Self Destruct

 

The adventures of the USS Lyonesse continue on as we had another episodes this last weekend of our Star Trek Adventures that currently has us in close orbit of a wormhole or possibly black hole whilst we attempt to rescue a time dilated SS Atlantis from the NX pre federation era. It's going to be a fun section of the adventure as the crew have been there for many years relative to the rest of the universe and have seemingly gone feral - looks like there are factions between command and at least one other division. Add to this that we are from the 'future' and have already diffused one phaser fight but far from convincingly as the npcs ran away from us. It will be interesting to see the patience of our captain being stretched here as although we are on a rescue mission, if people don't want to be rescued then what exactly are you supposed to do? I am amused that the whole problem could disappear down a black hole so to a less responsible captain the paperwork could be quite short on this one but I am sure that the doctor will expect nothing less that a full prescription of rescue protocols.

Prior to the game I did come across an amusing ten minute video of all of the self destruct sequences from Trek together with the cancellation protocols and to my surprise they vary considerably. It does make me wonder under what circumstances we would do this in our Trek. Players would avoid the scenario as much as possible to the point its not really a consideration but I have always said, good players can let go of their characters and there is no reason why we couldn't in principal divert play to another ship, but this would be undermining the principal of the game of course. Its just that in the series the destruct sequence was both used as a bluff and also very effectively as a  trap and I can envisage this as a dire but plausible action under extreme circumstances.

To be fair the ship will have a set of emergency escape pods and an evacuation procedure so severe courses of action are potentially viable without losing characters but I would want to cause a medical emergency for our GM as the existing deck plans have been lovingly created. Ultimately our first loyalty is to the ship, its one of us (and literally from the supportive dice rolls we get from it) and I think would buy it a drink in ten forward.