Star Trek Adventures! ( Spoilers)

Each Player chose an image of either a Star Trek cosplayer, animation, or actor to represent their character.

Modiphius Entertainment’s Star Trek Adventures RPG was a huge hit with our family game table! 

All of my players are mostly familiar with the original series and the reboot movies. They love TOS so we choose to playtest the USS Lexington. I had 5 players; my friend Sam, my wife Cassandra, and my three children Lexi, Josh, and Zach. Zach wanted to be Captain however, I talked him into being a human first officer, Lt. Commander Luke Bolton. Josh reprised his role as the Vulcan science officer whom he renamed as Lt. Jackson or Mr. Jackson. Lexi chose the communications officer again but picked a different image and named her Lt. Ruby Martinez. Cassandra’s chief medical officer was Dr. Dolly O’Connell. Sam wanted to be chief of security but also wanted to be Caltian. There were no Caltian in the pregens so I used a nimble human and adjusted his melee attack to include claws. Sam was Lt Rafael Huerta the Caltian Chief of Security.

USS Lexington is on route to Dourap IV, a mostly Tellarite colony near the Klingon border. They are suffering from an outbreak of d’kar fever, a potentially lethal disease; the heroes are racing to bring medical supplies and a small team of doctors to the colony to treat the victims. I, as the GM, make the captain of the Lexington an NPC and read the Captain’s log to the players. I cut the handout information into smaller sections then handed the pieces to different players. The captain asked each of the PCs questions that can be answered by reading the handout information to the table. Dr. O’Connell told everyone about the d’kar fever, Mr. Jackson gave a run down the planet’s specifics, Lt. Martinez talked about the colony and major city, and Lt. Commander Bolton told everyone the details about the civilian medical team that was on board. Dr. O’Connell immediately was concerned about the shipment of medicine and was heading to the turbo lift to leave the bridge when disaster struck.   

Okumarts free Star Trek paper minis an a printed layout of the bridge on cardstock was a big hit.

While traveling at high warp speed, USS Lexington encountered a subspace anomaly which shaked the ship violently. Dr. O’Connell was thrown from the turbo lift door to the railing but was uninjured. The bridge crew worked together to stabilize the ship and drop out of warp.  Mr. Jackson advised engineering to take the Warp engine offline to drop the ship out of warp. When the Lexington dropped out of warp, the warp drive was offline, several other major systems were compromised, and the ship was drifting at high sublight speed. The crew began assessing the damage and making repairs. Reports of numerous injuries started coming in from all over the ship, Dr. O’Connell rushed to sick bay to coordinate treatment of the injured. Lt Rafael Huerta started work on the phasers and shields. Lt Ruby Martinez began fixing the communication array. Lt. Jackson worked on finding out where they were. Lt Commander Bolton worked on the impulse propulsion and maneuvering thrusters, all the while, the entire crew of the USS Lexington worked on to repair of the ship.

Dr Stoorer revised to be a male Tellarite

To complicate things, half the medical supplies for the relief effort have been destroyed. The adventure called for an NPC female human doctor with foul language however for the composition of my players it was not suitable, also if the relief was for a Tellarite colony I thought it fitting that the lead doctor be a Tellarite. So, I created an argumentative misogynistic male Tellarite Dr. Stoorer. Dr. O’Connell calmed him down and assured him the ship could synthesize more medicine. The civilian medical team and star fleet medical division worked together to start replicating the medicine. 

Lt. Jackson reports to the Captain that the ship is drifting directly towards the Klingon border and there are three D7 battle cruisers waiting at the border for them. 

Trouble on the Klingon Border

The chief engineer calls for Lt. Rafael Huerta, head of security, to meet with him at the deck 8 Jefferies tubes. Lt Huerta, Mr. Jackson, and Lt. Comm. Bolton rush to deck 8. Once on scene the chief of engineering alerts the other officers that the accident in warp was deliberate sabotage.

Lt. Huerta conducts an investigation and finds a medical tricorder fallen between two pipes in the Jefferies tubes. Rafael thinks one of the civilian medical team maybe the culprit. They race to sick bay.

