Roleplaying in the Universe of: Star Trek
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I realized after my last “Roleplaying in the Universe of” article went live that I hadn’t come up with this idea in a vacuum. In my subconscious I drew the idea from elsewhere. Vulcan Stev has been doing a shockingly similar type of article consistently for a while. You should check it out. So let’s give credit where credit is due.
For years, I’ve bashed Star Trek. I would criticize the “pointy ears or bumpy forehead” aliens, the lame costumes, and the “treknobabble.” I would talk about the merits of Star Wars, its superior universe, cool heroes and awesome aliens.
Now, mind you, my family would sit down every week when I was younger and watch “The Next Generation”, and I drank it in. I watched “Deep Space 9″, and eagerly anticipated
Voyager”. But around season 2 of “Voyager”, I began to lose interest. The universe began to bore me, and I didn’t find it made any sense.
There was plenty of other Sci-Fi I enjoyed, of course. Blade Runner, Battlestar Galactica, etc. But not Star Trek. Trekkies annoyed me, and any time Star Trek was brought up in conversation, I’d just shake my head.
Now, primarily thanks to my wife, a huge Trekkie, I am finding that I actually don’t hate Star Trek like I thought. I’m finding myself stopping whenever I see it on TV on Spike or Sci-Fi (SyFy). I go to Wikipedia and look up “Borg” because I want to know their origin.
In short, I think I may actually like Star Trek again.
In fact, I’ve been doing some research to find the right Star Trek RPG, because I would love to run a game.
I’ve found a couple:
There’s the FASA Star Trek, which the boys over at Fear The Boot swear by. Apparently, there’s a cool mechanic that involves everyone getting their own board to symbolize their job on the ship once the action starts, which intrigues me. I can find most of the FASA books on Amazon for only about 5 bucks, but the core rulebook is a bit harder to come by.
There’s the Decipher Star Trek RPG, which I’ve heard is like d20 but with d10s. The books are also cheap on Amazon, due to Decipher going out of business. The advantage to this one is that it has more recent information (TNG, DS9, Voyager).
Also, on 1km1kt.net, I found Bridge Crew, a “simple, narrativist style RPG” depicting the crew of a ship, heavily based on Star Trek. Each person has a job to do, and different rules for how that’s accomplished. It’s supposed to be kind of campy, but I’m sure it wouldn’t require much work to adapt it into a serious RPG.
What do you all think? What system would be the best for a Star Trek RPG?
What is it about Star Trek that you really want to capture in a game?
I think the sense of wonder and adventure, as well as social and scientific topics.
Dude, you should check out Groknard’s blog. It’s all about Trek RPGs.
http://groknard.blogspot.com/
And that FASA mechanic does sound cool.
Thanks very much for the link-love. The Gaming in the Universe of… articles were my forray into the Network. I try very hard to give a gaming over of the universe(s) for the movies the family reviews.
I’m working on my GitUo… Star Trek so your article is food for thought.
There’s also the ultra-rare Star Trek RPG that Heritage Models put out back in 1978 (I have a copy). It’s pretty bare-bones, and I’m not sure it would sustain a campaign for longer than a couple of sessions.
I was a big fan of the Star Trek RPG that Last Unicorn came out with. The source books were beautiful and comprehensive. I can’t really speak to the game system itself, as I never actually played it. *blush*
But I must agree with the endorsement of FASA’s game. It played really well, and it had the bonus of having the best starship combat game evar. It beat Starfleet Battles by a mile in terms of playability. The RPG was very effective at capturing the military aspects of the Trek universe, although it’s a bit dated at this point (the supplement on the Klingons, for example, was modeled on one of Robert Forward’s novels that tried to explain the change from swarthy Klingons to bumpy Klingons by postulating that the former is really a human-klingon hybrid race, which has since been overtaken by official canon). But don’t give up the search for that core rulebook; it’s worth it. And pick up the Starship Combat Simulator while you’re at it.
Oh, and there’s another free game called Where No Man Has Gone Before or something close. I don’t have it handy, but it was a free pdf and seemed a serviceable effort. I’ve not played it.
There is another option for published Trek games. I am a fan of the Last Unicorn Games version of the system.
LUGTrek had a very active online community for a few years after the release. It has, for the most part, petered out.
Here are a few links:
http://www.coldnorth.com/memoryicon/index.htm
http://www.io.com/~sjohn/trek.htm
The books are pretty easy to find online.
I also liked the Last Unicorn version, too bad the line collapsed. But the sourcebooks were very cool, some of that info actually being used in Enterprise! The system worked, I had no problems with it, with a some of Traveler-ish chargen where you picked up skills during each year at the Academy, etc.
I also have GURPS Prime Directive which GURPSifies the Starfleet Battles universe. It’s TOS with extra aliens and a lot of military stuff.
I’m actually fond of the LUG’s system as well. The books were well done and the system was easy enough to pick up on.
I found a site that is selling every Decipher Star Trek book as a bundle for $35. That’s 8 books for dirt cheap! I’m thinking I’ll pick it up (at that price, why not?!) and from there decide whether it’s the system for me, or if I need to try out something else.
That’s almost certainly worth it – even if just for the background info and ideas.
I’d probably use Primetime Adventures if I was going to do Star Trek – it’s very straight-forward, easy to learn, incredibly flexible, and focused on the characters and the story rather than the crunchy bits of how the universe works. It also would be the easiest to teach to non-roleplayers and get them to join me.
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