Octopus Overlords

OK. Let's give this a try. I'm going to walk through character generation for the new Solo/Co-op RPG from Modiphius, Star Trek: Captain's Log. From the Modiphius website:

The Captain’s Log Solo Roleplaying Game is a 326-page, full-color standalone
digest-sized rulebook that provides a complete, streamlined version of the award-winning 2d20 System used for the Star Trek Adventures roleplaying game, which you can use to create your own Star Trek stories with a dynamic character formed from your own imagination.

Whether you are venturing into the cosmos alone, conducting Galaxy-spanning missions cooperatively with friends, or exploring the unknown with a gamemaster facilitating your adventures, use the guidance and random tables contained in Captain’s Log to generate countless hours of memorable adventures in the Star Trek universe.

Create an original character and then use the tools in this book, combined with your fertile imagination, to fashion your own fascinating Star Trek-style stories. Play in any era of Star Trek - from the 21st century to the 32nd century and everything in between. Explore strange new worlds, new civilizations, and all the wonders of the universe!

I'm going to start off creating a character using their Lifepath creation method. There's also a quick start method where you create many parts of your character during the course of play. For the most part, I'm going to be using random dice rolls and not fudging anything. I'm only going to make a couple of choices at the beginning.

First step: Base Character Stats

Base Character Stats

Characters are built on a series of Attributes (reflecting your character's physical abilities), Disciplines (reflecting training), Focuses (areas of expertise under your disciplines), and Values (statements that describe core beliefs and convictions).

When starting out, your character will have no Focuses or Values, and values of 7 in all Attributes and 1 in all Disciplines

Attributes

Attribute	Value
Control	7
Daring	7
Fitness	7
Insight	7
Presence	7
Reason	7

DIsciplines

Discipline	Value
Command	1
Conn	1
Engineering	1
Security	1
Science	1
Medicine	1

Focuses

Values

Next: Step 1 - Species

Step 1: Species

To determine Species, you first have to have a era that you are going to be playing in. Both the era and and the character Species can either be chosen or rolled for randomly, on a D20 table. There are separate Species for each of the eras. There are also rules for mixed species characters, so you could possibly end up with a randomly rolled Horta/Kzinti character (ew.)

For this character, I want to put him in The Original Series era, and I want him to be a human, so I'm not going to roll for these.

When you determine your species, you will be given 3 attributes to increase. Humans are given the option to increase 3 Attributes by 1, your choice, so I'm going to start off by increasing Control, Daring, and Insight by 1.

Attributes

Attribute	Value
Control	8
Daring	8
Fitness	7
Insight	8
Presence	7
Reason	7

DIsciplines

Discipline	Value
Command	1
Conn	1
Engineering	1
Security	1
Science	1
Medicine	1

Focuses

Values

Step 2: Environment

We're going to need to now determine where our character was raised. The first roll is for the Setting for the environment, and the D20 roll was an 18,and that comes out to be either a Starship or a Starbase. A random 50/50 roll puts my character on a Starship. Being on a starship gives me a Value (that I will randomly roll, they really do need to have more values than they provide), a choice of increasing Control or Insight by 1, and Command, Conn or Engineering by 1. I'm going to increase my Insight by 1, and Command by 1. The value I rolled was a 6, "Good leaders get their hands dirty."

Next we roll for the condition on board the starship. This could get a bit weird. But here goes. The roll of 4 gives me a result of Utopian Paradise. So this may be a Federation starship...they kind of match up with that description. This is going to give us another Value, and increase Control, Reason or Presence by 1, and any Discipline by 1 as well. I'm going to increase Control by 1, and Conn by 1. I'm going to roll the value, but if it doesn't seem to match up I may choose. I rolled an 8, "I finish what I start." That seems OK.

Attributes

Attribute	Value
Control	9
Daring	8
Fitness	7
Insight	9
Presence	7
Reason	7

DIsciplines

Discipline	Value
Command	2
Conn	2
Engineering	1
Security	1
Science	1
Medicine	1

Focuses

Values

"Good leaders get their hands dirty."
"I finish what I start."

