Star Trek: The Rebel Generation

[David Johnston2]

OK, there's enough thread drift that I figured this tangent deserved it's own thread. Basically the idea is that the PCs are rebels in the TNG-era Federation. However TNG itself is basically the regime's propaganda, chock full of absurd pronouncements about how they have eliminated all crime, poverty, terrorism, and materialism, statements that are adhered to as the party line even when they are obviously contradicted in specific episodes.

1. Money: They no longer use "money" as we know it. Legally, people no longer exchange goods and services with each other. Everyone in society has a guaranteed minimum ration of energy and living space and free access to the net. People who are considered to be doing things that are socially valuable get "social duty credits" which can be used to get things like use of transporters, off-world travel, holosuite time, personal services, natural food, increased living space (which is at a premium on Earth, still populous and with much of the world turned into environmentally protected preserves). Social duty credits are non-transferable person to person. It is possible to live "off the grid", stealing or bartering for the necessities of life in the grey market, but on developed planets it isn't easy and is considered evidence of mental illness. Many people split the difference, living on their guaranteed lifestyle allotment plus a little extra social duty credit, but dabble a little in grey market transactions.

2. Crime: They proudly boast that they have eliminated crime and so they have, by defining it as mental illness. Therefore there are no longer any lawyers or trials (except in the military where they have retained courts-martial). Once public security has determined that you have engaged acts injurious to society or yourself you are interviewed by a psychiatrist and then a therapeutic committee determines an appropriate course of treatment and their discretion is limitless short of executing you. It could be hour-long talk sessions once a week, a regimen of mood-stabilising drugs, indefinite confinement, hard labour on a colony world, or experimental neurosurgery. There is no presumption of innocence because guilt is not at issue in the first place.




2.

[Roger.d4]

There is only one problem with the 'no money' thing they had going in the series.

Riker comments sever times 'That's why they pay me the big money' and obviously Gold Pressed Latinum.

[Phantasm]

Originally Posted by Roger.d4

There is only one problem with the 'no money' thing they had going in the series.

Riker comments sever times 'That's why they pay me the big money' and obviously Gold Pressed Latinum.

Latinum I can see as the "standard interstellar monetary unit" outside the Federation, with a thriving underground market for it inside the Feds. Trade in latinum can easily be used to live "under the radar" away from the Core Worlds of Earth, Vulcan, Andora, and Tellar.

Riker's comments about being paid the big money are likely a holdover from earlier times when the Federation *did* use credits. He's probably refering to all the benefits he gets as XO of one of the most advanced ships in the Federation fleet.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by Roger.d4

There is only one problem with the 'no money' thing they had going in the series.

Riker comments sever times 'That's why they pay me the big money' and obviously Gold Pressed Latinum.

I've been known to quote aphorisms about giving inches and taking miles even though distance is measured in centimeters and kilometers in my country. Gold Pressed Latinum is what the Ferenghi use. The Federation sneers at them for being so primitive.

[Bandii]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

2. Crime: They proudly boast that they have eliminated crime and so they have, by defining it as mental illness. Therefore there are no longer any lawyers or trials (except in the military where they have retained courts-martial). Once public security has determined that you have engaged acts injurious to society or yourself you are interviewed by a psychiatrist and then a therapeutic committee determines an appropriate course of treatment and their discretion is limitless short of executing you. It could be hour-long talk sessions once a week, a regimen of mood-stabilising drugs, indefinite confinement, hard labour on a colony world, or experimental neurosurgery. There is no presumption of innocence because guilt is not at issue in the first place.

They could also just dig up the old Neural Neutralizer technology and turn all criminals into happy, shiny empty people.

-Mike

[David Johnston2]

3. Politics: The Federation is an ungainly patchwork of species in varying degrees of integration into the system. Very few of the member species conform sufficient to human standards of government enough to attain an actual seat on the Federation Council and access to the full technology of Earth and the other Founding members. Most simply have associate membership. The Federation is a league of homeworlds exclusively. Colonies, even colonies with hundreds of millions of inhabitants get no separate representation, nor any recognition of any right to autonomy, even if they have been lost for centuries and only recently rediscovered. There is a Council President elected by popular vote, which effectively means that Earth gets to pick them since humans are the most numerous species in the Federation. This, combined with a long-standing political alliance with the Vulcans means that Earth is unquestionably the dominant political power in the Federation.

[LemmingLord]

This is all a very good idea. What does it have to do with the GURPS system in particular? I am surprised yu didn't just put it in the roleplaying thread.

I played a GURPS Star Trek/Star Wars crossover where the characters we made were Maquiis rebels. Our first act was stealing a small experimental starship. During our escape we got transported through the badlands to ...dum dum dum! The star wars universe. Maybe one of the best game sessions I ever played.

Most star trek shows are episodic..in that you can watch them in whatever order you want and it doesn't matter. If that's what you want to do then you might try to establish the status quo for the game.. Instead of each adventure being a mission for the federation trying to bring peace to the galaxy, the adventure might be about discovering and stopping fifth column federation activity... Obviously you don't want the players to fight the "Patsies" such as Jean Luc Picard and the people in the military who buy that everything is honky dory...but the real thread would be those secret societies and black ops organizations that do the REAL dirty work...

An episode might look like this: while trying to expose secret sales of federation weapons to the Tholians, the crew of the Rebel Yell are captured as prisoners of war by Tholian terrorists.

[Apache]

So you're basically doing Blake's 7, eh?

:)

[Captain-Captain]

Blake's Seven. The Next Iiteration, anyway...

[dataweaver]

LemmingLord may have a point; perhaps this thread should be moved to the general roleplaying forum.

Note also that one of the Maquis once posited that the reason why the Federation was hounding them was because they had done the unthinkable: they had left the Federation. And you don't get to do that.

Mind you, the Maquis are no longer a significant factor; the Cardassians and the Dominion made sure of that. But their story and their surviving members might serve as a catalyst for another such movement.

So: what in the spinoff series (TNG, DS9, and Voyager) do you need to ignore in order for this hypothesis to hang together?