Star Trek Adventures: Into the Junkiverse

[Mothra]

@iguferon and I have been playing a whole bunch of Star Trek Online recently and now that we’ve mined out that dilithium deposit like a Horta out of Grethor, we’re turning our antennae to the underwhelming but sufficent Star Trek Adventures ttrpg system.

I’ll be running a campaign in the next month or so, and any and all are welcome if you’d like to take a swing at it. DM me for the book and the discord link. I’d also suggest this website to build your character - select “2nd Edition”, then select “Select All” for all books. Then select the era your character is from. I suspect, for example, that if you want to play a Denobulan, you’d have to select 22nd Century to get that option.

It is a very drop-in drop-out kind of game, so there is little commitment necessary.

We are playing the newer 2e module. No restriction on species, era of Trek, backstory or job. You do not even need to be in Starfleet. You may have many characters. For example, one character is a cook, the other is a redshirt, the other is a science officer.

Generalities on the STA System

The system is an extremely simple 2d20 situation, where you are given a challenge rating of, say 2 or 3, and you must get that number of successes by rolling under the total of the two skills you’re using to solve the problem. For example, you want to pilot through an ion storm, it is difficulty 2, you add up your relevant Attribute (Daring) and your relevant Discipline (Piloting), get a number, and then roll 2d20. If you get 2 under that number, you have two successes. If you get one success and one failure, I get to add a complication, and so forth.

The scenario will take place in Elysia, a junkyard void realm accessed through The Delta Triangle, as seen in the hit Animated Series episode The Time Trap.

We’re all stuck in Elysia, which you end up in by falling into the Delta Triangle (or by other means). This is sort of a starship graveyard situation where people don’t age, violence is generally forbidden, and order exists thanks to the Elysian Council, formed from all the various species that have become stranded here over the centuries.

More Scenario Details

Our general mission would be to maybe free the people within Elysia, since the Enterprise was able to get out once. I can imagine missions being things like exploring derelicts in Elysia, or using the Enterprise’s method to make runs into the prime universe to get supplies or energy or whatever we need inside the triangle. I would just imagine the derelict expanse and the council in this station to be “home base”, from which we do shit.

This would also mean we’d work with various species, various governments, whatever ships we want from whatever race, since we’re all essentially “Elysians” first and foremost, before being Starfleet or Empire or whatever.

Because of the out-of-time, out-of-space nature of Elysia, you can be from any era, with any backstory. You will be expected to do missions and tasks from the Council, for the benefit of everyone in the void.

I think we’d have a session zero to throw around some ideas and commit to them, then introduce our characters, and then do a little adventure.

Days available for me are as follows:

• Tuesdays after 7:30pm est
• Wednesdays around 6pm est till 9pm est
• Fridays whenever

Who’s interested?

[daphaknee]

I got two characters thought up now

[iguferon]

I’m an Andorian juggler.

[daphaknee]

im a gossipy bullion (veronica says its 'bullyin") hairdresser

and i wanted to be a security officer thats what if girabaldi cared about the same problematic things tasha yar did and liked aeon flux instead of looney tunes

[Tulpa]

Put me in

I’m gonna play some stupid bullshit

[Mothra]

Looks like Wednesday works best, I think we’ll start with 6pm est - 9pm est and adjust from there as we go.

December’s looking quite busy so it’s looking like we may have session zero on January 7th. I’ll put up an event in the channel.

[gary]

I’ll join! I can come up with a character by then

[Mothra]

Reminder that session zero for this campaign is this Wednesday, January 7th, at 6pm est. See ya there!

We’ll talk through our characters, tweak the starting scenario a bit, and throw around a few ideas. This will be partly what kind of ship or station or whatever we might zoom around in, what the nature of Elysian culture is, and what kind of things you would all know from living here for a time.

[Mothra]

Hm… the west coast vs east coast time zone business complicates things a bit.

I talked it through with iguferon and Daphny and we’re going to go with every-other Monday, 6pm pst - 9pm pst Update: We’ve now settled on every-other Wednesdays, 3pm pst - 6pm pst, see the post after the new poll.