Step 3: Early Outlook

For the early outlook, you have three options. You can determine upbringing, which gives you a base of how they were brought up...starfleet, business, agriculture, etc. If you have a Klingon character, or were raised in a Klingon environment, you can roll/choose a caste. The third way is to roll or choose an aspiration. In all of these cases, you can either accept or reject the upbringing, and that choice will change what options you have for the character. I'm going to be choosing an aspiration. My roll for this is 11, To Discover. Sounds like a great aspiration for a starship commander. I'm going to choose to accept it, this will increase my Reason by 2 and Presence by 1. I can increase either Science or Medicine by 1, so I'm going to up my Science by 1. I also get to add my first Focus, so I'm going to roll on the Science Focus table since I just added to my Science Discipline. My 2d20 roll of 16 gave me a focus of Geology.

Attributes

Attribute	Value
Control	9
Daring	8
Fitness	7
Insight	9
Presence	8
Reason	9

DIsciplines

Discipline	Value
Command	2
Conn	2
Engineering	1
Security	1
Science	2
Medicine	1

Focuses

Geology

Values

"Good leaders get their hands dirty."
"I finish what I start."

Step 4: Education

So we roll first on the general education table. A roll of 19 gives us the Civilian Career Training option. A D20 roll there gives me a training sub-category of Physician. Well, that's a bit of a curve ball for where I was heading, but lets roll with it. I gain another Value..."Push me too far and you'll see my ugly side." I get 3 points to assign to attributes, wherever I want, so we're going to go with Fitness, Insight, and Reason. I increase my Medicine by 2, and 2 other disciplines by 1 each. I'm going with add onto Science and Command.

Also, at this stage, you get 3 Focuses, and I came up with Diagnostic Expertise, Terraforming, and Prime Directive

Attributes

Attribute	Value
Control	9
Daring	8
Fitness	8
Insight	10
Presence	8
Reason	10

DIsciplines

Discipline	Value
Command	3
Conn	2
Engineering	1
Security	1
Science	3
Medicine	3

Focuses

Geology
Diagnostic Expertise
Terraforming
Prime Directive

Values

"Good leaders get their hands dirty."
"I finish what I start."
"Push me too far and you'll see my ugly side."

Step 5: Career Length

This step is an easy one...a simple roll to see how long they've been doing what they're doing. My roll of 16 gives me a result of Veteran, so I've been kicking around Starfleet for a while now. I get one new Value, and I rolled "Information is Power."

Attributes

Attribute	Value
Control	9
Daring	8
Fitness	8
Insight	10
Presence	8
Reason	10

DIsciplines

Discipline	Value
Command	3
Conn	2
Engineering	1
Security	1
Science	3
Medicine	3

Focuses

Geology
Diagnostic Expertise
Terraforming
Prime Directive

Values

"Good leaders get their hands dirty."
"I finish what I start."
"Push me too far and you'll see my ugly side."
"Information is Power."

Step 6: Career Events

For career events, you will choose/roll 2 events that occurred through his career. Each career event will add one to an attribute, one to a discipline, and give you a focus.

For our first event, we rolled a 12, Betrayed Ideals for a Superior. Well, that's heavy. It's asking for details at this point. Who was the superior, what they the ask you to do, what were the repercussions and was it on record? I'll come back and fill in these later after I get a bit more info...this increases Presence by 1, Command by 1, and gives me a focus, rolled against Command, and I got Inspiration.

My second event rolled is 1, Ship Destroyed. Man, this guy is having a career. Once again, a lot of info it wants me to fill in, and it increases my Daring by 1, my Security by 1, and one more Focus under Security...I rolled a 30, which is Phasers.

Attributes

Attribute	Value
Control	9
Daring	9
Fitness	8
Insight	10
Presence	9
Reason	10

DIsciplines

Discipline	Value
Command	4
Conn	2
Engineering	1
Security	2
Science	3
Medicine	3

Focuses

Geology
Diagnostic Expertise
Terraforming
Prime Directive
Inspiration
Phasers

Values

"Good leaders get their hands dirty."
"I finish what I start."
"Push me too far and you'll see my ugly side."
"Information is Power."

