[Psionics] [Space] Psi Trek - Worldbuilding

[Prince Charon]

Landing Party/Away Team Loadouts question

The standard loadout for landing parties in TOS was a communicator and a phaser (type one or type two), plus one or two members of the group being equipped with a tricorder, and usually only one of them with a small medical kit, as well as a belt to stick them on in some episodes. The movies added excursion jackets, which were also seen (along with an equipment harness) in the original pilot. Phaser 'rifles' (technically, 'longarms' would be more accurate, as the barrels are probably not rifled) were only seen in TOS in the second pilot, though the first pilot had a sort of field artillery beam weapon, that may or may not have been a laser or other non-phaser raygun. The first pilot did not have a recognizable tricorder, but there was one guy with a large backpack connected to a handheld scanner of some sort, which may have been the equivalent in that era. There was also the rather insane 'photon grenade' launcher from Arena, which we discussed previously, and the occasional other gadget, but these weren't standard.

In TNG, 'landing party' was renamed 'away team,' the communicators became part of the uniform, and tricorders were smaller and I think more common, but the loadout remained mostly the same as in TOS, save that in later seasons, and in DS9 and VOY, phaser rifles were seen more frequently, and the type one holdout phaser mostly disappeared (the prop designers had made it so small that it was hard to see on screen, though this also made it a better holdout weapon than the type one from TOS).

ENT brought back the excursion jackets (as well as a sort of desert uniform) and handheld communicators, had no equivalent of the little type one phaser, but had a few different types of pistol and rifle, and were otherwise equipped pretty much as standard for the other series, although someone did have a survival knife in at least one episode, so they may have been present in other episodes, but unused. They also had a scanner that served the same narrative purpose as a tricorder, and was smaller than even most 24th century models.

So, the standard loadout for most of the TV series and movies is:

* Communicator (one per person)
* Phaser (one per person, variable type)
* Utility belt or harness (one per person, not always used)
* Jacket (one per person, not always used)

* Tricorder (one or more per party)
* Medkit (one or more per party)

Do we want this to be the standard loadout for landing parties/away teams in the Psi Trek setting, or should it be modified, and if modified, what should be added?

Personally, I'd add survival knives as a common option, at least for landing parties going into the wilderness, rather than into a city or doing anything particularly diplomatic, and multitools as an 'everybody has one' item.

[isf]

Originally Posted by Prince Charon

Landing Party/Away Team Loadouts question

Do we want this to be the standard loadout for landing parties/away teams in the Psi Trek setting, or should it be modified, and if modified, what should be added?

Personally, I'd add survival knives as a common option, at least for landing parties going into the wilderness, rather than into a city or doing anything particularly diplomatic, and multitools as an 'everybody has one' item.

I think that whatever equipment they have should vary by task. What kinds of tasks are the away teams usually going on? Going to a city for supplies or information should have different needs than going down to a wilderness or a crash site.


I'd look through the various tech books and come up with some basic kits depending on what is available n setting. I think that the standard uniforms should have some protective value and not just be regular clothing.

[Phantasm]

All that said, Communicators, Tricorders, and Med-Kits as well as basic defensive weapons and some sort of armor (in DS9, the uniforms were built from a kind of phaser-resistent fiber, IIRC) or environmental gear should be standard for any party operating away from the ship. Whether more than one person carries an item besides the standard sidearm should vary by the needs of the mission. In a first-contact mission, you won't really want everyone showing up in battle armor, while on a scientific survey mission you'll want multiple people with tricorders.

IMO, the "standard" away team should be:
- the expedition leader
- at least one security officer (true to the TOS feel, the redshirt will be the first to die)
- a medical specialist (injuries will happen)
- a technician (the other redshirt)

On survey missions, you'll want someone from the sciences division.

Normally, unlike Star Trek, you won't send your command officers down on away teams. (Unless your PCs are playing the command crew, in which case they'll do it so they have something to do, plotwise.)

