Star Trek: Excalibur, S01E03

Ship’s Log, August 3rd, 2154.

The Excalibur has returned us back to our original position prior to our little trip through the spatial rift.  We have resumed course to explore the unknown space before us, and have run smack dab into an Andorian patrol.

The Andorians have not acknowledged our hails and appear to have their weapons trained on the Excalibur.

Commander Saguisag orders the hull polarized and to continue hailing the Andorians.

“Charge cannons?”

“No, let’s keep a defensive posture for now.”

The gambit worked, the Andorians do not fire on the Excalibur.  The Andorian ships power down their weapons.

“We’re being hailed by the lead ship.”

“On screen.”

A male Andorian appears.

“I am Captain Shabaav of the Andorian Empire.”

“Commander Saguisag, Starfleet.  What’s your business here, Captain?”

The Andorian captain furrows his brow.

“You should have received a transmission from your superiors, Commander.”

At that very moment, the communications officer reports a message from Earth, recalling Lt. Commander Riordan back to Earth while the Andorians transfer a member of their race to join the Excalibur crew as an observer and first officer.  This crew change is meant to strengthen relations between Earth and the Andorian Empire.

The message is checked and double checked for authenticity, while the Columbia NX-02 arrives to bring Riordan back to Earth.

As Riordan was a popular shipmate aboard Excalibur, some of the crew are not happy with him leaving, nor the idea of an Andorian taking his place.

A goodbye party/welcome ceremony is held aboard Columbia, where Excalibur‘s new XO, Threvak, is introduced.  He seems less aggressive than the typical Andorians we’ve encountered in Star Trek.

The Andorian and Earth ship crews say their goodbyes, the Andorians go back to their patrol route, Columbia heads back to Earth, and Excalibur continues on her mission of exploration.

“Ready to resume our mission?”

Looking around the bridge, Commander Saguisag gets nods from his crew.

“Let’s Go!”

And the ship goes into warp.

[end credits]

Far too long between these sessions, and this wasn’t even a proper session, just an exercise inmoving the plot along.

I wanted to go back to having an Andorian aboard that I had originally rolled up for this crew, oh so many months ago.

I hoping to find the time to expand this campaign, either through actual play or through just simple writing, even if it looks like an outline more than an actual story.

And yes, “Let’s Go!” is Commander Saguisag’s “Engage!” or “Hit it!” or “I would like the ship to go.  Now.”

Beginnings Revisited

Star Trek Adventures has a new sourcebook, The 23rd Century Campaign Guide, and per usual, they included a new career path option:

NOW I can recreate my original FASA Trek trader captain, Mackenzie Decker, if I so choose.

I’m actually thinking of having Decker as an NPC, and maybe pull a nuBSG and do a gender swap on Mackenzie Decker?

File:Big Wow 2013 - Indiana Jones (8845876192).jpg

I’ve met this cosplayer, Abby Darkstar, and her partner, Keith Zen, both are really nice people.

Anyways.

Decisions, decisions.

Beginnings

The first character that I created in the old FASA Star Trek RPG was Mackenzie Decker, son of Matt Decker, brother of Will Decker.  He was ex-Starfleet,  resigning his commission after the disappearance of Will Decker after the V’Ger incident.  He became an independent freighter captain, and was known by his leather jacket and whip, looking much like Jake Cutter from Tales of the Gold Monkey but without the hat, and Indiana Jones without the fedora.

In the new Star Trek Adventures Exploration Guide, there are two new character creation options, Outpost Scientist (ex: David Marcus) and…

Independent Archaeologist (ex: Vash)

I’m not sure I’ll recreate Mac Decker as this new character option, or just make a new Indy-type character.  One of the example Values listed is ‘These artifacts belong in a museum!’ and one of the new Talents listed is ‘Make Your Own Luck’.

Steam コミュニティ :: ガイド :: Indiana Jones and the Great Circle • Achievement Guide

Don’t touch that dial!

Wait a minute….

I’m thinking too big.

I’m thinking that Solo RPGs should be this big grand adventure similar to what happens when a group gets together.

It shouldn’t be that at all.

It *can* be, but I may have to work my way up to that.

I have ideas all the time of what should happen next, but I don’t have to set up the whole game on my tabletop in order to run with it.