Step 7: Finishing Touches

So at this point, you can do some customizing. You can add 1 to two attributes, one to two disciplines and add one more value. You can't have Attribute value above 12, and only one can be 12. Same thing with Disciplines, you can't have any discipline above 5, and only one at 5. I'm going to raise my Daring by 1 and Presence by 1. In the Disciplines, I'm going to Increase Command by 1 to a max of 5, and Medicine by 1 as well.

Now I see that I have made a couple of mistakes. I'm going to have to go back through the results I recorded, because I should have a grand total of 56 for my Attributes, and 16 for my Disciplines. I ended up with 57 and 15 so I think I may have transposed one of those numbers. Also, I'm supposed to be adding a value here and I'm at my max of 4 already. Also, I should have six focuses so I missed three somewhere along the line. At this point I also choose what my assignment is, as well as my rank. You choose these rather than roll for them. After I have a chance to dig through where I made my mistakes and get those corrected, I'll come back and clean up all of the rest of it. Might be a day or so before I can get to it though. But that's the basics behind character generation.

After we get the character cleaned up, we then determine if we are on a ship or a space station, and then build that out.

Attributes

Attribute	Value
Control	9
Daring	10
Fitness	8
Insight	10
Presence	10
Reason	10

DIsciplines

Discipline	Value
Command	5
Conn	2
Engineering	1
Security	2
Science	3
Medicine	3

Focuses

Geology
Diagnostic Expertise
Terraforming
Prime Directive
Inspiration
Phasers

Values

"Good leaders get their hands dirty."
"I finish what I start."
"Push me too far and you'll see my ugly side."
"Information is Power."

I'm reading, thanks for writing it out for us.

Ugh. Just saw that the table tags don’t work on Tapatalk. Is that going to be a major problem for anyone?

I don't use tapatalk, but the charts/tables line up pretty well and aren't confusing. I suppose you knew that already. If they are supposed to have line dividers between cells, they don't for me. They just look like columns of information, which is good enough for me.

GreenGoo wrote:I don't use tapatalk, but the charts/tables line up pretty well and aren't confusing. I suppose you knew that already. If they are supposed to have line dividers between cells, they don't for me. They just look like columns of information, which is good enough for me.

That may be based on the theme you’re using. On my system the cells had borders.

Subscribed.
Also, I'm in chrome on my phone and see cell borders.

I was looking at this game a while back. I'm loving seeing the write-up. Just one thing, now that you've been copy-pasting: I'm sorry.

Blackhawk wrote:I was looking at this game a while back. I'm loving seeing the write-up. Just one thing, now that you've been copy-pasting:

Spoiler:

hentzau wrote: ↑Fri Aug 18, 2023 5:41 pm Focues

Geology

Values

I'm sorry.

Dang it!!!

Also: You created one hell of a commander.

"Good leaders get their hands dirty."
"I finish what I start."
"Push me too far and you'll see my ugly side."
"Information is Power."

Betrayed Ideals for a Superior

For a Romulan!

It may sound silly just from you posting your results from a bunch of random number tables for a character generator, but it's already making me want to buy this.

OK, so I found where I goofed on the Focuses. You get to choose 3 focuses during the Education phase. I made a simple math mistake on the Disciplines, my Command should be 5. But I’ve gone through the steps 4 times now for the Attributes, and I can’t find where I’ve made a mistake. So I’m going to keep it at 57 points. He’s gifted, what can I say.

I'm going to Increase Command by 1 to a max of 5, and Medicine by 1 as well.

Shouldn't your Medicine now be a 4?

Edit: Ah. I guess this was one of the mistakes.

Step 7a: Filling in some details

Been thinking about our character, Robert, and his early career events for a bit, and once I start connecting the dots, the first part of his career is really pretty well spelled out. Robert excelled in Geology, Terraforming, and Diagnostic Expertise, so it seems like a pretty good fit to put him on the crew of a terraforming project. Maybe on a scout ship that does the preliminary surveys of planetary bodies that will be prospective candidates for terraforming. One of the purposes of these surveys is to scout for any existing life forms to ensure that the terraforming does not interfere with the natural development of that life form.

