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r/startrekadventures•
BurfMan

Making minor changes to A Star Beyond the Stars - am I missing something?

SpoilerHelp & Advice

Hi all,

I am running part II of A Star Beyond the Stars tonight for some friends. In preparing for the evening, I have been pondering some small changes - or rather infer some connecting plot points. These don't seem to conflict with any of the events n the remainder of the adventure - but I wanted to get a second opinion before I back myself into a corner through inattention to detail!

I can't see anything pertaining to the Decius' actions after the first mission, when they departed to Kortar. It is my assumption that they came to Kortar to extract To'Pagh when he was in trouble or the experiment was failing.

The Klingon on Cordolan IV is not named, but I am thinking this must be To'Pagh. Act I seems to indicate he was killed at his desk, but I am inclined to think he must have killed B'Trell (who had perhaps been reading the incriminating evidence), vented the station, and waited in the infirmary for collection from the Decius.

I'd also like to include a little more interaction with the Klingons - there's a week of travel between Kortar and Cordolan and it seems that this would require co-operation from Klingon high command to carry out the operation since this is all within Klingon space.

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Am I off the mark here? Did I miss anything in the module that would make these bits impractical? I couldn't see any recurrence of the specific Klingon characters. I am thinking by having To'Pagh be a core part of the conspiracy on Cordolan IV, then this will link mission 1 more strongly to mission 2 - where at present Kortar seems a bit of a random diversion.

Posted Sep 27, 2022, 2:10 PM UTC

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Jetpackal•

This all makes sense and is far less of a change than I made to it!

3
BurfManOP•

Thanks! And, curious, what change did you make?

1
Jetpackal•

That's a long story. But I replaced the bluegills with Gekli young that had been genetically altered with Trill DNA. (I wanted the season finale to be in Fluidic Space)

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Mollmann•

Yes, there are a lot of loose threads and/or things that aren't fully explained in the starter adventure. Why did the Decius just leave? And yeah, the experiments on Cordolan and Kortar, which occupy much of Part II, don't end up mattering at all in Part III. I tried to pull it all together more neatly in my own adaptation of the adventure: https://lessaccurategrandmother.blogspot.com/2022/03/star-trek-adventures-star-beyond-the-stars-rescue-at-xerxes-iv-signals.html

Your adaptations all sound solid, and I don't think mess with the plot at all.

3
BurfManOP•

Thanks! Ran it with the changes it seemed to go well. I think the narrative of what happened was fund for the players to piece together, so glad I did that.

I did find this mission massively over reliant on science and engineering tests, to the degree that only one player was rolling much, and they were rolling too much anyway, with a lot of stuff gated behind needless rolls.

I wish I'd adjusted the challenges in the scenario and mixed up the sorts of skills required.

Its a weird change from the first mission which is far more varied in approach and offers all players stuff to do, and doesnt rely so heavily on rolls. They feel like they were written totally seperately.

But overall, we had fun I hope. I'll take this as a learning exercise though

2