By Jim Johnson, Project Manager
Art by Carlos Cabrera

 

Across six decades of Star Trek, television pilots have introduced us to diverse new crews, strange new worlds, and fresh possibilities for adventure. A good pilot does more than introduce a series: it gives viewers a taste of what makes that series special and a reason to come back for more.

 

The same principle applies to the start of a Star Trek Adventures campaign. Your first episode introduces the player characters, establishes the setting and tone, and gives everyone a chance to experience the kind of stories the group wants to tell together. Just as importantly, it helps you and your group discover whether the campaign works in practice.

 

Think of your pilot episode as a proof of concept. You don’t need to have an entire campaign mapped out before you begin. You just need one compelling adventure that lets your group experience the promise of the campaign and decide together where to go next.

 

Preparing for the Campaign

 

To aid you in preparing your new campaign’s pilot episode, review the Player Advice document available on the Star Trek Adventures downloads page and share it with your group at your Session 0. Once you and your group have completed Session 0, you should have all the key ingredients needed to build out your first episode. Those key ingredients include:

• Agreement on scheduling and campaign commitment
• The campaign’s starting era or year of play
• Main player characters, with ranks and expected roles
• A setting, likely either a starship or station
• The campaign’s overall tone and scope

Chat with your group over a meal - art by Rodrigo Gonzalez Toledo

 

If you’re missing any of these key elements, work with your group to pull them together. Having them in hand will make your pilot episode planning much more effective. To do so, consider brainstorming answers to the following questions:

• CHARACTERS: What does each character bring to the crew, both mechanically and narratively?
• COMMITMENT: How often can the group realistically play, and what length of campaign feels manageable?
• ERA: What period of Starfleet or galactic history interests the group, and what does that make possible for the campaign?
• SCOPE: Are you imagining episodic adventures, a serialized story, or something between the two?
• SETTING: What opportunities and constraints does a starship, space station, or other form of home base create?
• TONE: Are you aiming for exploration, political intrigue, military adventure, mystery, character drama, or a mixture of them all?

 

It’s useful to remember that you don’t need answers to all of these for the pilot; sometimes great campaigns grow organically from a good first episode. Your group might need a few sessions to work out exactly what they want out of their time together.

 

Developing the Pilot

 

Once you have your key elements in hand, develop the overall structure of your pilot episode. Keep in mind that you don’t necessarily need a detailed outline or to spend a lot of time preparing a large-scale story. You can certainly do so if you’re so inspired, but there’s a bit of an art to planning an episode without over-planning or over-thinking it. Manage your energy.

 

Here are a few ideas on what your pilot episode should include:

• A great opening scene to hook the players and get them invested in the story
• Memorable NPCs, such as a key antagonist, interesting alien species, or a worthy foil within the player characters’ organization
• Moments that push the ’wow’ button—this is a science fiction franchise after all, and you should strive to include the sense of wonder where possible
• A spotlight moment for each player character to show where they excel
• A satisfying conclusion, to give the players a sense of completion even if the campaign continues

 

Your pilot episode doesn’t necessarily need to have all of these elements to be successful. Prepare the situation, the major NPCs, the central problem, and a few interesting complications. Think about what might happen if the crew takes different approaches, but don’t try to anticipate every possible decision. Let the players surprise you.

 

If the session ends with a few unanswered questions or an unexpected development, that’s not necessarily a problem; it may give you the beginnings of your next episode and the continuation of your campaign.

Player choices may take stories in unexpected directions - art by Carlos Cabrera

 

Evaluating the Pilot

 

Sometimes, despite our best efforts and intentions, a campaign pilot episode doesn’t work out and the campaign doesn’t continue forward. Perhaps the player dynamic didn’t quite work out, perhaps the mix of player characters and their respective back stories didn’t quite gel, or perhaps the pilot episode didn’t live up to the expectations the group had coming out of Session 0.

 

The best thing to do in such a situation is to have a post-episode chat with your group, and talk about what went well and what challenges arose. Use the opportunity to actively listen to your fellow players and see what ideas percolate for use in your next Session 0. Use it as a learning experience. Consider asking the following questions:

• What was the most enjoyable part of the session?
• How did everyone have an opportunity to contribute?
• How did the actual play experience match the campaign we imagined during Session 0?
• Was anything confusing, frustrating, or less engaging than expected?
• What would we change before playing the next episode or planning a new campaign?

 

It’s important to remember that, unlike a television series being evaluated, you don’t necessarily need to cancel a campaign after a challenging first episode. You could use the time to check in with your group and make minor adjustments for the second episode, rather than scrap all the work you’ve done and start over.

 

A Learning Experience

 

Pilot episodes have often been a challenge for me and my groups. We’d conduct a great Session 0, develop interesting characters and a cool starship, and lay the groundwork for what we were sure would be an epic campaign. Then we get to the first episode and play it through, but the energy involved in planning and standing up the campaign fades away and we’re left feeling flat.

 

It’s often hard to diagnose what went wrong, and easy to add the ’failed’ campaign to the stack of others in our gaming past. Rather than diagnosing the issues and trying again, we tended to jump into a new Session 0 for a new campaign and repeat the cycle until lightning strikes and we find ourselves in the middle of an ongoing campaign.

 

Think of your group as both the creative team and the audience. Everyone contributes to the campaign’s success, and everyone gets a say in whether the experience is something they’d like to continue.

 

Perhaps a lesson to be learned is to not over-plan or overdevelop a campaign beyond the pilot episode, and focus on telling one excellent standalone mission that has the potential to grow out into a larger campaign.

 

Remember: Your pilot doesn’t have to launch a five-year mission. It just has to give your players a great game experience together that will want them to come back for more.

 

Additional Resources

 

There’s no shortage of RPG campaign building advice out there, for a wide range of roleplaying games. Specifically for Star Trek Adventures, you can find advice along these lines in the core rulebooks as well as the Player’s Guide, Gamemaster’s Guide, and the Captain’s Log Solo RPG.

 

You can also glean a wealth of advice and inspiration from Star Trek nonfiction resources, which offer insight into how various television series were imagined and developed from the ground up, and can serve as inspiration for planning your campaigns. Some of my favorites include:

• The Making of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, by Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens
• The Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion, by Terry J. Erdmann with Paula M. Block
• The Making of Star Trek, by Stephen E. Whittfield and Gene Roddenberry
• Inside Star Trek: The Real Story, by Herbert F. Solow and Robert H. Justman
• The Star Trek: The Next Generation Companion, by Larry Nemecek

Hailing Frequencies Open

 

How does your group approach the first episode of a new Star Trek Adventures campaign? Have you ever had a campaign that looked great on paper but struggled once play began? What did you learn from the experience, and what advice would you offer other gamemasters preparing their next pilot?

 

Share your thoughts and experiences with your fellow Star Trek Adventures fans at the official Modiphius Discord.

 

In upcoming articles, I’ll explore specific Star Trek television pilots and examine what they can teach us about creating memorable opening missions for our own campaigns.

 

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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