'Nathan Burgoine's Blog

Tabletop Tuesday — Mutants & Masterminds: “The Recovery Agency”

Hey all! It’s Tuesday nerdy time. I’m back with my 4th Edition Playtest Origin Edition of Mutants & Masterminds with the final part of my “upgrade to fourth edition” of a trio of NPC characters I put together for one of my M&M Campaigns as an ongoing arc (and foil) for the players a few years ago: “The Recovery Agency.”

I’ve outlined all three characters over the last three weeks and their origins and how they got snapped by by organized crime and shady government agencies before then finally broke free—and today is all about what they accomplish now they’re together and officially running as The Recovery Agency.

The Recovery Agency

Current Members: Evac, Patch, and Pinpoint
Base of Operations: “The Cabin” is their main Installation; multiple other ongoing (and often changed) safehouses; they operate throughout North America, but have rarely also been active in South America and the former Soviet Union as well.
Motivation: Freedom and Personal Profit

Although not on the radar of most heroic, legal, or media groups, “The Recovery Agency” has built a name for itself among a very specific clientele: those who can’t afford to be cared for in public health spaces, those who need might need to be rescued from kidnapping (or from being otherwise institutionalized in some way), or those who might end up incarcerated and would prefer not to remain so. 

Initially, The Recovery Agency started by liberating a small circle of incarcerated metahumans including the Vancouver projective-teleporter “The Gastown Geist” (arrested for liberating Indigenous and other museum artifacts and returning them to their original owners, tribal leaders, or countries of origin), the San Francisco vigilante “The Purple Hand” (in prison for multiple assault charges against violent offenders), and the hydrokinetic eco-terrorist Seiche (who was caught after destroying multiple data farms facilities), among others. Notably leaving nearly no real evidence and no trail to follow, their reputation grew among metahuman circles—both among villains and those heroes or vigilantes who keep their identities hidden. As their client list grew, so did their funds. Connecting the various “escapes” of metahumans might lead a hero group to learning The Recovery Agency exists—but finding them is a great deal harder. 

Motivation and Goals
While on the surface Evac, Patch, and Pinpoint might seem like three self-motivated cash-grabbing mid-powered metahumans who offer support to sketchy clientele—especially metahumans who can’t afford to end up captured or in a traditional hospital—“The Recovery Agency” does have a moral center of sorts. They don’t take on clients who seek to dominate others, nor do they work with outright murderers. Though some of their clients have killed, these are the exceptions rather than the rule, and their targets are never the innocent. The Recovery Agency’s services, which are by no means cheap, include extradition from nearly any location, which can include recovery from kidnapping (or jail), telepathic proof-of-life and/or locating services, reconnaissance to plan for or recover a missing person, and healing/medical aid. 

In exchange, they get the main thing they’re all after: their freedom from those who would prefer to have them back under their thumb. They have enemies—in particular a family of organized crime and the covert government program “Project Crosshairs.” Their Agency’s operation and the nature of their client list has had two unexpected positive side effects: one, they tend to be left alone by metahuman villains, even those who aren’t clients, because no one wants to mess with the recovery/escape plans of more powerful metahumans who might take umbrage; and two, they’ve earned a modicum of protection from those who are their clients, given they have a vested interest in keeping them safe for their own potential future use.

Tactics
The Recovery Agency are calm, collected, and methodical. To join their program, people need to pay a hefty fee and are screened beforehand. They do not accept extremely violent clients (those they deem too dangerous) nor ones that cross particular lines (the drug trade or sex-trafficking, as two notable examples), but they certainly work with thieves and meta-criminals who’d never be known as decent folk, let alone good guys. They also work with anti-heroes, vigilantes, and even some outright heroes considered by most to be on the side of the saints, most specifically those who need to keep their own identities secret. Once a potential client is screened and their dues paid, they will need to shake hands with Pinpoint—who will then telepathically contact the client as a test—which officially puts them on the roster and grants them a small signaling device, as well as phone numbers and other contact options they can use to call for aid—the Recovery Agency also uses algorithms to keep an eye on news about any of their clients. 

The Recovery Agency offers multiple services to their clients. Pinpoint can use her telepathic and remote sensing abilities to help track down kidnapped clients, examine scenes where someone was taken, or ensure proof-of-life. Her psychometric abilities can also give the group the leads they might need to locate a client if the kidnapped or incarcerated client doesn’t know where they are or can’t tell them. Evac’s abilities—the ones used central to their agency—are generally applied to grab and recover a client from a situation they don’t want to be in (up to and including jail), and to either deliver them to somewhere safe or to bring them to Patch for healing and recovery if they’re injured. Between the three metahumans, they generally have what it takes to get their clients out of bad situations and deliver them to somewhere safe. During official jobs, Pinpoint uses her telepathy to “network” the three together mentally to keep them all on the same page.

If they are ever compromised, The Recovery Agency doesn’t hesitate to use Evac’s abilities to get themselves to one of any number of safe houses they keep available to them and their clients (the locations of which are carefully changed over time), and can even fully retreat to “the Cabin,” their official headquarters on a small island in Northern Ontario. Evac has a series of “teleport hop” locations (RVs, small apartments, attic or storage rooms, or the like) they keep available on the outer edges of his teleport distance from each other just to give him a place to teleport to in emergencies—which they can then use on their way to places even further removed. 

Installation: “The Cabin,” a home on a private island in Northern Ontario that appears to be nothing more than a rich-person’s getaway (Installation, Size 6, Toughness 6; with Communications, Computer, Dock, Fire Prevention System, Grounds, Gym, Infirmary, Library, Living Space, Power System, Secret, Security System) [13 points]

Vehicles and Other Equipment: The rest of the 60 points of Equipment shared among the group should be mostly used for the various safe-houses and teleport “hop” sites Evac maintains (these can be as simple as RVs, small apartments, or storage rooms/closed storefronts (Small Installations with Living Space (cots or beds, mostly), Fire Protection System, Secret, and Security System features) [2 points each] or more developed spaces like Subway Stations (as per the Deluxe Gamemaster’s Guide, pg 259) [5 points] or Abandoned Warehouses (Deluxe Hero’s Handbook, pg 231) [5 points]. Pinpoint maintains a Penthouse (Deluxe Gamemaster’s Guide, pg 259), and Patch has a few Apartments decked out for recovery care (Small Installations (usually apartments) with Infirmary, Living Space, Security System 3, Fire Suppression, and Library features) [5 points]. They’re all wealthy enough to get their hands on specific equipment they may need at any time.

Hooks

If you’re looking for a way to tie The Recovery Agency into your own Mutants & Masterminds campaign, here are three hooks you can use to bring Patch, Evac, and Pinpoint to your own gaming table.

Family Matters. A series of explosions among a particular organized criminal family’s holdings sets the city’s criminal underworld to a boil and leaves the city poised on the edge of what could be a terrible outbreak of crime and violence if the various families go to war now that one of them is wounded. Pinpoint finds a way to touch the heroes and telepathically approaches them with an offer: she knows who is bombing the family in question, and she knows why it’s happening. Someone has kidnapped Patch, and he’s being held somewhere she can’t reach him telepathically—at least, she hopes that’s why she can’t find his thoughts. Evac has assumed the criminal family who once had Patch under their thumb is responsible and has been teleporting explosives into their buildings after making sure Patch isn’t inside, and Pinpoint can’t talk Evac out of this angry course of action. So far, the family refuses to give Patch back—but do they even have him? If they don’t, who does? Is this in truth an attempt to draw out Evac or Pinpoint (or both of them) by Project Crosshairs?

Not Again! Villains the heroes have put away keep escaping, and the reason is simple: the villains are clients of The Recovery Agency. Tracking down how the villains escaped won’t be easy, and may involve the use of psychic or magic abilities, but once they know the “how” trying to find a way to thwart The Recovery Agency isn’t going to be easy, giving their penchant to cut and run. 

The Rescue. In a showdown with villains where things aren’t working out for the heroes, Evac appears (perhaps even alongside Patch). A few moments later (or a teleport or two), and they’re out of danger. The heroes aren’t clients of The Recovery Agency, though, so what gives? Well, the villains the heroes are facing are new recruits of Project Crosshairs and Pinpoint thinks the next target of the villains is going to be the assassination of a major political figure—one she was never introduced to, and thus can’t warn telepathically. The three saved the heroes, but does that mean they can be trusted? Is this a legitimate threat from Project Crosshairs, or are The Recovery Agency hoping to manipulate the heroes into doing damage to the off-book and shady agency as revenge—or a plan to reveal them to the world in hopes it takes down Project Crosshairs once and for all? 

STA Saturday — “The Enemy Within”

It’s Saturday, and I’ve been cheerfully re-watching the TOS-era episodes of Star Trek and trying to mine them for ideas for Star Trek Adventures as put out by Modiphius. It’s been fascinating to pay as much attention as possible to the episodes as I’m watching them—I confess to often drawing or doodling while I watch TV—but as I’m hunting for little idea seeds, I’ve just got my journal to one side to make notes as I go.

So, after The Man Trap, Charlie X, Where No Man Has Gone Before, and The Naked Time, I found myself staring down The Enemy Within.

Oof.

The Enemy Within (TOS Season 1, Episode 5… or 4?)

Okay, so to start with this is a technology-does-wobbly-thing episode, and it’s the transporter that’s gone buggy in this one, and basically the way it goes is this: Away Team on a slow-rotation planet where day is warm enough but night drops so far into the cold it’s freeze-you-solid territory, collecting samples, but a geologist falls, cuts his hand, and ends up covered in “a powdery yellow ore.” He beams up because he’s injured, and the transporter goes a little funny, but Scotty and transporter technician both find it in working order thereafter. Okay, was probably just the ore, so Scotty tells the geologist to decontaminate his ore-stained jacket and get his hand fixed, and Scotty sends the technician off to check a technobabble.

Kirk beams up next, and he’s woozy (also he beams up without the little Enterprise symbol on his chest—oops!). So Scotty walks him personally to Sickbay, conveniently leaving the transporter room empty and… another Kirk beams up, and he’s all snarly and grinning like a maniac and has on a lot of eyeliner and okay, look, what we’ve got is a Good-and-Evil Kirk problem, basically.

Scotty figures out something’s wrong with the transporter when they beam up an alien dog later (off-screen) who is being forced to wear the best “it’s an alien dog!” costume ever, because a second dog beams up and that one’s snarly and awful. Evil Kirk, meanwhile, goes hunting for Saurian Brandy and then—

deep sigh

—assaults Janice Rand.

Because she’s in this episode, so of course she’s victimized. Four for four on the ol’ Rand-as-Victim counter.

She scratches him (which becomes an identifying feature for Evil Kirk until his inevitable escape and use of make-up and stuff), and for an added bonus, there’s a heavy layer of “There’s no way Kirk would do that, he’s the captain!” gaslighting of Rand from everyone until a man backs up Rand’s accusations and hey, it’s the sixties again.

There’s a lot of pontification on two things: one, that Kirk can’t be seen as compromised or the crew will, I don’t know, mutiny or something? So they keep things close to the chest, refer to Evil Kirk as “an imposter” and meanwhile, without his evil side, Kirk loses even more of his power of diction (speaking… so… slowly…) and all ability to be a commander because… he’s got no fear and anger or something?

