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Question: Dungeon Monkey!  I’m working on building a character for a new science fiction campaign our local game master is putting together, but I’ve got a problem, most of the other players have taken the cool roles in a crew for a space ship and I feel left out.  I usually play characters who are pilots, or good at fighting, or technical people but we seem to have all of those roles filled, we even have a sexy alien to talk with other people.  I’d rather not be a fifth wheel in the campaign but I also want to be somebody who might actually appear on the bridge of a ship.  Do you have any suggestions for vital roles I could fill that aren’t already covered in our spaceship’s crew?

Answer: One of the major problems with any science-fiction campaign is that many science-fiction settings only seem to allow a limited number of interesting roles in a space opera or space exploration setting, if your Game Master (GM) is aiming for a small crew on a ship then often a crew seems to be focused on a few select roles that are quickly filled, larger groups then have the problem of what do the “extra” players do?  Honestly no player wants to be the person who makes a character who is “just like player A’s character only mine can shoot a bit better and run a bit slower!”  However there are a few things you can do to carve yourself an individual niche that will ensure you not only stand out as a unique individual on the ship but might also provide you with a character that is actually useful to the party.  At the very least these roles will provide you with some fun to play with troupes that your group might otherwise be missing.

Expendable Extra Crew Guy – a.k.a. “the Red Shirt” of Star Trek fame, only you want to find a way to ensure that your character is good at one thing and one thing only, surviving against the odds or catching a lucky break.  Ideally you want to make this character nearly immune to any sort of harm that might actually come his or her way but also make them so horribly poorly skilled that they inevitably fall into trouble.  The fun of this sort of role is that it will allow you to be in the heart of almost every adventure and you can actually ham your role up to the point that you, and other players, look forward to the sort of madness your GM can toss your character into in any one of several bizarre settings.  In fact if you play your cards right you might even end up with the GM offering you some adventures where your character gets to be a major figure and actually have a heroic moment or two, as a contrast to your normal role of buffoon and/or party whipping boy.  At the very least you should find an immeasurable number of ways to come within a hair’s breadth of death, space settings are wonderful for high death counts.

Historian or other Esoteric Knowledge Expert – most GMs when running through the bag of space themed plots will eventually dig up the old but fun standard of introducing some sort of ancient alien race into the game setting, either an alien race discovered through relics and long-lost remains or one quite powerful compared to your level of technology, and still active, but in diminished numbers or having accepted a “detached” view of the local scrap of space your characters are campaigning within.  This is a standard trick for the GM to avoid answering the question “If the aliens were so powerful why are they gone/vanished/failed/not conquering everything in sight?”  You, however, have anticipated this in advance and have tucked away vast amounts of skills and abilities in ancient languages, historic technologies, mysteries of the universe, and raw linguistic talent.  When this plot unleashes itself upon the group and the GM explains that “No one here, sadly, knows the ancient language or its text but if you undertake a trip to…” followed by some system name that rhymes with “hurt and mangle” you can pipe up “Or you can all give me a couple of days on the spa planet with this stuff and I think I can crack it.”  That is your moment, just let the GM know you are happy when your findings indicate the group will still need to go to the Planet of Painful Bowel Extraction by Pincer to actually use the technology in question.  Be sure to leave yourself flexible enough that if it turns out the aliens are not ancient you are able to understand the bizarre cultural experiences your group will encounter when you inevitably end up on Western Planet, Nazi Planet, and Space Nymphomaniac Planet.

Be The Backup – It seems to defeat your initial goal but actually being the backup in this case is not a bad thing, really it is not, because your group has all the main troupes covered but lacks an additional person who is less talented, but still good, in many areas.  Your goal in this case is to achieve two things, first you want to be able to give every other character a hand when they are attempting to do something.  Most games reward helping someone with a bonus to that players roll and you want to make it so that no matter what roll is needed, you can be there to give an edge.  Second, and more critically, eventually a GM realizes that skilled players and technology make many normal plots fail when set in space.  Inevitably this leads to a GM attempting some sort of “Oh no, your engineer/pilot/gun master is down for a while, what are you going to do to solve this engineering/piloting/shooting like crazy situation?”  At which point your character saunters up, makes a roll that is good enough but not spectacular, and your party is on their way.

If all else fails, be the annoying robot that understands millions of languages and whines all the time.  It worked for a famous science fiction franchise or two, so it should work for you as well.

- Dungeon Monkey

Have a question for the Dungeon Monkey?  Want to seek out some gaming suggestions?  Email Dungeon Monkey at dungeonmonkey@umich.edu and get your answers!