I am the GM of a partly self-designed RPG for a group of friends set in the Star Trek: The Next Generation universe. There was once a commercial RPG made of that, but it failed and production ceased before Season 1 was complete. Therefore I created a new game powered by the FATE role playing system (if you've never heard of this, look it up, it's pretty great!)[1].
Over the last few years I have created modules with the help of members of this forum. In practice this has mostly been Morkonan (and if you're reading this, Mork ol' buddy, your assistance would greatly be appreciated!
). However, ANYONE is welcome to contribute! I will credit ideas that I wind up using (even in a modified form).In a little while I will be running episode 3 of this game. It is a few months off yet, but I'd really like to have this module thoroughly designed well in advance (for once in my blinkin' life!
). The basics:
Episode 3: The games are afoot.
The crew of the good ship Tamworth are ordered to the Klingon Homeworld to participate in a sort of Space Olympics. The ultimate event - the one in which the Tamworth is set to participate - is a Starship Sprint, specifically set up for ships of its era (the Tamworth is nearly a century old, an early-model Oberth-class Science Ship).
Obviously the games won't run smoothly. There will be thrills and spills a plenty.
Nearly a year ago, Morkonan and I were throwing around ideas, and we had a LOT - see this thread for details.
But now it is time to turn this into actual playable games.
Resources: I have the following miniatures and equipment.
* Individual miniatures of the crew members.
* Miniatures of a mind-boggling array of starships (laser-cut pieces, and when I created them I wanted to ensure I had a large array of options, so I have created Klingon, Ferengi, Cardassian, Borg and Romulan ships of several types).
* A map board with pens, which is dual sided (squares on one side for away team action, hexes on the other for starships).
* FATE dice.
I intend to get:
* Klingon miniatures.
* Anything else that is needed for the game.
Our RPG group allows each GM six sessions to play their game. Some of the guys cheerfully run aeons-long campaigns, feeling no need to bring each part to a close at the end; personally I prefer to run my six sessions as one six-part "episode" in the style of TNG, with the sessions finishing with "Commercial break."
Additional requirements: My last two episodes have been fairly dramatic (the most recent one involved the horrendous death of an important player character[2]), so I would really like this one to be mostly light-hearted and fun.
As well as this, I have the idea of running a "game within a game" at the end of each session, perhaps involving heats, semi-finals and finals of the race that the Tamworth is participating in, or possibly other Space-lympic[3] events. These games should be genuine - no cheating, no mucking around, the Player Characters CAN lose, and if they do so it affects the rest of the campaign.
Okay, so over to you. My objective is to create a synopsis for 6 sessions - an introduction (possibly including a teaser), 4 main acts and a conclusion. What should go in them?
[1] Since I created this, a new STTNG RPG has been released. It looks pretty good, but I'm sticking with my own system (though I might buy sourcebooks and plunder them for ideas).
[2] The player-character in question was the ship's Chief Medical Officer, who is actually played by myself, and occasionally used as a GM Avatar when the situation demands it. This was for two reasons: 1) To heighten drama; the PCs knew that their characters weren't invulnerable; and 2) because when I was painting the PC figures, I couldn't find another male model to paint as the CMO, so I decided to kill him off and replace him with a female character so that I didn't have to buy another figure!
[3] For a start, can anyone think of a really good name for an Olympics-like event set in the Star Trek universe and involving the major races like the Klingons and Romulans?
