This brings up
the question of just how much railroading can a GM do in an adventure?
I think I had given clear leads for the course of action: a distress
signal from a Warbird in the Neutral Zone (where there shouldn't be any
Romulan warships). They also asked for guidance from Starfleet Command
(so already they had blown that Initiative Renown point), who sent back
a message reiterating that Starfleet vessels must help vessels in
distress unless their current mission prevents them from helping. Dave
decided to play it safe, against the advice of the rest of the players,
and so we have no scenario.
Now, I could have given Dave an excuse he could live with. Maybe there
is one survivor (who may still be alive when they reach the Warbird)
left or perhaps Starfleet Command or Starfleet Intelligence can order
Dave to go in. But really, this campaign is about giving players the
chance to make the right decisions on their own. Theoretically natural
curiosity plus a gift for finding trouble is enough to get the players
to the adventure.
There were two other things which I didn't agree with. I gave the
players a simple starting mission (not one stated in the adventure)
wherein they're transporting some Vidorian Fever vaccine to Psellus
III. This is actually an important clue that can be used later in the
episode, but it also meant that when the distress call came it was a
choice of delivering the vaccine and saving some unknown number of
Psellians versus investigating a recently dead ship. In real life most
ships would stop and give aid to another ship in distress, even if it
looked like they were too late -- versus getting to port a few hours
later and maybe having some more people die from some plague. The sea
is a harsh place to get into trouble and sailors realize that, which is
why distress calls are taken seriously. The same should apply in space.
But that is the GM's interpretation, which is of course the correct one
for the universe.
|
The other
point I disagreed with was Eric wanting to go in and drag the Warbird
back to Federation space as some sort of trophy or intelligence coup.
Although that's great from a Starfleet Intelligence standpoint, that's
not who I want the characters to be. They should have been thinking
first about the ship in trouble and what they could do to help, rather
than how they could most profit from it. In the end this was a very
short adventure and now that I think about it some more I will probably
penalize everyone involved, since I started out by giving them a free
skill to use in this adventure. I do have to balance the scales.
|