During one of these surveys, the chief geologist and chief medical officer signed off on a celestial body that was a candidate for terraforming, but during some additional scans Hentzau found traces of life that the initial scans did not find. The captain, chief medical officer, and chief geologist all put pressure on the young Ensign that his findings must be wrong and that he needed to not file his report. Eventually, incensed at what they were asking him to do, he punched the Chief Geologist right in the nose (Push me too far and you’ll see my ugly side) and was thrown in the brig. The chief geologist offered to drop charges and not get Hentzau court marshaled if he would drop his report, so he did. As soon as possible, Hentzau requested a transfer off of the ship, which the captain gladly approved, with a recommendation of promotion to Lieutenant and a rotation to Security, much to Hentzau’s surprise.

Now…ship destroyed. Anyone got an brilliant ideas for how THAT happened?

Name: Robert Hentzau
Pronouns:He/Him
Environment: Starship (Utopian Paradise/Starfleet)
Early Outlook: Aspiration - To Discover
Education: Civilian Career Training/Physician
Career Length: Veteran
Career Events: Betrayed Ideals for a Superior, Ship Destroyed



Rank: TBD
Assignment: TBD

Attributes

Attribute	Value
Control	9
Daring	10
Fitness	8
Insight	10
Presence	10
Reason	10

DIsciplines

Discipline	Value
Command	5
Conn	2
Engineering	1
Security	2
Science	3
Medicine	3

Focuses

Geology
Diagnostic Expertise
Terraforming
Prime Directive
Inspiration
Phasers

Values

"Good leaders get their hands dirty."
"I finish what I start."
"Push me too far and you'll see my ugly side."
"Information is Power."

Oh, and I didn’t make this clear…if anyone has any cool ideas based on things I’m rolling here, please chime in!

Perhaps the "traces of life" were actually from a highly advanced, xenophobic species that did not approve of the initial terraforming activities. In retaliation, they blew up the ship. The ensign survived because he had just launched in a shuttle on his way to his new posting. He now suffers remorse for not standing firm on his beliefs, feeling that by betraying his ideals, he contributed to the death of his former shipmates.

That said... I'm not thrilled that it puts the two events at nearly the same time and links them. Kind of feels like that would make it one event. But I supposed the processing of terraforming takes a while, so there could be months between the actions. Depends on how long he spent in the brig, and how long it took for him to get the transfer.

hentzau wrote: ↑Sun Aug 20, 2023 2:21 pm During one of these surveys, the chief geologist and chief medical officer signed off on a celestial body that was a candidate for terraforming, but during some additional scans Hentzau found traces of life that the initial scans did not find. The captain, chief medical officer, and chief geologist all put pressure on the young Ensign that his findings must be wrong and that he needed to not file his report.

Why, those... those... ugly bags of mostly water!

TheMix wrote:Perhaps the "traces of life" were actually from a highly advanced, xenophobic species that did not approve of the initial terraforming activities. In retaliation, they blew up the ship. The ensign survived because he had just launched in a shuttle on his way to his new posting. He now suffers remorse for not standing firm on his beliefs, feeling that by betraying his ideals, he contributed to the death of his former shipmates.

That said... I'm not thrilled that it puts the two events at nearly the same time and links them. Kind of feels like that would make it one event. But I supposed the processing of terraforming takes a while, so there could be months between the actions. Depends on how long he spent in the brig, and how long it took for him to get the transfer.

I think I’d like to have them be two separate events, to keep the specter of his terraforming coverup as a future complication.

Even though it’s not normal procedure for the game, maybe I’ll roll up what type of ship he was transferred to and see if that sparks any story threads.

(Also, I am by no means a Trek expert. So I may make mistakes/continuity errors occasionally.)

hentzau wrote: ↑Sun Aug 20, 2023 2:21 pm Now…ship destroyed. Anyone got an brilliant ideas for how THAT happened?

Here:

The chief geologist offered to drop charges and not get Hentzau court marshaled if he would drop his report, so he did. As soon as possible, Hentzau requested a transfer off of the ship, which the captain gladly approved, with a recommendation of promotion to Lieutenant and a rotation to Security, much to Hentzau’s surprise.

