I've been on a bit of a Star Trek kick of late, and was curious if the old FASA rules were worth looking up? Is there a retro-clone of them?
I was never quite fond of Decipher's CODA system and their treatment of Star Trek (and weirdly, like the Black Unicorn predecessor more) - though this might be some unreserved hate for the Decipher crew and the nonsense they pulled in the Star Trek and LotR card games.
Decipher got reamed for their starting unlicense CCG use of Star Trek, IIRC. Then I never followed the game much thereafter. Somethjng about Q Tents being required cards and general shenanigans. Their ST rpgs looked like they were competing with Hero or 3e DnD in page count or splats. Never knew what was going on there...
As for FASA, one of the few FASA games my college gamer buddies were not into and memorized wholesale. Wonder why that is...? Bigger Star Wars WEG fans, I guess? I noticed SW and ST fans are a bit like oil and water, and oddly enough mech fetish (Robotech, Gundam, etc.) coincided more with SW fans. I am sure someone could do a master's thesis on the deeper reasons why...
I got rid of my FASA Star Trek rulebooks years ago. I remember making up lots of characters. It had a kind of neat lifepath character generation system for the time. It was heavily inspired by Traveller's chargen. Sadly, those characters really never got used. My game group and I made a few sporadic attempts to play it, and things simply never came together into even so much as a single meaningful game.
The system was a decidedly old school percentile system. It had an action point based combat system which seemed extremely overcomplicated to all of us at the time (mid 80s). Plus, the rules were written to require squaregrid and counter based personal combat.
We did play a lot of the starship combat game, which was called Star Trek III: Starship Combat Roleplaying game at that time (and later changed to Star Trek: Tactical Combat Simulator). Play really didn't resemble Star Trek at all. We all prefered to play Star Fleet Battles which felt much more like we felt starship combat should work. However, the FASA offering played much more quickly and it had all those pretty starship porn drawings to suck us in, so even though we didn't particularly like the game, we played for the graphical flavor. Not to mention we used the starship design rules to make a whole lot of photon boats.
I think either the LUG or Decipher RPGs are superior to the FASA offering. The main strength the FASA offering has is the tons of published support for it. Plus FASA's game existed in the TOS movie era, so it's really the only offering to focus on that era, because the LUG and Decipher games are firmly late TNG era and it seems all other Star Trek games are TOS TV era.
I've been thinking recently about picking up the three corebooks again. I've been looking on ebay and... shit those books are far more expensive than I think they should be. People act like they're printed on gold or something. I've seen a couple of decent prices, but nothing to make me want to pull the trigger yet.
As a complete side note, I was looking at the Cubicle 7 Doctor Who game the other day and thinking about how it would work for Star Trek. Maybe the initiative system would have to change to encourage fisticuffs and ripped shirts, but it seems like it would already encourage the monologuing common in Trek. Plus, lethality of phasers is analogous to the letahality of most alien weapons in Who. And I feel Trek would benefit from fairly broad and vague mechanics instead of hyper-detailed skill selections as the FASA game more or less went for.
Quote from: Coffee Zombie;909278I've been on a bit of a Star Trek kick of late, and was curious if the old FASA rules were worth looking up? Is there a retro-clone of them?
I was never quite fond of Decipher's CODA system and their treatment of Star Trek (and weirdly, like the Black Unicorn predecessor more) - though this might be some unreserved hate for the Decipher crew and the nonsense they pulled in the Star Trek and LotR card games.
I played a lot of FASA Star Trek back in the day.
Some highlights
Character generation uses a lifepath system that generates a service history for the characters. It works well for the genre.
The mechanics are percentage based.
Combat is a bit too much like a wargame as it uses action point system to regulate the action. It was neither good or bad.
The starship combat system was the real gem in my opinion. While Star Fleet Battles was the better Star Trek WARGAME, the FASA take was better for roleplaying. Each of the main bridge officers (including communications which ran damage control) got a little control panel. The whole thing was setup that the players had to cooperate in order to fight the GM control opponent. It felt very Star Trek once the players got the hang of it. And the skill mechanics that applied to each station made sense.
The FASA supplements are hit or miss. The best one in my opinion was the Tricoder supplement which eliminated having the science officer player parroting the GM. The heart of it was a set of cardboard code wheels. The GM told the player, using a easy to use cheat sheet, what codes to look up. The player then read the result. Very effective in making the science officer player feel like he was playing the science officer.
FASA Star Trek in the 80s was a bit of an odd duck in that even without the internet there were a ton of resources to look up all things Star Trek. Most of us knew the show backwards and forwards, and those that didn't knew the broad strokes at least. Outside of Starship combat, and character creation, we didn't dive into the system all that much. Roll your percentage for the skill test. Maybe look up some range or situational modifiers was pretty much it.