Also Spock is way into this. Like, he’s all “This is great! What a chance to dissect human psyches!” He’s practically having a sciencegasm.

For fuck’s sake, if you’re not going to send a shuttle, could you at least beam down a fucking tent?

Oh, and I forgot: down on the planet, Sulu and the away team can’t beam back up because the transporter would create doubles of them, so they’re slowly freezing to death.

Now, you may ask yourself: why not send a shuttle to pick them up?

… um …

ANYway, they’re stuck on the planet, which is the ticking clock problem, and supplies they beam down aren’t functional (“heating units” duplicate don’t work, though I have to beg the question as to why they don’t beam down stuff that doesn’t have moving parts, like, y’know, thermal tents/sleeping bags/what-have-you, but again, ticking clock narrative tension).

Ultimately, Kirk is reintegrated by technobabble and the courage to face his dark side, unlike the dog who dies in the attempt, and then Spock cracks a snide aside to Rand about her assault, saying Evil Kirk had his interesting qualities, eh? It’s such a horrible, off-key moment.

Definitely one of my least favourite episodes.

Scenario Seeds

Apart from the obvious: a transporter accident that affects one or more of the crew, at first I had a real struggle with this one, because it really just goes all-in on the Evil Kirk, Good Kirk thing, and there’s not a lot else even mentioned throughout the episode.

Then I remembered the planet of massive day/night temperature variation where Sulu uses a phaser to heat rocks where apparently alien doggies have still evolved to live, and then I considered the yellow ore. Like every other interesting transporter accident effect we see in Trek, it occurred to me someone with bad intentions could weaponize it—assuming they could recreate the accident.

Seed One: Slow Rotation and/or Extreme Temperature Planets

I’ve dropped some “Eyeball Planets” into my Star Trek Adventures games in the past, but instead of a planet that doesn’t rotate and develops a band of “middle-ground” temperature, this would be a planet like Alfa 177, where there’s an extreme to the day/night temperature fluctuations (and/or a very slow day/night cycle tied into that).

A Slowly Tilting Planet—If the day/night cycle is super-slow and that’s why the temperature rises and falls to such extremes, you’d could end up with something similar to the “band of habitable” you might theoretically get on an Eyeball Planet, but have it be in motion. Lifeforms like the space dog of Alfa 177 might have evolved to hibernate through the extended night-slash-winter, or perhaps they stay in constant motion: a species endlessly migrating to stick to the “warm” zone that moves across the planet as day becomes night, evolving to know to keep the sun at a particular “height” on the horizon—which would assume there’s a way to keep moving across the entirety of the planet throughout the entire day/night cycle—including very important land-bridges, or perhaps chains of islands where life-forms (or even humanoids) have to move from one to the next to stay ahead of the freezing night, but not get too far ahead into the blazing day. A planet such as this would mean people (say scientific or geological survey teams like the ones we saw in this episode) are (a) on a real clock for any singular location of the planet’s surface, and/or (b) need to keep in motion. If humanoids lived or evolved on such a planet, and now utilized slowly-moving structures (ocean-going city-sized vessels, or a kind of “caravan” city on a massive rail) rather than their ancestral migratory methods, were something to go wrong with any of those technologies, they’d be facing a massive problem—and one on a scale not easily solved by shuttles or transporters, if the populations are large enough.

Seed Two: The Yellow Ore

The ore found on Alfa 177 was decontaminated and dealt with on Enterprise before it could cause more trouble, but if someone got ahold of records or learned about or encountered the ore some other way, the player crew could come up against some new iteration of a very old problem.

Weaponized Yellow Ore—Enemies of the Federation, were they to learn of the ore, might be able to ensure they go through a transporter carrying the substance prior to the important arrival by transport of a target. This could mean (a) a diplomat intended to hold the line in tense negotiations ends up beaming in, only to find themself feeling a bit light-headed and weakened, but they head into the talks (likely after a player medical officer gives them a once over), only to fade and become weaker-willed as time goes by. Meanwhile, the enemies have snatched the “second” beamed-up version of the diplomat, the one with all the anger and fury and willpower. Once the crew first track down the source of the issue with their diplomat (likely starting with breadcrumbs leading to a missing transporter operator, given the enemies would have to deal with the chief or have infiltrated/replaced them to capture the second version of the diplomat), a dive through the history records only gives them the method of restoring the diplomat before it’s too late—but they’ll need to track down the ever-deteriorating “negative” version first. Or, (b) when meeting up with a transport carrying valuable cargo they need to get to a colony on a tight schedule, the crew find the small vessel adrift, cargo gone, crew all dead. Six people—three pairs of twins, which is unusual. Also, half the deaths appear to be violent in nature, paint a confusing crime scene, offering up little in the way of clues. However, records only list four crew in the official manifest, and none are twins in Federation records. Was the fourth crewmember responsible for utilizing the yellow ore to cover their own theft of the cargo? Are they a secret agent—Cardassian, Orion, Ferengi—out to ensure the cargo doesn’t get to the Federation colony in need? Was it an accident—and is the fourth (duplicated) crew still out there somewhere, one fading and trying desperately to outrun the violent negative version giving chase—the cargo in the shuttle the “good” crew managed to liberate when the evil duplicates first attacked them?

If you’ve got a Star Trek Adventures campaign, have you used a transporter fluke in your stories at all?

Tabletop Tuesday — Mutants & Masterminds: “The Recovery Agency: Pinpoint”

Hey all! Time for some Tuesday nerdy joy. Today, part three of my 4th Edition Playtest Origin Edition of Mutants & Masterminds “upgrade to fourth edition” for a trio of characters I put together for one of my M&M Campaigns as an ongoing arc (and foil) for the players a few years ago: “The Recovery Agency.”

So far, we’ve met Dusan “Deuce” Somerled, codename: Evac, and Jaison Turcotte, codename: Knockout (later Patch). Today we meet the architect of their escape and the organizer of what will become the Recovery Agency: Sophie Raymond, codename: Pinpoint.

Pinpoint

Sophie Raymond’s curious ability to know more than she should showed up when she was only twelve, after a car accident that left her only surviving parent, her father, in chronic pain and unable to care for her. She described things to the police about the car that had struck her parents’ car that shouldn’t have been possible for her to know—including what her mother and father saw and thought at the time of the collision—and upon going back to the site of the accident once she’d recovered from her own injuries, she “saw” it all over again. Every detail she reported turned out to be correct. Soon after, a group of men from the government came, took her into their care, and put her father into a full-time care facility where he got the best treatment and had a higher quality of life than Sophie had believed would ever be possible. 

As she grew into a young adult, she started to realize (often through accidental telepathic glimpses) the kindness shown to her father was a condition of her following the rules and attempting all the tests the government group requested of her—and she now knew her role in “the project” was as a “Pinpoint Candidate,” and the goal was for her to help the government track people who might be (or had been) targeted for violence or kidnapping, and was told it was for their safety. 

While sometimes this meant Sophie “saw” things at sites of violence that were disturbing, for the most part Sophie didn’t mind her role or learning how to use her abilities—she believed in helping people and besides that, her options were limited; her father being comfortable and able to live a near-normal life meant the world to her. Alongside her psychometric abilities, her developing telepathy had qualified her for the Pinpoint Candidate group. At first thought to be limited to her parents, the testers instead realized Sophie was capable of forging a telepathic link to anyone she’d ever touched.

Thus, once she was eighteen and could legitimately pass as someone with a government position, she found herself presented as an “aide” in important meetings—all to garner a hand-shake introductions with major political figures, in the name of allowing Sophie to help track those individuals down should they be kidnapped or otherwise “disappeared.” 

It wasn’t until she was twenty-one and—on her father’s telepathic suggestion that she attempt to learn more, even if it risked his comfort—that Sophie learned about how she and the other “Pinpoint Candidates” were being tested to see which might best be folded into something called “Project Crosshairs”—and that she was in the lead for consideration. 

“Project Crosshairs” wasn’t about finding potential important individuals should they be taken hostage so much as it was about keeping tabs on targets. In fact, the project sought to make it possible to aim potential assassination attempts, or dip into the thoughts of powerful opposing political figures for military intelligence. Sophie realized how much her abilities were being abused, but stayed and did her part for nearly four more years—keeping as much of the developing extent of her abilities secret as possible, “struggling” to accomplish the project’s goals, right up until the day her father passed. After his funeral, she made a break for it, along with copies of all the information she could gather about other covert affiliated government programs under the “Project Crosshairs” umbrella, especially those trying to use metahumans like her. 

One of those was the “Metahuman Rehabilitation Project”—a “feel-good” program the government used to show metahumans who’d broken laws using their abilities for the good of society. Having learned about how many off-book uses of the “nonviolent” metahuman prison rehabilitation program had occurred—and specifically about Jaison Turcotte and Dusan “Deuce” Somerled—Sophie managed to work her way into the prison as a specialist long enough to shake their hands at post-mission “check-in.” After that, Sophie telepathically blackmailed other key government and prison staff to do what she needed to ensure the high-tech Faraday cage system keeping Dusan in the prison could be temporarily shut-down. 

Once she had everything in place she needed, she did just that and alerted Dusan and Jaison their escape time had arrived. 

They teleported out of the prison to the meeting place she’d set up, and while she helped them undo all the monitoring devices they’d unknowingly had implanted (including subcutaneous tracking chips), she explained how Project Crosshairs was after her—and would now be after them—and had already been using them both. Then Sophie made her proposal: they could have partnership and freedom through what they’d already been trained to do, using a blend of their three abilities, but most importantly by working for themselves. She called it “The Recovery Agency.”

Amongst themselves, the three shared the real breadth of their metahuman capabilities, much of which they’d managed to keep secret from those using them. Dusan’s range was much greater when teleporting to places he’d already been; Jaison’s full ability wasn’t just to heal, but to harm; Sophie told the men of her ability to read places and objects to see the past, and her psychic ability to “know” things around her she shouldn’t be able to know (represented by her enhanced sight and hearing)—as well as the full range of her telepathic abilities, which included “seeing” through the eyes of those she connected with. Sophie became Pinpoint, Dusan called himself Evac, and Jaison took up the moniker Patch. 

The three operate a kind of “location, protection, health, and recovery” insurance company. In many ways, they do what they were being trained—forced—to do, only now they do it on their own terms, for a tidy profit. (In game terms, shift their “Benefit—Status” Advantages to “Benefit—Wealth” of equal rank to represent them no longer being with the government and instead now taking payment for their services, but retain their Equipment Advantage as is—only now it’s representing their own funds.)

Over time, the three have grown beyond close. Jaison often spends the night with Dusan in whichever safehouse they’re currently using, Dusan protects the other two like it’s his born duty, and Sophie loves the others like the small family she lost. Now and then, they meet another metahuman who could potentially add a new skill-set to their organization, but so far, they’ve not increased their circle permanently; instead offering short-term contracts. Sophie handles most of the financial and organizational sides of the business, including an array of ever-shifting safehouses, vehicles, and equipment. Dusan maintains a series of planned “teleport hop” sites for distances beyond his initial range, and Jaison continues to study medicine and bio-chemistry to increase his understanding of he might accomplish with his abilities—as well as shifting some of his own funds to shelters and organizations for street-youth.