It’s about the journey and what happens next, no matter how big or small or whether or not dice are rolled.

It’s story telling.  I’m trying to tell a story.  And I should not let the tools hamper me, they should help or enhance the experience.

So, as I had noted back in November, the Excalibur had run into an Andorian blockade, with hails being ignored and weapons being trained on the ship.

Commander Saguisag orders the shields raised hull polarized and to continue hailing the Andorians.

“Charge cannons?”

“No, let’s keep a defensive posture for now.”

The gambit worked, the Andorians do not fire on the Excalibur.

“We’re being hailed by the lead ship.”

“On screen.”

See?  Was that so hard?  I can do this, I just need to adapt my playstyle to something simpler.

DON’T TOUCH THAT MF DIAL!

Meanwhile, in the Solo RPG world…

I’ve decided to put Star Trek: Excalibur on hiatus, for the simple reason that I’m not as well versed as I think I need to be in Enterprise-era lore to create a compelling story that I’d be interested in playing.

Instead, I’ll take a look at the other ship/captain combos that I’ve made and see if any of those pique my interest.

Don’t touch that dial!

Upcoming and Incoming

I seriously think I have too many options for gaming, resulting in executive indecision.

I’m reading up on that and may ask my doctor about it during my next annual visit.

In the meantime, I hope to finally get around to playing something more consistently in the next few weeks.

I’ve neglected all of the solo RPGs as I’ve been hopping around reading up different systems, when I should just focus on continuing the adventures of the Excalibur.

– – –

Meanwhile, I’ve been preparing for a couple of games that should be arriving in the next month or so, both from Firelock Games.

Oak and Iron is a tabletop naval game in the age of sail.  They have a second edition coming out soon, so I decided to pick this one up since I finally watched Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World.  Ships are in 1:600 scale, and I found a few on MyMiniFactory that I’d like to have included in my games, including the HMS Surprise from the aforementioned M&C movie, and the USS Enterprise , from the late 18th century.

The core set comes with 6 smaller ships, but I did pick up a couple of expansions which contain much larger ships, including 1st/2nd/3rd rate Ships of the Line.

There was a Kickstarter for this last summer, which I backed.

This is basically a smaller scale skirmish version of Blood and Plunder from Firelock, based in the Jamaican city of Port Royal after the earthquake in 1692.

The miniature count for squads average about 6 models, and while I already have models for English, Spanish, Native Americans, and pirates, the core set contains15 models that will represent the French, and I included an add-on of the new Native American set with multi-pose plastic models that I will build as a Maroon (escaped African slaves) faction.

– – –

And of course, I have my sports games to play, but that’s another story.

Stand by!

YouTube

I have to admit that I don’t know why it took me so long to use YouTube the way I have over the past few weeks.

In that time I’ve gotten a better (full) understanding of the basic game mechanics of at least 3 4 different RPG systems that I’ve owned for more than a few years, but never sat down to really learn any of them.

  • Star Trek Adventures
  • Dragonbane
  • Savage Worlds Adventure Edition
  • edit: Marvel Multiverse Role-Playing Game

And other video tutorials are enticing me to learn more about still others.

Heck, I may finally learn how to play GURPS.

Stand by!

Q’apla?

That’s hillarious:

I was thinking that one of my miscellaneous characters for Star Trek Adventures Captain’s Log should be a Klingon, so I started looking into acquiring the Klingon Core Rulebook from Modiphius.

Amazon has the deluxe edition for about $50.

Modiphius has it on sale for $60.

DriveThruRPG has it digitally for $20.

I go to the page for the item on DTRPG and:

Yeah, I’m an idiot.

Online Resources

All this time I never used one of the biggest resources for learning that was right under my nose.

YouTube.

Case in point: for years I never could wrap my head around Modiphius’ 2D20 system, even though I’d read it and kinda maybe got the gist of it.

Star Trek Adventures 2nd Edition appears to have stripped things down a bit, from what I’ve heard from YOUTUBE videos, and right here is a video that I found that explains the basics of the system better than any other resource I’ve found online.

He also goes into character creation:

While this is great for when/if I finally delve into this system, maaaaaaybe with my gaming group (hint hint nudge nudge), I’ve decided to start looking up some videos explaining how to play the Captain’s Log Solo version of STA.

Wish me luck with this.

Don’t touch that dial!