USS Carter Ep 9 - Sargasso: after action report

[subplotkudzu]

 And here's what actually happened.

USS Carter After-Action Report: Sargasso

Act 1: The 10-crew USS Adlai Stevenson hits turbulence that stops warp travel & FTL sensors/communication. The impact kills or incapacitates the 3 senior officers, leaving Ensign Liefson in command. Chief Coy Mahn & Ambassador Rossad find the wounded & assist in sickbay. Just as they're getting it together, an Orion pirate ship turns up!

This went as planned, save that Bernie's high Astrogation skills let him plot a course back out of the turbulence so they got the ship underway earlier than I expected - they were cruising at full impulse when the Orions turned up. I had expected Karen as Coy Mahn to give Liefson a morale boost when he was thrust into command, but Jason handled it himself, switching between Liefson & Rossad seamlessly as the ambassador helped the ensign steady himself. Jason surprised me with Leifson's desire for the captain's chair (which was hinted at last season): after an initial panic the problem was keeping his ego in check.

Act II: After either surrendering or fighting the crew is captured, learn things from other prisoners and have dinner with the Orion captain Dathio. Dathio uses Coy Mahn to rid himself of his treacherous second officer, pushes Liefson's buttons and offers Rossad a deal: he'll trade the Stevenson's crew for the telepath's services. Rossad & Coy Mahn (his bodyguard) are sent off to a private chamber where Darius is approached by the captain's slave girl, who is supposed to drug her and seduce him.

Having the Stevenson in motion changed the dynamic here - it became a slow tension scene common in TOS Trek, which was cool and again played to time management: they had a limited amount of time to affect repairs & plan while running away. Rossad made a telepathic reconnaissance of the enemy ship - we didn't know he could do that, but he made an extraordinary success and it was a cool scene. Plus, I realized time was running against me, and it was a fast way to pass along data. When Liefson realized escape was impossible he turned to fight, with Coy Mahn scoring phaser hits before the Stevenson was tractor beamed. We were half way through available game time (babysitting concerns) so this became the new Pinch #2. When the bridge crewman turned to Liefson and said "we're being pulled in, Captain" Jason lowered his chin, set his jaw and provided the background beat of "Dun-duh! Dun-duh! Dun-duh!"- perfect time to break and bring the lunch dishes to the kitchen while Jason & Karen plotted.

Act III: Darius converts the slave girl to his cause. She explains the captain's plan to have his intelligence officer kill a drugged Coy Mahn in a fight to eliminate her, and gives the crewman maps & keys to the ship. Coy Mahn reconnects with Liefson and the rest of the crew, prepping for an escape under the cover of the upcoming banquet. The undrugged Coy Mahn wins her fight, Rossad surprises the captain, Liefson retakes the ship in the confusion and the episode ends with a high impulse dogfight out of the turbulence.

Now we're well off script. During the break Rossad - with his experience in small unit tactics from his time on the the Betazed armed forces - hatched a plan. Calling Coy Mahn to join him & Engineering Crewman M'Batu (an NPC who had been active so far) in engineering, he tells the ensign to distract Dathio - not a hard sell; Leifson had no desire to lose the ship. Rossad's plan? M'Batu & Coy Mahn beam onto the Orion ship to disable the tractor beam & impulse engines. M'Batu rigs encrypted communicators so that Rossad can warn them of threats (Betazeds can't project to non-psis) and sets the transporter to bring them back later.

Leifson, trusting Dathio to not take him seriously, gets a bottle of Saurian brandy & meets him at the airlock for a dramatic, inspired by bad fiction, man-to-man with the pirate leader. As Liefson hoped (with Jay burning Courage points madly), Dathio & his men have a hearty laugh, humoring the stripling as Liefson makes a transparent "I'd like to join your side" ploy. Since I'd already designed Dathio as a manipulator with a warped sense of humor it was easy to have him think he was playing out the ensign's apparent charade to learn what the kid valued for leverage, as to assist his seizing control of Starfleet's highly protected computers.

Meanwhile, Coy Man ruled as the baddest redshirt ever. With M'Batu using the Jefferies tubes, Coy Mahn & Rossad play Molly & Cowboy as he led her through the ship to take out guards and provide M'Batu with a distraction - all HTH because the ship's sensors would detect phaser fire. Karen even engaged in some TOS double handed punches! Once M'Batu disabled comm & sensors inside engineering she then went to town with her phasers, clearing the deck in a few seconds. As M'Batu shut down the tractor beam she set explosives on the impulse drive. Rossad warned them that Liefson was running out of time, so she activated the protective force field around the engineering transporter pad and had M'Batu beam the largest mass of pirates out of the airlock and into their makeshift cell.

Dathio finally heard Liefson's 'condition' - crew allowed to leave in a shuttle - and laughed at the young ensign's naiveté. This was when all of his pirates disappeared in a transporter glow! Liefson tossed brandy in Dathio's eyes and dove back into the airlock, cycling it behind him and sprinting for the bridge. Rossad pushed the button to beam back the crewmen, and Coy Mahn joined Liefson on the bridge as they fled.

Sure, most of Act II & III got trashed, but here was my high impulse dog fight out of the Sargasso! Rossad scans the Orion officer's minds for the pirate's weak point - apparently they have a poor port nacelle. Liefson orders Coy Mahn to fire…a hit! To no effect. (Even w/ all her remaining courage Karen's came up 1 short to target a specific system!) "That was our only shot…" Liefson mutters before Coy Mahn adds "Do you want me to detonate their impulse engines now?" Liefson sputters, then yells "Yes!" With a muffled explosion and a scream of Orion rage over the communicator Dathio's ship flies off course and out of range. "Captain, you did it!" says one of the enthralled, leggy, bridge crew as they break free of the Sargasso and jump to warp. "We did it, crewman," Leifson replies, and sets a course for the nearest starbase, where he'll have to hand over his first command.

Sure we missed the Orion slave girl bit and knife duel, but everyone got some spotlight time and the players were in control of things while still hitting many of my goals. Who wants more than that?

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

If I've learned anything in twenty-five years of gamemastering, it's this:

NEVER depend on capturing the PCs. Whatever plot you've devised instantly takes second place to the storyline of "not getting captured." I once had a PC literally attempt to bluff (modified Corbomite Maneuver) several _hundred_ hostile Martian plains tribesmen -- _even after_ I'd completely broken into expository mode and reminded him that the plains tribes frequently take captives for ransom and seldom mistreat their prisoners.

It's like some instinct goes off inside their heads.

Cambias

[brianrogers.livejournal.com]

In this case it wasn't so much that (though you do know whereof you speak) as it was the flow of the story changing - Bernie had done so well on his Astrogation roll I felt I had to give him something, and that got them moving, and that led to a longer chase, and that ate up a lot of play time that I would have used on the "escaping from prison" scene. Jay had shown no problem with Darius and the others being taken prisoner by the Norse Gods in "The Bifrost Incident", so I'm sure he would have been fine with this too, but the game just didn't flow that way.

My general problem is that once the villains capture the heroes and put them in a deathtrap (all too common in V&V, as it should be) they will go to great lengths to NOT listen to the villains master play, singing songs, taunting them with jokes, and otherwise unlimbering post modern sarcastic snark on their captors.

Next time they do that I'm going to have the villain shoot one of them in the head, leave his corpse dangling there and walk out of the room, activating the deathtrap as he goes.