1st Star Trek Adventures campaign

I’m almost ready to start my 1st campaign for STA. Id like to thank everyone for their help and suggestions.

Basically the PC’s will be fresh out of Starfleet. Theyll arrive at their duty station…Starbase??? After a few adventures, that’ll let all of us shake the bugs off our characters and such, the station will come under attack by an unknown force. In the enduing battles, the characters will get a series of chances to save people from the station, on ships caught in the f8ght…etc… At an appropriate and pivotal moment, there’ll be an explosion that engulfs the ships.

Next thing the PC’s know, theyre picking thselves up and assessing damage control. They begin to slowly realize that nothing matches what data they can manage to pull up. This is when the actual meat of the campaign will start.

So my final campaign questions are below. Thank you again for any help and suggestions that you provide.

  1. Since my players know about Star Trek, but haven’t really watched any of the shows, I was thinking of importing some characters from the other shows. Which ones would import?

  2. Since they’re going to be given the chance to save various characters from the station and ships, what alien races would you put in to be rescued?

  3. Im thinking that once they’re dumped into the future, the PC’s will limp their ship to an abandoned Starbase. Since it appears to be powered doen and abandoned, what encounters and adventures do you think could happen there?

3 Likes
  1. nobody that is important, it’s their own show, don’t let them rely on Picard, 7of9 or Spock to solve their problems. On the other.hand, maybe Spock is the main antagonist because he was rejected by vulcans and starfleet didn’t exists.
  2. be sure to kill all heads of departments of the players to put them in charge. Save some Ferengi, they are always useful to the gamemaster. Save some useless politicians to complicate PC lives.
  3. several options there DS9: a cardassian base full of traps and unknown programs. Stargate Atlantis: a base made by an advanced civilization but I have a preference for Discovery, a base with true believers in Federation that still follow Starfleet rules of their ancestors but with no means to restore it

To be honest, I’d need a bit.kore context t9.ne helpful. In the starting part, what era are you in? TOS? TNG? it’s important because that will inform what we can do with the rest of the questions.

To answer the questions the best I can without knowing the era:

  1. Do cameos, and it doesn’t really matter who. You can have Picard…just don’t let him get involved. What you don’t want to do is to allow him to steal the limelight. So, depending on era, you will probably want Kirk, McCoy, Spock, Scotty, Sulu, Picard, Data, Troi, Worf, LaForge, Sisko, O’Brien, Janeway, Seven, Tuvok, Neelix, EMH, Kim, Paris. What you want is probably three or four that are era appropriate and that they’ll recognise. Remember though, don’t let them take over. The most you is maybe one attached to the party as a guide in the first mission or so, then they just become cameos or your party’s channel to Starfleet. Nothing more.

  2. This is really heavily dependent on context, I’m afraid. Where you are and when you are. Vulcans are omnipresent in the Star Trek timeline, but beyond that…it’s really context dependent. You want familiar faces, so Klingons would be amazing…but if you’re in Enterprise era or TOS,.it won’t jive with canon because they’re enemies to the Federation. Same with the Romulans, except it would have to wait until post TNG for that to make sense. Cardassians are a weaker but possible choice, but again, post DS9. We need to know the era at least.

  3. It’s completely your choice, but I’d avoid the future, do a parallel universe/dimension instead. You can rewrite history to suite your arc, so you can still find an abandoned starbase, but you can use the stats provided for “modern” ships rather than future ones, which will be harder to find or design.

As for adventures, I think you can assume that the initial phase will be repairing the station and getting it back to working order. After that, my suggestion would be that Phase II will probably be exploring, trying to find essential materials for the repairs and trying to find out what happened. Be sure to drop hints about a future protagonist, but don’t overdo it. Think the Dominion in DS9 - you heard about them long before you met them. Mix this up with the typical TNG dilemma or monster of the week style sessions. Phase III will be meeting the antagonists, and having things go to pot. You may or may not link these to the destruction of the Federation, or even those who attacked them in the first starbase…or you might save those for later.