In my area at least most FASA Star Trek fans were big into building deck plans. Thanks to photocopiers and miniature (15mm) scale deckplans from FASA we could readily make ones that look nice and were of use in actual play. I still have one that I made of a smaller ship called the USS Amundsen.
Finally as you can tell I am a big fan of the system and one reason is because the best roleplaying session I ever ran for any system was done using FASA Star Trek.
From my blog (http://batintheattic.blogspot.com/2009/05/from-attic-best-damn-game-i-ever-ran.html)
Even though it was designed by wargamers the fact it was Star Trek meant a lot of role-playing came along for the ride. Some of the best campaigns I ever refereed was using FASA's ST:RPG.
The best adventure I ever ran involved the players starting out on a milk run dropping navigation warning buoys around the time-space distortion that nailed the USS Defiant and nearly got the USS Enterprise. The ship, the USS Challenger, was refitted with a emergency anti-matter injector that could give a short burst of Warp 9. It was done in case there was a problem with the ship falling into the distortion.
I went all out for my Star Trek games. I used what computer tech I had at the time and creative photocopies to create orders, manifests, and other in-game documents for my players.
When they were halfway done, the distortion starting grew unexpectedly and caught the Challenger. The Engineer made his skill roll and injector worked pulling them out. When sensors came back on-line the Science Officer reported a Klingon D-7 bearing down on the Challenger with shields up. The players had a tough fight but the lone D-7 was no match for a Consitution Class Starship and it fled.
During the course of doing Damage Control after the battle, Comm Officer reported the Subspace Network was down. The Science Officer, Engineering and Comm Officer worked together to determine what was going on. The Challenger equipment was OK but the Subspace Network was simply gone. Even nodes near the Federation's Core were not on-line. However when they started searching for the other races they began to pick up a unknown network centered on Andoria. They found the nearest node and warped to it.
When they got there several weeks later they found a Starbase of unknown design. When they made first contact they discovered it was a Starbase on the frontier of the Andorian Star Empire! By now it was obvious they were thrown in some parallel timeline.
The players were able to find out that the Andorians had no record of Humans or Earth. The only record was that they found a dead world destroyed by nuclear weapons. As a consequence the Federation never developed and the Andorian Star Empire now dominates this region of space contending with the Klingons and Romulans for power.
They were able to secure permission to proceed to Earth. When the players got there they beamed down and started combing through the ruins for any records of what happened. They were surprised by Klingons and a firefight ensued. Meanwhile in orbit the Challenger was attacked by a D7 hiding behind Earth's Moon. It was a tough fight but the players won both on the ground and on land. The D7 was destroyed in the aftermath.
The players were able to determine that the nuclear war occurred around October 1962. Apparently in this timeline the Cuban Missile Crisis exploded into World War III engulfing the entire planet in nuclear war leaving on the cockroach as the highest lifeform.
From the wreckage of the D7 they were able to find out that the D7 was sent to the time-space anomaly that the Challenger was mapping and was able to use it to go back into time. They launched a nuclear missile at the US Fleet blockading Cuba. Both sides blamed the other and the crisis spiraled out of control into full scale war.
A smart player checked and it turned out the Challenger had the data on-board to execute a time warp via a slingshot around the Sun. What followed was some of the best roleplaying I ever seen as the players debated among themselves whether it was ethical to go back and restore the time line. This debate elevated a pretty good session into a game that emulated it's source material perfectly. Both sides had strong points in favor of the arguments. Both arguing with the passion that only college age fans could bring. In the game billions of lives were at stake on the decision. The player of the Captain actually started sweating at having to make this decision.
In the end the decision was to restore the timeline. The Challenger slingshotted back to 1962 and hide behind Earth's Moon. When the Klingon D7 warped into Earth orbit the Challenger surprised it and was able to destroy it before it launched the missle the ignited World War III. Then it warped back to the 23rd Century back into a future where the Federation existed.
I really like FASA Trek too. I played a lot of it in the 80s and early 90s. While we stuck with the character generation, skill system and starship combat rules, we used a more freeform personal combat system with range bands instead of the rigid squares and action points system (which is a lot like the Traveller boardgames Azhanti High Lightning and Snapshot).
One thing I liked about the system was the variety of possible campaign styles you could choose - it's possible to play the officers of a big starship like the Enterprise, a smaller more party-operated vessel, or a merchant vessel. You could also play a Klingon, Romulan, Orion or Federation superspy campaign. The Klingon campaign sourcebook is really well done and there were some fine adventures specifically for those different kinds of campaigns. Generally all of them are plot-based scenarios with a lot of possible outcomes. My favorite is Termination 1456. The players are a group of Klingons sent to investigate and assassinate a rogue Klingon Admiral in his homebase.