[Inky]

That's a very good point about them not needing to be the command crew. In your own RPG, you can remove the running unlikeliness of the captain and half the senior officers being on all the away missions by just playing as somebody who isn't them.
Or players could have more than one character, playing as the command crew when on board and switching to your lower-ranked characters when an away team is sent down - making it a particularly co-operative style of game, I'd imagine, since the focus could only be on advancing the whole ship/team rather than your own character as you wouldn't always be the same character.
But really, you could equally well play as lower ranks all the time and have the captain and bridge officers be NPCs - they'd be almost like quest givers in a computer game. And it removes the awkwardness of the captain ought to be giving the others orders but it seems awkward to have one player giving the others orders.

[Inky]

As for what they'd bring, a few extra things for whatever job they're supposed to be doing, as Isf wrote. Sample bottles and extra tricorders if they're exploring. Ropes and other climbing gear if the location calls for it. Presents for the dignitaries if it's a diplomatic visit. Emergency rations. Etc.

I may be unusual in this, or maybe I'm not, you don't know until you ask, but I really like thinking about the practicalities and tangible things in an adventure - once I start thinking about things like that it gives me ideas. And it seems silly - always did to me with Star Trek - to set your scene among something as interesting as astronauts exploring planets and then say almost nothing about what that's like. You can't expect minute detail, especially not from a scriptwriter who themselves doesn't know that much about space expeditions or a GM ditto, but it's nice if they throw you something for your mind to get its teeth into! Especially since this is an RPG, where the players will constantly want to improvise something that wasn't part of your nice tidy plot!

People often say things like that that don't do much in game-mechanical terms can be skated over, but, for instance, if you're meant to be collecting samples, then actually adding one sample after another to your actual inventory gives a potentially dull non-combat task a sense of progress and actually doing something. (Even if the sample-collecting is in fact just the GM's way of decoying them down there so she can set a monster on them.) And it provides inspiration - once the draft of the treaty is actually a visible item in somebody's inventory, that suggests possibilities like sending a Romulan to steal it. :-)
Of course whether this applies depends whether your players have the same taste for how-is-that-done or not, but they might.


Communicators, phasers, jackets, utility belts or harnesses, a tricorder and a medkit seem like a solid starting point, though. They'll get you a long way in practical terms, and having a standard basic set of gear does take a lot of the strain out of picking gear for an away mission. And they're enough to immediately conjure up the atmosphere of Star Trek and all its atomic ancestors! The multi-tools are a sensible addition - maybe they didn't appear in (the very props-budget-limtited) Star Trek, but they're certainly something you can believe an astronaut would carry, and they allow you to at least try to do something in a hundred and one possible contingencies that you hadn't thought of.

I approve of you including the belts and jackets - practicalities again, besides providing the Enterprise/The Cage-era detail that it looks like you're after. It always strained suspension of disbelief to breaking point in TOS when a landing party beamed down to an icy planet in the same sweaters they wore on the bridge, and the ladies in their short skirts and tights. And in an RPG, where you often don't even have pictures, making the players put their characters in suitable clothing before they beam down is one way to make them notice how fierce this planet is.

[Prince Charon]

OK, so I'm on the right track, at least. I do like the idea of each player having two characters (one on the command staff, one on the Prime Team/default landing party or equivalent) - or maybe more than two, as not every away mission makes sense for every character - though if the PCs' vessel is pretty small, like the Prime Trader from GURPS Prime Directive (p141 in the 2002 version, though based on the Free Trader, pp137-141 and p162), it would make at least some sense that the top officers were going, as there often wouldn't be anyone else who could do it. At some point I might try to adapt the Free Trader/Prime Trader for this setting, but that's for later.

In general, this question is about the standard loadouts, rather than special circumstances, though some things will be very common (e.g. if you have a lot of survey or other scientific missions, which is in keeping with Trek, having at least one science officer and having more people with tricorders will be the standard for your game).

