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Author Topic: Star Trek RPG... What if there is no time travel?  (Read 14352 times)

Omega

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Re: Star Trek RPG... What if there is no time travel?
« Reply #120 on: May 16, 2022, 03:16:07 AM »
No, the zinger are all the fart/dick jokes and making every single male character the butt of the joke on ST: Lower IQ

Damn, dude. There is something wrong when you feel emasculated by a cartoon.

So we now can add to your faults pretending to read minds.

Wait? These two have minds???  8)

Back on topic. Such as it is.

Star Trek has suffered from the age old problem of many a series where subesequent writers just dont give a fuck. Combined with the usual escalation these shows tend to suffer. Star Trek has not quite gotten to Star Wars level but it is well on its way. The nu-Trek movies far more so. And the more the writers dont give a fuck the worse it gets. Some of it is building off the stupid of Voyager and TNG. Voyager in particular. But even DS9 got in on the act.

As said early on in the thread. You can cut out Time Travel and Teleporters and not impact a Star Trek RPG session at all. You just need to either consider what impact it had and now to get the same results differently. Or the easier option is to simply sideline timetravel to so rare the PCs are never going to encounter it. Or in the case of Teleporters, just say the ship doesnt have one. Theres nothing that says every ship has to.

Then roll with it.

jeff37923

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Re: Star Trek RPG... What if there is no time travel?
« Reply #121 on: May 16, 2022, 05:32:32 AM »
Lower Decks is good Trek.

Good at mocking Star Trek and spitting on it? Yeah its good trek all right.

Dude, Star Trek has been mocking itself since Voyager. Lower Decks at least doesn't have to rely on a woman's ass in a silvery catsuit to get viewers.

Oh noes! A show with a mainly male target audience has atractive women in sexy costumes! That's not halal!

It also doesn't tend to generate good scripts for episodes.

But, you'll overlook like that for the zinger.

No, the zinger are all the fart/dick jokes and making every single male character the butt of the joke on ST: Lower IQ

Damn, dude. There is something wrong when you feel emasculated by a cartoon.

So we now can add to your faults pretending to read minds.

No mind reading needed. Your posts show that Star Trek: Lower Decks makes your penis feel small. That you lack enough of a sense of humor to be offended by the show just puts you square in scold territory. You are bleating like a sheep over a science fiction franchise that has been milked dry.
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jeff37923

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Re: Star Trek RPG... What if there is no time travel?
« Reply #122 on: May 16, 2022, 05:41:48 AM »
No, the zinger are all the fart/dick jokes and making every single male character the butt of the joke on ST: Lower IQ

Damn, dude. There is something wrong when you feel emasculated by a cartoon.

So we now can add to your faults pretending to read minds.

Wait? These two have minds???  8)
I don't until I've had my coffee...

Back on topic. Such as it is.

Star Trek has suffered from the age old problem of many a series where subesequent writers just dont give a fuck. Combined with the usual escalation these shows tend to suffer. Star Trek has not quite gotten to Star Wars level but it is well on its way. The nu-Trek movies far more so. And the more the writers dont give a fuck the worse it gets. Some of it is building off the stupid of Voyager and TNG. Voyager in particular. But even DS9 got in on the act.

As said early on in the thread. You can cut out Time Travel and Teleporters and not impact a Star Trek RPG session at all. You just need to either consider what impact it had and now to get the same results differently. Or the easier option is to simply sideline timetravel to so rare the PCs are never going to encounter it. Or in the case of Teleporters, just say the ship doesnt have one. Theres nothing that says every ship has to.

Then roll with it.

I don't think that it is that the writers don't give a fuck. I think that the writers do not know how to write for a franchise that has been written to death. One of the reasons why nu-Trek works in its own way is that it erased all of the baggage from TNG, DS9, Voy, and Ent - with a clean slate, the writers had more wiggle room to maneuver, but even then they couldn't under the burden of the weight of Paramount's producers and directors (remember that these are the same people who got the rights to an awesome franchise in HALO and decided to create a series with people who had never played the game, thus not catering to the lucrative fan market whose profit from enticed them to buy the rights to begin with). One of the reasons why Picard doesn't work is because instead of new stories, they dragged the old stars of TNG and Voy out of retirement and back on to the sound stage (and Patrick Stewart is definitely showing his age).
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jeff37923

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Re: Star Trek RPG... What if there is no time travel?
« Reply #123 on: May 16, 2022, 05:48:27 AM »
Quote from: jeff37923

No, the zinger are all the fart/dick jokes and making every single male character the butt of the joke on ST: Lower IQ
[/quote

Damn, dude. There is something wrong when you feel emasculated by a cartoon.

