Quote from: Lurkndog on December 21, 2023, 11:27:51 AM

Quote from: Koltar on December 17, 2023, 01:00:51 PM
This whole thread makes me want to start a thread about the 'right way' to run a good or fun Star Trek RPG campaign....

- Ed C.

Honestly, I'd read that thread.

Or even just a "how I ran my Trek game" thread with followup on how it turned out.

I'd enjoy running a Trek or Trek-like game at some point, and I'd love to get some pointers.

For context, I set my Trek campaign in TOS season 1.
1) Make sure everybody knows that the concept of "Unreliable Narrator" is central. "You might know about supposed 'logs' of James T. Kirk.  First, Jim Kirk has only recently started his exploration mission:  What those purported logs speak of hasn't happened yet.  Second, say you encounter a giant metallic ice cream cone: Don't think that you can just ram a spare star ship down its gullet and be done. The problem probably has a different solution."
2) Decide what era you are in. Enterprise, TOS, TNG, and JJverse each have a different feel as well as tech level.
3)Decide what timeline you are starting in (It's a given that at session zero, you will have begun an alt TL).  TOS Spock doesn't believe in Little Green Men. Enterprise had literal LGMs as major antagonists. Enterprise and TOS tangled with Organians.  By TNG they had quietly disappeared.
3a) What does everybody look like and why?  Klingons are the most well known example. Mexican bandits? Lobster heads? Scaly? Different sub races? Fashion statement?
3b) A hundred little choices: Are Vulcans reluctant to discuss their reproductive pattern (TOS) or just blurt it out to anyone (JJverse)?  Are the Tholians off in a different part of the map (FASA and most other 'verses), or between the Romulans and the Klingons (SFBverse). Do Kzinti exist? How about Deltans?

Personally, I'd love to see a full on shadow war between the Trill and those Puppet Master clones from Season 1 TNG.

You're absolutely right about the game having to be an alternate timeline. There's simply too many things a player can do to wreck the canon of a fixed linear narrative television program.

Personally a couple of years ago I did a campaign in my own interpretation of FASA lore in the TNG era. Obviously the season 1 source book FASA released was a great jumping off point for me but I was really able to flesh out things like what happened to all the Klingon hybrid spies, what would happen to Starfleet's military including it's marines in an era of relative peace, what would happen once the Borg got involved, how does The Triangle factor into intergalactic politics when the Klingons are at peace and the Romulans have isolated themselves until recently.

I set my game on the new Galaxy class Enterprise D with the PCs replacing the main cast of TNG. Everything they did was their own decisions not beholden to canon. And things they may have taken for granted could be very different. It was an interesting 6 months long campaign. Unfortunately cut short when real life intervened for several of the players. But it's still a campaign I want to come back to from time to time.

What game systems have people used?

I'm primarily interested in TOS as a setting, since it is a little simpler, closer to my heart, and doesn't have as many problematic technologies in play.

For games taking place in established universe like this, I pick a point in the timeline.  Before that, this more or less match the established canon.  After that, all bets are off.  One of the first things I did in my DC super heroes campaign was to have the Justice League and Teen Titans either killed off or vanish in a massive demonic invasion. 

Start the players beaming onto a mirror univers version of their ship and make whatever changes you want.

Or make them a Klingon crew on the romulan border where the history is mostly unknown.

I'm not too concerned with canon as long as the themes and tones of the show are correct.
Though on a personal note, I disregard everything Trek from 09 forward. I think post Enterprise Trek fails to understand what made Trek so popular. And often intentionally disrespects that.

I am interested in people's ideas for system. I'd lean towards the old FASA game, just for nostalgia's sake, but I'm not sure it would hold up for TNG era. I've got the d20 Star Trek game. Haven't read through it much. I'd have to re-read it to have a better opinion.

From the TOS era, was have the idea of the Kirk/Spock/McCoy triad. Spock is the voice of logic and reason. McCoy is the voice of compassion and empathy. Kirk is the voice of authority who has to decide between head or heart, or come up with an alternative solution that makes the best of the situation considering the two factors.

So scenarios should feature some kind of conflict between reason and empathy. Rules and compassion. (The latter is where we get a lot of the Prime Directive stories)

I've harped on TNG theme and tone in the previous thread. I'll let that stand for now.