Since maybe it needs to be said, I suspect that the PC-to-NPC ratio on away missions will probably vary a fair bit from campaign to campaign. Phantasm's poor security officer is one traditional example (though to be fair, the 'redshirts die the most' meme is not as bad as usually depicted - but may be consistent with the sort of game you want to run/play), but it does depend on both how many players you have, and how big your typical landing party is. If you have three players and they're dead-set on playing the TOS tropes straight, adding three NPC security guards to the landing party is completely appropriate.




Unrelated, and posting now mainly because I'm worried that I might forget later, 1shotadventures.com has a rather interesting Star Trek adventure called Who Tracks the Steps of Glory?, which I think could be adapted to this setting. It may require replacing the Romulans with a different foe (most likely the thlIngans, if they exist and are an enemy with a neutral zone in your game), but on the other hand, some GMs might prefer the normal TOS Romulans to the more mysterious ones that have been voted in. Either way, it's worth a readthrough, unless you think someone might run that game for you.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Inky

Or players could have more than one character, playing as the command crew when on board and switching to your lower-ranked characters when an away team is sent down - making it a particularly co-operative style of game, I'd imagine, since the focus could only be on advancing the whole ship/team rather than your own character as you wouldn't always be the same character.

We did this in a non-Star Trek space navy game a few years ago. In the main phase of the campaign, each player had a mid-ranked officer as their main PC and a couple of lower-ranked supporting PCs, usually one of them a marine and the other a specialist of some kind.

This made it fairly easy to have ground parties of one or two officer PCs and several supporting PCs, and for these parties to be plausible selections for the NPC captain to have made.

[Prince Charon]

This may be the official answer, unless there's something that the group thinks I need to add or change:

Landing Party/Away Team Loadouts answer

This appears to be the consensus:

Per person:
* Environmentally appropriate uniform
* Communicator
* Multitool
* Sidearm (usually a type one or two phaser once those become common)
* Survival/utility knife (optional)
* Utility belt or harness (optional)
* Jacket (optional)

Per party:
* Tricorder or other portable scanner (one or more, often one general science and one medical)
* Medkit (one or more, usually accompanied by a medical tricorder)
* Longarm (optional, usually a type three phaser once those become common; MACOs nearly always have them on away missions)

Landing parties expected to be away from both the vessel and civilization for more than a few hours should also carry personal camping kits and supplies of food and drinking water, or at least good water filters. If taking a shuttlecraft, of course, this may not be required.


Landing parties/away teams typically consist of the following:

* One leader, usually an officer
* One or more mission specialists
* One or more medical specialists
* One or more security personnel or MACOs

(It is recommended that unless your group wishes to play the shows' tropes very straight, or you have a vessel without a lot of crewmembers, that the players each have two or more characters: one on the command crew, and the other or others on the usual landing party. Depending on the number of players you have, you may need to round out the party with a few NPCs appropriate to the mission, typically security guards or MACOs.)

[Prince Charon]

I have a vote-question on Klingons that I was going to post on Monday (partly because I couldn't work out what needed to go in a question on tricorders), but I can declare the above to be final and post the Klingons question tonight or tomorrow if people want me to.

[Prince Charon]

First Klingons/thlIngans question

Do Klingons exist in this setting, and if so, around when are they encountered by the Solars or USA? If they do exist, what they're like and what the first contact was like will be voted on in a later question.

1. They don't exist, as their narrative role is filled by other races, like the Kaa, or possibly the Kronin if they exist (we can have a vote on the Kronin later).

2. They exist, and are encountered by the Solars during or not long before the Romulan War.

3. The USA Space Forces encountered the Klingons some time in the 2160s or '70s, before the Unification Wars.

4. The Authority met the Klingons during the Unification Wars of (mostly) the 2180s.

5. The USA met the Klingons after the Unification Wars, in the late 22nd or early 23rd century. (My preferred option.)

6. The USA first contacted the Klingons closer to the middle of the 23rd century.

7. They exist but have not yet been encountered by the United Space Authority.


Please include the number of your preferred option when you vote.