Thursday, March 4, 2010

Fantasy Treks

In the vein of my previous post on movie inspired adventure seeds, I thought I'd turn to the small screen, and see what sort of fantasy rpg adventure fodder might be found in episodes of Star Trek The Original Series.


SPOILERS follow if you haven't seen the forty year-old TV series...


"The Cage"
The Plot: The Enterprise crew follow a distress signal to Talos IV, but find that they've been duped by telepathic aliens who take Captain Pike captive.
The Adventure: Make the distress call a village seeking aid, replace the Talosians with Mind-Flayers, and put the whole thing in a dungeon. Easy.


"Shore Leave"
The Plot: Captain Kirk orders shore leave for the Enterprise crew on a seemingly uninhabited planet. The landing parties begin to see strange sights drawn from their thoughts--including a White Rabbit, samurai, Don Juan, and people from their past.
The Adventure: An island that's basically a thought-responsive amusement park for a long vanished race, is exactly the sort of thing Gary Gygax would've put in an adventure.


"Mirror, Mirror"
The Plot: A transporter accident sends Kirk and companions to a parallel universe, where the Federation is a barbaric empire, and everyone has an "evil" counterpart.
The Adventure: Evil duplicates of the party (or maybe good ones?) running around sullying their good (bad) names, or competing with them would add an interesting wrinkle to any campaign.


"I, Mudd"
The Plot: The Enterprise is commandeered by an impostor crewman who takes it to an uncharted planet. There the crew find the con man, Harry Mudd, who has set himself up as the king of the planet of androids.
The Adventure: A lost city full of androids (or magical simulacra, if you like) who desperately want to serve--and protect adventurers from their dangerous lifestyle--certainly has humorous possibilities.


"The Way to Eden"
The Plot: The Enterprise is hijacked by a criminal scientist and his space hippie followers who are looking for a paradise planet.
The Adventure: Well...uh...hippies...umm--elves, maybe? Yeah, I got nothing here. Sorry.

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