Beyond the Alpha Quadrant 4 (Session 1)

This series of documents describe a typical "SFB Campaign" I run here at Penn State. As an unusual twist, this campaign is going to be run by "committee": I'll give a list of choices at the end of each "Session", each of you may vote on which choice you would take. When I put up Session 2 (on April 13, 2003) the most popular choice will be finished and put online. I'll also put up brief notes on other choices (making this thing like a large "Choose Your Own Adventure" book).

I generally allow the players to select any race they would like. The tech level of this campaign is 2X, but I would invent new systems if someone chose a race that doesn't exist at that tech level (like Species 8472). I generally create a new SSD for each player's ship (several of the "2003 Campaign" SSDs I've put up recently are player's ships). Since there are no real "players" for this, I just took three standard races which don't have many 2X SSDs:

[New SSD] Lyran 2Xl Galaxy Ship
[New SSD] WYN 2Xl Galaxy Ship
[New SSD] ISC 2Xl Galaxy Ship

The players form a "party" of starships that travel together. I'm the Game Master, and I describe and run all the things they encounter, plus make rulings when necessary.

At this time I also describe the rules to be used. Typical decisions to be made include the following:

• Legendary Officers? Sometimes I don't allow any; sometimes I get gross and allow Custom Legendary Officers, this system is used for the "Captain" of each vessel.
  [New Rules] HUGELY Expanded version of the "Custom Legendary Officers" system (Microsoft Word format)
• Ship Modifications? The ability of FAB and CONST to build new systems is described. This allows the players to modify their ships with time. The standard rule at 2X is CONST produces 3 Construct points (see my TNG rules for what this concept means) per day and FAB produces 3 Energy Allowance (for option mounts) per day. This is usually way too gross, so I put limits on it (like they produce only 0.3 per day, or it requires CARGO boxes of spare parts). Players can also buy new systems (or buy pods of various types to attach to their ships). After a few sessions, I usually ask for the player's notes and redraw all their SSDs for them using SSDPRINT.
• Racial Technology base? Each race has a "technology base" which represents which systems they "know" (could theoretically build and/or operate). A typical set of rulings follows:
  Generally, the races form into groups (the "Galactic group", the "Omega sector group", the "Module C4 races", etc.).
  You can build/operate any system that has appeared on at least three SSDs for your race, even if it isn't on your individual SSD (so the Lyran above could build/operate a mauler, even though his particular ship doesn't have one).
  You can build/operate any system from any other race in your group, or a "weird" system that appears on only 1 or 2 SSDs, at one tech level lower (so a 2X Fed could build a 1X Disruptor).
  As the campaign progresses, you can "learn" new systems from ships you capture (or whatever), or might figure out how that weird system really works so you can use it at 2X.
• Campaign Technology base? Sometimes I rule that we're in the "Revised Lower Tech Universe" (or whatever) and certain systems are unavailable.

Now that the ships are selected (and the rules would've been set up), we would begin...

It is the 2Xl (late) time period. The Federation, after a brutal 5 year war and a particularly daring mission of the Enterprise-C, has recently accepted the surrender of the Xorkelians. However, the Cardassians (another coreward race) have enslaved several star systems during the war, and now the Federation is preparing for war again.

During this time, several groups of "Galaxy ships" were sent to probe nearby galaxies. These ships are built for speed, and use a modified RTN (Rapid Transit Network) system to accelerate the ships to millions of times the speed of light.

Each RTN consists of about 100 "Transwarp Accelerators" placed about 1 parsec apart in a line. These Transwarp Accelerators (an old SSD of one is here) apply transwarp energy to the ships as they "fly by". The RTN components are built by robot ships (which use the RTN itself to deliver new sections and expand it).

The RTN is formed in a line directed at a nearby galaxy. After 100 "accelerations", the ships coast towards that galaxy at tremendous speed (an unstable wormhole effect travels along with the fleet). The ships can make minor course corrections using their own transwarp engines.

The robot ships will also use the RTN and follow about 1 month behind, to construct a new RTN at the target galaxy for the return trip home. When the ships return towards home, the remote RTN is usually destroyed after it is used.

This campaign directs the party towards the Galaxy IC 1613 (See my Local Group of Galaxies map, it's to the SouthEast of the Milky Way). It's an irregular dwarf galaxy roughly 2.5 million light-years away.

How these particular ships got together is anyone's guess: At this time, the Lyrans are a minor race within the Klingon Empire, the ISC is a minor race within the Romulan Empire, and the WYN were recently expelled from their own cluster due to the heat zone effects (and generally travel as traders along with the Jindarians and the Ferengi). Presumably this was a joint effort between the Lyrans and the ISC (having nothing much better to spend their budgets on, since they are protected by a larger empire), and this WYN ship is along for the ride.