The timeline nowadays kind of strikes younger Star Trek fans as odd. The game came along in that period when the Star Trek movies were being made (The Motion Picture, Wrath of Khan, etc.) but before The New Generation. The FASA materials generally assumed you would be playing either in the Classic Trek era or the STI-IV era. At the time there wasn't really a lot of canon beyond the original series and the first films and the 'official Berman/Braga' canon hadn't been invented. So, some FASA Trek things, particularly the portrayal of Klingons, Romulans and Federation history are now considered wildly divergent non-canon. IMO, that's a good thing and offers roleplayers a lot of freedom to go where no gamers have one before - just ignore everything said about Trek from TNG onwards.
And if you're going to play FASA Trek, you have to use the roleplaying starship combat rules - each player will have a specific job to do while the captain character gives orders. It's really pretty fun, and really adds drama to the game - just like in a great Trek episode or movie.
Wow, sounds like some serious love for the FASA version. Is the lack of a retro clone due to the innately "licensed" characteristic of the game, or is there just no enough demand and critical mass to make one surface? On the subject of tracking down copies... yikes. Yeah, while looking for the Classic Doctor Who RPG (out of curiosity, I like the DWAITS well enough) I stumbled across the FASA game, which is what got me thinking about this in the first place - and yikes, those sets and books are way overpriced.
It's a great game.
My only caution is make sure everybody has the same idea of what "Star Trek" means. If one person wants to explore strange new worlds and the other wants to kill Klingons and take their stuff, it may not work well. But that's a people issue, not a game issue.
Quote from: Coffee Zombie;909295Wow, sounds like some serious love for the FASA version. Is the lack of a retro clone due to the innately "licensed" characteristic of the game, or is there just no enough demand and critical mass to make one surface?
A bit of both. Remember Star Trek for the interested has been intensely mined for information for decades. It not that hard to run a Star Trek campaign with a given sci-fi RPG. Not going to be as a good mechanic wise as a Star Trek RPG but good enough for most.
However there is a Star Trek Retro-clone out there Starships and Spaceman. http://www.goblinoidgames.com/spacemen.html
It not a FASA retro-clone but rather adapting D&D mechanics to a Star Trek game.
Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;909298My only caution is make sure everybody has the same idea of what "Star Trek" means. If one person wants to explore strange new worlds and the other wants to kill Klingons and take their stuff, it may not work well. But that's a people issue, not a game issue.
A Star Trek Campaign is definitely one where you want everybody to sit down beforehand to hash out who doing what and why. The Captain player can make or break the campaign if it revolves around a bridge crew like the various series.
Quote from: Kellri;909291The Klingon campaign sourcebook is really well done
John M. Ford was involved and made the first really consistent view of who the Klingons are. The TOS Klingons were explained as a genetic subspecies to allow the Empire to deal with humans better. There were Klingon-Romulan Fusions as well. The baseline Klingon were the movie klingons with the ridged foreheads. There was also a book that Ford wrote as part of the paperback Star Trek series. The Final Reflection (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Final_Reflection).
I was bummed when the Next Generation went the whole honorable Klingon route. Although I appreciated Enterprise's explanation of how the TOS Klingons came to be.
I liked the FASA Star Trek rules. It was one of the few campaigns where I got to be a player most of the time which was a fun change. The campaign was a semi-continuation of a previous Star Trek campaign run by a different GM which actually worked out nicely by allowing our GM to bring in old PCs (hers and others') as interesting NPCs, which gave the campaign a feeling of substance and history beyond the TV shows. And the GM was great using old PCs, she was completely immune to turning the old PCs/NPCs into show stealers. She introduced her own starship captain PC to us by having Star Fleet order us to arrest her. So rather than having her old PC save the day or save our bacon, we had to get her PC out of trouble by finding out the truth and disproving the basis for the arrest.
As other have said, the life path system was nice. It did a good job of generating characters with the appropriate skills at reasonable percentages for their rank and position. After a year or so of play we sent a few characters off to specialty schools e.g. Command School which allowed them to gain new skills or improve existing skills and to go up a rank. Essentially that was the only character improvement we did throughout the entire campaign. Which seemed pretty true to the TV Shows. It's not like we see Captains Kirk or Picard learn important new skills or get significantly better at skills they already have.
We used a troupe style of play. We each started with (I think) 3 characters. One bridge officer, one security officer, and one medical or science officer. That allowed us to select a character who fit the mission or for the GM to tailor a particular session towards a particular PC. Over the 2-3 years we played we each added on more characters. We even had a few lower decks style sessions where we focused attention on the young ensign characters instead of the experienced Lt Cmdr, Cmdr, or Captain. Once really nice thing for our group was that we had sketch pictures of all our PCs. The original GM was a sketch artist in his day job and graciously consented to do sketches of our characters. I'd never had a group where we did that and it had a significant impact on my gaming since. Now we always get (draw, have drawn, or find somewhere) pictures of our PCs and significant NPCs.
