Right then, here is the WIP proposal, feel free to add or suggest anything.
The vote is to decide on which class of ship to use for this. Below are the three options
Spoiler for Intrepid Class:
Spoiler for Sovereign Class:
Spoiler for Prometheus Class:
I personally lean towards the Intrepid, and 2nd choice the Prometheus.. Both are smaller and would be more suitable to a long exploration of space.
What I suggest is that me or Rahl take CO and XO, and the others can either be done on first come first served, or if theres a real want for a specific one from more than one person, we can have a draw for it.
With such a small crew, I would actually reccomend the Prometheus Class..
Alright, we definitley need to make sure we get the alliances between factions right. Secondly, will the actions of our character/crew be able to affect the established status quo (was there a status quo during this timeline? I can't remember). Since we are a Federation ship we should decide which races we will be able to play as; I suggest to make this as flexible as possible. Another important aspect is battles. How will battles between people work? And how about confrontations between ships or even fleets? For this we could have some sort of calculator set up in Excel, I remember some kind of Alliance game on TWC had something similar. These are all off top of my head, but I will come up with more.
On a separate note, characters will be able to change the timeline, and should the possibility arise, we may even break the Prime Directive. Woe betide us if we do. In terms of battles, I was hoping we would have some kind of calculator or use a random number generator and set some odds.
In terms of timeline, it is post Dominion War so playables would be: Federation, Klingon, Romulan and the Pro-Federation Cardassians. Alliances would also be along that same line.
Ok, there's a lot for me to say about this so this will be a long post.
First off, a Star Trek RPG has a lot of potential for being good but as with all RPGs, success comes from a dedicated player base and game mechanics. If we aren't committed to this then it will most likely run its course fairly quickly. My idea for the quintessential Star Trek RPG player is one that is good at RPing in general, knows the spirit of Star Trek, and has enough Star Trek knowledge in general. However, even if we have dedicated players, if we do not get the game mechanics right then the RPG can end simply because it doesn't work right. In our first chat, Major and I, I brought up many points that I believe are necessary to be addressed before this can begin. I'll also say that I'm not completely sure what type of RPG this will be. I've only been involved in a few Stellar Alliances games (good times!) here but haven't been involved with any others so my idea for what this is could be very different from what y'all think of it being. Anyway, things I think we should figure out:
1) Setting/Background: We should have some sort of a setting for the players and a background so that everyone playing know what's going on in the universe. Major says this is set post-Voyager (don't know if others wish to have a different setting) so that does leave considerable more leeway with figuring out what we want our setting to be. All we know about the Star Trek universe in general after VOY what little we get in Star Trek: Nemesis. If we stay with this then I'd say go post-Nemesis so that the Romulan Empire is still a relative unknown to the Federation. I'm chatting with major right now and we think having the date set in 2380 (approximately) would be a good date. It's both post-VOY and Nemesis and is before the 2009's Star Trek story where the Romulus star system's star goes supernova and begins the story for that movie, set beginning, even though it's in the future with Spock Prime, in 2387. Is that confusing? Major says he doesn't want to include the alternative universe and I agree with him. I...have big problems with the story of 2009's Star Trek and think it'd be best to ignore it. So, during ~2380 Spock is still leading the struggle for Vulcan reunification and the Borg thread has been severely diminished because of VOY. That's...pretty much all we know. That leaves us a lot of room to come up with a good setting. Really, I'm not sure exactly what would be best. I do like the potential setting. The Romulan Empire is still in disarray because of the events of Nemesis with Shinzon and such and their dealing with reunification. What do you guys think?
