So, what's next? I'm assuming we find our bunking assignments and get ready for our 'day jobs' - not much to RP out there, I'd think.

   Just wondering where the next story point will begin.

I figured we would find that out when they posted their next post. My guesses would be meeting our direct superiors or with some event happening: Ship starts exploding, we move into the nebula, we find out that we accidentally brought on tribbles with the supplies.

Yes..."accidentally..."

Just keep them away from me. I'm only half-Klingon, but still... I don't know how you people can stand those things.

If properly cooked I'm sure they could make a fine meal.

Is Garrity there or just the ensigns, captain, and T'ra?

I am there just posted. I was waiting for your questions to be answered

The reason I was asking was he had a question for you as well. Actually a request, but it would have been silly to post when I wasn't sure you were there.

Makes sense. I read the first post and I could see if I wasn't as well, but I believe I am there.

For some reason, I thought we had done a time jump and were being briefed right before heading down to the planet. Since we have days of travel before we head down, Cheng will shut up now.

I'm not sure how long we have. You might be right about days, and I just missed it, but I was figuring that it wouldn't take that much longer for him to instruct his away team to assemble in the transporter room and I could do my tests while the others were getting equipment.

I am not certain if we time jumped or not. Still, most missions allow from prep time, so I left it open for the Captain to say we are going. Or, if he we do have time we can do that to.

It's been about a day. I use horizontal rules to designate time jumps and transitions but I will try to make it a bit more clear in the narrative going forward.

example:

---

So I don't want to discourage players asking questions but I am trying to keep up the feeling and pace of a Star Trek episode. If you watch the briefing scenes there are a couple rounds of Q&A just so that one character isn't delivering minutes of exposition by themselves but there is also a "Chekov's Gun" approach to details where if it's not important it doesn't get screen time.

That would be my objective as well with this is that I don't want you to think that I am misleading you or withholding information from you. I will never run a game where you will be backed into a corner and I'll say "well you didn't ask the right question."

I perfectly understand that you need information to make informed choices but I ask that you trust me that I will deliver that information to you. I am not playing this game to see if I can outsmart my players, I am playing this game to focus on what choices do you make: given all available information do you go up or go down, left or right etc.

Those hard choices are easily the best part of Star Trek. It's not the cheesy dialogue or poorly choreographed fight scenes or perfectly mediocre special effects. It's the aliens, the excitement, and the hard quandaries approached with emphasis on both logic and emotions, future consequences and past precedences.

Therefore all I ask is that if there is a clarifying question about something that your character could reasonably figure out on their own, feel free to shoot me a PM or address it OOC. I'll deliver pretty clear narration in game when I think you guys are overthinking things and I'm ready to push on but if there is other questions I will address them continuously in OOC/PMs.

ALSO if I ever do forget to mention anything, if that information becomes pertinent I will make sure to deliver it to you prior to making a decision.


Finally this goes for things like equipment. Anything that would be considered reasonable and standard duty: you have unless I specify otherwise. The engineer always has his tools, the security officer always has their phasers, the science & medical always have their tricorders etc.

In addition for away missions a standard and reasonable load out is assumed. You have your environmental suits as well as a belt with spare parts/climbing gear/emergency shelter equipment etc. Again this is not a game to try and trick you. This isn't a dungeon crawler. The individual obstacles are fairly linear but the focus is on the reperussions of those decisions. Who do you help? Who do you abandon? Who gets injured because of your choices?

---

That being said here are some clarifications:



Cheng would know that only Starfleet personnel use starfleet signals. If they were civilians they would be using standard Federation signals. The scans in the report show no sign of other Starfleet signals.



Timor would know looking at the report that there is nothing he could do. It would be like trying to fly a kite through a hurricane. There is no additional information that can be gleaned from orbit.
This message was last edited by the GM at 13:26, Wed 17 Apr 2019.

Also, one last warning. This game is going to feel kinda railroad-y at times. There will be specific obstacles that you will have to face from a specific starting point and no matter how much you would like to try there will be no getting around it. You will have to board the alien ship, you will have to beam down to the planet's surface, you will not be able to escape to warp etc.