PINPOINT — PL 8 (116 points)
Abilities: Str 0, Sta 1, Agl 1, Int 1, Awe 4, Pre 2 [18 points]
Combat: Attack 2, Defense 4, Initiative +5 [12 points]
Unarmed +2 (Close Damage 0)
Mental Blast — (Perception Ranged Damage 5, Resisted by Will)
Resistances: Dodge 8, Fortitude 6, Toughness 4/1*, Will 10; *without Defensive Roll [15 Points]
Skills: Expertise: Geopolitics 4 (+5), Expertise: Governmental Organizations 8 (+9), Expertise: Psychology 4 (+5), Insight 4 (+7), Investigation 6 (+7), Perception 6 (+10), Technology 6 (+7) [15 points]
Advantages: Assessment, Benefit (Status 2—Government Affiliated), Contacts, Defensive Roll 3, Equipment 4 (Various Headquarters, Safehouses, and Vehicles), Improved Initiative, Trance, Well-Informed [14 points] 
Powers: 
Telepathy (Mental Communication 4, (Broadcast, Rapid 1, Selective, limited to people Pinpoint has touched); linked with Comprehend Languages 3) [19 points]
Telepathic Powers: (Array) (16 points)
AE — Mental Blast (Perception Ranged Damage 5, Resisted by Will) 
AE — Probe Thoughts (Mind Reading 8, Close, Cumulative, Effortless)
AE — Sense Link (Mind Reading 8, Sensory Link, Sense-Dependent: limited to those with whom Pinpoint is in Mental Contact via her Telepathy power) [18 points]
ESPer: (Array) (4 points)
AE — Psychometry (Postcognition 4)
AE — Heightened Senses (Enhanced Senses: Analytical Hearing, Analytical Sight) [5 points]

Much like Evac and Knockout before her, Project Crosshairs doesn’t know Pinpoint’s full capabilities—most notably the full range of her telepathic abilities, her mental attack, nor how deeply she can probe into the minds of others—she has walked a fine line of them wanting to continue training her for full use with their program and keeping them from reaching the full functionality they’re hoping to attain. Once her father died, Pinpoint unleashed all her abilities to get out. 

If you use Pinpoint while she’s still part of Project Crosshairs, her role might not even be noticed by non-psychic heroes—she’ll likely be in the background, shaking hands with important people and forging that initial link she needs to keep tabs on people for her superiors. Other telepaths might be able to sense the presence of a powerful telepath, but that’s not an ability Pinpoint herself has ever had, so she doesn’t automatically know when she’s in the presence of others like her. Alternatively, If the heroes are involved in recovering a major political figure who has been kidnapped, it might well be Pinpoint—through Project Crosshairs—giving them the intelligence they need to locate the kidnapped individual. Having the heroes meet Pinpoint before she breaks off from Project Crosshairs could be a good way to seed knowledge of her to the players before she’s in the wind.

Next Week, on “The Recovery Agency”…

It takes time to set up a new extra-legal organization, but in time, Evac, Patch, and Pinpoint get their agency up and running. After a few tactical rescues as “free samples,” the group finds themselves in no shortage of potential clients.

It’s only matter of time after that, however, that the heroes will start to run into the Recovery Agency and might find themselves needing to track down the organization.

Or maybe The Recovery Agency will come to them—asking for help.

STA Saturday — “The Naked Time”

And we’re back for the fourth episode of my “Let’s take a look at Star Trek (The Original Series) episodes and mine them for Star Trek Adventures ideas. It’s been quite fun going back to season one of the series, and not just watching, but combing for scenario seeds. The Man Trap, Charlie X, and Where No Man Has Gone Before all had crumbs I was interested in considering—and now it’s… The Naked Time.

The Naked Time (TOS Season 1, Episode 4… or 6?)

Okay, I have to confess something about this episode right off the bat. Spock and doomed-to-die guy going down to a planet in full hazmat gear to figure out why all the scientists on an imploding planet Enterprise is there to watch implode are dead, and it’s clear something went bonkers wrong. Someone is strangled, someone else is in the shower where they froze to death fully clothed. But—this is the thing—the entire plot hinges on an away team of “somehow, a trained member of a starship thinks nothing of taking off glove so he can scratch his nose and thus brings a deadly virus on board ship” and, look. I used to roll my eyes at the sheer ridiculousness of that.

But now I look at the world and think, “Yeah, fair.”

Anyway, this is a Bottle Episode (meaning the whole episode is set more-or-less in the ship/settings we’ve already seen and only includes characters who’d normally be there—no villain, no non-Starfleet crew) and since the narrative is basically: “What if crew of Enterprise, but drunk?” I wasn’t sure what I’d find in there.

OMG dude, find someone else to head to the rec deck with.

I mean, other than Yeoman Janice Rand once again being harassed by someone. She wasn’t in the last episode, but she’s back in this one, and therefore a man won’t leave her alone. We also get our first glimpse of Nurse Christine Chapel, who—once she gets virus-drunk—tells Spock she loves him (both human him and Vulcan him) and I have to say, this is one area where I truly appreciate Strange New Worlds, because with all the backstory of their previous attempt at a relationship and him getting burned once, his responses don’t just read Vulcan-says-no-to-emotional-connection but also fool-me-once-shame-on-you. I like that. It also makes it way less out of left field that she’s just “Hi, new character; also I love Spock.”

I mean, in order of airing, that’s exactly what happened, but prequels are neat that way.

Bones (a.k.a. Doctor Racist) drops a few barbs at Spock for being an alien, and when Spock is infected we see some pretty awesome acting from Nimoy playing a Vulcan trying to hold himself together (and failing). We unfortunately also get to listen to Lieutenant Riley tell women to wear less makeup (dude) and sing terribly for a really long while (OMG stop), but counterbalanced with Shirtless Sulu looking good and the brilliant interplay of “I’ll save you Fair Maiden!” to Uhura who quips back, “Sorry, neither.” Captain Jerk makes another appearance or three as he yells at Uhura, Scotty, Bones—pretty much everyone, actually, including punching Spock, but by that point he’s also virus-drunk—and for some random reason when Bones finally comes up with a solution to the virus, he tears Kirk’s uniform at the shoulder to administer it.

Oh, and also they invent time-travel in the last few minutes, but kind of shrug it off. Seriously. “Maybe we’ll find a way to use that someday, huh?” is kind of their whole reaction. But I guess they did just narrowly survive almost dying.

Scenario Seeds

Okay, while at first I was a bit at a loss for where to go with this one for my gaming sessions, the whole notion of a “bottle episode” struck me as a solid thing to consider. The vast majority of my plots absolutely involve the crew interacting with other individuals (non-Starfleet, most of the time) but we’ve had some really strong sessions where that’s not the case. Also, the opening scene with Spock leading an away team reminded me of something I’ve done a couple of times too, and the notion of Department Away Teams. Finally… they freaking invent a method time travel in this episode and barely spend a minute or two on it!

Seed One: Bottle Episodes

Sticking to the ship and the crew that would normally be present can maybe feel limiting, but starships have a lot of people on them, and thanks to the wonderful Support Crew mechanic and incidental NPC creation as your campaign progresses, it’s likely you’ve already got some of that crew populated all around your players. This doesn’t mean you can’t introduce new characters, but a Bottle Episode is more about there being no outside villain at play, or at least, everyone who’s on board is supposed to be here. One of my favourite TNG episodes—Disaster—plays with this idea by having the ship ram into a quantum filament and shaking up the main characters: Troi is in charge on the Bridge for the first time ever, Worf has to deliver a baby, Crusher and Geordi are in deadly escape room, Data and Riker have to figure out how to get from one end of the badly damaged ship all the way down to main engineering, and—the most terrifying of all—Picard is trapped in a broken elevator with three children.

Routine Survey—Now, you don’t have to smash the ship against an anomaly of the week, or expose your crew to a virus like “The Naked Time” does, but you certainly can. But one idea that sprang to mind was to have the crew be working on a routine star system survey—somewhere probes picked up something interesting and unusual enough for the crew to take a peek, odd harmonic readings that could be indicative of dilithium deposits—only to have a hard time tracking down any dilithium. While the crew work, it gets harder and harder to concentrate, with crewman reporting signs of what might be some sort of novel illness symptomized by difficulty thinking or concentrating. Ultimately, they crew can uncover that the false dilithium readings are created by a unique radiation present in the system among the asteroidal belts and planetary rings and moons and so forth, but as individual after individual stops being capable of doing their job, they’ll need to rely on whoever is still functional to get them out of there. This can really be fun if you’ve got some “Lower Decks” characters, or at least one character who is an ensign or even a crewman. “You have the bridge, Ensign.” Allowing a character who isn’t usually in charge to be very much in charge, or to have characters stretched out of their usual roles in general can be a refreshing change—or just amusing.

Seed Two: Department-Led Away Teams

This one builds on that notion of “stretching” characters, in that every now and then I like to put together Away Teams like the one we see in “The Naked Now” where the usual commander (Kirk, in this case) isn’t in charge, and is responsible for the rest of the group. This is where the glorious Support Crew mechanic can really shine, and it’s also a great opportunity to flesh out the people who live-and-breathe around the main player-character crews. So, if there’s a Medical mission, and there’s no reason for the First Officer to be there, hand the reins to your CMO player and have the player of the XO hop into the boots of the nurse or medtech heading on the mission with the doctor. Now, I’m not suggesting sidelining the usual characters for the entire session, and likely things will revert to the usual senior officers once whatever-the-heck is going to hit the fan hits the fan, but as a first scene or two, setting the stage with some Support Crew and one or two of the usual main player character crew can make for a fun change. I should also note this is something you’ll want to keep an eye on with your individual groups. I love the Support Crew mechanic, so I know I’m tempted to bring it up more often, but if I get the sense a player wants to stick to their main character, I’ll do my best to ensure they get to play their main character the vast majority of the time. (I’m serious about loving the Support Crew mechanic, though—I’ve only gotten to be a player twice, but both times I’ve taken the Supervisor Talent and chosen a character who’s not as likely to be useful in every scene—the CMO and the pilot, respectively—knowing that increases my chance of getting to add/play Support Crew.)

Medical Team to Transporter Room One—The crew is responding to a medical crisis on a starbase or starship or colony, and a great way to start a scenario is to have the medical officers beaming down into the thick of it to start saving lives. Sure, the other senior officers are all likely doing something as well, but triage is the realm of the Chief Medical Officer and the medical staff, and having the players put together a full medical away team with different specialties and running a scene first to stabilize a situation, and then to begin investigating can set up the mystery of the episode before the baton is passed to the crew of the ship as a whole. So maybe (a) the CMO, the head nurse, medtechs, medics, life sciences officers like xenobiologists who are cross-trained in triage and emergency medicine have some time to shine and gather information, figure out what’s going on, and come up with the details the Chief Medical Officer can then present to the Captain. Or, y’know, (b) the CMO ends up having to be in charge for far more than triage when they’re cut off from the ship due to an ongoing conflict (maybe the reason there’s a medical emergency in the first place) and find themselves defending patients from aggressors or having to negotiate or some other situation once things go off the rails.