I’ll be on vaca in Virginia in the middle of this month the next session will be January 26th. I’ll update the event in the Discord accordingly.

Sorry if the time doesn’t work for anyone, it’s a bit tough juggling schedules sometimes across this fine nation of ours and beyond (Canada).

[tacotaskforce]

That’ll work for me for the foreseeable future.

[Tulpa]

Ah, I can’t do mondays at all

[Mothra]

Looks like we can move things around a little.

Can you guys vote on which time/day is better? You can vote multiple options.

• Mondays, 6pm pst - 9pm pst (9pm est - midnight)
• Wednesdays, 3pm pst - 6pm pst (6pm est - 9pm est)

[Mothra]

Nice! Alrighty, we’re on for Wednesdays, 3pm pst - 6pm pst! Thanks all for the flexibility.

I have adjusted the event in the play channel accordingly.

[Mothra]

ST: Junkiverse, S1E1, “Boned”

Summoned by the Elysian Council, the gang was assembled for their varying talents to investigate a strange biological entity that had consumed a pirate ship, and taken the crew of a D7, later retrieved by the U.S.S. Bonaventure. Using that same repurposed D7, the crew traveled to “The Dagger”:

…burrowed through its bone, hacked a door, and slew several aggressive bugazoids. After Conan cleaved through the body, they found the skeletal remnants of a TOS terran - a known pirate group - seemingly twisted into this form. They then fought their way to Engineering, where they discovered The Heart, a Vohrsoth who had merged with the warp core, consuming the “biomatter” of various bodies to fuel itself.

Conan (@Tulpa) was able to intimidate her into a dialogue, where the crew successfully brokered an alliance. The Heart will lend her bio-talents towards the Elysian society in exchange for assisting her in finding her species creators, known only as “The Ancient Ones.” Evidently she has been searching for them, as they had fulfilled their genetic purpose yet never been contacted. She has followed their trail into the Delta Triangle.

Elysia will provide biomatter in the form of Star Trek barrels of piss and plants from Cedric and Councilmember Phil’s Phylosian biodome.

Notable Moments:

• Bog Yarzon (@daphaknee) conjuring a hare-brained plan to burrow through the bone by using a balloon of zinc to cause arthritis, which was then time-accelerated with Krenem technology to make a porous section which Conan was able to cleave through.

• Joe Miracle (@iguferon) clearing the debris off of the Engineering panel to discover a warp core breach in-progress, resolved by capping the antimatter injector until repairs could be made.

• Rampant targs will be kept on-board and penned in a cargo bay that will house the botany food-production lab, dubbed the “Botany Bay.”

• A test of the transporter on the Don Targ resulted in it appearing with two heads (where did this matter come from? Needs investigating), then exploding in a blast of viscera. Joe has roped off the transporter until it can be un-fucked.

• The Kid (@tacotaskforce), a self-professed ace pilot, immediately fucking up the piloting of the Vagrant. This galaxy is full of such wonders, such terrors, such teeny little indignities…

• Joe and Bog working together to assemble a delivery vehicle for the zinc balloon on a torpedo, attaching little clampy arms that whapped the balloon on impact, bursting it.

• Conan tearing off a bugazoid scythe-arm and gutting it with said arm.

If I’ve missed any, please add them below.

[iguferon]

conan blew me away with how good he was at diplomacy

[tacotaskforce]

I feel like you are underplaying the sequence of events where, literal seconds after setting foot on our new starship, we discovered it was about to explode. I am in love with how every single function of the ship we have attempted to use so far has not worked.

[Mothra]

I have made a little map of the known places in Elysia, just for reference. We can add stuff to this as we go:

[Mothra]

Mmm this one ended up being a lot more railroady and breathless than I’d prefer, thanks for bearing with me y’all. I think after chatting with @iguferon, @haley and a few people from my other game, I’m going to avoid cramming so much stuff into a session, it’s just a lot more fun for everyone when there’s room to breathe, talk, have character moments, and scheme up ideas.