Meanwhile on the bridge, Lt. Martinez attempts to explain to the Klingons that the USS Lexington is disabled and is not intending to violate their territory. The Klingons make it very clear that they will not fall for any federation tricks and will destroy them soon as they enter their dominion.

Once Lt Huerta reaches sickbay with a security detail, Lt. Comm. Bolton, and Mr. Jackson, he speaks with Dr. O’Connell in private. Dr. O’Connell comes up with a way to find out which one does not have their tricorder. Dr. O’Connell ushers all of the civilian team into another room and announces that she is inconsistencies from their tricorders and feels they should be recalibrated. She asks everyone to hold up their medical tricorders and everyone holds one up. At first the heroes are discouraged but Lt. Huerta checks the civilian roster and finds one of the orderlies is missing. Dr. Stoorer grumbled that the missing orderly was Kyle Hunsley, a last-minute addition to their team who was aloof and lazy! Another orderly described Kyle as antisocial and they hadn’t seen him since before the accident. Lt Huerta alerted security on all decks to be on the lookout for Kyle Hunsley. Mr. Jackson said he might be able to pinpoint his location with Kyle Hunsley bio signature and ran towards the bridge. Lt Huerta and Lt. Comm. Bolton take off in separate directions to join the manhunt.

Easy to lose one man in this crowd!

Mr. Jackson returns to the bridge and advises the captain about the search for the saboteur. He hypothesis that using Kyle Hunsley’s biosignature from the medical team’s roster that he could pinpoint his whereabouts on the ship. Mr. Jackson makes a shocking discovery and alerts Lt. Huerta that Kyle Hunsley is not a male human but a male Orion. This deviates from the adventure slightly as I was concerned my players may slay Kyle without questioning him so an Orion disguised as a human would give them a clue as to what was going on.

Due to time constraints, I immediately ended the cat and mouse game, Kyle Hunsley steps out of the turbolift onto the bridge and fires a stolen phaser on stun at the captain rendering him unconscious. Lt. Martinez doesn’t hesitate and fires her phaser and stuns Kyle. The rest of the heroes arrive on the bridge shortly after. Mr. Jackson decided to mindmeld with the unconscious saboteur to learn why this has all happened. Mr. Jackson tells the group about the Orion crime syndicate and how it released the disease on Dourap IV, to make money selling them the medicine needed to stop it. Kyle’s mission was to slow Star Fleet’s relief effort long enough for the colonial government to buy the medicine from the Orions. Kyle never intended to disable the ship and sending it hurling towards Klingon space.

Lt. Huerta gasped at the reminder that they were heading towards Klingon space. Engineering reported 7 minutes until impulse propulsion back online but navigation reported 5 minutes before crossing into Klingon space and starting the next Federation/Klingon war.

Klingon Captain

Lt. Huerta turned to Lt. Martinez, “Ruby, tell the Klingons we have captured an Orion terrorist who intended to infect this who sector with d’kar fever and who also sabotaged our ship. Ask them if will hold fire for just two minutes while our impulse propulsion becomes operational?” Lt. Martinez rolls incredibly well on her interaction with the Klingons but they demand the price for the two minutes is beaming the saboteur over to them. Ruby tells the rest of the bridge crew but explains only the captain can authorize such a deal and he is unconscious. Lt. Comm. Bolton steps up, the moment he has been waiting for the whole game, and announces, “As acting captain, I authorize the exchange.”  Kyle is beamed over to the Klingon D7 just as he begins to wake, “What? Wait!” then he is gone. The Klingon captain comes on screen with Kyle being held by two Klingon troopers by either arm, “This would-be terrorist has bought you two minutes, Federation. A second longer in our borders and we will destroy you.” The Klingon captain barks at his troopers in their language and they drag Kyle through a door as he screams, “No! It wasn’t supposed to end this way! Nnnnooooooooo!!!!” The transmission cuts as the USS Lexington slowly pulls away from Klingon Space.

The USS Lexington got back on course and saved the colony! 

Live Long and Prosper!