Damn Jeff,

 Everything you've posted in this thread I tend to agree with.

This is very weird.

- Ed C.

I know! I'm checking the temperature in Hell right now!   8) ;D

By the way, how did your Star Trek campaign go for your friend?
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Tantavalist

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Re: Star Trek RPG... What if there is no time travel?
« Reply #124 on: May 16, 2022, 09:37:24 AM »
I think that if anyone ever wants to do Star Trek- most realistically for an RPG campaign- they'll have to sit down and decide what elements of it are canon and which elements are not. This doesn't even have to be due to politics (though it will be if dealing with anything from the last 10-15 years) but simply the inevitable drift and sprawl a decades-old franchise that's been through the hands of multiple writers who didn't consult or research with one another to keep things straight. Everything made by Star Trek from the end of the Kirk era has been mostly written by people who don't know the minutiae of the lore like a hardcore Trekkie does and and canon that's been added to enough begins to contradict itself.


One of my main points to re-work in any Trek canon I'd control would be hand phasers and the nerfing thereof.  Back in TOS, a hand phaser was a horribly deadly weapon. Phaser combat usually consisted on one person pulling a trigger and the fight being over- buildings could be blown up and crowds rendered unconscious by a single shot from a phaser.

Then TNG arrives- and more importantly, Star Wars happened between it and the end of TOS.

With later shows when a phaser fight did happen the directors seemed to want to make things more exciting by having the battles be like Star Wars- people duck and dive around cover while throwing sparkly light at one another. Which worked with blasters in Star Wars, but in Trek- why don't they set the phaser to high-intensity disruption and blow up the cover and whoever's behind it? They keep missing- what happened to the wide angle settings, or why not use sustained beam and walk the shot onto the enemy?

It's one of my pet peeves, and players in the ST game I ran were sometimes shocked to find what hand phasers were capable of and how short and deadly phaser combat was. It's a good thing the Modiphius game has metacurrency because the way I ran things it was "whoever doesn't shoot first, spend metacurrency to not be removed from the fight".

Wisithir

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Re: Star Trek RPG... What if there is no time travel?
« Reply #125 on: May 16, 2022, 08:22:59 PM »
It's one of my pet peeves, and players in the ST game I ran were sometimes shocked to find what hand phasers were capable of and how short and deadly phaser combat was. It's a good thing the Modiphius game has metacurrency because the way I ran things it was "whoever doesn't shoot first, spend metacurrency to not be removed from the fight".
Games about massive crewed ships probably lend themselves better to storygame where treknobabling a problem comes down to a single engineering roll instead of roleplaying the poor sod interacting with inconsistent imaginary tech.

Your idea on the lethality of phasers is probably well suited for transporters. They are safe and reliable when the transporter operator can take a 20, but under duress or canonically questionable circumstances trigger a save vs death. Now beaming is not an easy button solution and arranging for safe transport induces game play instead of eliminating it.

Ratman_tf

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Re: Star Trek RPG... What if there is no time travel?
« Reply #126 on: May 17, 2022, 03:00:23 AM »
I think that if anyone ever wants to do Star Trek- most realistically for an RPG campaign- they'll have to sit down and decide what elements of it are canon and which elements are not. This doesn't even have to be due to politics (though it will be if dealing with anything from the last 10-15 years) but simply the inevitable drift and sprawl a decades-old franchise that's been through the hands of multiple writers who didn't consult or research with one another to keep things straight. Everything made by Star Trek from the end of the Kirk era has been mostly written by people who don't know the minutiae of the lore like a hardcore Trekkie does and and canon that's been added to enough begins to contradict itself.


One of my main points to re-work in any Trek canon I'd control would be hand phasers and the nerfing thereof.  Back in TOS, a hand phaser was a horribly deadly weapon. Phaser combat usually consisted on one person pulling a trigger and the fight being over- buildings could be blown up and crowds rendered unconscious by a single shot from a phaser.

IIRC the original TOS RPG had phasers that would disintegrate on the higher settings.

Actually, that would explain the lack of high tech tanks and other vehicles besides shuttles in Star Trek. Granted, a tank with a Phaser Cannon would be pretty terrifying, but it could be disintegrated by a red shirt with a hand phaser...