The orders are to make a brief survey and make contact with races there if possible. Once the ships slow down from the RTN effect, the ships will be limited to about Warp 15 (old scale), so it is understood the fleet will have no way to actually survey the entire galaxy.

The party uses a special form of shielding (invented about 50 years ago) to get past the Energy Barrier at the edge of the galaxy, and hop aboard the RTN...

This section describes what my players call a "crap encounter" (a minor random battle not directly related to the story; unpredictable things do happen...). These "crap encounters" are usually fairly amusing, and sometimes net the players a captured ship or whatever.

The players get to about the 30th node in the RTN and are moving at about Warp 80 (old scale, about half a million times the speed of light). Weapon targetting is almost impossible and the ships are more or less "out of phase" (and will pass completely through solid objects, even something as large as a star). One of the robot ships reports the 83rd node (ahead of them) is no longer responding to communications, and is presumably offline (there are no robot ships at the 83rd node to confirm this). This is not a big deal; a missing node here or there is acceptable.

The players get to about the 40th node, and now the 82nd node (along with the two robot ships there) is not responding. This is becoming a problem, as this leaves a gap of almost 10 light-years (between node 81 and node 84). Unless the ships are exactly precise in their course, they will be out of node 84's range and will fly off in the wrong direction (not towards Galaxy IC 1613). They will arrive at the "gap" in about half an hour.

The players can abort the mission (and restart when the nodes are fixed), continue on, or take some other action (this is where the role-playing component of this game comes in). As Game Master, I know the following: An Andromedan force has detected the RTN activating, has been destroying the nodes one by one, and is approaching the party (going "backwards" in the RTN).

[New SSD] Andromedan 2Xs Upheaval Battleship
(presumably there'd be Andro satellite ships too, but you get the idea)
There would probably be a fight here if the party slowed down, as they cannot slow down fast enough before they come across the Andros. After the Andros are dealt with, the party can ride the RTN slowly back to the beginning, and reset it for a second attempt.

If the party kept going, the fight would be like 1 impulse as the party flies by the (relatively unmoving) Andro ships at high warp. Unfortunately, the Andros wouldn't have been dealt with, which means the RTN (and the robot ships) would be mostly destroyed behind them (and there would be a several month delay in sending a replacement fleet of robot ships to build the remote RTN at Galaxy IC 1613).

Or something else might happen, depending on what the players decide to do. They could ask for robot ships at other nodes to investigate (I'd probably put a couple at node 79 or 80 or whatever).

I generally won't (and can't) plan for every contingency; I just keep track of what's going on "in the background" and let the player's actions dictate the direction of the campaign. I do try think of obvious courses of action (like the two choices above) and plan for those.
I've ran campaigns where we chose ships, I placed the players on the Alpha Quadrant map somewhere (usually in the WYN cluster to start), and just let them do whatever they want. Sometimes I have to have a session break if they start heavily fighting a race that doesn't have many SSDs designed (like the Teckla or something).

Anyway, to move this along, I'll assume they chose the "slow down, fight, and reset" option.

Another "crap encounter". :)

The party is about 1/3 of the way to Galaxy IC 1613, and detect a huge distortion in subspace ahead. The distortion is obviously artificial, and can be avoided by moving in a particular direction.

What is disturbing is the specificness of the course correction that is needed. Only one path in the area will clearly navigate past the distortion, which is a bit too specific (as if the party is being purposely directed towards a certain location).

If the party decides to "blow through" the distortion, each ship will take 2d6 * 100 damage each turn for 1d6 consecutive turns. The damage can be reinforced against.

If the party tries to slow down and miss the distortion by a larger margin, they can do so, but it will take 3d6 extra months to arrive at Galaxy IC 1613.

If they follow the obvious path, they will encounter a bizarre Size 0 monster which matches their relative speed, then it attacks:

Note 1: Weapon penalties due to the speed of the units involved is countered by the sheer size of the monster.
Note 2: These rules assume a 10 impulse system. If using 32 impulses, see below.

Each impulse, the psi-monster moves first (before all other units). Roll 1d6 and consult the "Psi-Monster Random Actions Table" to determine it's course of action.

The psi-monster has hit points equal to half of the combined BPVs of all opponent ships. The monster regenerates each impulse; after weapons fire, add 1% (round down) to the psi-monster's hit points (cannot exceed maximum). The psi-monster has (E6.0) MCIDS; it can be used any number of times per impulse, but not more than once per target per impulse.

