Star Trek General - /stg/

I need ideas for adventures on a starship, going through the final frontier.

Rolled 4 (1d6)

>Rolled 5
>Artistic and Creative
I don't really get it. Maybe 47 went to one of those faggy arts-based high schools or something.
You character can either accept or reject their upbringing. This affects stats, so it matters. I rolled a die, and it turns out 47 appreciates going to art school. I guess she mostly drew laser guns or something - maybe a tomboy? Anyways, that gives us +1 INS and +2 PRE. We also get +1 to COM, ENG, or SCI; die says +1 ENG.
We get a Focus now, which is kinda freeform, but will increase our chances of success in certain situations, depending on the GM. Since apparently 47 is artsy, let's go with Art History.
Now to get another Talent. Rolling more dice gets us Collaboration (Engineering) - whenever an ally does a Task that involves Engineering, we can use 1 Momentum to allow them to use our ENG score, and one of our focuses (hope that Art History class can help someone fix a spaceship!). Current stats:
CON-7 FIT-7 PRE-10 DAR-9 INS-9 REA-7
Disciplines:
COM-1 SEC-2 SCI-1 CONN-1 ENG-2 MED-1
Up next is Starfleet Academy! Well get another Value, another Talent, and three more Focuses, along with stats and stuff. Here we get to find out if we're a red shirt, a gold shirt, or a blue shirt, by rolling 1d6.

I swear I've come across a random generator for this that was actually pretty decent...

Best I've got without it is to just post leading images.

>Rolled 4
>Operations Track
Gold shirt it is. That fits with the stats so far, but that's just a coincidence.
Next we choose Security or Engineering as our Major (the Academy is a school, after all), and two minors (everyone at the Academy is the best of the best of the best, so we can handle it). 47 thinks Lazors are kewl, so either Security or Engineering works, and the present stats don't lean one way or the other, so it's another roll of the (physical) dice: Engineering it is. Science and Conn will be the minors. That's +2 to ENG, and +1 to both SCI and CONN.
We get three Attribute points, to be distributed to either 2 or 3 Attributes (so we can't go +3 to one). We're going to go with 2, with +2 to REA and +1 to INS.
We get three Focuses. At least one should related to goldshirting. Because lasers are cool, we have to choose Shipboard Tactical Systems, that's a given. Hand Phasers too. And...let's just go EPS to keep them lazors going.
Now we need another Value. Since we're engineering, and fond of lasers, let's pick something along those lines. "Well-maintained systems always work when needed."
And another Talent, this time chosen (randomly) from the Engineering Talents list: Jury-Rig. This reduces the difficulty of Engineering repair Tasks by 2, but only lasts for one Scene. Jury-rigged things have a difficulty increase of 1 to their repair.
To update the Stats:
CON-7 FIT-7 PRE-10 DAR-9 INS-10 REA-8
Disciplines:
COM-1 SEC-2 SCI-2 CONN-2 ENG-4 MED-1
Next: Career thus far! We won't be rolling for this one, as the default Experienced Officer is the most fun. This gives us another Talent and Value. Value we're going with "If it can be fixed, it ain't broke." Our new Talent is Testing a Theory: when doing a SCI or ENG Task, you can roll another d20 as long as you succeeded in a Task in the same field earlier in the same adventure.
Next: Career Events. We're going to roll 3d20 to see what's happened to 47 so far.

Rolled 12, 5, 14 = 31 (3d20)

Uh, let's roll that again.

Thanks man, inspiration is tough.

Yeah.

I'll try and post things. I tend to work at ideas in a very mechanical way of 'if [X], then what'? but it works best when bouncing off of someone else.
Like this image here: Why is the ship there? Was it called, sent or was it a pure random discovery during something else? How long has this thing been in this state?
What other concerns might the ship have, like is it the usual oh noes gotta transport this vaccine/diplomat/cargo of essential dildos adding extra drama through a time limit?
What about other time limits, like is there a serious danger that's going to be triggered by the ship being there, or is already present even and they don't know they're in the shit already?
What if there's a people problem with it? Is it inhabited by somebody, or things? Why? Are they in trouble? Should they even be there in the first place? Do they need evicting or protecting from something/someone?

