Nearly every gamemaster I’ve known loves world building, and
Star Trek rpgs offer a unique opportunity to literally invent entire worlds
from scratch.
Numerous episodes of Star Trek rely on strange new worlds
both as settings and as plot devices to drive stories. From the planet Minos in TNG, which was taken
over by automated weapons systems, to the beautifully realized Pahvo in the
most recent episodes of Star Trek
Discovery, exotic alien worlds play a huge roll in Star Trek storytelling.
So it’s no surprise that Star Trek Adventures offers some advice on creating
new races and planets.
As I noted in my previous post about running “Signals,” the
adventure scenario included in the free quickstart guide, I felt a mining
colony of humans missed an opportunity to offer player characters something
more interesting. So when I run the adventure, I substitute an alien mining
colony into the adventure. These aliens, which I called the Nelbinar, started
in my imagination as nothing more than a Star Trek version of the Svirfneblin,
or deep gnomes, from Dungeons &
Dragons. I imagined them as a people who send mining crews throughout the
Shackleton Expanse looking for new precious materials they can take back to
their homeworld to build exquisite feats of architecture. I decided they’d be
short in stature, have gray skin and large and pointed ears – all owing to depictions
of Svnirfneblins in D&D. One of the best-known Svirfneblin characters from the
Forgotten Realms novels had enchanted tools attached to his arms after his
hands were cut off, so I decided the Nelbinar, likewise, use cybernetic
enhancements to aid them in their work.
From that fairly basic concept, I decided to create the
Nelbinar homeworld using the guidance in chapter 10 of the Star Trek Adventures core rulebook, which provides several random
tables for planet creation. I had a rough idea of what the Nelbinar homeworld
might look like, but I decided to go with whatever random elements the tables
turned up as a creative exercise, whether my rolls produced results that
matched my original vision of the planet or not.
The process begins with a table determining the planetary
type, but I knew the Nelbinar homeworld most likely would have to be Class M to
support the evolution of a humanoid race, so I skipped to the next table that
focuses exclusively on habitable planetary types. From that table, I rolled a
dry desert world, like Vulcan. The next table, on which gamemasters are
instructed to roll twice, confers planets with notable features. From that
table, I got “warlike primitive inhabitants” and “transcendent inhabitants of
great power.” Those two elements left me scratching my head a bit since neither
one fits all that well with what I envisioned for the Nelbinar.
I put some thought into it and decided the cybernetic
enhancements nearly all members of Nelbinar society use grant the ruling elite
of the planet a form of surveillance on the population. The elite compile a
huge amount of data about the activities and whereabouts of nearly every member
of the species, giving them an almost omniscient view of the planet. So that
took care of the “transcendent inhabitants of great power.” But what about the “warlike
and primitive” part? I decided that the planet is highly polluted as a result
of the species’ limitless drive for construction and development. The Nelbinar
pump nearly all of their waste into a large inland sea, where they also send
all their criminals, prisoners and undesirables. These prisoners suffer a range
of maladies due to their environment, leading to a rough and painful existence
on the islands of the sea.
With just those few elements in place, I feel like I’ve got
a pretty good grasp of the viewpoint of Nelbinar characters. I’m already
visualizing how those pieces might fit together in an episode set on Nelbinar,
even though I have no immediate plans for my players to visit the planet. It
was a fun mental exercise that makes the Shackleton Expanse (the setting for the
Star Trek Adventures living campaign) a little more real in my mind’s eye.
Here’s my complete write-up of the Nelbinar and their
homeworld. Feel free to borrow it for your own games, Star Trek or otherwise.
The Nelbinar
Traits: Nelbinar, Cybernetic enhancements, Indifferent
to nature
Overview: A race of intelligent humanoids with claims
on several worlds in the Shackleton Expanse. The Nelbinar dispatch mining teams
throughout the region to find unique resources to take back to Nelbinar. Driven
by the desire to build their arid homeworld into an engineering marvel, they show
no concern for the natural world or environment. Instead, they revere their own
ingenuity and technological acumen. They believe their proclivity for
innovation will conquer any problem they encounter. Sustainable growth carries
no meaning to them.
Appearance: Nelbinar are short in stature compared to
humans, often possessing a slim frame. Their skin is usually a grayish and
unhealthy color due to the polluted environment on which they live. Their skin
pigmentation is a natural adaptation after generations of being exposed to
harsh sunlight on a planet without an ozone layer. They possess large noses and
pointed, leathery ears. They often outfit their bodies with cybernetic
implants. Goggles that change lighting and enhance visual acuity are common, as
are tool-like attachments.
Society: Nelbinar is a
desert world, like Vulcan. Nearly all of the planet’s surface – and much of its
substrata – features structures developed by the Nelbinar species, made from
exotic materials gathered from across the cosmos. Nelbinar spend little time
outdoors and do not value nature.
The Engineers, a
political elite that design the planet’s more advanced technology, govern much
of Nelbinar society and form a ruling class. The cybernetic accessories that
virtually all Nelbinar citizens wear also provide the Engineers with a vast
dataset on the planet’s population, offering them endless insight into how to
they should structure their society, though other societies might consider this
level of surveillance an intrusion. This dataset, referred to as the Grid,
takes on an almost spiritual meaning to the Nelbinar, and communing with the
Grid is reserved only for the most brilliant among the population.
The lone exception to
the extensive development that covers Nelbinar is one inland sea, where the
Nelbinar dump much of the waste and unwanted byproducts that result from their vast
construction efforts. This highly polluted environment features a chain of
islands where many of the planet’s convicts and prisoners are sent. The
inhabitants of this island chain are warlike and primitive, and many of them
suffer from illnesses and psychoses as a result of exposure to toxic compounds.
Ecological niche & impetus toward intelligence: The harsh desert conditions on the surface
of the planet favored species that could build elaborate shelters, and that’s
exactly where the Nelbinar excel. Their mastery of building with an endless
range of materials granted the evolutionary advantages they needed to become
the planet’s dominant species. They view their planet as little more than a
blank canvass on which to create. The planet gave them little of value, so the
Nelbinar have no qualms using their homeworld and its resources as they please.
No comments:
Post a Comment