Security, Engineering, Science…—And, obviously, you can do this with engineering teams, science teams, security teams, shuttle pilots and so on as well. The Division Sourcebooks are a great resource for figuring out roles for team members within each department. With my groups, the Chief Engineers have Assistant Engineers as well as three department heads (one for Systems Engineering, one for Propulsion Engineering, and one for Structural Engineering), all of whom have developed over time when things start going awry in Engineering, and in my Shackleton Expanse campaign, which has had more tactical encounters, they’ve got a really fleshed out group of Security for when things hit the fan, complete with a combat medic, a sharpshooter, and a hand-to-hand expert. Ditto the science divisions on the USS Curzon, where Oceanographers, Botanists, Stellar Cartographers, and Particle Physicists have already popped up.

Cadet Placement—This is a scenario I’ve used twice now with my players of the almost-entirely-Trill ship the USS Curzon, and was inspired from what we saw Nyota Uhura in the first season of Strange New Worlds, and also Spock’s crew in The Wrath of Khan, but adding final-year cadets to any situation can be a whole lot of fun. Having your player’s ship be considered a training vessel means you can drop a bunch of cadets in their laps. Then (a) have the senior officers taking turns guiding some (or all) of those cadets through rotations in their department over a few episodes (including them not being good at it), and/or (b) having some really good conversations with cadets about the realities of Starfleet versus what they’ve maybe convinced themselves it will be like. Either way, once their time is up on the ship, they ship home to graduate—and, if any of those cadets strike a chord with the group and feel like they’d be a great addition? Well, they can return as commissioned Ensigns. Then, the following year, you can introduce a new crop of cadets, and repeat as often as is fun. Another option is that you can have them serve on other ships, but be a familiar face the crew encounter later on when they realize the helmsmen of that ship they’re meeting up with, or one of the science officers on the duckblind station, or what-have-you, is one of the former-cadets/now-ensigns they all served with. It adds an immediate investment of the players wanting to ensure everyone is okay—it’s not just the USS Alcubierre out there, it’s Ensign Tovi Otner’s ship!

Seed Three: Time Travel

I’m still chuckling over how blasé the crew of Enterprise were when they were all, “Oh, huh, we traveled three days into the past because of what we did to the engines. That formula we put together for the emergency restart of the engines is also a recipe for time travel. Neat. That could come in useful, I suppose.” Again, I get it, they just averted imminent destruction by the skin of their virus-drunk teeth, but still, it’s such a throw-away moment at the end of the episode.

A Do-Over—The scenario in “The Naked Now” is a “cold-start” of the engines being impossible (because it takes half an hour) and basically messing with antimatter and matter to get things moving much faster via a dangerous, theoretical intermix formula and there was every likelihood they’d blow up, but instead they went back in time three days. It’s easy enough to drop something very similar into the hands of your crew—a loss of engine power requiring a restart before dropping into a gravitational well or a collision—though if they’re doing this after the events of 2266, they’ll at least know this is a possibility. Still, if it’s that or nothing, they may find themselves in the position of having some very much unscheduled free time. After that? Well, (a) maybe they need to hide from themselves given they’re co-existing with themselves from the previous situation that led them to have to use the intermix formula in the first place—if that was due to an enemy attack, they’ll have to resist the urge to stop the attack from happening (because paradox) but it doesn’t mean they can’t use the time to get ready to deal with the initiator of the violence once their other selves make the hop back into the past, no? Keeping off everyone’s sensors, trying to restore the ship after the dangerous maneuver (and potentially the battle that led to the engines going cold in the first place) can add an odd ticking-clock element as they have to make sure things unfold as they did before—at least until their other selves vanish, at which point they can get down to business again. Or, (b) they could stare down the temporal prime directive and escape the scenario they were in only to realize there’s a swath of destruction about to happen that they could—theoretically—stop from ever happening, or at least mitigate in some way. They still need to end up hopping back in time (otherwise, paradox) but perhaps they can stay off their own sensors and at least fix some of the damage done. But is that bending (or outright breaking) the Temporal Prime Directive? Does it matter when lives are at stake and the time-jump is such a small amount? Aren’t they duty-bound to save lives if they can? Such philosophical discussions are staples of Trek for a reason, and there’s no real right answer, really, just the best choice the characters can live with—which may or may not include a dressing down from the Department of Temporal Investigations.

Do you have a favourite “bottle episode” scenario or episode? Also, if you play Star Trek Adventures, I really want to know: how often does your group utilize the Support Crew mechanic?

See you next week!

Tabletop Tuesday — Mutants & Masterminds: “The Recovery Agency: Patch”

Hey all! It’s Tuesday nerdy time. I’m back with my 4th Edition Playtest Origin Edition of Mutants & Masterminds with the second “upgrade to fourth edition” of a trio of characters I put together for one of my M&M Campaigns as an ongoing arc (and foil) for the players a few years ago: “The Recovery Agency.”

Last week, we met Dusan “Deuce” Somerled, codename: Evac. This week, a second member of the “metahuman rehabilitation” project joins up, Jaison Turcotte, codename: Knockout.

Knockout (later, Patch)

Jaison Turcotte developed his regeneration and sleep-touch abilities as a young adult—and a second-generation metahuman—and ran away from his lesser-powered evangelical parents when he realized they’d want to use him as a prop to gain money for their “church.” On the streets, Jaison finally allowed himself to admit he was queer, and was lucky enough to find a small group of fellow queer runaways and did his best to blend in. 

Unfortunately, his luck took a turn for the worse when his group got caught in a crossfire between organized crime and police in a building they were squatting in. Even worse, one of the criminals stumbled upon Jaison while he was using his abilities to heal one of his fellow street kids from a stray bullet. Snatched up by the criminals, Jaison ended up in the “employ” of the crime family, under their control, punished for acting even slightly counter to their demands. Forced to use his abilities to affect the biology of other people both to hurt and to heal (often in succession, during “interrogations”), he grew desperate to find a way out, and when he was forced to take part in a raid against a rival drug lord of the criminal family, Jaison took it upon himself to get “caught” by the police.

Unfortunately, it soon became clear the police were crooked, and while Jaison was sent to jail—the criminal family couldn’t stop it—they had multiple contacts within the metahuman-capable prison where Jaison ended up.

In jail, Jaison met “Deuce.” While Dusan noticed Jaison was both a smarter man than most (as well as handsome), Dusan steered clear, even though the two were one of only a few metahumans in the prison. Even after they both joined the nonviolent metahuman prisoner rehabilitation program, Dusan barely interacted with Jaison. 

At first Jaison was left alone by the general prison population and metahumans because of his ability to knock other people unconscious (this was the only power he’d admitted to having to the police and rehabilitation program workers, though an injury during hand-to-hand training forced him to pretend to “discover” his self-regeneration abilities). Jaison tried to avoid notice, sticking to his own cell and working through medical courses/first-aid training through the rehab program, but the criminal family continued to send him violent “messages” they knew Jaison’s healing ability would handle before anyone would be the wiser. During those attacks, the family-aligned inmates let him know he’d be expected to return to their service upon his release—and that they were more than aware he’d turned himself in an attempt to escape them. 

Jaison was given the code-name “Knockout,” with hand-to-hand training specifically focused around grabbing and holding combatants, and was sometimes paired with Evac on missions where Evac’s target might potentially be unwilling to leave. Evac teleported the two of them in, Knockout rendered the target unconscious, and Evac teleported all three out. Their handlers ensured they were capable of working together well, but also manipulated both through their trust issues to make sure they never quite reached friendship.

Then, after one of the mandatory psychological evaluations the rehab program required between missions, Jaison heard a woman’s voice in his head telling him to seek out Dusan, and to wait for a chance to escape. Desperate to find a way out from the criminal family who sought to control him, Jaison decided to gamble on it. Dusan started shadowing Jaison as much as possible—he’d also heard the voice in his head. The voice told Dusan to keep Jaison close, and that an escape opportunity for them both was being arranged. While the two waited for the opportunity, word of Dusan’s “protectiveness” of Jaison spread back to the criminal family, and Dusan found himself targeted by other inmates as well. After a particularly rough beating the two took, Jaison revealed his ability to heal others to Dusan, healing Dusan for the first (and not last) time. That gesture of trust cemented a real friendship (and the start of something more) between them, and was also Dusan’s first use of the nickname “Patch” that Jaison would later take as his codename.

But only after the mysterious voice in their head made good on her promise.  

KNOCKOUT/PATCH – PL 8 (111 points)
Abilities: Str 0, Sta 3, Agl 1, Int 4, Awe 1, Pre 0 [18 points]
Combat: Attack 2, Defense 4, Initiative +1 [12 points]
Unarmed +4 (Close Damage 0)
Knockout +4 (Close Affliction 8, Progressive)
Cellular Disruption +8 (Close Damage 8, Penetrating 8)
Resistances: Dodge 7, Fortitude 10, Toughness 6/3*, Will 6; *Without Defensive Roll [15 Points]
Skills: Expertise: Streetwise 6 (+10), Expertise: Emergency Medicine 6 (+10), Insight 6 (+7), Perception 4 (+5), Stealth 4 (+5), Technology 4 (+8), Treatment 8 (+12) [16 points]
Advantages: Attractive**, Benefit (Status 1—Government Affiliated; the rehabilitation program treats Knockout as lesser than Evac, but this still does open doors for him), Close Attack 2, Defensive Roll 3, Equipment 4 (Much like Evac, Knockout is kitted out for any mission, and if injured are involved, this includes equipment suitable to his ongoing EMT training), Improved Grab, Improved Hold [13 points]
Powers: 
Bio-Manipulation: Array (24 Points)
AE – Knockout (Progressive Affliction 8 [Fatigued, Exhausted, Asleep])
AE – Patch-up (Healing 8, Energizing, Resurrection, Limited to Others)
AE – Cellular Disruption (Penetrating Damage 8, Accurate 2, Incurable, Reversable, Subtle 2) [26 points]
Rapid Healer (Regeneration 3, Immunity 2 [Disease, Poison]) [11 points]

Like Evac, Knockout is a little underpowered point-wise for his PL, but similarly to Evac, the rehabilitation program doesn’t know his full capabilities—most notably his ability to heal others, especially not to the point where he can bring them back from recent death, but also his ability to disrupt the cellular stability of anyone he touches—what can be healed can be harmed. 

If you use Knockout while he’s still part of the “rehabilitation” program, his role is likely partnered with Evac as part of an extraction of an unwilling target: the two teleport in, Knockout goes for a grab and activates his namesake ability, and as soon as the target is incapable of putting up a fight, Evac teleports out with both of them. Like Evac, Knockout isn’t here to fight—but also like Evac, he has options up his sleeve if he needs to: most specifically his cellular disruption ability. But while still with the government program, Knockout is loathe to use the ability in any way that can be traced back to him because once that happens, he knows he’ll be used to a much more destructive degree. While luckily his cellular disruption leaves no obvious signs it was him, it’s still his touch.

**(In 3rd Edition, Attractive is an Advantage that offers bonuses to social interaction skills if the person being interacted with finds people of the individual’s gender attractive; the Origin playtest book mentions the Attractive Advantage, but it’s not included, which I’m guessing will be fixed via errata—if it’s not, drop the Attractive Advantage and give Knockout two ranks of the Persuasion skill.)