You set up something with consequences. Roll with 'em.

His transfer was approved. Some survey samples needed to be taken directly to Terraforming Command at the nearest starbase, so he took a shuttle to deliver those, and would wait for his next assignment there while his replacement returned with the shuttle.

After he transferred off of the the survey ship (it would have been a survey ship rather than a scout ship for that particular task), the remaining crew began to to lay the foundations for terraforming. It turns out that the life traces that had been detected were, in fact, full-fledged life, just of a type that hadn't been encountered before, which is why the initial scans didn't detect them. These life forms, which live deep underground in pockets of liquid silicon dioxide, were not terribly happy when the survey ship's crew's first task was to redirect a number of large, icy comets to the surface of the planet to provide a source of water for the terraforming process. They were unable to communicate with the Federation crew, and saw their actions as an attack. When the survey ship passed low to do a direct analysis of the results, the lifeforms responded with gouts of pressurized magma forced upward, destroying the ship and killing the crew.

Hentzau, having just transferred off, survived. He didn't even learn what happened until he arrived at the starbase. But he broke some major regs, and he's partially responsible for what happened, and he knows it.

Did he report it, including his choice?
Did he report it, but (being the only survivor) lie and say that he was waiting until he arrived at the starbase to use the subspace communications array?
Or did he keep it secret, his own hidden shame?

Regardless, he's now got either a huge, dark secret, or he's got a huge black mark on his record. He's also likely got some serious guilt over his actions (is this where his focus on the Prime Directive started? Out of guilt and a desire to make up for it?) And would Starfleet (including any counselors he spoke to) simply assume that he's dealing with survivor's guilt?

-------------------------------------------

Just a suggestion, but it sets up some interesting conflicts (both internal and external) for the character.

hentzau wrote: ↑Sun Aug 20, 2023 3:30 pm I think I’d like to have them be two separate events, to keep the specter of his terraforming coverup as a future complication.

...he posts while I'm in the middle of researching/writing.

Blackhawk wrote:

hentzau wrote: ↑Sun Aug 20, 2023 3:30 pm I think I’d like to have them be two separate events, to keep the specter of his terraforming coverup as a future complication.

...he posts while I'm in the middle of researching/writing.

Yeah, but damn, that’s all really good.

I think I may pick this up in PDF form. Not sure I'm ready to drop $40 on it, but I'm willing to gamble $18. Figured I'd also be taking notes while playing on the PC anyway, so PDF is probably more convenient. If I like it enough maybe I'll spring for the hardcover some day down the road.

YellowKing wrote: ↑Wed Aug 23, 2023 3:39 pm I think I may pick this up in PDF form. Not sure I'm ready to drop $40 on it, but I'm willing to gamble $18. Figured I'd also be taking notes while playing on the PC anyway, so PDF is probably more convenient. If I like it enough maybe I'll spring for the hardcover some day down the road.

I'm still a book kind of guy. I've done some playing around with the PDF version (buy the book and get the PDF for free) and it's fine. The one thing I wish they would do would be to go ahead and release the form-fillable character sheet. Not that that would have helped with this particular exercise.

And I'm about to get off the pot about Robert's second career event. I may leave it up to fate...roll a die and either accept what BH wrote (which was very much in line with what I was thinking of as well) or create a new event in which Robert's second or third tour ship was destroyed.

To spark the thought process, I rolled to see what kind of ship Robert was transferred to, and my roll came back as a Hoover-class starship. The text from the book states that "the Hoover-class would become the spaceframe to test new technologies and engineering techniques, and their crews would by necessity become experts in their systems."

From Memory Alpha, there is one named mention of a Hoover-class ship, the U.S.S. Edison, NCC-1683, which was destroyed in The Battle of Binary Stars with the Klingons.

Well. Now my homework is to watch that episode of DIscovery (haven't really watched any of Discovery yet) and see if there is any chance of survivors from that fracas. Back in a while.

Edit: Oh,it's the second episode of the first season. I won't be missing out on much.