HOWEVER how you solve the problem will some room for variation. While there is only one way to fix a broken warp nacelle there are a LOT of ways to disable alien attackers or ships or quarantine a population from the plague or break up a doomsday cult.

 Finally there will always be critical decisions that are completely free for you to choose. Will you break the Prime Directive? Will you destroy the alien menace or let it roam free once the danger has passed? Will you reprimand your insubordinate crew or try to become their friends?

Not to get to meta but everything else is really just setting up that central dilemma for the show. Episode after episode are built around "rail road obstacles" that lead up to a central decision that a character is able to make freely:

Do they give in to fear or rise to bravery?
Do they bend their laws to do good or sacrifice what is right for what is proper?
Do they respect the culture and quirks of an alien species or reject them?

That is why your values are so important and ones I wanted to spend a LOT of time on so if you do not have them memorized I encourage you to do so because you should be looking for every opportunity to engage or challenge them as ultimately you can think that those values are what each missions is really about.

Sometimes I will build a mission with a specific value/challenge in mind but other times it will be more open and it is up to you to decide if you want a value to come into play.

Above all else though, TALK TO ME. Send me a PM if you have an idea or a question or need something clarified. If you want to bring a value into play but aren't sure if it is appropriate or not or if you would like to see a situation where the value can be challenged shoot me a PM. It is so important that this becomes your natural reaction to any questions/comments/concerns you have which is why it is always Rule #1 in my games. Forget having fun, let's have an open channel of communication and fun will naturally emerge from two people playing on the same page.

Okay. So, I won't need the test cylinders, but the reason I wanted them in the transporter room was also to get transporter scans of everyone right before the mission that would be on both our shuttle and the ship. They are used with one of the medical devices and are just generally nice to have. I doubt we will need them, but it is much better to have them and not need them than need them and not have them. The same way he backed down because "snitches get stitches" and he has become gun shy about suggesting that they might be wrong, he is attending to potential problems that might crop up early in line with the way he attends to machinery. It is also an opportunity for Garrity to tell him he is being overly cautious, support him, or do whatever he would do when a subordinate makes a request.

Question: Aren't crews basic transporter scans on record already?

They are.  Getting a physical is probably standard procedure before going on an away mission.

New ones are more up to date by dint of the meaning of the word "new", but you have every right by nature of your position to tell him "No." You are in command. If you think that his requests are unreasonable you can react as such. At no point has he questioned the fact that you are in command. Heck you can ignore him if you so choose. He made his request. The choice of how to react is yours. This is a chance to give additional insight into how they interact with each other. You don't have to jump on it if you don't want to. Timor can just shut up until he is needed.

15:14, Today: Timor Imonim rolled 17 using 2d20 ((8,9)).

Okay, so looking at my results from deionizing the hull, I succeeded and can now help T'Saen with her thing. Can I make a case that with the EPS focus and the concept of rerouting power to restore her controls or sending it to shields to soften the impact? I'm just looking for ways to get her the 4 successes she needs. If I can get two on my roll, she would only need to get two on her's. She may also have focuses she can bring in. I'm not keen on handing over threat, but the choice would be her's at the end of the day. If she feels it is needed. That is up to her. I'm just trying to get the best idea of what is going on and what our options are. As we get more used to the system we will have to ask these questions less often.

Sure! As heavy handed as I feel that I've been these past few days I highly encourage you guys to be creative on bringing your focuses to bear. Bring on the Treknobabble!

On the fitness roll; what is that with to avoid being tossed by turbulence.

  Two questions:
 1) Fitness check (Fitness + ???)

 2) Did I manage to get any data on the Scientists to review before boarding on the shuttlecraft?

  Mucho obrigado.

One last question, do we need to make an assist roll for the shuttle.

Pure Fitness. It's a tricky one but only one 1 success is required.
This message was last edited by the GM at 21:38, Wed 17 Apr 2019.