authority if they are a Starfleet officer. They wouldn't be assigned a post on a Federation Starship until that had been culled out of them. If they were unwilling to give that authority over themselves up, they would have been kindly dismissed to pursue their own life calling, because they weren't cut out for starfleet. Your players should be able to get into character enough to accept authority at all times (even if they have enough awareness to not be easily fooled when the Captain is being mind controlled by an alien).

But perhaps we could help you with your "hoops" a bit better if you were to describe more about what exactly you're currently struggling with.

From what you've said so far, I think making the Captain an NPC is a wise choice. It's a pivotal role that could easily make the table feel like someone else at the table is the "main character" while their character plays second (or third) fiddle. The real struggle will probably be making the NPC Captain really express the value they have in the crew they command. The Party should definitely be the Senior Staff managing their own departments, making one Chief of Security, another the Science Officer, Chief of Engineering, and so on. Remember that the Captain very frequently held meetings in the Briefing Room not only to hand out Orders, but to ask for expert counsel and advice. If you make them roll Knowledge Checks to help them answer their own questions, it isn't really all that helpful because you're just giving them some percent chance to fail at their jobs or succeed at parroting information back to you. At the Briefings, you should give the Players some small amount of GM control of the game using a few guidelines within the limits of what their character is supposed to be an expert on. Does the Chief of Engineering think that the broken warp core can be jury rigged to get us back to a Station for repairs? If they say it can, let it be so even if you didn't think it could be. Your job at that point is to decide if or how their plans get complicated along the way (such as if the players do not yet know that interdimensional aliens are sabotaging the warp core). Does the Science Officer have a theory about the strange phenomenon that is debilitating the crew? Well, they should propose a way to test their theory and work with the Engineering Officer to devise a method of Deploying Countermeasures if the theory is proven.

When considering Away Missions, remember they have reasons when they choose to send Senior Staff Members. The Medical Officer is sent when the symptoms are unable to be identified by a computer scan. The Engineering Officer is sent when machines or structures need to be analyzed or constructed. The Diplomat is sent whenever political disputes and concerns arise.

It's also important to remember that often the Trek Team has to fight their battles on multiple fronts, where an Away Team might be trapped on the surface fighting for survival while the other half of the senior staff is working on the ship to fight off enemy ships, fix broken systems, and bypass planetary interference preventing them from beaming their fellow officers back to safety.