>Rolled 12, 5, 14
>Betrayed Ideals for A Superior
>Required to Take Command
>New Battle Strategy
47 had a hard life, I guess.That gives us +2 DAR, +2 COM, +1 PRE, +1 SEC. However, since we can't gain more than two each of Discipline and Attributes, we'll put it down to +1 DAR. +1 PRE, +1 COM, and +1 SEC.
We also get two Focuses from these events. Let's go with Inspiration and Hazard Awareness.
Now we're at the last step (Finishing Touches). First, we gain one last Value. One value has to be about a relationship - to a person, ship, organization, etc. Since we haven't done one like that yet, we've got to go that way. "Follow the chain of command" - that relates 47 to Starfleet, and can probably be connected to those career events.
Next, we clean up our stats. For Attributes, none can be above 12, and only one can hit 12. We're good there, and now can give two more Attributes +1: +1 CON, +1 FIT. For Disciplines, they can't go above 5, and only one can be 5. We're good there too, and get to again give 2x1: +1 COM and +1 MED
For final stats, if I've got everything right:
CON-8 FIT-8 PRE-11 DAR-10 INS-10 REA-9
Disciplines:
COM-3 SEC-3 SCI-2 CONN-2 ENG-4 MED-2
Just some more little details left.
Stress: FIT+SEC+3 (from Resolute) = 14
Department: Engineering
Rank: Lt.
Assignment: USS Nietzche's Ghost (random ship name generator)
Equipment: Communicator, Uniform, Phaser Type-1, Tricorder, Tool Kit
And that's it.

Goddamn that's a cool image. Now you've got me imagining taking an Excelsior, Ambassador, or Phalanx on a deep space exploration mission and finding the border outpost of an advanced but extinct empire.

And here's the finished char sheet.
The end.

...

...

Nice, seems easy enough.

Trying another one:

Your ship arrives at the scene (again: called or expected?) and runs right into the debris of two other star fleet vessels. What the fuck happened?
Are there survivors? How long have they been like this? Is whatever caused this still around? Was it another ship or ships? or something grounded? Some bigass space monster? Can you stop it? Why did this happen? Did the ships provoke it, even unknowingly? What were they up to here in the first place?
Can it be prevented from happening again to character ship? What circumstances might lead to that such as fightan, science! or diplomancy?

Aesthetically speaking, Oberth is my favorite Star Trek ship. Though I'm also a fan of Miranda

>Graceful, elegant design
>Minimal cross section
>Crew and families shielded by nacelles during combat
>Implying warp engines cause cancer, not the (heavily shielded) impulse engines

Oberth is nice, but the Miranda is second only to the Akira. Gorgeous ships.

The reason for nacelles being separate from the ship is because of radiation issues. That said, it can easily be handwaved by saying the radiation is proportionate to the size and power of the warp core, so something relatively small like an Oberth can get away with mounted nacelles as long as they have radiation shielding.

The reason for nacelles being so far apart is Kirk's Enterprise being a flying saucer with a fork stuck in it.

Yeah but I mean the in-universe explanation.

That's a matter of warp field efficiency. It's why the Excelsior is still the USS Speedy Gonzalez a hundred fucking years after introduction and why the Intrepid is a swing wing. The Defiant sucks nuts at efficiency but just goes ADD MORE POWER XDDDDDD and overcomes it in the name of armoring up.

look at that slut just waltzing through this bad sector with her huge gaping hole hanging loose

This nigger arm of the galaxy has more bad sectors than a Seagate hard drive.

Yeah, even by starfleet standards a survey ship is likely to be out for quite some time. Before Holodecks were invented, they likely needed rather a lot of space for stuff like that to help keep people sane over the course of a few years on a ship.