Quote from: estar;909284Combat is a bit too much like a wargame as it uses action point system to regulate the action. It was neither good or bad.
Our GM used an extremely simplified combat system. It was not much more complicated than rolling percentile dice and either comparing to your skill or comparing rolls + skill between two opposed characters.
QuoteThe starship combat system was the real gem in my opinion.
While we used more of the ship combat, this too we simplified. Though we kept the different activities for different bridge and engineering crew members. And I agree with estar's comparison between Star Fleet Battles and FASA Star Trek.
QuoteThe FASA supplements are hit or miss.
Our GM used the Triangle Sector supplement as background for the region we most warped around. The supplement seemed good and locating it where the territories of the Federation, Klingon, and another race (I think it was Orion) made for a good setting with diplomacy, cold war style confrontations, a bit of espionage, along with planet hopping and the occasional alien menace.
QuoteMost of us knew the show backwards and forwards, and those that didn't knew the broad strokes at least.
This was one of the greatest strengths. Both the main GM and I each used Star Trek to introduce roleplay to novices. When doing that, we would make the novices play the captain and senior officers while any old hands took on the role of more junior crew. This worked great as it pulled the newbies immediately into having their character do something. And because it was like the TV shows, anyone who watched the shows regularly had a pretty good idea of a halfway reasonable response.
QuoteOutside of Starship combat, and character creation, we didn't dive into the system all that much. Roll your percentage for the skill test. Maybe look up some range or situational modifiers was pretty much it.
Pretty much how we ran combat.
QuoteIn my area at least most FASA Star Trek fans were big into building deck plans.
We didn't do much deck planning. We (especially me) did build a lot of new ships. In part that was a function of the campaign legacy and history. The time period was set between TOS and TNG. This meant that the old show ships (except for types like the Excelsior class from the films) were outdated and the ships from TNG were not yet built (except for the Star Gazer type. I believe the timing worked out so that those were around all shiny and new.
QuoteFinally as you can tell I am a big fan of the system and one reason is because the best roleplaying session I ever ran for any system was done using FASA Star Trek.
Yes, I would echo that.
Quote from: Opaopajr;909280I noticed SW and ST fans are a bit like oil and water...
There is a lot of that, though not everyone plays that game. In our group, we followed the Star Trek campaign with an even longer running Star Wars campaign that my friend and I co-GMed.
Quote from: Coffee Zombie;909278I've been on a bit of a Star Trek kick of late
You might find this (http://www.modiphius.com/star-trek.html) interesting...
Quote from: estar;909313John M. Ford was involved and made the first really consistent view of who the Klingons are. The TOS Klingons were explained as a genetic subspecies to allow the Empire to deal with humans better. There were Klingon-Romulan Fusions as well. The baseline Klingon were the movie klingons with the ridged foreheads. There was also a book that Ford wrote as part of the paperback Star Trek series. The Final Reflection (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Final_Reflection).
I was bummed when the Next Generation went the whole honorable Klingon route. Although I appreciated Enterprise's explanation of how the TOS Klingons came to be.
I much preferred The Final Reflection's Klingons to the Gagh-Chomping, Bloodwine-swilling, Opera-singing Space Vikings of TNG.
Me too.
FWIW, Ford's influence on FASA Trek was one of the best things about their setting. Years ago I did a netbook that compiled all of the Trek timeline material published by FASA and discovered in the process that it was pretty much all based on a similar timeline written by John M. Ford for his novels. Unlike the 'official' timeline, it actually makes sense. That kind of ruined the Enterprise show for me.
The FASA system seems rather hopeless to me now (when people call it a percentile system, it's not nearly that simple)- but somehow, it worked. It had that 'classic' Trek feel that the other Trek RPGs could never seem to get. And I agree that the Combat System was not as detailed as Star Fleet Battles, but amazingly, that worked too. For one thing, you could resolve a ship-to-ship battle in less than 20 minutes. Try that in SFB.
JG
Quote from: James Gillen;909431The FASA system seems rather hopeless to me now (when people call it a percentile system, it's not nearly that simple)- but somehow, it worked. It had that 'classic' Trek feel that the other Trek RPGs could never seem to get. And I agree that the Combat System was not as detailed as Star Fleet Battles, but amazingly, that worked too. For one thing, you could resolve a ship-to-ship battle in less than 20 minutes. Try that in SFB.
JG
The FASA starship simulator was great fun. Yeah, SFB of course is a better wargame, but where are the plugins for character skill? This is a RPG we're doing here, we're not at a convention with guys who have memorized all the to hit tables and will always make the exact attack that has the most favorable statistical chance.
