Surviving The First Session

#4 Ignorance

What Happened

First of, I should mention that I wrote about this particular campaign cock-up in a letter which was published in Imazine 34 (you can find Imazine at: http://www.tcp-ip.or.jp/~panurge/imaz.htm).

It was a Star Trek campaign, in which I played the captain (a "hippie Bajoran"), Bog Boy was the GM, TAFKAC was a junior office and someone who I'll refer to as Mr Smile was the First Officer, a.k.a. "Number One".

(For those who read my stuff in Valkyrie, this is the same Mr Smile who starred in the Dark Conspiracy scenario).

Before we started playing, Bog Boy took Mr Smile aside, and asked him if he had knowledge of the Star Trek background. "Sure," was the reply. "Of course I have!".

So we began play. This was a bit of a weird scenario in that I - one of the players - had written it. This probably sounds a bit weird, so I'll explain.

I figured that my Captain, having just taken command of a new ship, would want to test his crew, and find out if there were any problems. I was particularly concerned with how well they would interpret the Prime Directive, since this is an area which often involves difficult moral choices.

So I came up with a plan. I, the Captain, would invite them to the holo-deck, where they would find me in a recreation of a formal Bajoran garden. I would explain that I'd invited them there, to talk to them about how I wished to conduct my command because I wanted them to see something of myself.

However, half way through my speech, alarms went off and the voice of the officer in command (an NPC) broke in, stating that the sensors had just picked up a derelict ship. I shouted "Computer: end program!", the door appeared, and everyone piled out, back into the ship.

Except that we didn't. This had all been arranged beforehand by me (the captain) with the help of a junior engineering officer (another NPC). The "end program" command was a fake, as was the door that appeared. When we ran back onto the ship, we were still in the holo-program.

And when we took our seats on the bridge and saw on the viewscreen what looked like a very old derelict Galaxy-class starship, we were still on the holo-deck.

The crew quickly established two things:

1) From its registration it was the USS-Something that had gone missing four years previously.

2) The hull was more than 300 years old (they got this from sensor sweeps).

The basic story was this:

The ship had hit a time-wormhole and been thrown back 300 years to the past. Their subspace communications had been destroyed, as had their warp engines. They could only limp home on impulse power. Realising this would take a "long" time, they rigged the ship to survive for an extended period.

Now, 300 years later, the ship was still inhabited by their descendants, whose level of civilisation had now regressed so far that they were not even aware that they were on a spaceship. They thought this was the "world". They were led by a religious priestess, whose title was: "The Captain".

But from the sensor sweeps, we (well the other PCs) could see that the life support was now finally about to fail. They would all die.

This was the dilemma. They needed to be rescued. But according to the Prime Directive, they might be considered a separate society. This was even recognised at one point by Tafkac, whose character said: "It's like a little society, all of their own" to which Mr Smile replied: "I know, but I can't be arsed."

I had figured that they would try to do something clever, like setting up a recreation of the derelict ship on the holo-deck, and somehow beaming them there without them realising.

Unfortunately, Mr Smile's primary motivation at this point was getting into the pants of the priestess, so he wanted to act all big and impress her. (Tafkac's character was actually taking notes of all the incriminating things he said).

So, after they refused to believe him that they were on a ship, he just forcibly captured them at gunpoint, and had them beamed over to a cargo bay.

He called this a rescue.

I called it a massive violation of the Prime Directive.

But the "discussion" we had afterward went something along the lines of:

Me: "I can't believe you just did that! What about the Prime Directive?"

Mr Smile: "What's the Prime Directive?"

The Lesson

In this case you must ensure that the characters have the appropriate knowledge of the setting.

#5 The Wrong Kind Of Character

What Happened

This was also a Star Trek campaign, although a different one. The players this time were me, Bubba, Mark, Evil G and Demonic, with Bog Boy again GMing. (He loves Star Trek, and so he tries time and time again to do a Star Trek campaign, and time and time again we manage to fuck it up).

I had, once again, been stiffed with playing the Captain. Demonic was playing my First Officer (a.k.a. "Number One").

Now, we all tend to have stock character types that we play, and Demonic is no exception. He tends to play creepy socially dysfunctional weirdos (don't know why, but hey he's happy) and on this occasion the character created was a real classic of the type. I'd don't think he'd ever played creepier.

Of course, we didn't know this until the campaign started.

The first scene was in "ten-forward". The entire crew were present to meet their new command team (i.e. the players).

You now how some blokes just kindof creep women out? Especially at social occasions, like parties, when they're trying to hard to impress? Well that was how Demonic's character acted.

He basically was moving through the gathering, saying: "Hello" to all the female crewmembers in a rather creepy voice, and acting in a really slimy, disturbing manner. You just knew that every single female crew-member would be thinking to herself: "I don't want to be left alone in a room with that man."

Which is a bit of a problem when the bloke concerned is the second-in-command of the ship and the man in charge of personnel.

At this point we had to explain to Demonic that people like that don't get promoted to high positions in Star Fleet. It just doesn't work like that.

The Lesson

Find out how the players are planning to play their characters before you start play, and make sure that the characters fit.

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