Quote from: Crawford Tillinghast on December 21, 2023, 02:19:34 PM

3)Decide what timeline you are starting in (It's a given that at session zero, you will have begun an alt TL).  TOS Spock doesn't believe in Little Green Men. Enterprise had literal LGMs as major antagonists. Enterprise and TOS tangled with Organians.  By TNG they had quietly disappeared.

I would say that in addition to the timeline concept, more broadly decide what is and isn't canon.  If you want to play in something past the end of Voyager, you need to decide if all the red matter stuff where Spock goes back in time and forks a new timeline is real at all.  By providing canon sources to players (along with which edits you had to make), everyone will be on board with what is going on.  This is actually one of the main strengths of playing in a preestablished IP- you can say exactly what is and isn't true and everyone can actually understand it, because simply by consoooooming content over the years, they know much about the game universe.

Quote from: King Tyranno on December 21, 2023, 02:46:56 PM
You're absolutely right about the game having to be an alternate timeline. There's simply too many things a player can do to wreck the canon of a fixed linear narrative television program.

In the context of a game world, you are probably in the only timeline, the only canon, and all sources prior to that point in time are true, and all the ones past haven't happened and may not.  From the perspective of a game set right after the original series, Next Generation doesn't exist and is basically a noncanon fanfic.

Quote from: Crawford Tillinghast on December 21, 2023, 02:19:34 PM

Personally, I'd love to see a full on shadow war between the Trill and those Puppet Master clones from Season 1 TNG.

  This happened in some of the Deep Space Nine post-series novels, although it felt like it got cut short prematurely to me.

I've played a bunch of FASA Trek in TOS universe. I haven't really run it, altho I was a co-GM for a while.

My own thought is to run FASA in TOS (without the Action Points -- IE, more like most other RPGs). I want to use a Constitution class ship and set it early in first season. Pre-Balance of Terror, pre-Errand of Mercy, pre-Amok Time. So we don't know what Romulans look like, we don't know all that Vulcan lore, and we can fight Klingons if we want to. I'd like to use elements of the SFB universe too. But no TAS.

While we always created our own characters, this time I want to play the cast of the show. Either at the upper ranks, or the lower ranks (or both, just not in the same adventure). So in one, the players are Kirk, Spock, McCoy and Scotty. In the other they might be Sulu, Chekov, Rand and Riley (I made a spreadsheet with all the characters, their ranks and departments).

There's the whole concept of how much freedom the players have in a military organization. For me, whether Star Fleet Command gives orders to Captain Kirk, or Kirk is giving orders to Sulu and Chekov, either way it can be handled similarly. Here's the situation, solve it.

I may not even use a "star map" at all. Locations relevant to the current story might be described in terms of how many days away they are.

The only canon I'd have would be the situation at the start of season one. We make our own future.

Quote from: Ratman_tf on December 21, 2023, 07:31:06 PM
I am interested in people's ideas for system. I'd lean towards the old FASA game, just for nostalgia's sake, but I'm not sure it would hold up for TNG era. I've got the d20 Star Trek game. Haven't read through it much. I'd have to re-read it to have a better opinion.

The Last Unicorn version seemed good and each of the core books were very grounded in the shows they represented.  I never actually got to play it though.

Long ago, back in the 80s, I was a part of a Star Trek campaign that was probably one of the most fun I ever played. regardless of system.

It was FASA's rpg after Star Trek III was in the theaters. The campaign was the Triangle Campaign. IF any of you know what I'm talking about, you know it was an excellent campaign setting for Trek. https://memory-beta.fandom.com/wiki/The_Triangle_Campaign.

We were all out of Starbase 10 in the Triangle, assigned to a Chandley class frigate https://memory-beta.fandom.com/wiki/Chandley_class of which I don't remember the name, but I think it was the Nimitz, and was the Mk II variant (larger contingent of Star Fleet Marines, which will be important in the future).

What I do recall was the mission: to patrol the Triangle sector by providing force if necessary to protect Federation interests in the sector. This would include distress calls by merchant ships, colonies, and the like. The Nimitz was put into this role because of her ungodly amount of firepower and a large compliment of Marines for either boarding operations or planet based missions.