You'd go stir crazy without a large open area or two.

or at least some pussy. ENT notwithstanding I asume Orion girls were getting deep dicked by Starfleet boys for centuries.

...

Not many ships would come across Orions. More likely the crew were casually encouraged to fuck each other.

What would you say is the best Trek RPG module?

While I can't say there's a specific best, the FASA modules are consistently engaging, and give a solid setup for each mission plus a number of alternate options for running those modules if you don't want to be Starfleet, or if you're part of SIC. The only shame is that FASA had fuck all for ship designer quality, so the ships are consistently goofy as fuck, and it's verrry 80s.

>Waste of trips
Why Ensign user, why?

Decision at Midnight. Starts off as just a bunch of new recruits just getting on ship and leads to the removal of the ship's captain after nearly starting a war with the Klingons

so the plot to Discovery, then?

From what I can guess, sure.

I prefer Return to Axanar or A Doomsday Like Any Other, but that one is pretty good too.

>tfw no John M. Ford adventures like Paranoia

What's the premise on those 2?

Return to Axanar deals with the Klingons on the titular planet, and the borderline illegal efforts the captain of the party's ship goes to in an effort to prevent the Klingons from using the Federation world as a base. This starts off where a specialist insists the planet is being used as a base, and dragging the Captain to the world, then crewmembers getting brainwashed into being Klingon Manchurian Candidates, and ending up where the party's ship is being hunted towards the Federation border by a Starfleet task force, while the Klingons are waiting for the party at the border.

A Doomsday Like Any Other is about another Doomsday Machine appearing on a collision course to a neutral planet that's dealing with the Romulans and Feddies, with the players tasked with destroying it. The Romulans want to capture the Machine for their own devices, and a third party who somehow manages to control the Machine. Notably the book recommends the smallest ship other than the Chandley the adventure is built for to be a Constitution class.

Guys I think my star trek image folder may be growing too large... it's at 737 images now and it's nearly all ships.

But people keep making more images.

What is that, a 2360s refit of an Excelsior bridge?

Looks like it. Pretty vomit inducing, IMO. The Excelsior should be in blues and grays.

>NX-01 bridge looks like a space shuttle.
>TOS bridge looks like a naval CIC from the 60s
>Movie bridge looks like a Scientology tech facility.
>TNG bridge looks like an IKEA living room
>JJ bridge looks like an Apple store.

Here you go:

The whole TNG design era was crap. The early 2300s were the best thing until the Dominion War and TNG movies era.

The Movie bridge was quite nice though. It felt like the TOS bridge while being acceptably different.

Nope, conjectural design for launch in 2360 as an Excelsior replacement, with the note that production was stopped (pending upgrades) in favour of much heavier armed ships.

It's grown on me a little over the years but overall yeah, got a lot of niggling problems.

Movie era bridge never really felt like a living workspace in the way the original did for me, until they hit the -A. Even the repaint for WoK to make it 'warmer' didn't do it much good.

Still prefer JMF's Klingons to the official version.

>A Doomsday Like Any Other is about another Doomsday Machine appearing on a collision course to a neutral planet that's dealing with the Romulans and Feddies, with the players tasked with destroying it. The Romulans want to capture the Machine for their own devices, and a third party who somehow manages to control the Machine.

Did Star Trek Online shamelessly rip off that storyline?

...

In terms of design it was pretty awful (half the stations don't even have chairs, and the multiple levels are easy to get thrown from to break your neck like the original helmsman did) but Voyager's bridge aesthetic was pretty nice IMO. Sufficiently Trek-y without looking like a budget cruise liner. Best engineering set in the entire franchise, too, mostly thanks to the warp core and the open space.

I actually liked the NX-01's engineering second best. It was cramped and primitive, but it was supposed to be, and the warp core was believable as a bridge between modern tech and the glowy columns of the later ships.

I kinda throught the NX's engineering one of the weaker parts of its set, but the overall interior was pretty nice since I'm a slut for not!military designs it's still damn good

I wonder how long Sovereign-kun will last. Will she be a Galaxy or an Excelsior?