Glad for the opportunity to try space combat in STA, something I haven’t gotten to touch in the other game I’m in. It is strangely wargamey in relation to the rest of the system, I’m not nuts about how much time it takes.

More on the STA Space Combat

I think first thing, movement zones were pretty unnecessary. It makes sense if you run the whole thing on a grid, but in reality, all that matters is whether something is at long, medium or close-range. There’s really no other need to have sectioned zones. Maybe some abilities use them?

Made a lot more sense to use this as loosely as one does in Sentinel Comics: The Roleplaying Game, where you have a very general idea of the environment and just use zones as a way to make one area distinct from another - buildings, streets, and here nebulae, large structures, things like that.

The amount of shield everyone has means that around 3 rounds of combat would have to cycle before you could lose your shields and get into real trouble, which to me feels like an eternity. That’s 5 turns of player actions, then 4 turns of enemy ship actions, repeated 3 times, with an attack typically doing 7 damage if it hits.

Evidently it was notably more complicated in the first edition - here’s what the GM of my other game had to say about it:

Tbh it’s a bit less wargamey than it used to be, Power used to be its own currency that you could shift around and certain actions had explicit power usage

Whereas now it has kind of been subsumed into something that you have either on or off to do extra stuff

Another currency, just for space battles?

I think it’s just got a level of granularity that isn’t reflected in the rest of the game. I don’t hate it, I just think it was trying to do something that Felt Trek but probably overcomplicated things

See also the 1e version of Extended Tasks. I think both of these suffer from 1e being a bit poorly structured.

I do get what they were going with in trying to make it “Feel Trek”, the book give little excerpts of battles in Trek through the lens of the system, and it feels like they started by watching the battles and trying to apply rules to it, and worked their way here:

Gives me shudders of games I’ve played that were all combat for the full 4-5 hours.

I think in this game we’ll focus on one-v-one, in the event another space battle happens in the future.

To my fears, combat took up a whole bunch of time and just too much shit had to be soaked in the pirate port club. We’ll wrap up that location next session and move forward.

The other big mystery of this system that remains for me is Extended Tasks, something that sounds similarly lengthy but I’d like to explore. We’ll find some reason to try them in a future session I’m sure.

[Mothra]

ST: Junkiverse, S1E2, “Rats Nest, Pt. 1”

With the station running in grey mode and life support on minimum, the gang warmed themselves by burning oil barrels Babylon 5-Down-Below-style, over such one might roast a lizard on such as a stick.

Councilmember Glint confirmed that they had been cut off from their main source of energy: solar power from the small nearby brown dwarf Eos. Something unknown has happened to deactivate the sentry drones around Eos, which pirates quickly took advantage of, moving in and taking over the sun’s megastructure rings and aligning them such that they block out all light to Zeal. Further, the star has become unstable, and changed color.

With little time to lose, the crew took the Vagrant under cloak, using several Council ships as a diversion while they snuck through, as well as a hare-brained inflatable decoy torpedo of Bog’s (@daphaknee) design. After a brief scrap with a Bird of Prey, the Vagrant took a hull breach but disabled their weapons, chasing them off.

Arriving at the Eos ring, scans showed a mysterious psionic “pacification field” emanating from the structure, denying all ability to commit violence. Klarpong (@haley) cooked up the Panera Hellmax of drugs in the Botany Bay, allowing the crew to maintain a baseline level of high anxiety to counter the suppressing effects of the field - with this, the crew can attempt to commit violence, should they choose. He then was able to mask the ship’s signal to appear as a pirate.

Journeying into the ring, the gang found a Tortuga-like pirate bar/club has been set up, led by a cackling Irish maniac named “Lord Finnegan”.

The Kid (@tacotaskforce) spoke with the orion bartender Zhaan, a former crewmate of his, learning that Finnegan has intentionally caused Eos’ instability to lure in the builders of the ring, and further, is freezing out Zeal so it’ll be easy to claim and fully intact.

Conan (@Tulpa) challenged Finnegan to a playful, They Live-style six-minute scrap, which, combined with Joe’s history as an ally, got them on his good side. With a bit of deception by The Kid, the gang has convinced him to open the rings and bring light to Zeal once more.