Also, like Rob said, the Tricorder was just plain cool. The console layouts with chits to represent sliders and the tricorder are two examples of gadgetry at the table that aids immersion into the setting, not pulling you out for it's own sake.
I kind of like the concept of the dedicated away team, or Prime Team, as Amarillo Design Bureau calls it. It would make for interesting troupe play, everyone had a Bridge Crew member, and a Prime Team member. That way you get Picard up in space for when you need to not fuck up a diplomatic mission and Kirk on the ground gettin' shit done when it all goes south. :D
I actually liked the FASA starship game better than SFB because SFB became so bloated. Forrest Brown of FASA said one of their design goals was to be able to set up the game, teach new players, and play the game to a conclusion in 4 hours or less. First time I played it was a Constitution class and two Enterprise class against 5 Klingon ships. From start to end took us 2 1/2 hours to thoroughly kick Klingon ass.
We found character creation a bit on the slow side and my junior high friends didn't have the patience for the star ship combat simulator. Still, it was a fun game. Very well put together and thought out. I'd read Dragon Quest first and second edition so the action point system wasn't new to me but it still felt a bit too boardgamey. I was a narrativist in my youth. I should dig up my Galaxies in Shadow files and put together some Trek stuff. I've always wanted to run a Star Trek campaign.
Anyhow, I was working on a setting that's basically a lower / harder tech exploration game that's essential Star Trek's Federation encounter's Dune's empire.
I played plenty of FASA Trek, and sold it all on eBay years ago. It was never a good game, but it was "the Trek RPG" so we played it. Effectively, it was the only donut shop in town unless you made your own Trek game and I certainly played several different homebrews over the years. I knew two GMs who just used Traveller - which actually worked fine in a world of phasers and disruptors. One GM did a good job to reskin Traveller ship combat to make missiles into photons and lasers into ship phasers and patterned his campaign off Star Fleet Battles.
The best Trek RPG play I've enjoyed was at the Los Angeles conventions with a great GM who reskinned the Buffy system for Trek. Damn, that worked awesome.
Quote from: Spinachcat;909448The best Trek RPG play I've enjoyed was at the Los Angeles conventions with a great GM who reskinned the Buffy system for Trek. Damn, that worked awesome.
I'm thinking of something similar.
JG
Quote from: Spinachcat;909448(...) reskinned the Buffy system for Trek. Damn, that worked awesome.
I only met two GMs who did Star Trek campaigns, one with FASA, one with a reskinned Cyberpunk/Interlock (which is not
that far from Unisystem).
I'd use this:
(http://mondbuchstaben.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/fartrek_cover.jpg)
Quote from: Dirk Remmecke;909596I only met two GMs who did Star Trek campaigns, one with FASA, one with a reskinned Cyberpunk/Interlock (which is not that far from Unisystem).
I'd use this:
(http://mondbuchstaben.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/fartrek_cover.jpg)
I checked out the free PDF. It looks pretty cool. It also led me to Rogue Space. And now the print versions are sitting in my Lulu cart while I try to decide whether to order.
It does look cool...
Quote from: Gabriel2;909605And now the print versions are sitting in my Lulu cart while I try to decide whether to order.
Isn't that Lulu discount still in effect till tomorrow? Code: LULU30.
Remember, there's also Where No Man Has Gone Before, which is a D20 Modern version of Trek. It includes such things as a table of random gimmicks that the producers insert into the next season in a desperate attempt to get better ratings. :D
JG
I remember almost nothing about the game's system, but I do remember that the later books had really cutting-edge art and graphic design for the time. It was one of the first RPGs I remember that "Looked slick".
I still have the first edition boxed set, with a single volume rulebook. It is very TOS oriented, I think it may even predate STTMP. It had a Star Trek feel in background, but teh mechanics were clunky iirc.
The second and subsequent editions had much better graphic design, the Starship Combat Simulator was also available as it's own boxed game.
There's always the Whole Nother Generation article from that old Challenge magazine with the random plot generator and stats for races like Obnoxoids with their racial ability of Irritate Everybody 95% and Chief Geek Wesley with his skill of Irritate Everybody 98%.
Quote from: estar;909311However there is a Star Trek Retro-clone out there Starships and Spaceman. http://www.goblinoidgames.com/spacemen.html
It not a FASA retro-clone but rather adapting D&D mechanics to a Star Trek game.
------------
I was bummed when the Next Generation went the whole honorable Klingon route. Although I appreciated Enterprise's explanation of how the TOS Klingons came to be.
1: Um... Wrong? (and right)
S&S is not a retroclone. Its a reprinting of the original board game and RPG. The RPG in 78 by FGU and the board game in 82. The original rules do not quite map to D&D stats but like Tunnels & Trolls does have some overlap and does use a 3d6 for generation.