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Lurkndog

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Re: Star Trek RPG... What if there is no time travel?
« Reply #127 on: May 17, 2022, 12:05:43 PM »
Actually, that would explain the lack of high tech tanks and other vehicles besides shuttles in Star Trek. Granted, a tank with a Phaser Cannon would be pretty terrifying, but it could be disintegrated by a red shirt with a hand phaser...

A Star Trek tank would have shields. Arguably, even a lightly armored vehicle could carry shields, though there is probably a point at which that's not cost-effective.

As for the lack of tanks, I think it is more a matter that Star Trek focuses on the Space Navy and not on the army or marines. There have been references to Starfleet Marines, in concept at least, but I haven't seen much of them on screen besides some scattered concept art of Security guys in helmets and chestplates with phaser rifles. At this point, though, there is a lot of Trek I haven't bothered watching.

You could also argue that a Trek starship trumps pretty much everything planetside, unless planetary shields are in place. Didn't the Enterprise set the ship's phasers to wide beam stun once? The plan was to stun an entire city or something.


GeekyBugle

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Re: Star Trek RPG... What if there is no time travel?
« Reply #128 on: May 17, 2022, 12:15:10 PM »
Actually, that would explain the lack of high tech tanks and other vehicles besides shuttles in Star Trek. Granted, a tank with a Phaser Cannon would be pretty terrifying, but it could be disintegrated by a red shirt with a hand phaser...

A Star Trek tank would have shields. Arguably, even a lightly armored vehicle could carry shields, though there is probably a point at which that's not cost-effective.

As for the lack of tanks, I think it is more a matter that Star Trek focuses on the Space Navy and not on the army or marines. There have been references to Starfleet Marines, in concept at least, but I haven't seen much of them on screen besides some scattered concept art of Security guys in helmets and chestplates with phaser rifles. At this point, though, there is a lot of Trek I haven't bothered watching.

You could also argue that a Trek starship trumps pretty much everything planetside, unless planetary shields are in place. Didn't the Enterprise set the ship's phasers to wide beam stun once? The plan was to stun an entire city or something.

Also even tho (almost) all the ships we're shown are military the Enterprise isn't in a military mission, even if they do engage in battle. It's always space battle they aren't exporting Federation Democracy to other planets.
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jhkim

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Re: Star Trek RPG... What if there is no time travel?
« Reply #129 on: May 17, 2022, 04:10:41 PM »
I think that if anyone ever wants to do Star Trek- most realistically for an RPG campaign- they'll have to sit down and decide what elements of it are canon and which elements are not. This doesn't even have to be due to politics (though it will be if dealing with anything from the last 10-15 years) but simply the inevitable drift and sprawl a decades-old franchise that's been through the hands of multiple writers who didn't consult or research with one another to keep things straight. Everything made by Star Trek from the end of the Kirk era has been mostly written by people who don't know the minutiae of the lore like a hardcore Trekkie does and and canon that's been added to enough begins to contradict itself.

Even within the Kirk era, there are tons of internal inconsistencies. The original and animated series had all the big problem issues: warp drive time travel, open-ended time travel, transporter duplication, saving and changing in mid-transport, and so forth. They got some great writers like Larry Niven and Harlan Ellison, but the writers often didn't know the lore like in later series.

When I ran a Kirk-era Star Trek campaign, my approach was that *all* the episodes were roughly as true to in-game reality as believable "based on a true story" dramas. So no details of episodes were guaranteed real, but the broad points were correct. I avoided time travel entirely, like the OP suggested. There were many rumors of time travel but it was similar to Area 51 and aliens for the real world. It was theoretically possible, but any use of it was either a hoax or very well covered up.


One of my main points to re-work in any Trek canon I'd control would be hand phasers and the nerfing thereof.  Back in TOS, a hand phaser was a horribly deadly weapon. Phaser combat usually consisted on one person pulling a trigger and the fight being over- buildings could be blown up and crowds rendered unconscious by a single shot from a phaser.
It's one of my pet peeves, and players in the ST game I ran were sometimes shocked to find what hand phasers were capable of and how short and deadly phaser combat was. It's a good thing the Modiphius game has metacurrency because the way I ran things it was "whoever doesn't shoot first, spend metacurrency to not be removed from the fight".

Yeah. Once you're hit with a phaser, you're down was my rule for Star Trek. There were still a handful of exceptions in the Kirk era, like the Horta, but they are very rare. I would sometimes feature extended hand-to-hand combat, but phaser combat was very quick.