As for specific adventures for the dilemma/monster of the week…I’d recommend picking your favourite Star Trek episodes (or adapting from other franchises) and just run those with a few tweaks. Alternatively, Modiphius do two packs of missions tha tyou could adapt (I have them, but I’m going to be starting them in the next week or so, so I can’t say how good they are). Those are the easiest options.

Big bit of advice - don’t plan too much. Notice I gave overall sketches of what should happen, not specifics. The specifics should depend on their choices. I’d develop a bank of missions - favourite episodes, poached missions, my own ideas - as part of my prep. Nothing too firm, but enough that I have a bunch of ideas to work with. Perhaps 10-15. Then, I’ll pick one to run as appropriate, develop it into a proper gameplan and run that session, influenced by my overall sketch. Once the players have completed it and made choices, I’ll pick another one that suits and reflects their choices, and run that. I’ll also occasionally replenish that bank. That way, you’re allowing them freedom to choose while not having to improvise either.

But yeah, pick an era, and then find some of your favourite episodes to run. Since they haven’t watched them, it’ll be new to them. You don’t have to stick to your era - even if you are in TNG, you could do a TOS episode, with a bit of adaptation.

Shameless plug here, but if you need a starbase design, I have several you can use (depending on the era, of course) here.

The K-class and the Watchtower-class are TOS era, the Ournal-class (Earth Spacedock) and the Lotus-class are TOS-movie era, and the Alexandria-class is post-DS9 era. The good news is, all these starbases have an operational life of 100 years or more so they could appear anywhere in the timeline after their deployment, especially if they’ve been abandoned sometime in the future.

I hope you like them. :sunglasses:

Apologies everyone I meant to put this in the opening post. The game will be set in around the Next Generation/DS9 era.

If it’s set TNG/DS9 era, that means they’ve come forward into a time when the Federation has expanded quite a bit, and depending on when in DS9, the Dominion War is happening.

My immediate idea is that they were stationed at a “frontier” starbase, that was eventually abandoned as the Federation’s borders left it behind. So everyone in the area of space is nominally an ally or member of the Federation.

BUT… if the Dominion War is happening, lots of attention from the government and Starfleet will be at the front lines, which means that ordinary things that people of this area of space rely on might not be happening (maybe in terms of legal rulings, or logistical supply issues, or criminals taking advantage). And it also opens the door for whoever your “unknown force” is to start mucking about in this area of space (or maybe they’ve worked behind the scenes for years and the Dominion War gives them an opening to move openly again).

Unless you meant the characters start in the TNG era, in which case there’s loads of opportunities in the future. Temporal Wars, the Burn, loads of ways things could go wrong that either cause the Federation to withdraw from an area of space, or even not exist.

As for cameos, the increasing use of holograms means anyone can have a cameo at any point after the mid-24th century, even if it’s not “them”. You just need a reasonable explanation for why that character’s hologram is present (maybe the station that is now abandoned had been upgraded with a “historical figures” database that only has one or two intact programs).

I have a large time travel thing for my players so they visit but run the scenes so it’s not Spock fixing their problems they fix Spock’s problems
The closest to things being more than a cameo is that they asked for a temporal shield expert and got Year of Hell Janeway as a treat.
Maybe at most they show up, give advice, maybe they have a need for that character.

Since you’re in TNG/DS9 era, that will make it easier. I’d recommend setting it after the DS9 episode “In the Pale Moonlight”. That’s when the Romulans side with the Federation, so you can have Romulans and Klingons show up on your starbase. That’ll be good because your friends should recognise them and make the connection. Obviously, Klingons aren’t damsels in distress, but you can have them in the background or team up with the party to fight.

So yeah, I’d recommend coming across Klingons, Romulans and Vulcans for their name recognition. After that, just pick some random species. Bolians, Trill, etc. They probably wouldn’t recognise them anyway, so no need to be particular about species not in those three. They’re not going to know a Bolian from a Tholian. Ferengi are fun, if you can pull off the RP.

For inspirations on starbase missions, make sure to have a look at the free Mission Briefs on Starbase Adventures!