Next Week, on “The Recovery Agency”…

By the time they’ve managed to connect to each other and their friendship is underway—as well as their shared secrets—Knockout and Evac are both more than aware the agency they were working for is using incarcerated metahumans outside the legal limits of whatever legal frameworks the government is supposed to operate within, but their options aren’t many. 

That changes when the voice of the woman they’ll come to know as Pinpoint returns to their minds with one word:

Now.

STA Saturday — “Where No Man Has Gone Before”

Okay, two weeks ago I began a silly little project to re-watch Star Trek (starting with TOS) with the goal of trying to draw a story seed or two for Star Trek Adventures from each episode. We’ve done The Man Trap and Charlie X. Next up? Where No Man Has Gone Before.

Where No Man Has Gone Before (TOS Season 1, Episode 3… or 1?)

Okay, before we dive into this episode—which I truly do believe sits best as Episode One of the TOS series, rather than three, we need to address the hunk in the room.

It’s rare a human puts Spock into second place on the eyebrow front. Also, James T. Who? See you in the rec room, Gary.

Specifically, Gary Mitchell could get it.

I give Dr. Dehner props for calling him on his admittedly cheesy line, but those wonderful brown eyes, the eyebrows, the chin, the lips… listen. I’m not saying that it adds up to the complete dismissal of James T. Kirk (or, in this episode for some reason, James R. Kirk), but I am saying we need to admit that pretty much only one person on that set makes those mock-neck-zipper-shoulder tunics look good, and that is Mr. Mitchell here.

(Also the scruff. I forgot the scruff.)

Ahem! Sorry. Anyway. So the Enterprise picks up an Earth signal from space that’s kind of impossible because no one has been here in quite the while, and Kirk takes a moment from being Captain Jerk and teasing Spock (already sick of that and I’m only three episodes in) to determine it’s basically a starship black-box, and then because other ships will come this way at some point, decides to… ram the barrier around the edge of the galaxy.

(Yeah, so there’s a barrier around the galaxy. Also, Enterprise is at the “edge” of the galaxy? This I can only assume is in an “up” or “down” direction given the galaxy is something like 100,000 light years in diameter and Sol is about half-way between the centre core of the galaxy and the edge, and in Kirk’s era, they sure weren’t jumping 25,000 light years at any time warp factor. Whatever. It’s Star Trek, and as we’ll come to treat like a mantra, they sure weren’t attempting to build a cohesive canon episode-to-episode.)

Anyway, ramming the barrier turns out to be a bad idea, because a number of the crew die—all of whom had high-ish esper ratings (meaning they had little flashes of insight, precognition, what-have-you), and we witness two of the crew—a psychiatrist, Dr. Elizabeth Dehner, and also the aforementioned hunk, Lt. Commander Gary Mitchell—spark and sizzle like fireworks, and when they barely manage to pull away from the energy barrier, Gary’s eyes are no longer the most swooniest of lovely browns, they’re silver (also those contacts look really uncomfortable).

Gary starts to progress from hot dude in a sleeveless sickbay shirt (chest hair!) to hot dude who can control his own biological state to telepath to telekinetic and—alas—absolute power begins to do what it always does. Meanwhile, Dr. Dehner is entranced by Gary’s whole smokin’ thing, the ship is damaged, and they stop at an automated mining facility on an otherwise empty world where the plan is to dump Gary before he loses touch completely (humans are starting to be like insects to him by this point) and repair the ship and then get the hell out of there.

Alas, Gary gets silver sideburns, so you know he’s powered up into godhood, and—Oh No!—it starts to happen to Dehner, too, and Kirk has to kill Gary (but first he has to convince Dehner to hold on to her humanity for just a little longer to fight Gary back down to a mortal level) and in the end, the gods die, Kirk’s uniform rips for the first time (this will be a recurring theme) and as they fly away from the planet where Kirk lost Dehner and Mitchell he has time to be Captain Jerk about Spock’s feelings one more time. Roll credits.

(Oh, and this time no one stalks Yeoman Rand, but it’s because she’s not in the episode; but don’t worry, Dehner—a focused, cool and composed professional—gets super emotional at the staff meeting while all the men remain completely calm and aloof look at her like ‘jeez… women,’ and Dehner makes a crack to Gary about being cold because she’s a woman overcompensating as a professional and so there’s still that. Also Captain Jerk doesn’t even know his Yeoman’s name. Dude. Boss 101.)

Scenario Seeds

This time, something that jumped out at me right off the bat was the inclusion of the Delta-Vega Station as a setting for Enterprise to limp to in a damaged state, and the other thing was the notion of espers.

Seed One: Automated and Uncrewed Mining/Mineral Facilities

Delta-Vega Station is an uncrewed lithium cracking station. The mining facility is on an other wise desolate planet (which does have a tonne of minerals and crystals, but Dehner notes would take a miracle to survive on for any length of time), and Kirk mentions that ore ships drop by once every twenty years or so. Facilities like this one were set up by a mining company, working alongside the Federation.

Your Place/Ore Mine?—Quite a few options pop to mind with facilities like these. For one, (a) setting up a new automated and uncrewed mining facility would be a great starting point for a mission where you wanted to focus on your player engineers and science officers (especially any that might have a Focus in geology or mineralogy or the like), and having a non-Starfleet or civilian mining company also be involved is always a fun way to set up some tensions or personality clashes—or perhaps new friendships or relationships—between the Starfleet crew and people who don’t exist in (and aren’t used to) Starfleet’s hierarchy. Then of course, the routine “set it up and get it running” goes awry when individuals with telepathic ability start to see/hear whispers, especially those who handle any of the crystals the facility is setting up to process, and later, non-telepathic individuals start to wander off, vanishing off sensors by going deeper into the mines and actively attempting to stymy the efforts by sabotaging the automated units, as it turns out the crystal formations are all connected and host a nascent consciousness—something similar to a crystalline entity, only planet-bound—which is attempting to save itself from being harmed by the facility via telepathic influence on the weaker minds around it. Or, (b) the crew’s vessel is passing by an uncrewed facility and picking up strange readings—explosions?—that may indicate something may have gone wrong on the site. When they arrive—taking a shuttle because the particulates in the atmosphere being processed here refract transporter beams—there are clear signs the facility has been breached, but not by whom, and an atmospheric hunt through the dimly-lit facility with only machines in motion follows, a cat-and-mouse game where it turns out enemies of the Federation have laid a trap, and now the crew have left their shuttle behind them, the enemies are going to use it to return to the crew’s vessel and infiltrate it—or simply destroy it with explosives placed on the shuttle. The crew need to find a way to get a signal back to the ship through the disruptive atmosphere, and there are still enemies on the planet to worry about. Or perhaps (c) a frantic call from an ore-ship brings the player’s crew to the site of one of the facilities only to find a previously unknown alien species suffered a catastrophic failure of their own engines and crash-landed on the planet weeks ago: they’re hurt, afraid, and combining a First Contact mission with disaster relief and medical interventions among the many wounded makes for a high-tension setting—especially if it soon becomes clear the “catastrophic failure” of the alien vessel’s warp-engine doesn’t seem to have been an accident in the first place, but might have been by design (though more effective than intended), to give the species a plausible reason to end up on this planet where they could attempt to gain technological advantages by learning all they could from Federation technology without earning the ire of the Federation itself.

Seed Two: Espers

As described by Dr. Elizabeth Dehner, being an esper is not something I’d consider a Talent by Star Trek Adventures terms, or even the the level of a Focus (though for someone very high on the scale it could work, and be applicable to situations where having a vague insight into the future or random events might offer an advantage). I’d consider “Esper” a great facet to drop into a human or other non-telepathic species character as a Trait, however, something the narrator or player can spin up here and there in a scenario when it might apply. Or, to put it a little more front and centre, a value of “Highly rated on the esper scale” could be a great way to tuck in some psychic ability without overdoing it, given the use of Determination, and also a way for a narrator a fascinating Sci-Fi way to challenge the player—strange radiations, other telepathic species, time loops; all might affect an esper in a way the narrator could roll out by challenging the Value in a given scenario: does an esper refuse an order when they get a flash of insight that following orders might lead to disaster? How can they prove it?

The Sound of Psilence—The crew are called to a newly discovered species to initiate first contact after a survey ship reports an encounter with their warp-capable test ship, only to learn the species have no sense of hearing, utilize an incredibly complex and difficult to understand written language, and communicate with each other via a form of telepathy that doesn’t register clearly among Vulcans, Betazoid, or any of the other telepathic or empathic species of the Federation—but the player and crew espers find themselves glimpsing images and sensations that might make it possible to speak with them. First contact progresses until (a) the esper crew start to realize they’re also getting senses, images, and glimpses of impending doom, and the alien species aren’t just trying to communicate but to warn them about an enemy incursion or natural disaster about to destroy a Starbase, Colony, or Starship—can they manage to communicate clearly and in time in order to stop the destruction? Or, (b) the more the espers interact with the alien species, the more they notice stratification among their people, and ultimately learn that some of their species are “silenced”—made telepathically invisible via genetic engineering—specifically to be utilized as spies and assassins, and this First Contact is also an assessment by a species that cares little for individual rights to gain control of the crew’s ship and reverse-engineer Starfleet technology now they’ve learned more powerful species exist in the galaxy. Or, (c) when it becomes clear the species have a natural talent for accurate prescience, a group of Ferengi, Orions, or other advantage-seeking-species swoop in to kidnap a group of the more gifted aliens, intending to use them to scan the future for opportunities they can use for profit or personal advancement, turning First Contact into a rescue mission. Things are all the more complicated given co-ordinating or even clearly communicating with the alien species is difficult and done via esper-level vague intuition and imagery.

Just Lucky, I Guess—Adding a rakish rogue Okona-like figure as an ongoing character to the campaign might be fun if one of his qualities the crew only uncover over time is his high esper rating. The first time the free-wheeling trader/surveyor/independent businessman shows up where the crew are assigned to prospect a dilithium source only to find he’s gotten there ahead of them to stake his own claim and the Federation will now have to cut him in on the deal, it’s an unfortunate circumstance, but not the end of the world. When he shows up again with exactly what’s needed—assuming he receives a favourable trade—during a minor disaster, it might cross into unfortunate and into annoying. His ability to know where to go—one he calls a ‘knack for being in the right place at the right time’—is one he’s learned to trust, and even more so when it’s paired with the notion of bringing something with him, but it’s only so long before something goes wrong. Potentially, (a) he has the same relationship with Klingons, or Romulans, or some other political organization that decide his ongoing ability to be where things will be interesting is something they can use against the Federation, and they attempt to kidnap him—only, their attempt goes sideways as he manages to glimpse just enough of the trap springing around him to lend them on a merry chase into neutral territory and leaving the players to realize they might need to risk a political incident to stop their enemies from using his ability against them. Or, (b) knowing a place will be “interesting and important” isn’t the same as knowing that place will be safe, and the rogue gets himself in way over his head when he shows up somewhere with exactly what a violent militant group need to launch a coup. His own esper ability is enough to escape, but the group now has everything they need to build a bomb—and the only people he can call on for help close enough to be in time are the player crew. Or perhaps (c), he shows up somewhere the crew are set to begin a routine colony mission only to warn them of dire intuitions—he knows, somehow, they could spell doom with what they’re planning to do, only without any real specifics. Assuming, of course, he’s telling the truth and this isn’t a long con.

