[Nate the Great]

Yup. Absolutely worthless thing to know, but where are we supposed to get material for fiver jokes if not for worthless things?

Suddenly I'm reminded of old commercials. Did anyone else know that one of the oldest continually running commercial is the "Tootsie Roll owl" one?

To return to the topic of "Star Trek Gaming," are there any ideas that people think would make great premeses for a Trek game? Here's mine:

The Orion Syndicate has taken over a Risa-like planet where you are vacationing. Since the planet is outside the Federation, you are the only officer on the planet and your only resources are a runabout and a sporadic commlink with Starfleet Command (the runabout in orbit can send and recieve signals most of the time, but the planet is going through a batch of nebular gas and it is only sporadically that it clears up enough for you to beam up/down or communicate with anyone). Since you were on vacation, no one knows you're an officer. Can you find enough evidence to arrest the Syndicate members?

While examining an Iconian gateway your team is suddenly attacked by Romulans who want to claim it as their own. Your ship has been destroyed and they've set up signal scramblers. Being hopelessly outnumbered, you are forced to jump through the gateway and gather reinforcements. Where will you end up? Will you find allies or enemies? Consider it a riff on Sliders if you must.

Your team has been sent to Trelane's world to examine the equipment he used to create such realistic illusions. Too bad one of your colleagues is half-Deltan and as such is slightly telepathic. The equipment is just a little beyond your understanding, and you set off a pulse that drives the Deltan insane. Driven mad a la McCoy in The City on the Edge of Forever, he activates a program that sends all of you into a simulation of seventeenth-century Earth. You don't know how to get out, so you have to do the distasteful: think like Trelane. What kind of hoops would he design to get out of a variety of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century illusions? The insane crewman has the off switch, so you have to track him down to turn it off. What's worse that that, you can't access your ship because of Trelane's scrambler, so where are you going to get food if everythings an illusion? Who's going to get the little food and water that you have?