Though Goblinoid Games did do a 2e. Which meant it was instead re-written to use or be compatible with Labyrinth Lord and Mutant Future. So 2e is OSR.
It does though indeed make for a great Star Trek RPG. With the serial numbers filed off.
2: If you pay attention in TNG. Worf is about the only honourable Klingon in the series. The rest are oft shown to be just as conniving backstabbing thugs as they ever were. Worf just has a skewed ideal of what Klingons are and was very disillusioned when he found out they were not what he thought.
Quote from: DavetheLost;909634I still have the first edition boxed set, with a single volume rulebook. It is very TOS oriented, I think it may even predate STTMP.
The FASA RPG came out 5 years before TNG aired on TV.
Somehow it feels like that sentence is missing an acronym.
I ran a short campaign of it. There was a campaign setting "The Triangle" as well as a set of adventures that took place there. It was an area of neutral zone between the Federation, Romulans and Klingons. It wasn't fabulous but it allowed for spy type and merchant trader campaigns that were kind of interesting. Once my players tried the Klingon campaign setting there was no going back to Federation restraint.
It was okay. I ran a short campaign ages ago but I barely remember how the system worked, I remember the starship combat system did a good job getting people involved but not much else. There was some good background material especially ships. It seemed like a good Trek skirmish game with a role-playing system tacked on. It ran okay but it wasn't outstandingly good or bad. It was mostly just forgettable.
Quote from: Bren;909643The FASA RPG came out 5 years before TNG aired on TV.
And AFAIR producing two first season sourcebooks for TNG led to FASA losing the license.
More likely the licensing fee was raised and they couldn't, or didn't want to, meet it. Or no option to renew was offered.
There's a story that Gene Roddenberry learned of the FASA license when they submitted Operation Armageddon (a frequently mentioned but never released Star Trek boardgame covering galactic war between the Federation, Klingons, and Romulans) for approvals. The story alleges that the Great Bird of the Galaxy threw a fit when he learned his property was being used to promote war, and that led to the doom of the license. At that point the approval process grew far more stringent, and the only two products approved and released after that point were the TNG First Year Sourcebook and the TNG Officers Manual. Since FASA didn't see the line as worth pursuing anymore with that level of restriction, they discontinued it to focus on Battletech, Renegade Legion, and a little upcoming project called Shadowrun.
Quote from: Omega;9096412: If you pay attention in TNG. Worf is about the only honourable Klingon in the series. The rest are oft shown to be just as conniving backstabbing thugs as they ever were. Worf just has a skewed ideal of what Klingons are and was very disillusioned when he found out they were not what he thought.
I see Worf as analogous to a Human child on a colony that got destroyed, and was adopted by a kindly alien family, and his only concept of what life was back on Earth were old collections of stories about King Arthur and the Paladins of Charlemagne, and so he imagines that's the way all other Humans behave, and doesn't realize that while some of us might admire the old knightly codes, that doesn't mean we consider them practical for daily life, much less politics. ;)
JG
Quote from: Gabriel2;909605It also led me to Rogue Space. And now the print versions are sitting in my Lulu cart while I try to decide whether to order.
I hope you did - because it looks like Far Trek was pulled from Lulu, again. (Those not-for-profit print editions are only available for brief periods. One day, or so.)
But Rogue Space is great, as well, and should handle Star Trek perfectly. One of the sample alien races
is a thinly veiled Vulcan.
The system feels a bit like a Microlite Traveller.
Quote from: Dirk Remmecke;909697I hope you did - because it looks like Far Trek was pulled from Lulu, again. (Those not-for-profit print editions are only available for brief periods. One day, or so.)
But Rogue Space is great, as well, and should handle Star Trek perfectly. One of the sample alien races is a thinly veiled Vulcan.
The system feels a bit like a Microlite Traveller.
Yeah I ordered it, but when I read "will be pulled without notice" I certainly didn't expect it to be removed after one day.
Quote from: Lynn;909647I ran a short campaign of it. There was a campaign setting "The Triangle" as well as a set of adventures that took place there. It was an area of neutral zone between the Federation, Romulans and Klingons. It wasn't fabulous but it allowed for spy type and merchant trader campaigns that were kind of interesting. Once my players tried the Klingon campaign setting there was no going back to Federation restraint.
My players did the same thing when we tried the Klingon game. The desire to go murderhobo is a very strong motivator in players.
Years later, with LUG Trek, I tried to run a Star Fleet game and my group defected to the Maquis and began hunting Cardassians instead.
Far Trek will be back for sale in print next Saturday. No idea how long on Saturday though.
The pdf is still available from the Far Trek blog.
Star Trek is one of those properties I feel Traveller can emulate with very little work. Too bad we're apparently never getting the Prime Directive Mongoose Traveller book.