My character was the marine detachment's CO.

Some things I recall from the campaign

* the commander of Starbase 10 was a complete jerk to us. He didn't like the idea of dealing with marines, plus...

*our crew were a bunch of screw ups, who for the most part were "doing time" in the Triangle.

*The Triangle in this campaign was treated as a place where you do hard time in Starfleet if you were a screw up. There were always flare ups between all three factions, which made it hard work. Not a cushy job, if you will.

* in one situation dealing with the Klingon separatists, we were able to disable their shields remotely and teleport a overloading phaser into the turbo-flush, thus causing a hull breach

* I do recall something about our crew uncovering some sort of plans by the both the Klingons and Romulans to lead a combined effort to drive the Federation out of the Triangle. This would be accomplished by various proxies ("independent colonies", pirates, hired Orion warships, etc.) as to not draw suspicion to either empires...

*to which the commander of Starbase 10 took 100% full credit for finding. Asshole. This was the final straw. We've had it with this dick weed and having the Fed dumping us off in this hellhole.

*The rumors of mutiny were starting. Finally, it came to a head. So, while we were underway on our next patrol, The captain of the Nimitz gave everyone a choice: you can stay with Starfleet, to which you would be transported to a colony world, or you can mutiny and go pirate with us....

*except me. I was the last hold out of the command crew. it took some convincing, but I said yes. I think I was able to convince about 2/3 of the mariens to stay with the Nimitz.

* we proceeded to drop off the Starfleet loyalists and went to a neutral starbase...

*and painted our ship...pink. BRIGHT PINK. Why? Who the fuk knows.

*once word got back to Starbase 10 that we mutinied, we were labeled as mutineers under Starfleet regulations, and would be either shot on sight or captured and executed.

*end of camapign.

I have to say, reliving those memories want me to go out and find the FASA rules and the campaign book to play it.

Quote from: Lurkndog on December 21, 2023, 04:28:00 PM
What game systems have people used?

I'm primarily interested in TOS as a setting, since it is a little simpler, closer to my heart, and doesn't have as many problematic technologies in play.

I use GURPS 4/e  - in my opinion it best simulates folks that work in Starfleet, or who have been to Starfleet Academy - especially using and adjusting the 'Prime Directive' templates available as part of the GCA.

- Ed C.

I've played FASA, Prime Directive (original and GURPS and d20 Modern versions), Last Unicorn, and Star Trek Adventures.  I have to say, for modeling Trek, Star Trek Adventures was a lot of fun and we had a good long-lasting campaign with it - only ended due to the pandemic.

Rules-wise, I briefly played FASA Trek, but when GMing I preferred using a generic system. I used a variant of Greg Porter's CORPS system for several campaigns in the 1990s, and later tried using HERO System and Fate for some Star Trek one-shots.

There is some range possible between gritty and cinematic. In my 1990s campaigns, I used a fairly gritty system, and sidestepped the problems with Original Series continuity by saying that the episodes as aired were roughly as true as well-researched "based on a true story" dramatizations in the real world. So the basic story arc would be true, but details might not be correct.

In my Deep Space Nine one-shots, though, I just stuck to continuity - and I used a more cinematic system. (It helps that they had more careful continuity by the time they got to DS9.)

My general rule of thumb for episodes was to put together a science fiction hook (like nanotech or anti-aging drugs or virtual reality) along with a moral/ethical dilemma.

So, for example, I had a TOS episode that was on a world where aging had been overcome a few centuries ago, and now people were considered minors until age 60 - the PCs were then caught in a insurgent action by youth-rights rebels, who included soldier under age 18.

My campaigns were set in roughly the TOS movie era. I sometimes retread TOS material, but only by adding another layer to it. I had an episode about virtual reality, where a culture treated their VR worlds real, to the point that people killed in VR were killed. Kirk had shut down their servers, but they were appealing to the Federation that for their sovereignty, they wanted to re-establish their VR world.

I think that for Trek you would have to lay down some ground rules:

• No time travel
• This is what transporters do
• This is how the food synthesizers work
• This is how fast ships travel
• Holodeck yes or no

One of the attractions of using a bespoke Trek game would be that hopefully they've worked that stuff out already and play-tested it.