Wut?

Service life, time before role-replacement, etc.

Probably an Excelsior. The Galaxy should never have been pressed into frontline flagship duty. If it had been limited to its intended role of super long term long range missions and functioning as a mobile starbase, it would have been fine, but some asshole had to name one of them Enterprise. The Enterprise has been a cruiser class since the NX-01, so the Galaxy class got shoehorned into a role for which it was never meant. If they go back to that, and upgrade all the Dominion War Galaxy hulls to tri-nacelle battleship configuration (All Good Things future, STO Galaxy-X), then it will have a role as a slower heavy hitter. The Sovereign's warp geometry and more modern power systems make it a better fit for QSD so it's going to take the front line and medium term explorer roles.

I kinda wish the NX-01 had had a Nostromo-style bridge. Everything cramped and jammed together, with everything being multi-function and shit. Monitors jammed everywhere.

I mean, by Trek standards, it was positively claustrophobic, but I get what you mean

I’ve been reading through Adventures and I’m thinking of running a game set in the western edge of the Alpha Quadrant, around 242X, ignoring most of STO and JJ’s Trek.

So far I’ve got;
>Following the Dominion War the Cardassian Union relies heavily on Federation aid and protection from internal and external threats. The CU eventually becomes something of a satellite state reliant upon the Federation, which causes some resentment in the Cardassian population.
>Bajor finally becomes a member of the Federation.
>It becomes easier (and more popular) for citizens of the Klingon Empire to enter Starfleet as the hard border softens.
>The Romulan Senate caves in to the Vulcan reunification movement. The Neutral Zone remains, but the traditionally hostile relationship between the UFP and RSE cools.
>Early 2400s, Tholians across the Alpha Quadrant quit their postings and withdraw into Assembly space. A few weeks later, all listening posts on the edge of Tholian space go quiet.
>Vessels from the UFP, KE, RSE and CU sent to investigate discover nothing. No ships, no starbases, no signs of civilizations. Its as if everything has been methodically stripped away. Detailed scientific surveys turn up even less, leaving the disappearance an unsolved mystery.
>After a decade of the major powers of the α&β quadrant restricting travel into the area and maintaining a strong force along the border (mostly Klingon and Starfleet), the Cardassian Union beings illegal expansion and colonization of temperate worlds the Tholians neglected.
>The game revolves around an understaffed Starbase on the edge of this new frontier, as the CU, KS and UFP grab up star systems. The players alternate between their ship (not yet decided) and the port.

Probably. Wouldn't be the first time they've adapted other Trek fiction, not even the first time they've used FASA stuff (the Klingon CBC's are clearly inspired by the SFB abominations). But it's not like it's a terribly complex original idea either.

that actually seems kinda neat but is it going to focus on just the everyday colonization or is it going to be a big mystery puzzle solving theme with trying to figure out where the Tholians went?

I think it’ll mostly be about the day-to-day struggles with the crew, then move onto solving the mystery. Start out with the players just getting to grips with the area, occasionally dealing with Orion Syndicate pirates or breaking up fights between the Klingons and the Cardassians, or dealing with Colonists squabbling with each other. Then it’ll probably move onto problems with the Breen and the Tzenkethi carving out little kingdoms of their own.

All the while, little clues can be pieced together until finally the truth is revealed.

What’s a good, small ship of less than 50 people, with a multipurpose role? And does anyone have some good art for Starbases?

>less than 50 people
>multipurpose
Stolen Klingon B'Rel BoP like in STIII or an illegally upgunned and up engined Nova.

>What’s a good, small ship of less than 50 people, with a multipurpose role?
Any ship with a modular mission pod, like the Oberth or a smaller Nebula or Akira. The starbase can have various mission pods on standby and the players can decide which pods they want to bring for any given mission and how they want to load it up. The main problem is crew size; even an Akira is supposed to have a compliment of around 500 officers and crew and that's not including any extra it'd get if equipped with a carrier pod. Ships small enough to have a compliment of only 50 would typically not be capable of fulfilling a multipurpose role. Your best bet would be redesigning an Oberth to have late 24th century parts.

