Article:
D&D 4th ed vs Star Trek Away Team

Star trek Federation crews can pop up anywhere, so why not in the Dungeons and Dragons world?

With the abundant weirdness of the world your characters call home, there are plenty of things to attract a curious Away Team, such as unique flora or fauna, perhaps they have come to retrieve some dilithium crystals that just happen to be located exactly where your adventuring party in exploring?

Watching the television series, the reaction of the starship crew to a meeting with a group of heavily armed, armored, blood spattered and thoroughly battle hardened fantasy adventurers is quite likely to end rather badly for the natives, with perhaps the loss of a small number of red shirts. However, the same is not true in any dungeons and dragons random encounter.. you see, while the star ship crew have teleportation, instant communication and ray guns, they do not have razor sharp great swords, enchanted chainmail, divine healing or arcane, fireball hurling magical powers.

The Away Team are primarily ranged attackers, and woefully unprepared for lethal melee combat; they will react with shock when they witness magic in action for the first time (can't you just picture them all flipping out the tricorders and scanning around with an alarmed expression?), and that split second delay is a deadly mistake in D&D, because players rarely take prisoners.

But, aren't the Federation the good guys?

Well yes, in the Star Trek series they are, but this is the D&D world, and we can depart from the nice guy image for these star fleet 'space invaders' if we like.

The first step is to add a bit of reality to the situation, and getting rid of the whole universal translator idea. I mean, those things are highly unlikely, but very handy for writing television scripts. So there can be no verbal negotiation between star ship crew and the player characters, which leaves two armed groups, very nervous and surprised to see each other.