Star Trek Adventures: Playing "Biological Clock"

With the conclusion of our "opening arc," my Star Trek Adventures campaign reached its first standalone episode. Way back when I pitched the game to my players, I said that you could have a whole session go by without any combat... but at some point (during episode 3, I think) one of my players pointed out that there always seemed to be some combat!

So I resolved to pick for our first standalone an episode that could emphasize this Star Trekky quality. Reviews I'd read, on both Continuing Missions and Reddit, emphasized that "Biological Clock" from the These Are the Voyages mission compilation was a good one for that classic Star Trek feel: a science focus, a moral dilemma, the possibility of the whole thing going without combat. So that was what I decided would be our first regular, standalone episode.

“Captain’s Log, Stardate 48252.4. We originally diverted to Optera IV due to unusual subspace readings that Science Officer Karno theorized could be related to the mysterious signals we encountered on Xerxes IV, Moana III, and Seku VI. However, we are coming to the end of our seventh day surveying the planet, and though we have found much of scientific interest, and the crew has clearly enjoyed stretching its legs planetside, we have found no sign of the signals, nor any sentient life. I’ve given the order to wind down survey operations; in one more day we will depart the planet and continue our journey beyond the Rim of the Starlight.”

Episode 6: "Biological Clock"

(art by Scarecrovv on DeviantArt)

(based on a scenario by Fred Love)

Planning the Mission

So the issue I always face with prewritten STA modules is that they assume your player characters are the senior staff on a Federation starship. So how do I make my lower-decks characters the principle movers of the plot?

As written "Biological Clock" has the hero starship picking up strange tetryon readings from the planet Optera IV and arriving to investigate; they then discover unusual life-forms on the planet, alien insects that are apparently native to subspace, and probably intelligent. Ultimately, it turns out that a species called the Kavians has trapped the "Opterans" in normal space in order to harvest them for energy, not knowing that they are sentient; later, the Kavians turn up to, so the players have to stop them.

I decided to tweak things: the episode would open with the Ayrton wrapping up a week-long survey mission to Optera IV. The mission would be conducted by beaming teams down all over the planet, and having them "camp" in little bases, consisting of a mobile "sensor suite," a micro-transporter with limited range, and tents. The Ayrton would be in a low, slow mapping orbit, meaning it would be in contact only four hours out of every twenty. If a player had asked, I would have said there were relay satellites, but that they often glitched... however, no one ever did! Instead of the locations being scattered all over the planet, they would be mostly within a single river valley, which I drew out on my mat. (I meant to take a picture of this for this post, but forgot.)

the river valley on Optera IV

So the characters would be planetside, out of contact with the ship, when the tetryon readings first appeared, and would have to solve everything on their own, without the ship. Eventually, when it made sense, time- or plot-wise, I would reveal that the Ayrton was actually missing.

Other than this, I didn't make many alterations to the scenario as written, finding it to be a well-written science mystery. There were just two other tweaks I made. I did add a bit to the episode's "teaser": my players' nemesis is their shift supervisor, Lieutenant j.g. Jefferson. In the opening scene, Jefferson contacts them and tells them that they need to get two noncom geologists also in their survey party to beam back to the ship. My thought was that they could either accomplish this, obtaining an early success, or that if they failed, they would have the geologists available throughout the mission as supporting characters.

My other change was a small mechanical tweak, but is, I think, worth mentioning. In the scene Programming the Universal Translator, the characters need to adapt the universal translator to work with the unusual Opteran language (it combines sound, gesture, light, and tetryon radiation). This is given in the mission as written as two Extended Tasks: first encoding the language into the translator, then building a device that lets the characters manipulate tetryons in order to "speak." But Extended Tasks only work if there is some kind of restriction placed on them: they are basically impossible to fail, because they are something you get several rolls to complete. To make them meaningful, there needs to be some way to fail (a lot of time, this is done by applying some kind of time restriction), but as written, there is none.

the players encounter a captive Opteran
(art from These Are The Voyages)

So I made the first one just into a regular Task, with a single, high-stakes roll (Difficulty 4). The second one, I said they were adapting a transporter component... but if that they tweaked it too much, it would burn out. Their micro-transporter only had four pads, so this would drop them down to being able to beam only three people at a time if they were successful on the first go, and even fewer if it took them more than one Extended Task. I also decided to make it more interesting by stipulating that though one person could roll for the Task each time (the engineer player), they could only be helped once by any given player, the idea being that each person was helping the engineer with a different aspect of the process. I've embedded my rewritten directions below in case it's useful to anyone:

I wanted a break from the big arc of the first five episodes, so the links here were light. I made sure to seed a mention of the Kavians in episode 5, and also had the Kavians here mention the Haradin from that episode. The Ayrton was drawn to Optera IV by weird subspace readings they thought could be the signals they'd been investigating, but it turned out was not. And at the end of the episode, they learned the Ayrton had been trapped in a subspace pocked that sent them to a Micro-verse where they battled the ferocious Nano-Warriors for weeks, setting up something for episode 7.