Notable Moments / Details:

• The Kid turned a scrapped engine segment into an Earthworm Jim-style motorbike to which Joe, referencing the hit series Bablyon 5, likened to that time Garabaldi and Lennier restored a Kawasaki Ninja motorcycle and drove it around with a regrettable 90’s blur effect.

• Conan invented a new strategy, as of yet unnamed, where his mobile emitter is placed into a torpedo casing with four transporter pattern enhancers and fired through the hull of a ship, allowing him to activate, set up the enhancers, and beam in people from the ship.

• One of the ships is captained by “Commodore Azrael”, a guy from the Abrams universe, modeled after a dude Veronica and I played STO with who sucks preddy bad. He blasts Beastie Boys during his missions, a thing he has started doing since Payaya Goms began playing music over subspace radio. This may have had unintended effects.

• Conan and Joe found data on the megastructure, notably that it is of Iconian design and that there is a strange number being displayed which seems to go down whenever some kind of violence, humiliation, or suffering occurs. It is currently at 2.27 of some unit of time.

• Bog created The Suicide out of Andorian Ale, Orion Rum, Klingon Bloodwine, Cardassian Kanar, and Jameson-brand Earth Whiskey.

• The gang is strongly considering offering Finnegan a position on the Council.

[Mothra]

ST: Junkiverse, S1E3, “Rats Nest, Pt. 2”

At the pirate cove on Eos, the drug-addled gang cavorts about the crowd of scallywags, plying them for information. Alongside a Breen and a Klingon, Klarpong (@haley) encounters his sworn rival Gagog’anag, a jem’hadar selling a peculiar fungus as a ketracel-white substitute.

After some sparring in the pit, Klarpong and Cedric (@COINTELBRO) purchase several portions and create with them a powerful narcotic. Bog (@daphaknee) approaches the usual six-eyed alien and establishes a friendly dialogue with her.

The Kid (@tacotaskforce), following a lead from the bartender, plays liar’s dice with the romulan Likah and learns she helped Finnegan overthrow rival pirate lord Captain Cathead (The Kid’s sworn enemy). She, like many pirates, supports the cackling irishman’s bold plan of sabotaging Eos (damaging a critical component) with the aim to draw in its builders and force them to free all Elysians.

In an act of solidarity with the suffering alien, Bog retrieves maid outfits from the Barry Lyndon program on the Vagrant and the gang dons them, including the many-limbed plantling Cedric (please try to picture this garment):

Cedric and Klarpong grind up some of the narcotic ketracel fungus with DMSO, and apply it to Finnegan during a scrap, sending him into a staggered and hazy state. As Conan (@Tulpa) distracts and captures the addled pipehitter, the gang sneaks into the inner workings of Eos with the alien, who is able to fabricate the needed parts for Joe (@iguferon) and Bog to enact repairs.

Returning to Zeal, the crew are celebrated and use their pull to convince the Council to add Finnegan to their ranks, reasoning that it’s time to try more bold plans to escape Elysia.

Notable Moments / Details:

• Joe, at the bar, sharing a laugh with Zhaan as the bartender replicates drinks and slides them down to her, to no reaction.

• Conan and Bog are able to ply from the alien that the numbers they saw on the dendra are years of a single sentence, and that the total of all counts of the sentence are around 3 million years in length. The dendra are able to measure suffering, and this is how the sentence is paid down.

• Klarpong reverse-engineered the sensory instrument in an inactive dendra robot, creating the suffering-quantifying “Dolorimeter”. This is then used to prove to the Council that Finnegan’s new position will also serve as his punishment.

• Cedric has planted the ketracel fungus back at Zeal, and is working with the other, older pholosians to yield more of the plant.

• The Kid has learned that Captain Cathead’s sabotaged ship was last seen plummeting into the atmosphere of Tartarus IV.

• Joe and Bog are able to repair the transporter and torpedo tube on the Vagrant.

• The Kid has created several more rocket bikes.