Blackhawk wrote: ↑Sun Aug 20, 2023 3:47 pm

hentzau wrote: ↑Sun Aug 20, 2023 2:21 pm Now…ship destroyed. Anyone got an brilliant ideas for how THAT happened?

Here:

The chief geologist offered to drop charges and not get Hentzau court marshaled if he would drop his report, so he did. As soon as possible, Hentzau requested a transfer off of the ship, which the captain gladly approved, with a recommendation of promotion to Lieutenant and a rotation to Security, much to Hentzau’s surprise.

You set up something with consequences. Roll with 'em.

His transfer was approved. Some survey samples needed to be taken directly to Terraforming Command at the nearest starbase, so he took a shuttle to deliver those, and would wait for his next assignment there while his replacement returned with the shuttle.

After he transferred off of the the survey ship (it would have been a survey ship rather than a scout ship for that particular task), the remaining crew began to to lay the foundations for terraforming. It turns out that the life traces that had been detected were, in fact, full-fledged life, just of a type that hadn't been encountered before, which is why the initial scans didn't detect them. These life forms, which live deep underground in pockets of liquid silicon dioxide, were not terribly happy when the survey ship's crew's first task was to redirect a number of large, icy comets to the surface of the planet to provide a source of water for the terraforming process. They were unable to communicate with the Federation crew, and saw their actions as an attack. When the survey ship passed low to do a direct analysis of the results, the lifeforms responded with gouts of pressurized magma forced upward, destroying the ship and killing the crew.

Hentzau, having just transferred off, survived. He didn't even learn what happened until he arrived at the starbase. But he broke some major regs, and he's partially responsible for what happened, and he knows it.

Did he report it, including his choice?
Did he report it, but (being the only survivor) lie and say that he was waiting until he arrived at the starbase to use the subspace communications array?
Or did he keep it secret, his own hidden shame?

Regardless, he's now got either a huge, dark secret, or he's got a huge black mark on his record. He's also likely got some serious guilt over his actions (is this where his focus on the Prime Directive started? Out of guilt and a desire to make up for it?) And would Starfleet (including any counselors he spoke to) simply assume that he's dealing with survivor's guilt?

-------------------------------------------

Just a suggestion, but it sets up some interesting conflicts (both internal and external) for the character.

One slight variation on this would be that the life on the planet was not some previously undetected form of life, but was essentially eggs or larva or the like. Essentially this world was used as a hatchery by some frontier space-faring race that the Federation hadn't encountered yet. When the world was terraformed, all those little alien eggs / babies were annihilated in the process, so the space-faring race came looking for the terraforming ship and promptly blew it up. Could have also started some sort of border-skirmish war for the Federation.

I guess we're just writing Robert's biography, right?

What really happened that day... There are a couple ways to write this. How morally ambiguous do you want it?

I was thinking of a remix of all the ideas so far:

He's the junior science guy, and another guy, probably the doctor (life science) agreed with him, since the doctor also had some xeno experience. The senior science / engineering guy and the captain refused to accept their recommendations to stop the project, claiming their speculation (which admittedly, is pretty thin evidence) is worthless and they don't have time to diddling because (reasons) and chose to proceed anyway, and they'll send a report later but timeline must be adhered to.

(We can fit in the punch, as the older guy wasn't actually that competent, but he knows how to play people and he's going to goad your guy into attacking him, forcing captain to demote your guy and secure his position.)

It was at this time whatever that destroyed the ship started jamming (the ice asteroid dropped earlier) and they can't get the report out, and the captain, wanting to get rid of this young insubordinate guy, ordered him to get into a shuttle, get outside the interference area, and transmit the report, then come back, basically to cool his heels. The idea I guess, is the captain, knowing the engineer is up to his tricks again, want your guy to stick around, and since the doctor was able to grab your guy before the punch can connect, it's sorta no-harm/no-foul, and cool down on a boring assignment should be perfect.

As the shuttle left the area, you basically have the Starship Trooper's plasma bugs started shooting at the ship in orbit, which is when the captain realized he f-ed up big time. His last orders are to abandon ship, and for the shuttle to run to the nearest starbase, and do NOT rescue them. The planet is obviously inhabited, and is now under prime directive quarantine.

