Space Trek - An InSpectres variant.

INTENT

Players play the crew of a starship in the tradition of Star Trek, Blake's Seven, and Andromeda. Each four hour game session attempts to recreate the feel of a one hour television episode.

SERIES PREPARATION

Players gather around a table and prepare for a Series. This involves setting the Mission Profile, creating a Credo and Characters.

- Mission Profile

Mission Profile defines the space ship, resources, and training of support staff. There are five categories:

Exploration/Survey
Trade/Transport
Military/Espionage
First Contact/Diplomacy
Colonization/Enforcement

For each pair, players choose one of the two options. Then they distribute 5 Mission Points among the categories. This establishes the Mission Profile. During play, any action that falls with in a category gets a bonus equal to the Mission Points assigned.

- The Ship

Resource dice could be assigned to

Command
Security
Science
Engineering
Medical

Dice can be used in play to improve dice rolls.

- Credo

Players come up with the introductory statement which will preceed each Episode.

- Character Creation

I didn't work this out, but was going to adapt the InSpectres system.


PLAY

An adapted InSpectres dice rolling system would provide the core mechanic. Actions would earn Mission Dice which are applied to the five ship departments after the game. IT would be the GM's job to set the amount of Mission Dice the characters have to earn to complete the mission.

Like Inspectres story formula, Space Trek also has a fomula (based on ST:OS):

TEASER
The GM frames a scene with some immediate and urgent event demanding player attention.

THEME
Sing the theme music and recite the credo. :)

SHIP'S LOG (Replaces Confessionals)
One player is selected to narrate the first ship's log. The choice of player should be completely independant of the role of their character. This narrator must then set up a situation, including time, location, situation, and any orders from Star Fleet. As with Confessionals, he can also attribute temporary traits to other characters.

The first ship's log always occures after the THEME. In each phase hereafter, the ship's log may be invoked once by any player. These subsequent logs can be used to cut forward in time, montage preparations, announce discoveries, and otherwise move the story ahead. As before, the narrator can attribute temporary traits to other characters.

ENCOUNTER
In this phase, players develop details of the problem or opposition, working towards some event that makes it impossible for them to turn back. This is the CLINCHER.

STRUGGLE
Players develop the conflict until the TURNING POINT where someone announces a revelation that can be used to face down the problem or opposition.

CLIMAX
Armed with the new revelation, players solve the problem or defeat the menace.

VALIDATION
After the battle is resolved, in a quiet moment, each player gets a chance to contribute to witty dialog about the conflict.

FADE OUT. Award Mission Dice.


EDITED: Ship's Log rules, edited for clarity.

Would confessionals be supplemental and personal log entries?

Fang Langford

Hi Fang,

I intended Ship's Log entries to replace Confessionals.

Alan,

What can I say? The "sing the theme song at the beginning of the game" thing is just incredible. I LOVE that. :)

Want to write this sucker up as a mini-supplement?

- J

Jared A. Sorensen wrote:
What can I say? The "sing the theme song at the beginning of the game" thing is just incredible. I LOVE that. :)

Want to write this sucker up as a mini-supplement?

- J

Hehe.

First of all, excellent work. =)

I have a few pages of scribbled notes on a mini-supp I was to call 'InterStellar', along the same lines. I'm not sure I'll have the creative energy to really _write_ it, mind you. So I'll share a few thoughts. Use and abuse anything - god knows if we *both* wrote up a SF mini-supp for InSpectres, Jared would hardly complain. ;)

Here's InterStellar. The tone of the game was comedic, based on Futurama and Red Dwarf. I threw in some InSpectrery corporate chuckles, too.

Brief setting: some time in the next century, humanity makes contact with a Vulcan-like alien race. The Vulcanoids take human delegates to a central galactic parliament. While visiting parliament-world, humans bump into a bunch of Gray diplomats, who look embarrassed and run off. Sure enough, the technologically-advanced Grays have been illegally buzzing humanity for the last few thousand years.

So humanity blackmails the Grays a little, and persuades 'em to hand over useful technology, such as FTL drives, laser guns, and such. This gives humanity an edge over the rest of the galaxy.

Using this technology a human corporation emerges, called 'InterStellar'. Various aliens (or human organisations) hire IS to provide security, diplomatic, escort, even freighter service. Players play employees of IS.

I just liked the idea of an alien government hiring a corporation to provide security for their system. And then to have their nemesis-species hire the same company to attack them. Lots of opportunities there.

I'd also divided up the ship into various departments: Engineering, Science, Tactical and Logistics, if memory serves. As the feel of my game was more comedic, Logistics would run a little like the human resources department in Dilbert, ie, badly. The Logistics officer was always second in command, and would whine about budgets. I think the Logisitics guy could even *subtract* dice from other people, by vetoing certain expenditures. Nasty, but fun.

I'd ruled out a Medical department, as ship's doctors don't get to do all that much. And of course, 'Vacations' become 'Shore Leave'. It all mapped very well.

As well as Ships Logs, I thought that players could 'buy' underlings, but I can't remember offhand how the system worked. I think it was just equivalent to assigning descriptors - you could describe an underling who would aid with an upcoming situation. So, for example, the tactical officer on an away mission could gain an extra dice in Science by noting that one of their red-shirts had studied Xenobotany at the academy. Or gain a dice on a physical roll by asking their brontosauroid yeoman for help. This system was very much based on the fabulous Zap Brannigan/Kif relationship in Futurama and my own experience in a Trek game.

Certainly, I wanted to see the players develop their departments in-game, become proud of certain underlings, and so on.

Best of luck with the supplement. =)

Joe.