I thought I’d share with you a brief overview of recent events at my Monday night Star Trek Adventures gaming table to illustrate the importance of embracing the randomness of a roll of the dice.
Being a Game Master is diametrically opposed from being a writer. Embracing the improvisational elements of gaming and empowering player’s choices is so very opposite to writing a closed narrative. (Cross-posted on my Patreon).
But I love it.
If I do my job well it creates an even richer reality for the players, and leaves them wondering which parts were planned, and which ones came out of their choices.
I’ve had some insane events. Holodeck episodes with famous ‘cameos’. Emergency Holographic LAWYERS. Augments. Godlike beings. Court trials with gasping reveals. Spies that wait MONTHS to out themselves to their fellow players.
It’s a ride…so I thought I’d give you a small taste of the first ‘episode’ in one of my most recent adventures. Let me know if you enjoy this glimpse, and would like to read more.
On a routine resupply mission and approaching the Chantico Nebula, a week and a half away from Starbase 157, and another couple weeks from Nerendra station, our heroes were tasked with saving an Oberth class starship trapped in the Chantico nebula that was acting strangely: gravity was reversing itself ,and energy waves were building to dangerous and unexplainable levels.
Something like artificial wormholes were tearing spacetime apart inside the Nebula. Luna class USS Avandar’s Science Officer C’Aura Tam determined they were not naturally forming, and thought that something was wrong with the data.
She asks Comms/2nd Officer Zavaa Azghar to look at the data. The Orion officer digs into it.
Meanwhile, Captain John Simcoe ordered the ship deeper into the Nebula, calculating his starship’s stronger shields would be able to hold together long enough to rescue the far less powerful Oberth class ship. He was right, due in no small part to the fancy flying of first officer and pilot Bella O’Rourke.
After making it to the Oberth (the Tal’il), the gravity waves have again flipped and have resumed tearing the previously damaged starship apart.
The Avandar must act fast, and Captain Simcoe extends shields to protect both ships. That leaves them vulnerable in the long term, however. He accepts suggestions from his crew.
Communications/2nd Azghar has discovered a coherent signal in the underlying data: a decaying remnant of the Genesis Wave, forbidden tech that was once used to turn another nebula into an unstable planet. She surmises someone is up to something very not good.
Spacetime becomes even more unstable and a wormhole through subspace opens. The science officer can scan realspace through it and suggests a gamble: they can escape through the wormhole, emerging a few light years away.
They take the risk, as the only other option is leaving the crew of the science vessel to die.
Chief Engineer T’kosa dials the structural integrity fields and shields to ‘eleven’ and they traverse the short wormhole successfully!
The Avandar’s tractor beam held onto the Oberth through the wormhole. The Tal’il’s Captain, Nartis, thanks Simcoe and the Avandar and the two ships commence to their repairs, once again headed back to Starbase 157, now a little further away thanks to the wormhold ride.
Comms Officer Azghar receives a subspace alert: another nebula, light years away on thr far side of Stabase 157 and close to the Romulan border, the Paulson Nebula, is showing signs of the same unknown phenomena affecting it.
Captain Simcoe asks his Science Officer if they’re looking at a quantum-entangled event. She believes he has guessed correctly.
In fact, the Chalna nebula is also generating energy and experiencing altered spacetime phenomena…and all show traces of a carrier wave… the Genesis Wave.
Admiral Kal’Pa orders the Avandar to continue investigating these entangled nebulae, as an explosion could affect half a dozen star systems and wreak untold havoc.
Azghar contacts Ensign Ruby, a very capable holographic crewmember just recently given rank and duties after joining the crew in an unofficial capacity earlier. Her encyclopedic knowledge shows no similar effects on record.
Collected in a briefing room, the crew decides to use the deflector dish to blast the nebula with near the sum-total energy generated by their warp engines, itself powered by a controlled matter/antimatter explosion).
Once they reach the Chantico Nebula again, the Avandar tries to sever the quantum entanglement with the Genesis wave uniting two other Nebulae.
They are unable to generate enough power. The Nebula has grown in mass as well as energy levels, surmises Vulcan Engineer T’kosa.
Science Officer Tam’s calculations show it would now take a matter/antimatter explosion the size of several starships – losing containment and exploding at once – to stop whatever entanglement is pumping energy into these nebulae.
The Avandar races towards Starbase 157 to report and regroup. Meanwhile, several of the bridge crew gather in the lounge on Seven-Forward, where they remains on-edge, wondering if this is a long-delayed but unintended consequence of deploying Genesis Wave… or something intentional. An act of someone willing to risks untold lives for an unknown goal.
They would find out a week later, gathered once more around the gaming table… and trust me, it got weirder from here 🙂