Quote from: The Butcher;909719Star Trek is one of those properties I feel Traveller can emulate with very little work. Too bad we're apparently never getting the Prime Directive Mongoose Traveller book.
Is that officially dead? I picked up the Babylon 5 Traveller port and it was pretty good.
Quote from: The Butcher;909719Star Trek is one of those properties I feel Traveller can emulate with very little work. Too bad we're apparently never getting the Prime Directive Mongoose Traveller book.
Quote from: Lynn;909779Is that officially dead? I picked up the Babylon 5 Traveller port and it was pretty good.
J Michael Straczynski pulled the license for Mongoose Traveller Babylon 5 due to poor quality of those books. It is not official yet, but with the trouble that Mongoose is having with their TAS licensing, I strongly suspect that Prime Directive Mongoose Traveller is vaporware.
Quote from: jeff37923;909789J Michael Straczynski pulled the license for Mongoose Traveller Babylon 5 due to poor quality of those books. It is not official yet, but with the trouble that Mongoose is having with their TAS licensing, I strongly suspect that Prime Directive Mongoose Traveller is vaporware.
What troubles?
Quote from: jeff37923;909789J Michael Straczynski pulled the license for Mongoose Traveller Babylon 5 due to poor quality of those books.
Are you sure it didn't originate with the d20 based printed books? They seemed to pick their font and color combinations so that its so awful you wouldn't want to try to scan them.
Quote from: Lynn;909809Are you sure it didn't originate with the d20 based printed books? They seemed to pick their font and color combinations so that its so awful you wouldn't want to try to scan them.
d20 Gamma world used a speckled background for about every other chapter. It made it hard to read as the speckles were oft larger than letters and dark to very dark grey. argh.
Quote from: CRKrueger;909804What troubles?
Nobody is using TAS. There is a single test case whose publisher has decided that there is no money to be made by giving away your IP. The rest of the Mongoose Traveller 3PP have decided to go their own way.
Read the current license and it should become clear why 3PP are pretty much not using it. It was met with a heavily negative reaction in Traveller circles when it debuted.
Quote from: CRKrueger;909804What troubles?
The TAS Program, along with other community content programs, recycles the license used by the DM's Guild. Most of the current Traveller 3PP have original settings due to how the program for Mongoose Traveller 1st edition (OGL/SRD for rules only not Third Imperium) worked. However the license for the Community will fuck over your ability to use anything you release for an original setting. The Community Content license states that you grant an EXCLUSIVE license to the company and One Bookshelf to host your content. Anything you release have to stay there.
Hence only a handful of people are using TAS to release 3PP stuff and none of the current Traveller 3PP people.
Now with DM's Guild it has not been much an issue because a SRD under the OGL has been released.
So if you have an original setting for 5e you can release under the OGL and have your rights to the setting protected under the product identity clause.
If you have something that specific to Forgotten Realms, Ravenloft, or depends on the full ruleset of 5e then you can release it on the DM's Guild. You wan't make as much and it will stay there permanently but then again you didn't have any right to use any Forgotten Realm or Ravenloft material before so it a win overall.
The contrast with Traveller is that in addition to coming out with the TAS program, Mongoose also released the 2nd edition rules for Mongoose Traveller which are different enough from 1st edition to make conversion problematic for certain areas.
Mongoose has sunsetted the old Traveller Logo program. So while the Trav SRD will be always be there you can't cite any type of Traveller compatibility. You get access to the Third Imperium with TAS and access to play with the full Mongoose Ruleset which is something that didn't exist before. However without an SRD, nobody is going to release original settings or support for original settings for TAS.
To make it worse is the fact that the pool of Traveller Fans who have the desire to publish is vastly smaller than the pool of D&D 5e fans. So 5e has a wealth of authors willing to throw up content, mostly splat books, on the DM's Guild. But there has been a lack of releases for TAS.
The same problem afflicts the Cortex and Cypher community content program. It is especially bad for Cortex because it doesn't offer any access to any of the licensed Cortex properties.
The take away for a publisher is that nobody going to use a community content programs unless rights to an original setting is preserved either by the program itself or by a corresponding SRD under an open license.
Quote from: Omega;909833d20 Gamma world used a speckled background for about every other chapter. It made it hard to read as the speckles were oft larger than letters and dark to very dark grey. argh.
That's actually a feature. The text of d20 Gamma World is so terribly written and so not-Gamma World that not being able to read much of it is a good thing.
Quote from: DavetheLost;909871Read the current license and it should become clear why 3PP are pretty much not using it. It was met with a heavily negative reaction in Traveller circles when it debuted.
Probably because the artwork in the mongoose TRAVELLER sucked out the wazoo. At least the SJG version of the same universe looked like what it was supposed top be - it also looked much more realistic in the GURPS books.
- Ed C.