During weapons fire, the psi-monster does three attacks on every Size 5 or larger unit in the area:

• A Telekinetic Blast, which acts as a teleporting weapon which ignores all defenses. The Telekinetic Blast is simply scored as internal damage. Note the tremendous range of the weapon.
• A Mind Control effect, which has a chance at close range to control the entire ship. For each ship within range 17, during Impulse Activity, roll 1d6, if successful, the ship is controlled by the psi-monster for the rest of this impulse. The ship will fire one weapon from each group of weapons at the next closest ship (if within arc). The weapons are considered to have been fired by a Poor Crew (-1 to hit). No other weapons will be fired.
• Crew Casualties, resulting from other Mind Control effects taking over the crew (and the crew will fight each other). For each ship within range 23, roll 1d6 for Crew and 1d6 for Boarding Parties, if successful, one unit of that type is destroyed.

The real difficulty in facing this horror is deciding what range to be at. Too close, and you risk being controlled. Too far, and the Telekinetic Blasts will rip your ships to pieces over time.

If using 32 impulses, divide the amount of movement each impulse by 3, and check for which actions the monster takes on each 3rd impulse. The monster fires every 3rd impulse using the 32 impulse system.

I would probably have a few more "crap encounters" (probably one where they have something to gain like alien technology), but I think you get the point.

The party is now about a month away from Galaxy IC 1613, and they have a better picture of what the galaxy is like. A few notes about Galaxy IC 1613:

• There is no Energy Barrier at the edge of the galaxy.
• There are no signs of an Andromedan RTN. No Tholian, Seltorian, Borg, Species 8472, or other known galaxy-travelling races' transmissions have been detected.
• The local laws of physics are slightly different (as expected, but the details were not known). Warp Bubble design efficiency is degraded by 20% (i.e. the ships move at only 80% normal speed while "in warp"). Engineers and scientists are working on alternate warp geometries which may work better here. Transporter technology is also reduced (due to Heisenberg effects being amplified); their range is halved.

Now is the time to decide which part of the galaxy should be approached first. Decades ago, observers from the Milky Way split Galaxy IC 1613 into four roughly equal sized "quadrants". The boundaries of these quadrants were decided based on their terrain features. With four weeks travel, there is enough time to make course corrections to arrive at any of these four quadrants.

• The Digamma Quadrant is very dense; systems with 10-15 stars are not uncommon. There appears to be a network of wormhole-type conduits throughout the Quadrant; it is the opinion of the scientists in the party that the conduits cannot be natural. The conduits appear to be much more common on one side of the Quadrant (the side towards the center of the galaxy). The conduits also appear to be large enough for Size 1 units to travel through (but not Size 0 or larger).
• The Episemon Bau Quadrant is dominated by a gigantic supernova remnant. There are numerous bizarre terrain features here (such as double and triple black hole systems). 95% of the star systems are either extremely old or extremely young; suggesting the same for races that might be encountered there. The Episemon Bau Quadrant is the one closest to the Milky Way Galaxy, and would be reached in the fastest time (and would be the one arrived at if no course corrections were made).
• The Qoppa Quadrant was particularly interesting to watch from a distance. The area is fairly "normal" in terms of terrain, but on three occasions, an entire star (different star each time) moved at a few multiples of the speed of light for about a week or so. In one case one of the stars even made a 90 degree turn while moving. It is believed (but not 100% proved) that the planets of those stars moved with them. The area of moving stars seemed to be towards the middle of the Qoppa Quadrant, so the party would have a couple months of travel in the Quadrant before arriving there.
• The Sampi Quadrant is full of dust and dark matter. There are deposits of extremely heavy elements in apparently stable states here. Also, dilithium, trilithium, and quadrilithium signatures have been detected in huge quantities (planet-sized!). From the Sampi Quadrant, there is a powerful repeating communications signal being sent out of the galaxy towards the southeast (vaguely but not exactly in the direction of the M33 Triangulum Galaxy). The communication is badly garbled (since it is primarily pointing away from the party, and the dust is breaking up the signal), so it cannot be translated yet. The Sampi Quadrant is the furthest from the Milky Way, and would take an extra week to reach.

Remember that the information given is just based on what the party can detect at this distance. After the decision is made, a communication will be sent to the RTN robot ships (a month behind) where to build the RTN for the return trip home.

So, now we're at the decision I'd like all of you to make for Session 2. If you were playing in this game, which Quadrant would you approach:
1. Digamma
2. Episemon Bau
3. Qoppa
4. Sampi
Send me an email to smileylich@smileylich.com with your choice. While you're at it, if there's any SSD you'd like me to design, go ahead and make an SSD request if you like. I'll add the SSD requests to the current list, and (eventually) your ship will get done, assuming it can reasonably be done.

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