Starting Your First Captain’s Log Adventure

By Jim Johnson, Star Trek Adventures Project Manager
Art by Tobias Richter and CBS Studios, Inc.

If you’ve been following along in this Captain’s Log series of blogs, you now should have a good understanding of the Star Trek universe, a character ready to explore the Galaxy, and a starship or station on which your character lives and operates. It’s now time to start creating their first mission in the final frontier!

The handy flowchart on page 184 lays out the steps you’ll want to take for your first couple missions. The more you play, the more these steps will feel like second-nature, so that you can get into your character’s subsequent stories that much faster. You’ll feel like a writer or producer in your series’ own writing room.

With your character and ship or station established, you’ll next want to determine what mission type you’ll embark upon. Consult the probability matrix to select a random mission type, and then roll on that mission type’s specific probability matrix. For example, if your result is “Diplomacy” for mission type, you’d roll on the Diplomacy mission matrix, and perhaps roll for a “Host Cultural Exchange” mission. Of course, you could decide to simply pick a specific mission type and mission rather than leave it to chance. The choice is up to you.

Now that you have a mission in hand for your character, you’ll use the relevant probability matrixes to create an inciting incident and theme for the story, as well as any advantages or complications present at the start of the story. Most Star Trek stories open with a question or issue for the characters to face from the start, and Captain’s Log is no different. By rolling randomly or selecting incident, theme, and an advantage or complication at the start will help you formulate what sort of story to tell, tied into your character and their capabilities.

After that, you’ll want to spend some time with the other probability matrixes and your imagination to establish details about the opening of the adventure. Where is your character? What are they doing? What pressures or challenges is the crew facing as we fade into the first opening scene? What amazing adventures are awaiting discovery?

Adding details about the first encounter your character will face, any non-player characters present in the scene, the environment, and so on, will help add depth and scope to your unfolding narrative. Whether you keep a short list of bullet points or write things out into a full-blown story, you can start building the story, bit by bit.

Once all those details are in place, you should have a good idea of how the story and first scene are going to start, and that should give you enough information to write the opening log entry for the mission, whether you are playing a captain or any other role.

Stay tuned next time where we go into more detail on how to write out that first captain’s log, and then head into the story based on the details you’ve created.

Preorder your copy of the Captain’s Log Solo Roleplaying Game now and receive the final PDF right away and start creating your own Star Trek stories!

Thanks for reading this article, and thank you for your interest and support of Star Trek Adventures! Keep frequencies open for news about Captain’s Log and other Star Trek Adventures product releases. Live long and prosper!

Go to Captain's Blog #3