Wednesday, August 9, 2017

Star Trek RPG Operations Manual

I am working on my limited run Trek game to start in October.  I have decided on my base system(s).  I am going with my "Black Star" idea with Starships & Spacemen as my main set of rules and adding in "Basic Era" ideas when and where I can.   Nothing against White Star, and I will use it as well, I just want something closer to Trek than to Star Wars.
I also want to use material from the Basic Psionics book.

Here is what I have so far.


Since I am using this ship I wanted to honor it's genesis. So there is a mix, at least in the first adventure of Trek and Galaxy Quest.  At least for the first act.  THEN it becomes Trek. Or rather Trek if "Where No One Has Gone Before" was replaced by "Event Horizon".
Afterall it is good enough for Jason Issacs.


The Klatuu Nebula Shipyards is not only a nod to Galaxy Quest, is also a nod to "When the Earth Stood Still" and even a side nod to "Army of Darkness".  Commander Taggart is now Commodore Taggart.  Since I need a high-level Starfleet officer to get things moving.

The "pilot" episode deals with Taggert and his band of Thermian engineers having been given 22 derelict Ambassador class ships to retro-fit with the new Triberyllium Warp-13 drive.  Many of the ships have failed and one has gone missing with all hands (trying not to be too Babylon 5 here) so now this ship, The Protector, is ready to go and Taggart has taken over command.  There is one other ship that is functional, The Mystic (another nod to it's genesis).

Here are the books (so far).


The Core Rules.


The Lovecraftian Terror.


Mostly for the Mutants.


And Apes...in SPAAACE!  Because why not.

While I have most of these in POD and Dead Tree retail versions, I wanted to print them out so I can scribble in my notes and make the changes I want.   Make them all more "Trek".

For starters, I am converting everything to Metric.  Starships are not measured in feet! They are measured in meters!  I am going with the rough 5 feet = 1.5 meters.  So I have to fix all of those first.

Plus I really like the idea of using the the Basic-era system for this.  Star Trek, the shows not so much the RPGs, are usually fast and loose with skills.  Data can do X, Y, and Z well because he is Data.  The characters will be the same way.  So simple ability checks are fine here.

Also, I need to add some Trek RPG material from various editions.  Not sure what yet, but certainly some material from my FASA Trek books.  I'll have to run them off on the copier for this.

I am setting it well past the TNG/DS9/VOY time.  Though I would still like to use these uniforms somehow.   Maybe I could do it 20 years before TNG.  I am not really planning on using many races from TNG.  I'll see what my players want.

The adventures will not really be Trek adventures per se, but more Call of Cthulhu ones.


Right now I am thinking a short run. Maybe five adventures.  A mini-series really.

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