Quote from: Kellri;909956That's actually a feature. The text of d20 Gamma World is so terribly written and so not-Gamma World that not being able to read much of it is a good thing.
Then why didnt they use it on all the prose pages? :D
Quote from: Koltar;909959Probably because the artwork in the mongoose TRAVELLER sucked out the wazoo. At least the SJG version of the same universe looked like wehat it was supposed top be - it also looked much more realistic in the GURPS books.
- Ed C.
I thought the art has been pretty decent, at least in the few Mongoose Traveller Second Edition books out thus far.
Quote from: Omega;910017Then why didnt they use it on all the prose pages? :D
Good question. Actually, there is one upside to GW d20. The resulting backlash (accompanied by a giant sigh of 'What the fuck is this shit!?') gave Bruce Baugh the badwrongfeels while simultaneously ensuring he will never again be trusted with a beloved legacy setting ever again.
I couldn't stand FASA Star Trek, but it was at least still a slightly better fit than the first Doctor Who game.
Quote from: Omega;9096411: Um... Wrong? (and right)
2: If you pay attention in TNG. Worf is about the only honourable Klingon in the series. The rest are oft shown to be just as conniving backstabbing thugs as they ever were. Worf just has a skewed ideal of what Klingons are and was very disillusioned when he found out they were not what he thought.
Holy crap... Worf is Sturm Brightblade.
Think about it... he's the sometimes disgraced often disparaged epitome of what the spirit of Klingon Honor is supposed to be, while the other Klingons only pay lip service and continue to be bastards and backstabbers.
Isn't that really the same about every organization that claims to have some moral or ethical code? Pick a religion, pick a political party, pick a Social Justice Warrior :P - most of them are paying lip service only, because they get some form of personal power out of the affiliation.
You will always have very few true believers who walk the walk. The rest talk the talk and sacrifice nearly everything for expediency, convenience and "practicality".
Shhh, don't disillusion him (yet). We may still be able to fleece some cash off of him. ;)
Did FASA Trek ship combat use any kind of map, or were the relative positions between the ships abstracted somehow?
Quote from: Skarg;910797Did FASA Trek ship combat use any kind of map, or were the relative positions between the ships abstracted somehow?
Hexgrid.
When it gets right down to it, the starship combat was a hexgrid based tactical miniatures game with the character's RP skill percentages shoehorned in a couple of places for mostly negligible effect.
Quote from: Lynn;909779Is that officially dead?
I cancelled my pre-order of Traveller: Prime Directive and bought the Mongoose Traveller 2nd Edition book instead. Amarillo Design Bureau hired no one to complete T:PD while Mongoose Traveller 1st Edition was in print. Then cancelled the idea when MgT 2nd Edition was announced, for fear of ending up with too many T:PD 1st edition books that they couldn't unload. They remember what happened when GURPS moved from 3e to 4e, and they had G:PD 3e books in a warehouse collecting dust. ADB doesn't have an RPG department. They focus on their boardgames.
Quote from: Shawn Driscoll;910854I cancelled my pre-order of Traveller: Prime Directive and bought the Mongoose Traveller 2nd Edition book instead. Amarillo Design Bureau hired no one to complete T:PD while Mongoose Traveller 1st Edition was in print. Then cancelled the idea when MgT 2nd Edition was announced, for fear of ending up with too many T:PD 1st edition books that they couldn't unload. They remember what happened when GURPS moved from 3e to 4e, and they had G:PD 3e books in a warehouse collecting dust. ADB doesn't have an RPG department. They focus on their boardgames.
I was supposed to have done Prime Directive: D6. I turned in the first five chapters to Jean Sexton for SVC to review. Jean gave them to Steve, and... that was over half a decade ago.
Quote from: Shawn Driscoll;910854I cancelled my pre-order of Traveller: Prime Directive and bought the Mongoose Traveller 2nd Edition book instead. Amarillo Design Bureau hired no one to complete T:PD while Mongoose Traveller 1st Edition was in print. Then cancelled the idea when MgT 2nd Edition was announced, for fear of ending up with too many T:PD 1st edition books that they couldn't unload. They remember what happened when GURPS moved from 3e to 4e, and they had G:PD 3e books in a warehouse collecting dust. ADB doesn't have an RPG department. They focus on their boardgames.
That's a shame. While I can understand not wanting to be stuck with 1st edition books, it would make sense to just modify for 2nd edition.
Quote from: colwebbsfmc;910952I was supposed to have done Prime Directive: D6. I turned in the first five chapters to Jean Sexton for SVC to review. Jean gave them to Steve, and... that was over half a decade ago.
Pity. I liked Prime Directive, but neither GURPS nor d20. I also prefer the Starfleet Universe to the Star Trek Prime timeline universe. d6 System, I think would have been fun.
I don't see SVC as an RPG person...