This add on came about through my love of making “Consoles” for my game and my aversion to consulting tables to discover sensor readings or unusual stellar phenomena. The premise is a simple one, you (when playing CL) or your Science Officer (when playing STA) rolls a die, at a time specified by the GM or by another predetermined method (some examples are given later) and depending on the outcome, an Anomaly Card is drawn and then placed on the Stellar Cartography mat. The drawn outcome may, with the GM’s approval, spin the Players off on a whole new adventure.
Components
- Stellar Cartography Mat
- 1 x sheet of VTT Space Contacts (round border)
- 1 x sheets of Print Space Contacts (square border)
- 1x sheet of card “Backs” (for print version only)
- 3 x sheets of VTT Contacts (round border)
- 3 x sheets of Print contacts (square border)
The Contact sheets represent the following encounters, but this can be ignored and interpreted anyway the player sees fit.
- Space – Denotes clear space with no random encounter
- Sheet 1 – Black hole, Cloaked planet, Pink Nebula, Shockwave, Supernova, Binary starsysem
- Sheet 2 – Quantum filament, “Nexus” Energy ribbon, Interspatial rift, Distress signal, Wormhole, Cloaked ship
- Sheet 3 – Asteroid shower / field, Meteor strike on a planet, Planetary collapse, Mutara nebula, Borg cube, Dyson sphere
Triggering a Contact
There are many ways a GM or Player could trigger an event. For solo play, this could be done by rolling a die, when aboard your ship and if a specific number is rolled an contract card is drawn. If you have a set of the 1e challenge dice, if you roll the federation symbol, that could be the trigger. In guided or GM based games, either the GM can decide when is triggered(and maybe the contract itself or again rolling the dice can be used.
Print Version
VTT Version
When using this system as a VTT system, primarily for GM lead games, it is advised the GM “cut out” the contacts they might wish the players to encounter (or more like the contacts they definately DONT want the players to encounter) and save the “cut out” contacts as numbers from 1 to 20 with any short fall of contacts being made up from “space” tokens.
This will allow the players to roll and still generate a random encounter. Of course as GM you can always “Control” what each encounter is of course.
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