For that far ahead of the regular timeline you're probably best off coming up with your own ship. It's what, 40ish years after the end of Voyager?

What about that scout ship Data had in Insurrection? It was a terrible movie but that starship always fascinated me. It's probably the closest thing in Starfleet to the classic scifi hero ship size, like the Millennium Falcon or Serenity.

It's a glorified Runabout. That'd be something that would be attached to the main ship, not the main ship itself. Note Data in the cockpit. It's supposed to only need one guy flying it with maybe three or four more in the back.

If you want something like that then it'd be best to have all the characters be junior officers part of a larger crew, given assignments by the captain and/or XO, rather than be captain and bridge officers.

Honestly, I could kinda imagine some of the more useful and reliable late-TNG-era ships (like the Nebbie) could've been kept around for their sheer usefulness, while becoming increasingly automated with the advances of technology as time goes on. Something like the fanon idea that the Mirandas fighting in the Dominion War were old mothballed ships upgunned, given a skeleton crew, and sent to the front line. I can't imagine 50 people being able to handle a Nebbie, but something like a Nova, Intrepid, or even a Centaur-class being relatively workable.

I only just noticed but it's engines are very Defiant style.

A slightly automated, modified and well armed Intrepid might be the best choice. The Intrepid Class is probably on its way out, so unless the players get too attached they can upgrade to something more modern later on. Or just swap components for newer parts.

That said, what should I avoid when making new ships for a more modern Starfleet? Or even the Cardassian Union, Klingon Empire or Romulan Star Empire?

Avoid kitbashing. Make your own design with the basic Starfleet layout, and then a smaller variant with downward nacelles. Keep the Excelsior and Nebula around.

>That said, what should I avoid when making new ships for a more modern Starfleet?
Anything that looks like Mass Effect mashed up with an Apple store i.e. pretty much all of Cryptic's 25th century Starfleet designs.

>Or even the Cardassian Union, Klingon Empire or Romulan Star Empire?
Cardassians are hard to pin down since they have so few ships shown, but I'd try to just go with what's already been established. For the Klingons, design a ship based around functionality with as few extra parts and absolutely no "let's put irrelevant jaggies on the hull to look intimidating." Klingon ships can be huge, but only if that hugeness serves a purpose, like acting as a massive carrier or being a flying wave motion gun attached to engines. For Romulans, just design the ships to look vaguely bird-like.

>What’s a good, small ship of less than 50 people, with a multipurpose role?
In Beta canon the Saber is just that ship. In TNG there are Mirandas with 30, so any most any ship of similar size would probably work.

>recommending Cryptic's designs

He asked what should be AVOIDED and user above said cryptics design.

Imo, their tier 5 ship designs were cool.

That's exactly what should be avoided. It looks like nothing that would fit with Starfleet, even 25th century Starfleet. Even the Ent-J, as much of a vomit-inducing abomination as it is (though the interior looked nice), at least looks like a Starfleet ship.

From the thumbnail I thought this was the Normandy

Ok, colour me completely fucking illiterate. Still, I'm relatively lenient on Cryptic's designs (apart from any of the Temporal stuff), but it's still very hit-and-miss - mostly miss. I really like the Sovvie and Saber variants, and the 23c ships range from "not bad" to "i just came a little"; but almost all of the steel donuts at T5 in particular are ridiculously cancerous.

That's not a normandy, now THIS is a normandy!

I could understand your hatred of Tier 6 ships which all look horrible (well, except maybe the command cruiser variants), but that you also hate on tier 5 designs, like come on.

Some things I've noticed in my trawling around deviantart for trek pics:

Most exploration-looking pics are TOS or TMP era, mostly TOS. There's not that much of the Enterprise D, and really fuck all of Voyager. I've seen way more star fleet museum stuff than Voyager. DS9 turns up a lot as a location for ships rather than the focus but the Defiant is fairly popular, more than Voyager.

