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View Full Version : Roleplaying Good systems for a Star Trek rpg?



fergo
2015-01-07, 01:26 PM
Hi all.

I'm aware that there are several Star Trek systems, and I've heard of a couple of other systems people have mentioned can be easily re-skinned to suit the Trek universe. I was hoping someone on here might have tried a couple of them and be able to give me feedback on the strengths and weaknesses of each one, and advice on which one seems to suit my needs best.

Despite being a massive nerd all of my life, I somehow managed to avoid ever watching Star Trek until around 12 months ago. I promptly fell in love with it and consider myself a huge TNG fanboy (although, being from outside of the US, I don't have ready access to its earlier seasons, and have so far been unable to watch much of any of the other Star Trek series).

I love the idea of an episodic roleplaying campaign in Trek-verse. Get a few people to take turns running one- or two-session adventures, giving the feel of the self-contained stories of TNG, and allowing us to explore a wide range of different play-styles and challenges--from straight up shoot-em-ups, to deciding moral issues within the framework of the Prime Directive, to battling natural disasters or dabbling in inter-galactic politics. While there would certainly be recurring themes, problems and most importantly villains, the main continuity would be the inter-crew relationships: basically, I'd hope that each of the players would be up for loads of in-character talking, have a pretty firm idea of their background and core values, and would place character development as one of the most important objectives they want to get out of the campaign.

Because of this, while things like character balance would still be somewhat important, it may take something of a back seat to flexibility in character creation, so each player could create exactly the character they want to play (within reason). I guess it'd be good if the rules themselves were robust enough for everyone to pick them up quickly as well.

If anyone has any suggestions for somewhere to start looking, I'd really appreciate it :smallbiggrin:. Any other feedback and suggestions anyone had--whether about how to find players interested in character-development, or common pitfalls for episodic campaigns, or anything else--that'd be fantastic.

Thanks guys!

Gnoman
2015-01-07, 05:39 PM
That really depends on the feel you want to go for.

Option #1
Prime Directive (available in both D20 and GURPS flavours) is set in the Star Fleet Universe, which is the odd result of a partial license from the late 1970s that only allowed pre-movie TOS era ships, equipment, and aliens. Thus, there's no TNG material available for the setting. It is (because the SFU developed out of the Star Fleet Battles tactical wargame) a very martial setting, with the ST galaxy going through a General War (involving all major galactic powers) as well as several lesser wars. Also, in addition to the canon Federation, Klingon, Romulan, Gorn, Kzinti, and Tholian factions it adds many non-trek species (Lyrans, Hyrdrans, the Intersteller Concordium, and a couple of others), along with a few elements that the "real" canon never embraced such as "drone" missiles (which are semi-canon, they were included on semi-official Klingon blueprints) and shuttles carrying both phasers and heavy weapons designated "fighters".

Option #2

Reskin another system for the TNG era. This is going to be a lot of work if you want to make things accurate, but is best if you want a purer flavor. THere's several homebrewed TNG-era reskins already made, but I don't know how good they are.

Darth Tom
2015-01-07, 06:33 PM
I have previously adapted the Fallout "pen and paper" game for the Star Trek universe (and many others). All you really need to do is think about what skills, traits and perks you'd like (the existing ones can be easily modified) to suit your particular flavour of game. The SPECIAL system it uses is very flexible, and tends to create nicely versatile characters. I found my copy of the rules online somewhere, I think the PDF was just a free download.

aspekt
2015-01-07, 06:52 PM
I am a solid goto d20 GM. I have GURPS and some d6 WEG books.

But I just picked up FUDGE and think it would be one of the best options for setting up a game from scratch.