By Jim Johnson, Star Trek™ Adventures Project Manager
Art by Andrew Clark
In the previous How to Play article, we discussed planning and running an original Star Trek™ Adventures mission for your crew. If your group enjoyed that adventure and wants to play more with the same characters—congratulations! You have the start of a campaign in hand, whether that campaign spans just a few missions or many.
Let’s talk about some different campaign constructs you can use to develop an ongoing story for your crew. You’ll note in some cases these ideas map to how broadcast series are planned and released. For our purposes, assume that ‘episode’, ‘mission’, and ‘adventure’ are synonymous, with each taking one or more game sessions to complete.
Story Arc
Similar to the mini-campaigns found in several Star Trek Adventures products, you could plan a short story arc or mini-campaign consisting of two to five missions. These missions could be linked sequentially, telling one complete story from beginning to end, or more loosely linked to give you the flexibility to tell other stories between story arc episodes.
As an example, the fourth season of Star Trek: Enterprise featured the Arik Soong arc comprising the episodes “Borderland,” “Cold Station 12,” and “The Augments.”
You could even construct a mini-campaign to tell a cinematic story, similar to a feature film. For example, Star Trek: The Motion Picture could be presented as a three-part mini-campaign:
- Part One reveals V’Ger is on the way, gathering the crew, and embarking on an intercept course (while also dealing with a commanding officer unfamiliar with the refit ship).
- Part Two includes rising action as the crew encounters V’Ger, the death of Lieutenant Ilia, the introduction of the Ilia Probe, and a crewmember using a thruster pack to investigate the interior of V’Ger.
- Part Three brings the story to a climax and resolution, as the crew attempts to solve the problem before V’Ger destroys Earth.
Of course, there is no shortage of subplots and character arcs that can be folded into that broad outline, just as the writers did in the movie. You can build something similar with your crew; just be sure to review character values, focuses, and lifepath choices so you can fold in meaningful character beats into each part of your story arc.
Season
Modern television series are two or more episodes long, so once you have a couple of missions completed with the same group of characters, you have yourself a season. You can plan that season out in broad strokes or more detail. One way to get started is to check in with your group and determine their availability and tolerance for a gaming session of a given number of episodes. Perhaps your group doesn’t want to or cannot commit to a 20-episode season, but can commit to a 10-episode season.
Always be careful about not getting too ambitious in your planning; life finds ways of creating all sorts of complications that get in the way of a long-term season plan. Start small, be flexible, and build the season episode by episode.
If you are fortunate to have a group willing and able to play through a long season, then you can put in some planning around it, acting as both a writer and a producer of your own series. Get your players involved as well, if only by providing some details on their character sheets about their characters’ backstories, values, and focuses. Every player character likely has dozens of plot hooks built into them, each waiting to be folded into an episode as a minor arc or used as the inciting incident for a mission. The more you can directly tie the player characters’ histories and mechanical elements into your missions, the more engagement and investment you’ll get from your players.
Plotting out the season allows you to ensure each player character has opportunities to build out milestones and character arcs and to make sure you have a good balance of stories thematically across the season.
Multiple Seasons
Planning out multiple seasons is similar to planning the first season, just on a larger scale. Perhaps you have an epic storyline you want to explore with your players, and you envision it needing 30 episodes to tell, grouped into three seasons of 10 episodes. Broadly, the first season sets up the epic campaign (while also telling smaller, individual stories), the second season moves things forward on a variety of levels, and the third season brings the epic campaign to a conclusion that ties all 30 episodes together. The Shackleton Expanse Campaign Guide, the Federation-Klingon War Tactical Campaign, and the Dominion War arc of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine are all examples of epic storylines that could span dozens of episodes and multiple seasons of playtime.
With this information on planning and running longer-form stories, whether in short story arcs, longer campaigns, or even multiple seasons of your own Star Trek series, you and your group can play the game for weeks, months, or even years. The sky’s the limit!
Order your print copy of the second edition Star Trek Adventures core rulebook now in standard format or one of three limited edition covers! And order a print copy of the second edition Game Toolkit as well, to expand your options for exploring the final frontier.
2nd Edition Core Rulebook (Command):
2nd Edition Core Rulebook (Sciences):
2nd Edition Core Rulebook (Operations):
All print orders will also receive the digital versions right away.
Alternatively, you can order the digital editions by themselves of the standard core rulebook and the Game Toolkit.
2nd Edition Core Rulebook PDF:
Thanks for reading this article, and thank you for your interest and support of Star Trek Adventures! Keep frequencies open for news about other upcoming Star Trek Adventures product releases. Live long and prosper!
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