In the photomanip thread showing the PCs:

Unfortunately the game never really went anywhere. We did two sessions, though, so I'll give the run-down on the series as it shaped up and the two episodes we got through.

The series, set in and around the Klingon frontier before the imposition of the Organian Peace Treaty, focused on the crew of U.S.S. Valiant, a pre-refit Miranda Class starship.

Valiant is commanded by Captain Seeley Booth, portrayed by David Boreanaz. My group tends to cast actors as PCs and NPCs, and sometimes just lift characters wholesale from movies and tv shows. This is pretty much how it went with Booth. The first adventure demonstrated that when lives are on the line, Captain Booth is willing to bend the Prime Directive.

Lt. Commander Mack Gearhardt, Max Martini's character from The Unit, is the chief of security. Gearhardt didn't really get a lot of screen time in the first two episodes, so I can't say much about how he would have turned out as a character.

Dr. Jason Gideon, Mandy Patinkin from Criminal Minds, is Chief Medical Officer. Gideon is a psychiatrist with a background in criminal investigation, which came in handy in his introductory episode, in which he led a murder investigation on a small station.

Lt. Commander Albert Giles, portrayed by Anthony Stewart Head, was the navigator, recently transferred to Command from Science. As a practical matter, he served as the ship's science officer because the player who had indicated she wanted to play the SO never showed up or even, as far as I know, created her character.

Lt. Commander Kyle Williams, James Marsters, was Chief Engineer, though he hadn't yet served in that capacity.

You can find photomanips of all the main characters in this thread.

I'll talk a little about the two episodes we got through in a separate post.

A character named Gideon AND Anthony Stewart head as a character?

Hmmmmm....

Was this a table top game?

I'm not sure I understand the significance. Is there a connection between Tony Head and characters named Gideon?


Yes. We used a simplified version of the old FASA system, with task resolution more like Unknown Armies. We skipped over the whole action point system, and just did two actions per round.

I'm not sure I understand the significance. Is there a connection between Tony Head and characters named Gideon?

LoL yeah there just might be...as part of my longtime crew. James Gideon, as played by Anthony Stewart Head is my captain. I'm not complaining. I just found it funny is all.

That is fun.

I was looking all over IMDb trying to figure out what you were talking about.

Why did the game end after two episodes?

Another guy joined the group in the second session who is, frankly, a better game master than I am, and people were looking forward to playing in a superhero game he had been planning to run. He was kind of annoyed, because he always runs everything, and he had really enjoyed the episode his character (Dr. Gideon) had been in. Also, I don' think I included enough combat to satisfy one of the players, so he was getting bored, which pulled the campaign down. Three of the five players, including the one who wanted more combat, are housemates, and tend to "stick together" on this stuff, so when I lost him, the other two were pretty sure to fall into line.

Ugh.

Trek is atually better for a smaller groups.

Well, due to some scheduling issues, we're probably going to be starting a new group, and since only one of these guys played in the first group and then only the second episode, I think I'll probably just run the first episode again, and "reboot" the campaign. It looks like we'll have about four total folks this time around, so that may work better anyhow.

I'm considering trying a variation on "troupe style" for this campaign. If we really only have three players plus a GM, that might be a good choice.

You've just described the near-entirety of my RPG career.

A fair bit of mine, too. Out of my gamer friends there are exactly three of us who are willing or able to run game regularly. When I'm in a group with one of the other two, I get to play. When neither of them is in a particular group, it often comes down to "I run it or we don't play." But I've gotten to play enough lately that I'm starting to get the GM bug again.

I used to be murder on other GMs, too, which didn't help. My standards were, in all likelihood, preposterously high, and I'm sure more than one got tired of my teen and twentysomething self kibbitzing with, "Well, I would've done it this way."

I was kind of a dick.