I will say, this episode is still a favourite, with the budget for practical effects (telekinesis!) and those silver contacts. And even if the energy barrier thing is head-tilting, the whole “absolute power corrupts absolutely” plot still lands.

See you next week!

Tabletop Tuesday — Mutants & Masterminds: “The Recovery Agency: Evac”

Hey all! It’s Tuesday, and it’s time to get nerdy. I’ve been sitting with my 4th Edition Playtest Origin Edition of Mutants & Masterminds and going through my notes, NPCs, and characters and getting them ready for the new edition, and I thought I’d offer up the first of a trio of characters I put together for one of my M&M Campaigns as an ongoing arc (and foil) for the players a few years ago: “The Recovery Agency.”

This was a group of three mid-level powered metahumans who’d had to escape rough starts who banded together and figured out a niche of their own, one that frustrated the heroes of that M&M campaign, and a great deal of that was due to the first of the three characters: Dusan “Deuce” Somerled, codename: Evac.

I’m a huge fan of the “lesser powered but still formidable” type (I know I’ve talked about how much I love the Jobber in the Deluxe Gamemaster’s Guide from 3rd Edition), so it’s been a blast to crack my 4e playtest book and rework those smaller-but-scrappy types for this new edition.

And hey—if you’re a fan of M&M, I figured I could offer up some options for a session or two of your own if you’d like some.

Evac

Dusan “Deuce” Somerled was more-or-less written off by his poor family from birth, and shown the door by the time he was eighteen. A big guy with a tendency to let others do the thinking for him, he worked manual labor part-time jobs during the day, and as a bouncer at clubs at night to help try and make the rent on the basement apartment he shared with a series of good-looking (but usually shiftless and manipulative) boyfriends, the worst of which being Gerard LeBlanc.

When a contractor stiffed him on his day-labourer wages, Gerard convinced Dusan to break into the man’s office and take the money he was owed—after all, it was his by rights—but Dusan tripped an alarm in the attempt. Trying to make a break for it as the construction company’s security arrived, Dusan didn’t know what to do. 

He was thinking how he wished he’d asked his smarter boyfriend to come with him back in their apartment when Dusan suddenly found himself exactly there: back in his apartment in front of the boyfriend in question, who was stunned—but immediately and calculatingly intrigued—to see Dusan appear out of thin air. Dusan, for his part, mostly thought it was cool—and lucky. Gerard realized what Dusan could do had real potential to make their lives easier.

Well, Gerard’s life, at least.

The two began testing his abilities, and thus began Dusan’s career in petty theft. Dusan has teleportation abilities, able to jump up to 60 miles/125 km to places he’s never been but can more-or-less describe (“top of the tower,” “inside that bank”)—and much further if he’s returning to a place he’s seen before. Cajoled into a higher and higher-risk jobs by Gerard, the two brought three other less-than-honest friends of Gerard’s with them on a mission to break into a bank vault, pushing Dusan’s still-developing teleportation abilities to the limit at the time. Those other “friends” betrayed them and a firefight ensued. Gerard ended up shot and lay bleeding, and Dusan refused to leave his wounded boyfriend behind. The others got away with some of the cash on foot, and Dusan got arrested to ensure Gerard went to the hospital.

Gerard, alas, was far less loyal. He cut a deal to get off, most centrally by revealing Dusan’s teleportation abilities to the authorities. This sent Dusan to a jail capable of holding the teleporter in exchange for Gerard’s own freedom. 

Dusan tried to do his time quietly in the prison, which was mostly filled with regular human criminals, but also capable of handling lower-powered metahumans such as himself (the prison put together altered “Faraday cages” that kept his teleportation powers in check). In prison, Dusan leaned on his “Deuce” bouncer role—be big, scary, and silent—to stay out of trouble by looking like the trouble others should avoid. Dusan didn’t try to escape, though: he had no plan. Planning was Gerard’s thing, and Gerard was gone. He knew he wasn’t a thinker, but after the bank, Dusan felt even less capable of taking care of himself, and assumed he should never trust anyone again.

Knowing options were limited for big, tattooed lugs who’d used metahuman powers to break laws, Dusan agreed to take part in a new training and rehabilitation program for nonviolent metahuman prisoners when a soft-spoken and seemingly friendly governmental agent visited him in his cell. Dusan found he didn’t completely hate the idea of being the equivalent of a government-supported meta-powered rescuer—they even taught him more about construction with the idea he might need to understand how things are built (or become unstable) given they were hoping he’d be the first person arriving in places like earthquake zones to get government people out of rubble. Deuce didn’t like the idea of working for anyone but himself, but did his best to learn (none of it coming easily). He did, however, enjoye the opportunity to actually flex his powers a bit (albeit in a very controlled environment hemmed in by electrified barriers he couldn’t teleport through), and so far, his handlers don’t remind him too much of Gerard. 

Over time, Deuce has realized the way he moves from one place to another can be “pulled” or “twisted” in different ways, including wrapping a protective layer of that “in between dimension” around himself, as well as lashing out with it at up to three people at once, stunning those he hits. He also thinks he might be able to get past those electric barriers soon, but until he has somewhere to go, he’s not willing to try and make a break for it, and so far he’s found recovering people under his government code-name of “Evac” to be oddly fulfilling.

EVAC – PL 8 (104 points)
Abilities: Str 3, Sta 3, Agl 1, Int -1, Awe 1, Pre 0 [14 points]
Combat: Attack 4, Defense 4, Initiative +5 [16 points]
Unarmed +4 (Close Damage 3)
D-Lash +8 (Ranged Stun 8, Cumulative)
Resistances: Dodge 8, Fortitude 10, Toughness 8/3*, Will 4; *without D-Shift [14 points]
Skills: Athletics 5 (+7), Expertise: Streetwise 8 (+7), Intimidation 6 (+6), Perception 4 (+5), Stealth 5 (+6), Technology: Construction 8 (+7) [24 points]
Advantages: Benefit (Status 2—Government Affiliated), Eidetic Memory (quirk: only for places he’s been), Equipment 4 (When deployed to recover agents, Evac is often given a variety of tools that might increase his chances of success, all of it bugged with tracers in case he does attempt to leave), Evasion, Improved Initiative, Instant Up, Interpose [11 points]
Powers:
Teleportation: Array (24 points) 
AE – Evac: Teleport 6, Accurate, Easy, Extended [60 miles], Extended Only, Increased Mass 4 [800 lbs]
AE – Return: Teleport 8, Easy, Extended [250 miles], Limited to Extended, Increased Mass 4 [800 lbs]
AE – Dimensional Lashes: Ranged Stun 8, Cumulative, Accurate 2, Split 2 [26 points]
Dimensional Shifting: Sustained Protection 5 [5 points]

Evac is a little underpowered point-wise for his PL, but that’s on purpose: this is Evac when he’s still flying solo and working for the “rehabilitation” group that have given him a new purpose in life. They keep a tight leash on him—as much as that’s possible—mostly via handlers who have much more skill at manipulating Dusan than Gerard did, preying on his sense of wanting to be useful and helpful as well as having a place and people who care about him.

If you use Evac while he’s still part of the “rehabilitation” program, his role is pretty straightforward: he teleports in, grabs whoever his people want pulled out, and then teleports out with them. He doesn’t stay to go toe-to-toe with any heroes present (it’s been made very clear to him his job is to get people out, that’s it), but if heroes have someone he’s supposed to recover, he’ll try throwing down a lash or three to get hands on his objective. Mostly, however, Evac is likely to be a frustration: popping out with his target—which might also be who the heroes are looking for—before he can be stopped, as teleporters can so often do.

Next Week, on “The Recovery Agency”…

Of course, the agency utilizing Evac wasn’t entirely on the up-and-up, and over time, Deuce began to realize the “governmental agents” he was being called upon to retrieve weren’t always coming from disasters; sometimes they were coming from war zones, and he started to think they were just as often creating the problem as needing his special kind of extraction. Worse, Deuce started to think that the organization was sending them in specifically because they had access to his abilities to get them back out again. He wasn’t a thinker, but it was time to think of a plan, but luckily, that wouldn’t have to be entirely up to him, because he was about to meet another meta-powered man in the same “rehabilitation” program at the jail: a man code-named Patch.

We’ll get to Patch next week.

STA Saturday — “Charlie X”

Okay, last week I began a silly little project to re-watch Star Trek (starting with TOS) with the goal of trying to draw a story seed or two for Star Trek Adventures from each episode. Next up? Charlie X.

Charlie X (TOS Season 1, Episode 2… or 7?)

Just like last week, I’ll note that Star Trek TOS aired in a different order from how it was intended to be released, so “Charlie X” was beamed into people’s living rooms as the second episode, even though it was supposed to be the seventh, I think?

Okay, one of the things I loved about this episode is how, as Charlie grows in power and eventually takes over the ship, his outfit shifts from civilian, to crewman, to the same style of wrap-around command jacket Kirk is wearing. It’s a clever costuming nod.

Whatever. It’s what was listed next when I hit play, so here we are. Okay, this episode has some truly horrific moments—a woman with her face removed legit still makes me twitch—and the premise of the episode is basically: puberty makes an isolated and maladjusted seventeen year old lose all self-control, and it’s even worse because he has psychokinetic abilities and only patriarchal father figures can hold him back from totally nuking Enterprise (it’s too late for Antares, which he also destroys). 

Or something like that. The main thing is Charlie Evans has major powers to just rewrite reality around him, and that Yeoman Janice Rand is two-for-two in episodes where she is stalked by the villain of the week. (Seriously, she cannot catch a break.)

Oh! “Charlie X” has a scene where two bro-dudes step out of a Jeffries Tube and one says to the other, “Hey, I’ll put the equipment away. See you in the rec room, huh?” and the other dude gives him a slap on the butt and a “You got a deal, friend!”

Yep. Space dude pals.

Later, Charlie gives Yeoman Rand a swat on the butt and she’s aghast and Kirk “explains” things. And the reason for the air-quotes should become apparent, because this Starship Captain finds himself summoning all his father-figure wisdom and granting Charlie with the following: “I mean, man to man is one thing, but, er, man and woman, uh, it’s, uh, it’s, uh. Well it’s, uh, another thing. Do you understand?”

Smooth, Jim. So clear. Y’know, this might be why it never worked out with Carol.

I will give credit where it’s due Kirk here, however, that in another chat with Charlie he points out that how he feels about Rand is irrelevant if she doesn’t feel that way about him—feelings are a two way street, and that the galaxy is full of things he can have and things he can’t have, and that’s not fun but it’s reality. Yes, Jim. That’s the message.

Scenario Seeds

Okay, teenage hormones and world’s worst father figure talk aside, let’s mine this for details one might use at the gaming table. 

Seed One: The Antares

Okay, so there’s an amusing thing that happens with the Antares before Charlie uses his brain to blow it up: it’s given four different descriptions. No, seriously. First it’s a cargo vessel, then it’s a transport ship, then a science-probe vessel, and finally, it’s a survey ship. So which his it? Maybe the answer is just… yes. It’s only got twenty people on it—a Captain and the first officer (who is also the helmsmen) are the only two we meet—and while it’s smaller, it has what appears to be a fairly large cargo pod (or at least, that’s what I think the big vertical part of the structure is). Like Memory Alpha, I’m assuming Antares is part of the Federation Merchant Marine—ships sent to move things or people around and perform secondary surveys.