Last note on prep. All the missions in the TATV compilation have bespoke artwork for them. One of the pieces for "Biological Clock" wouldn't work for how I changed things (it depicts the player ship encountering the Opterans in space, trying to flee the planet), but the other two would. I decided to set up my Kindle Fire in front of the GM screen, facing the players, to let them see the images while they were playing. But this meant I needed more images! Fantastically, I discovered that a user on DeviantArt named Scarecrovv had made a whole set of images for this mission. Many were of things not visualized in the mission book, including the Kavians. So I used those, too plus a photo of a river valley I found.

Kavian mole-machine
(art by Scarecrovv on DeviantArt)

Playing the Mission

For this mission, I had three players that had been with me from the beginning:

• Hayley as Liana Carver, human science officer
• Cari as Jor Lena, Bajoran security officer
• Andy as Gurg bim Vurg, Tellarite medical officer

I also had two new players join the group:

• Céline as Seleya, Vulcan engineer
• Keith as Vivik, Arkarian pilot

I try to balance who is in command, but also didn't want to put a new player in command their first time out, so Jor Lena ended up in command. This made some nice tension: Jor is a bit of a "weapons first" player, but the mission very much calls for the opposite of that! Cari failed to get the two geologists in the teaser to beam back up as required, which kind of worked out for the players, as they came in very handy. They were older and more experienced than the players, but as they weren't officers, preferred to stay out of trouble. I gave them penchant for geology puns, and the players seemed to enjoy them; I will have to see if there is a future mission they can be worked into.

Kavian engineer
(art by Scarecrovv on DeviantArt)

Overall, the players did a good job. In previous missions, I have failed to convince them to split the party, but I did finally get them to do it here; Jor, Seleya, and Vivik went to investigate power readings in the forest (meeting a trapped adult Opteran) while Carver and Gurg went to a mountaintop with a strong tetryon readings (finding a baby Opteran). We were able to cut back and forth between the two groups, they could share information, and it gave everyone something to do. Hopefully we can keep doing this in future missions. The first couple acts are supposed to have the players not just figure out that the Opterans are intelligent, but also piece together their life-cycle; the latter I was a bit worried about, but they got it without nudging from me at all! It helped that Hayley actually is a biologist, and thus knew the significance of many of the clues; like when the Opterans shed their exoskeletons, she knew they would grow wings. (On the other hand, she quibbled with some of the terms the mission ascribed to the life-cycle.)

The players liked splitting up so much, they did it once when I didn't ask; while Carver, Gurg, and the two geologists beamed into a cave, Jor and Vivik returned to the forest to keep an eye on the molting Opterans, and Seleya stayed at base camp to operate the transporter. This let me do some fun stuff with Threat; I trapped the players in a forcefield bubble, and then—when they decided there was no rush to get out—I used more of it to trap the Opterans in one.

They seemed to have fun with the universal translator challenge I described above; they absolutely crushed it, racking up four breakthroughs in just three of the allotted five attempts. Clearly I need to make my Extended Tasks harder!

the Kavian commander, Shamra Kaladok
(art by Scarecrovv on DeviantArt)

The key turning point in the episode is when the Kavians arrive: the players need to convince them that the Opterans are sentient, to stop harvesting them, and to deactivate the polaron field that prevents the Opterans from returning to the subspace realm that is their home. I let the players handle this how they wanted; they ended up getting Kavians and Opterans to communicate with each other, and then brokering a deal on how the Opterans could voluntarily supply the Kavians with energy. They then had to convince the Kavian leader... and they got 8 successes on a Difficulty 4 Task!

The last scene of the episode is the players deactivating the polaron field. Because they had the Kavians on side, this ought to be easy... but I still had a lot of threat, so I spent 2 to create the Complication that the Kavian leader's subordinates turned against him. The players had to rescue him, and then figure out a way to get into the mantle facility and deactivate the polaron field, as their own transporter didn't have the range. They ended up beaming themselves into the Kavian transporter room and using their transporter.

I wanted to pile on the Threat here and make the climax tense... but the players succeeded at too much too fast, not really giving me the time to do this! They got four breakthroughs in just two attempts. I should have spent more of it earlier, both to make the Extended Task of shutting down the polaron field harder, and to have the Kavians break into the transporter room, so that the players' ability to beam out would be jeopardized. I am getting better about spending my Threat, but I still struggle to do it.

the subspace pocket the Ayrton was trapped in
(art from These Are the Voyages)

Still, overall my players reported enjoying the episode, and so did I. Hayley said she found roleplaying easier in STA than she ever had in D&D, because your character has more options in terms of what they can do in a scene, and so the characterization comes through in the actions you take. I enjoy that aspect of it a lot. Keith and Céline seemed to enjoy it too, and they have stuck around for episode 7...

Beyond the Rim of the Starlight:

• Opening Arc: A World Beyond the Starlight
• Part I: "The Alcubierre"
• Part II: "The Rescue at Xerxes IV"
• Part III: "We Are Not Ourselves"
• Part IV: "The Pierced Veil"
• Epilogue: "Signals"
• Season One
• "Biological Clock"
• "Never Again to See a Blue Sunrise"