Posted with permission from Sandy Kennedy.
“Risk is part of the game if you want to sit in that chair”
When I started GMing Star Trek Adventures, I took the deliberate decision to make all of my players’ characters the same rank, in the interests of fairness. It was also agreed that the mission type would determine who would adopt a position of responsibility (e.g. the doctor would take charge in a medicine-based mission). Given that they normally scoot through space in a Runabout – the Trek equivalent of a camper van – none of them has actually had to adopt the mantle of “captain”.
This worked quite smoothly…
…Until I decided to run Michael Dismuke’s “The Roord” as the next scenario! It’s a great mission, but it does specifically require the presence of a captain, for (hilarious) story reasons! In the beginning, I’ll be swapping out the Runabout for a larger vessel to meet the needs of the scenario, which will also allow me to (sneakily) force one of the players to accept the POSITION of captain. But what does this entail?
I found brilliant inspiration from the School of Marine Science and Ocean Engineering of the University of New Hampshire. They have a detailed manual for anyone who takes out their boats. I have adapted it to serve as a guide for all players who do “sit in that chair”, and I hope you will find it interesting and useful as a handout! At the very least it literally describes what is essentially involved in the idea of captaincy!