The Federation Merchant Marine—Given they’re smaller ships with only twenty crew, they’re the perfect size for a rescue mission. A vessel like Antares is a great start to an episode, and the trouble a smaller ship with valuable and/or time-sensitive cargo could get into is pretty varied, even within Federation Territory. If a ship doesn’t turn up where it’s supposed to, the crew’s ship could be assigned to trying to track it down (and potentially just as importantly recovering its important cargo and/or passengers). What happened to the vessel? Well, maybe (a) it’s as simple as raiders, and the episode can spin into finding the lost ship, damaged, cargo missing, with perhaps wounded requiring assistance before the crew can learn who attacked it for the cargo; or (b) it was an inside job, and it turns out Maquis managed to plant themselves into positions on board the vessel, waiting for supplies they can use in their fight against the Cardassians—and even a Merchant Marine vessel can be of use to their cause, turning the mission into a cat-and-mouse run around the Badlands where there’s a chance the smaller vessel might even have an advantage over the player crew in their larger ship; or (c) the target was a kidnapping—a Federation diplomat who is famously uncaring about putting on airs was using the vessel as the most timely transport to get to a negotiation, and it’s left her vulnerable to those opposed to the union she’s suggesting. The kidnappers have send the vessel onward to buy themselves time; the crew will catch up to it only to learn this, and have to back-track and figure out where, exactly, the diplomat was lost.

Familiar Faces—In a less pivotal way there’s an opportunity, especially in Starbase-centered games, to have a Merchant Marine vessel and her crew be regular guests, potentially creating romantic options for player crew like Cassidy Yates was on DS9, or to include members of the family of the player crew as occasional guest-stars, like Travis Mayweather’s “Boomer” family on Star Trek: Enterprise. And if you do decide to later feature the vessel in a story, it will only add more narrative weight to the scenario when it happens.

Seed Two: Oblivion

During “Charlie X,” Charlie Evans banishes two people to nothingness—Yeoman Janice Rand, and a fellow in the gym named Sam. Also, Charlie blows up the Antares by banishing a baffle plate on the shield of the vessel’s energy pile. The Thasians (as represented by a wavering green glowing face) say they were “too late” to undo what happened to the Antares, but they return Rand and Sam from the nothingness before taking Charlie away because they believe he’d never be able to resist using his powers among humans, and likely would destroy humans he’s around or have to be destroyed in turn. In the end, they take him away on their there-and-also-not-there vessel, after Charlie has a bit of a freak out about wanting to stay, being sorry, and—a little heartbreakingly—that he can’t even touch the Thasians, and they don’t know how to love. Not exactly a happy ending for Charlie Evans.

The Echoes of Antares—The crew are on a routine mission and pick up an odd signal via an older-style D-channel transmission, and manage to pick up what appears to be someone trying to warn them not to trust the boy, repeating and asking Enterprise to confirm. Enterprise is nowhere nearby (and might not even exist, depending on whether or not you’re playing in the years between the launch of the -A, -B, -C, or -D (and so on) versions of the vessel, but upon making contact, the player ship finds themself speaking to someone who claims to be Captain Ramart of Antares, NCC-501, which was listed destroyed by the USS Enterprise NCC 1701 back in 2266. What’s happening? Perhaps (a) it’s been over a century, but Charles Evans has finally reached a point where he’s mastered his Thasian-granted abilities enough to restore what he destroyed, but the limitations of his abilities are such that he can’t alter the past, only restore the vessel and crew to where it and they were destroyed in the present day; or (b) Charles Evans believes he’s reached that level of ability, but in fact has only unlocked the power to create and sustain matter from his own mental abilities, not realizing he hasn’t restored the Antares and the twenty lost souls, but merely created duplicates from his own memories thereof—not to mention guilt, now that he’s had a century to mature and come to understand himself. Either way, the crew find themselves talking to twenty people and a ship functionally displaced from the past—and then coming face to face with an incorporeal, much more balanced and calm Charles Evans, who hopes this attempt to make things right will make up for what he did to the Antares crew in 2266. The crew, for their part, are likely to panic at the very mention of the boy who mentally manipulated them to force them to say or do whatever he wanted like puppets. And if the scenario truly is the second version—what happens when Charles realizes he hasn’t made any sort of amends, only fooled himself into believing he could do so, and if he stops lending his own willpower to the effort, Antares and crew will be gone again. Either way, counselling a being only barely human who has spent perhaps a century or more considering his own guilt and shame is going to be a tall order, especially alongside twenty men who find themselves suddenly “ahead” of where they used to be, their lives, families, and loved ones likely now dead.

The Oblivion Gene—Two of the Enterprise NCC-1701 crew found themselves erased by Charlie Evans in 2266: Yeoman Janice Rand and an officer named Sam. When a member of the player crew’s ship starts to show odd signs of destabilization after a traumatic Away Mission brings them face to face with their own mortality—they start blipping in and out of reality on a cycle that seems to only increase as time goes by—a deep dive into the ship’s records uncover two relevant facts: one, the affected crew member is a descendent of Rand (or Sam), and two, what sensors pick up during these “blips” aligns perfectly with what Enterprise’s internal sensors logged as having happened to Rand at the hands of Charlie Evans. No one has seen or heard from the Thasians since the incident in 2266, but it’s the only breadcrumb the ship has to follow. While science and medical officers do their best to attempt to stabilize the quantum presence of the crewperson in question, the ship warps to Thasus, hoping to find a way to reach the Thasians for a solution—but the “blips” start to spread to objects and other matter around the crewperson, putting the ship and other crew in danger, and the crewperson’s mental state seems to affect this “spread” of the matter-negating effect. Reaching Thasus, the crew (a) make contact with the Thasians only to learn there’s nothing the Thasians can do—they didn’t realize reconstituting the ancestor of the crewperson might affect descendants (they forgot the whole “genetics moving forward” part of being corporeal, and figured their “temporary” fix for Rand and Sam would last at least three times their likely lifetime, so it didn’t matter), leaving it up to the crew to find a way to ensure the crewperson manifests their existence back to a permanent basis via managing their own mental focus, perhaps with the aid of telepathic player crew at great risk to themselves; or (b) make contact with Charles Evans, who has had perhaps as long as a century or more to learn how to control his abilities, and believes he has a solution: he can merge with the affected crewperson mentally, and this will not only restore their quantum state but allow him to—passively, without influence—finally restore his ability to touch and feel the galaxy around him (but is he telling the truth, or attempting once again to break free of Thasus and the Thasians, who are curiously no longer present? Charles himself explains they’ve moved further away from reality and rarely even return as incorporeal beings, but can he be trusted?); or (c) upon making contact with the Thasians, the only solution they can see is to grant the crewperson a measure of their own abilities—but can they avoid repeating the mistakes of the past? Can any human being handle being granted power over reality, even if it is intended only to save their own existence?

And there we go, two more seeds from which to potentially build adventures for your own Star Trek Adventures games. I hope you find them fun, interesting, or useful. I’m certainly enjoying taking a stroll through the TOS-era episodes for ideas.

Tabletop Tuesday — Earthborne Rangers (Day Two)

Hey y’all! It’s Tuesday, but it was Labour Day yesterday, so I spent most of today thinking it was Monday but then at the last moment realized that is not correct and anyway, let’s get nerdy.

I mentioned a month or so ago that my gaming group had started playing Earthborne Rangers, and we’ve had a couple of sessions since, and have started to get into the swing of the game, and I think I’m at the point now where I feel like I’ve got a strong enough grasp on the mechanics and we’ve played through two full game days (it might be three, I can’t remember if there was a day built into the “deliver the biscuits” training mission or not) and so I thought I’d check in with my impressions thereof.

May the Odds Be (N)ever In Your Favour

So, right off the bat, I’ll open with saying we are enjoying this game the more we get the hang of the back-and-forth. The world-building is solid. The card art is lovely. The conceit of the game—humanity attempting to do a much better job of connecting and working alongside our planet after it finally (mostly) recovered from us pretty much wrecking the place—is quite nicely done, right down to you “stressing” creatures until they take off, rather than, y’know, killing the monsters or what-have-you.

That said? This game is difficult. And I mean that in a game-balance sense: everything you try to do feels stacked against you, with perhaps one or two things you are built to be above-average good at.

Instead of dice for randomness, there’s a deck of cards. Every action you try to take in the game draws from one of four main energy pools your ranger has (of which one will only be a 1, two will be 2, and one will be 3—for example, my Ranger has Awareness 1 but Fitness 3, with Focus and Spirit of 2). Every card has four modifiers, one per energy/attribute type, with modifiers of either +1, 0, -1, or -2. Out of twenty-four cards, only 1-in-four are those +1s, there are more -1s than +1s, and the -2 is not counterbalanced by a +2. Basically, the odds are not in your favour for breaking even with what you attempt, so if you need two successes (or “Effort”) we’re learning you need to be able to commit a 3 (or more) via adding bonuses with your cards to the attempt, because as much as we know the math says 1-in-3 will be a neutral result of +0, the reality is we seem to draw -1 and -2 an awful lot, and those +1s hide. It doesn’t help that the -2s also trigger shuffling the deck again, so they go right back in.

This is maybe my main sticking point of the game, when it comes right down to it—the way success is often just out of reach, or perhaps we’ve been very unlucky in our initial sessions. My character seems to be stuck in a repeating pattern of “Okay, let me handle Traversing” (because of my Fitness, being an Explorer, etc., my deck is heavily geared towards getting us from point A to point B), and while it’s nice I have a thing I do particularly well, that damned -2 (and the -1s) rear their head an awful lot, turning what could have been enough into “and now someone else has to gamble and hope they succeed to add just one more point to our total.”

Similarly, the missions have been really frustrating so far. You often meet a friendly character, and they’ll have an interaction you can attempt to fulfil (putting effort on their card) and once you tip over to a completed amount of effort, they’ll offer you some sort of mission—but so far, every single time, we’ve not been able to complete the mission in time, because our Fatigue or our Deck runs too low and so they get shuffled back into decks for us to hopefully encounter again (to start that mission over again). There was one mission where first we managed to connect well enough with the friendly person to find out they’d like us to help them deal with a predator that’s been seen in the area, a mission which we accepted. Thereafter, we had to utilize five “presence” worth of prey to draw the attention of a predator—and it was looking damned close to the wire. But! We managed to get enough prey tucked under the card to succeed, even if we were right on the edge of running out of cards, but it was really exciting to finally have succeeded at a mission!

So we read the result on the card and… learned it was just step one of the mission—we now had to interact with the prey itself—but since we couldn’t do that given our cards were all but gone and needed to rest and end the day, all that progress? Undone. The prey cards would be going back into the decks, and we’d have to try again from scratch next game day—only the Mission Card sticks around, not the progress on this particular mission.

On the plus side, we don’t have to encounter that friendly person again first, at least?

This might not have felt quite so frustrating had we not decided to try Earthborne Rangers because Frosthaven was becoming too convoluted and felt like the complexity was rising just because. Earthborne Rangers is not an easy game to parse at first, and it felt like a letdown to get into the swing of it, feel like might have made it, only to realize… nope. We’ve yet to add a single new card to our decks, so it also feels like we’re stuck at exactly the same level of power we began with, and while I realize we’re only a couple of game days into the journey, it still feels like we’re flailing to not-quite-succeed.

