Thursday, June 16, 2016

Star Trek RPGs

Every so often I get the desire to run a short Star Trek-like game.  Assemble a new crew on a new ship and have some adventures.  This goes all the way back to days of playing Star Frontiers.

I might do a couple of one-offs this summer. Not sure yet really. A natural choice, of course, would be Starships & Spacemen but I am still partial to White Star.  I also like the idea of maybe doing my Black Star game.  Maybe mixing in some Realms of Crawling Chaos and Mutant Future for that Cthulhu in Space feel.

But what has really gotten me in the mood is Pintrest.
Weird I know, but I am totally addicted to "pinning" pictures of Starships.

This one grabbed my attention so much that I just HAVE to use it somehow.






It is a "kit-bash" of the Ambassador-class Enterprise C and NSEA Protector.



I rather like it.
Credit to the ship goes here, http://www.mcfergeson.com/hobbycorner/2015/04/23/the-uss-mystic-a-kitbashed-starship-from-star-trek/

Since his ship is the NX-3000 Mystic, I could make mine the NCC-3120 USS Protector.

Hell. I even considered picking up the models on eBay to make my own, but my painting skills are terrible. I could never do it the justice it deserves.

Not to steal too much from Voyager or even Event Horizon, but my basic outline would be that while testing their new Warp-13 capable engines (shout out to the Omega-13 from Galaxy Quest) the USS Protector is transported ...somewhere... and in this section of space the stars are right and there are horrors.

I would add other technobable details like the curvature of the warp nacelles and how this ship uses triberyllium instead of trilithium in it's warp core.  Maybe it is a design upgrade the Federation got from the Thermians.  (All from Galaxy Quest).  So start off as a regular Trek-like game, and then BAM hit them with the horrors.   Hey, maybe the Theramins are evil. Who knows really.

Lots of ideas here.

13 comments:

  1. Have you considered using the Far Trek RPG ruleset?

    Far Trek is based upon the older Where No Man Has Gone Before, but updated with more "good stuff." There is also a FASA conversion guide out there for using all the wonderful FASA Star Trek RPG assets in Far Trek.

    http://fartrekrpg.blogspot.com/

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  2. Don beat me to it, Far Trek/Where No Man Has Before were going to be my recommendations as well.

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  3. Love Star Trek! Pained that there's no licensed RPG for it at the moment.

    On my end, for one-shots I tend to run Savage Worlds or Fate RPG since I'm familiar with both and either can tackle just about any setting with little work.

    For a longer campaign I'm considering, I'm putting together an adaptation of Classic Traveller (but including Far Trek's tools (like their adventure generator)). Usually for settings like this I create some sort of 1-sheet setting guide with house rules (Star Trek ranks, some technology and setting fluff, a weapons list, etc.) which you can layer on top of whatever RPG engine you choose.

    Happy to collaborate on anything you want to do since I ran Star Trek in Fate earlier this year but am looking at some tools and such for running such a campaign.

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  5. Well, my comment was...

    -----
    If you really wanna kill some time prepping for a Trek game, spend a few minutes over at the Star Trek Miniature Maker! http://www.crowstuff.co.uk/trekminis/index.htm
    -----

    ...but then I tried to use it, for the first time, without access to any version of Internet Explorer. It appears that I may not be using it anymore, which is a shame!

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  6. Okay...then lets design you a warp13 vessel. Previous experiments in 'warp 10' resulted in the naecels trying to tear themselves loose so the new vessel has naecels that are independant of the vessel. In normal space the naecels attach like the ones on the old original series shuttles (and speed limit is full impulse?) These banana shaped naecels detatch because they create a warp field around the ship pushing it 'out of the universe - into its own micro universe' while the naecels streach out occupying the distance of travel and then arrive-shortening up. The ship emerges from its universe. The problem is the naecels are passing through superposition...where all life is the same life and every time that happens...life gets pissed off and retaliates with the equivelent of an elder god.

    I'll do a map of a ship. Email me at reddeerrun(at)hotmail(dot)com.

    I'll mail you the map. You can 'blog it'.

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  7. Roleplay game engine: b/x d&d. The thief character comes with thief skills that can be replaced with any skills you want.
    Redshirts can pick up engineering and security, thief-acrobat based skills, blue shirts can pick up science and medicine skills, goldshirts can pick up diplomacy, greenshirts hide in shadows, hacking, and thief like abilities.
    All get phys-ed skill: climbing.

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  8. Wow I really pleased with the response this has gotten! I was thinking this might be a one off, but maybe not.

    I will wrap-up the first part of my D&D5 adventure this weekend and that won't start back up till Gen Con. So maybe it is time to go to the Final Frontier!

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  9. I wish my rules set were available now.
    I think it could fit the bill, as I have really tried to build a lot of Trek into it without keeping it in that canon-realm.

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  10. That would be cool.

    It might be a bit before I get this game going, but please feel free to let me know about what you have going on.

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  11. There is always Starship Tyche:

    http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/137278/Starship-Tyche-Powered-By-Fate-Accelerated?manufacturers_id=4062

    It's the ongoing adventures... of the Starship... Tyche... Her... ongoing mission...

    So far, they have released a number of episode adventures that track the Original Starship Tyche series. [Winks, nods, and walks away whistling a familiar tune]

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  12. Jeff, that looks pretty cool. I'll need to pick that up.

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  13. STARSHIP TYCHE (uses Fate Core rules) is certainly adapted to play "Starfleet" type stories, but it is no longer on DriveThruRPG. I don't know where it is sold now.

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