Enterprise gets a surprising amount of attention, especially the refit and associated ships of the era. The Archer class is really popular, especially for pics of it coming across weird shit.

Though really a spreadsheet would be needed to confirm or fail my observations for sure.

The lack of Voyager is pretty interesting though, given all the actually kinda neat shit it ran into at times. I wonder if the TOS era and exploration looking pics is a lot down to how TNG was a lot more of the ship flying around problem solving rather than exploring, comparatively? DS9 got in a bunch of exploration of places and weird shit stories but no-where near as much as Voyager, but I've seen more pics of Akira's doing exploration stuff than Voyager, and that's a damn warship.

And somehow it took me this long to run into image related here.

>Star Cruisers
>Patrol Escort
>Luna variants that are literally just the luna class but slightly melted
>fucking Deep Space Science Shoes
>Destroyer
>Destroyer: REEEEE VOTH GET OUT OF MY SPHERE edition
>Destroyer: Timecop Edition
>Wells and the other Timecop ship I can't remember

Literally the only good things at T5 are:
>Sovvies (all sexy)
>Prommies (so long as you kitbash to make it as pointy as possible)
>D'Kyr
>Mirror (x) that you can buy off the exchange instead of sinking your life into fleet projects for

I'd wager that it's because (most) VOY fans are filthy casuls. The way the complete ban on serialisation made it more accessible also made it harder to really get attached to, which means you don't end up caring enough about the series to make your own shit (I expect that the web would be similarly devoid of VOY fanfiction excluding Seven x Literally Everyone compared to the other series).

There was never really enough weight to the characterisation of any of the normally functioning characters i.e. everyone but Seven, the Doctor, and Tuvok, who coincidentally are the only decently fleshed out characters on the show to care about them a lot, and as a result they're not really distinct enough to be "worthy" of fanstuff.

tl;dr: It's easier to get into VOY, but it's harder to get into Trek via VOY, and it's nigh-impossible to get the level of autism required for fanworks via VOY.

I just put 'voyager' into the search and the first image I recognised as a star trek voyager one was a mostly nude low quality render of 7 of 9 with weird blue shit. 5th image.

'star trek voyager' took a surprising time to get to an image of Voyager, again more low quality 7 of 9 pics first.

Yep, pretty much what I expected.

>it looks like nothing that would fit with Starfleet
>literally just a fatter Akira with more black
You're pretty delusional. "Starfleet" isn't just the basic saucer-neck-secondary hull-nacelles on long pylons, and hasn't been since the 80's. Cryptic (mostly) manages to stick with the Trek feel, especially since 2012. Not everything is a hit, to be sure, but they generally so a pretty good job adapting the canon designs, and canon-like designs, to the game.
Now, you might not like that general Trek aesthetic, but that's your problem, not Cryptic's.

Yep.

not him, but see the first half of .

The Armitage is basically "what would the Akira look like if Bioware shat it out?" and the same applies to other T6 versions of canon ships.

>Enterprise gets a surprising amount of attention, especially the refit and associated ships of the era
I think the ENT art style translates well to fan art, since it was designed from the get-go for HD CGI. The TNG-VOY ships were models made to be filmed, meaning they were made once, and to very high detail generally, which doesn't translate well to fan-art-level of CGI. TOS-style is low-detail for low-quality film, which also doesn't translate well to fan-art-level CGI, as it looks cartoony usually. (It can look good - see ENT - but most fan artists don't have the skill or tools to pull it off.)

>muh black-and-white
>implying that's not aesthetic af
Literally the only similarity.

For TOS stuff you've got to be good at the lighting in the image. If it looks flat, it's fucked, because model detail will not make up for it.

NCC-1707?

...

What the fuck is this thing?

TOS Hermes-class scout (maybe a Saladin-class destroyer?)