There’s also an ongoing flood, terrible weather that’s sapping our cards fast and furiously into the “Fatigue” state, and we’re down to the wire on the third day of three to deal with the flood problem (though we’ve gotten two thirds of the way through it, fingers crossed we can actually succeed at the remaining third of that mission and that it won’t have another “oops, gotcha!” moment once we complete it where it turns out there’s another step we can’t finish in time).

That… Doesn’t Sound Fun?

Now I re-read this, it really doesn’t, does it? That’s maybe too harsh, or maybe I’m letting the evening’s gaming session colour my experience a bit too much. We are enjoying ourselves while we squint our way through the session—I joke a bit there, but I do wish they’d upped the font size on these cards, even if it meant nudging the artwork down a bit—and while we’re still diving back into the rulebook on the regular (Wait, how do we clear an obstacle again?) the idea of the game is still really intriguing, and we’d like to succeed.

So we’re going to keep going. I think it’ll come down to whether or not we can finish the “Flood” mission or not—and whether or not doing so results in any sort of “gain” for our us in terms of our decks for our rangers. Maybe I’ll be back with another blog in another month.

STA Saturday — “The Man Trap”

Okay, it’s no secret I’m a nerd, nor that I am a gaming nerd, nor that for the last couple of years, my energies have mostly gone to two game systems, one of which is Star Trek Adventures as put out by Modiphius. One of my favourite things to do is to weave in tiny bits of Trek Lore into our ongoing campaigns, and touch on things that only got touched on once or twice in the various series that aired.

I end up on Memory Alpha a lot, as you can imagine.

Anyway, on Bluesky, it occurred to me that it might be fun to rewatch and “mine” the various episodes for ideas, random seeds, or just one-offs and consider ways they might be used in a game session. And, well, Jim Johnson (the lead designer of STA) invoked Pike so here we are.

Now, I feel the need to point out before I begin this that I’m a queer dude, and as such, there will be queer inclusion aplenty in said discussions, so if that particular facet of IDIC bothers you, maybe plot another course and engage at whatever warp speed you need.

(I don’t, however, ascribe to Kirk/Spock and that will likely become obvious as we go through TOS, but allow me the short answer here: Spock is too good for Kirk. Kirk is a mess. I am not a fan of Kirk. I will admit Trek wouldn’t be here without Kirk, but I can salute this series with love while also pointing at the many issues it has, and I likely will do so. That might be another reason to warp out of here for some of you.)

And with that—oh Great Bird of the Galaxy, help us—The Man Trap.

The Man Trap (TOS Season 1, Episode 1… Kinda?)

RIght off the bat, is this episode 1 or 5? It’s the first one when I hit play, was the original first one aired (I believe) and so we’re going with this as episode 1, even though Where No Man Has Gone Before was supposed to be the pilot (beyond the other pilot) and… Look. It’s the original series Star Trek. Convoluted Canon Where No One Thought Canon Would Matter is sort of its thing, really.

I swear, Jim, she hasn’t aged a day!

But, here’s the skinny: Enterprise is checking in on Mr. and Mrs. Crater, two archeologists who are cataloging a planet of ruins of a long-gone species and have been there five years (probably they should have given them more than two people to cover an entire planet, but maybe the archeology department of the Federation is spread thin) and it turns out McCoy’s ex is Mrs. Crater, and then it turns out Mrs. Crater is actually a salt-vampire-alien (with three fingers covered in suckers capable of drawing all the salt out of a body and a needle-toothed mouth to boot).

Nancy the Salt Vampire can shape-shift, kills four different crewmen (Darnell, Surgeon, Green, and Barnhart) and eventually even Mr. Crater (she’s very hungry, okay?) and ultimately McCoy has to shoot her after Spock convinces him she’s not actually Nancy by… punching her really, really hard.

Uh. Anyway. “Women who turn out to be scary/evil/unhinged/alien” is a recurring theme in TOS-era.

This episode also reminded me of the Captain Jerk facet of Captain Kirk’s… let’s call it a “command style” I guess? He yells at people. That’s what he does. He also starts by teasing McCoy about a past romance in front of Darnell (dude, be professional) and when McCoy is noting that he could have sworn Nancy looked 25 when he first met her—and this would be a key piece of important information, by the way—Kirk basically tells him to shut the hell up and do his damn job, yelling at him and ending a conversation that might have led them to realize they were seeing different things had he not done his immediate jump to anger. (Credit where it’s due: he does apologize later, but even later than that, he snaps at McCoy not to think with his glands, kind of undoing said apology.)

Also, holy heck, the sexism! Starfleet is not a great place to be a yeoman. Men leer and cajole and refer to you as “that” and it all seems kind of “meh, whatcha gonna do?” from the women on the scene. Boo. (That said, Janice Rand totally eats some of Sulu’s lunch before delivering it, and I am here for that tiny act of rebellion, Janice. You rock. Salt his damned celery and chow down with your bad self.)

Similarly, Darnell, the first to die, sees a very different woman than Kirk and McCoy do when he spies Nancy the Salt Vampire. He sees a woman from “Wrigley’s Pleasure Planet.”

Because of course he does. 60s science fiction, everyone.

Scenario Seeds

Okay, Captain Jerk or no, let’s mine this for details one might use at the gaming table.

Seed One: Time For Your Check-up

The biggest win from this episode for me is how it’s established early on that it’s 100% regulations for the Chief Medical Officer of a starship to drop by at archeological digs once a year to give everyone a physical. This is a great way to aim your player crew somewhere you want them to be and to have your Chief Medical Officer be in the lead in a mission.

Everyone’s Healthy? Great! — Even if it’s just a teaser scene before everything else hits the fan in some other way (like in The Man Trap), it can allow some time for the CMO character to shine until you reveal that (a) an old piece of automated and dangerous technology from one of the archeological sites has gotten loose, (b) the reason everyone is healthy is because they’ve accidentally exposed themselves to an alien retrovirus that has given them enhanced physical health, which sounds great except now they’re technically illegal thanks to the laws against genetic modification in the Federation and they need to be quarantined and studied before they’re allowed to mingle with the general population, which they’re not going to appreciate or agree to, or (c) one of the assisting medical staff is murdered and the data on their medical tricorder has been completely erased and slagged, which means someone the crew checked out is not who they seem—or at the very least, has something to hide. Maybe it’s an undercover agent surgically adjusted to appear human who is trying to get some sort of ancient technology off the planet, and had intended to do so before Starfleet showed up to perform the physicals—if you have your starship arriving earlier than expected that can be a clue right from the start.

Everyone’s Not Healthy? Crap! — If you combine this with some sort of medical emergency, you can keep the CMO in charge throughout. Say, the Away Team beams down and discovers some sort of virus is afoot, making it against regulations for other people to beam down, especially if said medical officer realizes whatever has broken out is virulent and already spreading to the Away Team and won’t be handled by the biofilter. If the outbreak happened because someone found something a long-lost civilization left behind (reactivating a dormant or not-so-dormant virus at some dig site, natural or perhaps engineered by the original native species who were determined to use germ warfare to wipe out an enemy and ending up wiping out everyone), you can add Science Officers and Engineers to the mix trying to co-ordinate where and when it came from via logs, contact tracing, etc. Splitting the crew this way—letting those whose main characters are still on the ship taking roles among the Away Team as medical or other support crew—allows for great use of the Support Crew mechanic on the planet (and the ship), with ship crew doing what they can from orbit while the CMO and Away Team have to work with whatever they’ve got on hand or can have beamed down.

Seed Two: Wrigley’s Pleasure Planet

Okay, so I wasn’t going to touch this one, but then there was a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it scene of this security dude walking into the frame during General Quarters. Hello Mister Redshirt. Then he turns and walks away whereupon the view is just as good and… Ahem. Anyway, I warned you this was a queer blog. Wrigley’s Pleasure Planet no longer seemed like a bad idea, is what I’m saying.

Wrigley’s Pleasure Planet? You’ve got to be kidding me… oh. Hi. Sulu? Lay in a course for Wrigley’s Pleasure Planet, would you?

Okay, I kid (sort of). I think this is definitely one of those Session 0 topics you’d want to have discussed beforehand. Darnell’s less-than-subtle subtext (who are we kidding, it was text) makes it clear this is not a Disneyland-type planet. But even if you don’t want to set anything on said planet—I doubt I would—it could say something about a character if they chose their shore leave there. In a group where players don’t mind a trace of cheeky humour, having it turn out that the straight-laced first officer that everyone calls “By the Book Bob” for his strict adherence to the various regulations took his shore leave on Wrigley’s Pleasure Planet can make for some character interactions.

Nothing Pleasurable About That!—That said, Trek also has a long history of shore leave episodes where things go wrong. Getting a distress call from Wrigley’s Pleasure Planet would definitely raise some eyebrows. Who’d want to endanger a planet of pleasure? Having the crew’s starship be the closest to respond to a planetary distress call from a planet that is normally a tourist destination would set a different tone than a planet with a crucial supply of some mineral or a tactical advantage.

As for the who and the why? Maybe (a) a species that finds the openness of the planet morally abhorrent are making a political statement. A particularly militant group of either the Kostolain or Arbazan would suit that characterization from what we see of them in TNG and DS9. Or, (b) perhaps whatever threat is being aimed at the planet is only a ruse. While those endangering the planet draw all eyes, a second group attempt to kidnap someone with important intelligence or connections.

When Pleasure is Silent—Or, what if one of the crew is supposed to return from Wrigley’s Pleasure Planet and… doesn’t. When the player’s ship goes to investigate, they find the entire population of the planet is just sitting quietly and silently, apparently content, but completely non-responsive. Is it (a) a medical outbreak of some sort that needs to be tracked down before it affects the crew as well—not to mention before the people involved start to dehyrate or suffer from malnutrition since they’re not even eating or drinking, (b) some sort of telepathic effect, accidentally created and spread among the populace by a powerful telepath, perhaps a Betazoid who was born with their telepathic abilities “on” who found some of the hosts of Wrigley’s Pleasure Planet have found a way to grant them telepathic silence, something they find most relaxing of all, given they normally can’t shut other minds out. In that case, moving through the minds of those affected, trying to follow the “web” of telepathic connection back to the source can make for an episode centred on telepathic crew members (perhaps utilizing Vulcan mind meld abilities to bring an “Away Team” into the collective unconscious of the planet), with all the crew having to resist the most calming, wonderful, soothing surroundings they might imagine long enough to get to the Betazoid at the centre of it all.

Re-watching the episode was a wee bit like time-travel for me. I don’t often go back to TOS, even though it was my entry to Star Trek (via syndication), and I remember the first time I saw this one—Kirk screaming as it tried to drain the salt from him (as well as the Salt Vampire being super creepy once revealed) definitely left an impression.

Anyway. If you play Star Trek Adventures, I hope this was helpful. If you don’t, I hope it was amusing. And while I don’t know if I’ll manage to find something I could imagine spinning a scenario or two from with every episode—I mean, some of them sure are, uh, sixties—I’ll keep going.