2) Ship: Darling has provided three classes to choose from, though there are many more classes, both canon and non-canon, that are out there to choose from. Obviously we all have good familiarity with the Sovereign and Intrepid classes since they were in shows and movies. I prefer the Sovereign myself design-wise but I also don't necessarily want to play on a starship class that's so well-known. I think it'd feel more unique and self-determinate if we chose our own ship class that isn't as well-known. On the other hand, the starships we're more familiar with will be easier to understand RP-wise. We all know relatively what the different areas of the ships look like. There are a lot of other starships out there, though. The Akira-class is one that's been featured in both DS9 and VOY, as well as First Contact. There's also the non-canonical Luna-class that is Captain Riker's starship in Star Trek novels. I bet y'all can understand why I know of it. They were designed to help explore the Gamma Quadrant after the Bajoran Wormhole was discovered but then the Dominion War happened and postponed its use. Anyone else have ideas for ships?
3) Player Creation: There should be some sort of a standard template for creating our characters. e.g. race, origin, history, and...whatever we can come up with. Are everyone officers or will there be others? Perhaps someone wants to play a chef or barber? I think the sky's the limit when it comes to what races can be chosen. Also, players should understand that some of the positions available to be played require a certain knowledge of Star Trek greater than others. For example, it might sound fun to be the ship's engineer, but if anyone has watched any of the shows TNG and/or those after then they will know the engineers know a lot of technobabble. It doesn't make sense to have a player be an engineer if he doesn't have a decent understanding of how the ship works.
4) Missions: This is about what we'll actually be doing in the game, as in while on duty. I think having an over-arching yet ambiguous mission like deep space exploration (or whatever we choose) would be a good idea. ToS had its five year mission of exploration and TNG was the continuing mission of exploration. That worked well for those shows because it left a lot of room for having varied episodes. That could be best for us but on the other hand perhaps having a more specific mission would be better because it'd put us all more on the same page and give us a bit more purpose. I think having "episodes" might work too. For example, perhaps each episode is a week long where we have a much more specific mission that we must try to solve. I'm not exactly sure how that will work out but this is an idea that obviously needs some work and it is also one that I think would take a lot of work and cooperation by all of us. And some obvious question are, who will come up with the missions? How will they be resolved? Who will RP as the antagonists?
5) Reward System: Call it "XP" or whatever. I'm not sure if we should have one at all or how it will work but I'm sure there should be some sort of in-game incentive since this is an RPG. Surely someone with more RPG experience could shed some light on how it could work. Darling mentioned some sort of an income system. I'm not against the idea but what would we buy and would there be advantages to them. If so, what would the advantages be?
6) RPing: Darling mentioned on duty and off duty threads. It makes sense to me to have specific threads for specific areas of the ship. For example, I can see good use with threads for Ten Forward (or our equivalent) and the holodeck.
That's...all I have now.
Last edited by Lord Rahl; April 02, 2012 at 04:50 PM.
sign my name down for this straight away. Hell yes!
Everything looks fairly good so far as a basis premise (even if i do hate nemesis as a movie - hell is up with my spell checker? its underlining movie!) I'd possibly suggest a excelsior class ship. Its fading from the fleet at this time, yet still around. Not over powered yet a proven and established ship. With possibilities for upgrades being preformed to it.
as to the basic 'plot' behind the game, perhaps this could be the first starfleet ship to return to the gamma quadrant. There is alot of potential there, as little is known about the area except the dominion and their two main serving species unlike the alpha/beta and to some extent delta there is less chance of annoying cannon fans (just think of it rahl, someone describing romulus as being in the delta quadrant *shudders*)
As for the XP I think one should get it on a regular basis, based on rank and how well the mission went. For example a mission could havE 3 outcomes: Win, stalemate and failure. So if we win the member gets his standard XP multiplied by -let's say-1.5, if it comes to a stalemate it is normal and if we fail there is no experience. This XP could be spent on abilities that each rank would have. The status of an ability could affect the chances that your actions have to be successful during a mission. That's all I could come up with, does it sound to gamey?
Star Trek RPG Proposal Thread
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They were designed to help explore the Gamma Quadrant after the Bajoran Wormhole was discovered but then the Dominion War happened and postponed its use. Anyone else have ideas for ships?
Originally Posted by 'Gunny