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Re: Star Trek RPG... What if there is no time travel?
« Reply #130 on: May 18, 2022, 04:13:19 PM »
Actually, that would explain the lack of high tech tanks and other vehicles besides shuttles in Star Trek. Granted, a tank with a Phaser Cannon would be pretty terrifying, but it could be disintegrated by a red shirt with a hand phaser...

A Star Trek tank would have shields. Arguably, even a lightly armored vehicle could carry shields, though there is probably a point at which that's not cost-effective.

As for the lack of tanks, I think it is more a matter that Star Trek focuses on the Space Navy and not on the army or marines. There have been references to Starfleet Marines, in concept at least, but I haven't seen much of them on screen besides some scattered concept art of Security guys in helmets and chestplates with phaser rifles. At this point, though, there is a lot of Trek I haven't bothered watching.

You could also argue that a Trek starship trumps pretty much everything planetside, unless planetary shields are in place. Didn't the Enterprise set the ship's phasers to wide beam stun once? The plan was to stun an entire city or something.

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Omega

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Re: Star Trek RPG... What if there is no time travel?
« Reply #131 on: May 19, 2022, 08:41:07 PM »
Actually, that would explain the lack of high tech tanks and other vehicles besides shuttles in Star Trek. Granted, a tank with a Phaser Cannon would be pretty terrifying, but it could be disintegrated by a red shirt with a hand phaser...

A Star Trek tank would have shields. Arguably, even a lightly armored vehicle could carry shields, though there is probably a point at which that's not cost-effective.

As for the lack of tanks, I think it is more a matter that Star Trek focuses on the Space Navy and not on the army or marines. There have been references to Starfleet Marines, in concept at least, but I haven't seen much of them on screen besides some scattered concept art of Security guys in helmets and chestplates with phaser rifles. At this point, though, there is a lot of Trek I haven't bothered watching.

You could also argue that a Trek starship trumps pretty much everything planetside, unless planetary shields are in place. Didn't the Enterprise set the ship's phasers to wide beam stun once? The plan was to stun an entire city or something.

In the ST MMO a few races have the equivalent of tanks. The Voth have a big power armour suit, and the Vaadwaar had a crawler tank. Tholians use a combination EVA suit power armuor. Mirror Qin even goes after the party in a freaking runabout using space armaments on ground targets.

All of these can be zapped to death. And thats probably why few races bother to field tanks or equivalents. Hand weapons in ST are very dangerous and we have seen people on the ground even shoot down shuttles and runabouts. Its also probably why few races field fighters.

Even the TNG watered down hand weapons are still very dangerous.

Personally I suspect an in universe reason for the change was that TOS phasers WERE so very dangerous. And not just to the enemy. One set to overload could do ship level damage. And they were so lethal. Which does not fit TNGs supposed kinder and gentler image.

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Re: Star Trek RPG... What if there is no time travel?
« Reply #132 on: May 20, 2022, 04:26:11 PM »
And the Puppeteers ARE lying sacks of shit as demonstrated once and again in the novels. Manipulative, lying sacks of shit.

The Puppeteers manage to be bigger assholes than both the Pak and the Thrint, making them the biggest in Known Space by a comfy margin.
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GeekyBugle

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Re: Star Trek RPG... What if there is no time travel?
« Reply #133 on: May 20, 2022, 04:47:14 PM »
And the Puppeteers ARE lying sacks of shit as demonstrated once and again in the novels. Manipulative, lying sacks of shit.

The Puppeteers manage to be bigger assholes than both the Pak and the Thrint, making them the biggest in Known Space by a comfy margin.

Manipulating Kzin evolution and maybe human evolution too, in such a way it benefits them. I read them as willing to exterminate a whole species if it's for the benefit of theirs. So yes, they are the biggest assholes, the Pak are acting due to their instincts, the Puppeteers do the same or worst in a purelly rational way.

Did the Puppeteers have anything to do with the extinction of the Pak? I wouldn't put it past them.
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Re: Star Trek RPG... What if there is no time travel?
« Reply #134 on: May 20, 2022, 04:58:32 PM »
Did the Puppeteers have anything to do with the extinction of the Pak? I wouldn't put it past them.

The Pak aren't extinct.  They had to flee the explosion of the Milky Way Core, but they had at least a fleet or two doing that.  The Puppeteers collapsed Ringworld civilization, if that's what you mean.
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