Robert made it to the starbase, (technically he didn't he was X away, when his life support ran out, but his mayday was received and starbase did send a ship to get him) and pulled his shuttle back to the base. His ship was MIA and its true fate only revealed by his own sensor logs. He was forbidden to go back, higher ups quarantined the planet, and scouts are only allowed in the outer planets with no closer approach.

So Robert always wondered if there are still his crewmates down there that can be rescued... and that's his everlasting regret.

Kasey Chang wrote: ↑Thu Aug 24, 2023 4:22 am I guess we're just writing Robert's biography, right?

Well, it's not just the biography. It's building out the character to do a "journaling" solo RPG experience. After I get the character sorted out, and get his current assignment set up, I will then start rolling on random tables to give him the starting seeds for the actual adventure. So it goes beyond just creating a biography.

I'm really leaning towards a posting during the time of Strange New Worlds. As I can read the somewhat jumbled timeline, the beginning of Discovery (where the Battle of the Binary Stars occurred) would be only about 3 years before the Strange New Worlds period. So Robert could have been aboard the Edison during that battle, been a survivor of the destruction of the Edison. I like how the random roll of the dice for the ship assignment put me firmly into a canon event in the Star Trek universe.

So I'm going to stick with the somewhat nebulous events as listed for the first terraforming event on the survey ship. I'll fill in names for the characters and the ship. His second incident was during the start of the Federation/Klingon war, during the battle of the Binary Stars, where he was serving as a security medic (I don't think they've ever stated that they have medics in the security details...but it seems to make sense.) During the battle, a contingent of Klingons beamed aboard the Edison when their shields were compromised. Hentzau helped to both fend off the Klingon boarding party (helping to justify his focus on phasers) and get wounded personnel to the escape shuttles and treat them while waiting for pickup from surviving ships. For his bravery in action he received a commendation and promotion to his next assignment...which I will determine shortly.

Step 8: Starship Generation

OK. now it's time for our ship. We're in the TOS era, so a roll of 9 gives me an Excelsior Class ship. This ship didn't get commissioned until 2285, so that's too late for what I'm looking for. Off to the table again. A roll of 14 gives me a Miranda-class ship. Great! I love that ship. Think U.S.S. Reliant from Wrath of Khan. This gives us a scale 4 ship, and that will give us 4 starship talents.

I was thinking about naming the ship the Ruritania, but that seems a bit too self-indulgent.

Name: U.S.S. Victoria
Registry: NCC-1819
Traits: Federation Starship, Miranda Class
Scale: 4

Systems:

System	Value
Comms	07
Computers	08
Engines	08
Sensors	09
Structure	08
Weapons	08

Departments:

Department	Value
Command	03
Conn	03
Security	02
Engineering	02
Science	03
Medicine	02

Ship Idiosyncrasy: The ship's computer's voice responses randomly change gender.

Starship Talents: Electronic Warfare Systems, Backup EPS Conduits, Diplomatic Suites, Fast Targeting Systems

So it seems that our ship is combat leaning, but has diplomatic suites??? Shoot the enemy a bunch and then invite them over for a party.

One of the last things before I begin the actual adventure is what rank and department is our intrepid hero, Robert Hentzau, currently hold on board the U.S.S. Victoria? My character does not have to be Captain, he could be one of any other officers on board the ship. Options are:

Captain
XO
Operations Manager
Helmsman
Chief Engineer
Chief of Security
Chief Medical Officer
Science Officer
Ship's Counselor
Communications Officer

Rank, I'm going to assume that he is at least a Lieutenant, if not a minimum of Lieutentant Commander.

So what say you, gentle readers? Where to you see Bob? In the center seat, or one of the other officer positions?

Geology, diagnostics, terraforming, inspiration, phasors...
Medicine, science...

Assuming he stuck with positions that played to his strengths, I'm going with Science Officer.

Think I've landed on a name...the U.S.S. Victoria. Doesn't appear to be taken anywhere, and I like the ring of it.

Not outside the video games, anyway.

Isgrimnur wrote:Not outside the video games, anyway.

Yeah, I do have limits around how deep I’m going to dive on this…