FASA's Star Trek RPG

Morrus

Well, that was fun

Staff member

• Jan 30, 2013

• #1

I used to play this game years ago, while at school. I have fond memories of it, but haven't seen it in a long, long time. So I just impulse-bought it on eBay:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=230915867991

As I recall, the chargen system is a bit Traveller-like in that you go through training/early career.

There were craploads of supplements (race books like Klingons, Romulans, etc.), plus the Tactical Starship Combat Simulator (like a pretty version of Starfleet Battles) which kinda "plugged in" to the RPG.

Anyone else remember this?

 

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N

Nagol

Unimportant

• Jan 30, 2013

• #2

Yes, we played that in school as well. The system was pretty good, from memory. The way space battles were handled (each player taking control of their section's minigame) sometimes worked well -- and sometimes didn't. You wanted/needed a player skilled at resource allocation for the Engineering section, for example.

The hierarchical command structure could also place a strain on the group.

 

Umbran

Mod Squad

Staff member

Supporter

• Jan 30, 2013

• #3

Yep. I have a copy of it on my gaming shelf. It does have that funny, "character generation is a number of rolls that determine what happened in your career" flow, that I always had mixed feelings about.

 

Storminator

First Post

• Jan 30, 2013

• #4

My son and I both got copies for Christmas. We've rolled up a PC, but we haven't had time to play it yet. I'm looking forward to giving it a go!

 

Morrus

Well, that was fun

Staff member

• Jan 30, 2013

• #5

Umbran said:

Yep. I have a copy of it on my gaming shelf. It does have that funny, "character generation is a number of rolls that determine what happened in your career" flow, that I always had mixed feelings about.

Click to expand...

I quite like it - it doesn't have Traveller's "Aha! Now you have to play a crappy character!" thing about it.

Then again, I barely remember it. How did it go again? You'd choose Command, Engineering, Science school? Get some skills. Get promoted, some more skills, go to another school. do a couple of tours of duty? Very hazy on the details.

 

Umbran

Mod Squad

Staff member

Supporter

• Jan 30, 2013

• #6

Morrus said:

I quite like it - it doesn't have Traveller's "Aha! Now you have to play a crappy character!" thing about it.

Click to expand...

By my memory, yes, characters that come out of the generation system are viable in the game.

Then again, I barely remember it. How did it go again? You'd choose Command, Engineering, Science school? Get some skills. Get promoted, some more skills, go to another school. do a couple of tours of duty? Very hazy on the details.

Click to expand...

I'd have to go home and check the books to get the details, but I recall that was basically the plan.

The mixed feelings come from the fact that you don't get a whole lot of control over character concept. You pick a race, and intended general specialty. But my recollection is that what rank you start play with is a result of the system, not really a choice you make. So, you wanted to play the captain of a starship? Too bad, you're only an ensign! And as I remember, you only have limited control over what skills you pick up along the way.

This has good and bad points. Sometimes, even frequently, I like having a bit of restriction in my character generation - I usually get it by "filling the gaps" in a party's roster. It bypasses option paralysis, and there's a creative challenge in working with a character design that isn't wholly your own. On the flip side, I don't want to end up with an ensign when what we need/want is a captain.

 

Mark Hope

Adventurer

• Jan 30, 2013

• #7

I ran this back in the day - lots of fun.

You could progress a character as far into their career as you liked during chargen. So if you wanted to play the ship captain, you could roll up that character pretty succesfully. In fact, senior bridge crew came out super-competent in their fields of speciality - which matches the source material really well.

The combat system - based on spending action points, with differing actions costing differing points - was interesting, but a touch too slow in play. We used to handwave much of that, or default to a more D&D style combat round, iirc. Ship-to-ship combat is notably missing from the boxed set, although iirc the first edition had it. However, that just means that you get to buy this instead:

Which is awesome.

The GM book had some decent advice chapters, and there's that neat little system for generating and statting out your own systems. The rules are straightfoward enough that you could use the system as the basis for a non-Star Trek sf game if you wanted - it has pretty much all the options you need. Good game - there are still a couple of supplements I never bought that I sometimes think about. Be sure to run a session and let us know how it goes!

 

Morrus

Well, that was fun

Staff member

• Jan 30, 2013

• #8

Mark Hope said:

I

The combat system - based on spending action points, with differing actions costing differing points - was interesting, but a touch too slow in play. We used to handwave much of that, or default to a more D&D style combat round, iirc. Ship-to-ship combat is notably missing from the boxed set, although iirc the first edition had it. However, that just means that you get to buy this instead:
View attachment 56167
Which is awesome.

Click to expand...

Nah, it go updated an improved with this:

Which really was awesome. And it partly inspired this:

 

Umbran

Mod Squad

Staff member

Supporter

• Jan 30, 2013

• #9

Mark Hope said:

You could progress a character as far into their career as you liked during chargen.

Click to expand...

Okay. I haven't actually opened the book in years, so my memory may be inaccurate.

 

RangerWickett

Legend

• Jan 30, 2013

• #10

I think Star Trek might have been my first ever RPG experience. Or at least the first one where I actually played with rules as opposed to hand-waving things. My older brother ran games based on The Hunt for Red October, about a Klingon ship that could fire while cloaked that wanted to defect. This was before Star Trek VI came out.

I was Captain Ryan Nock of the U.S.S. Hood, NCC-1703. And I was, like, 8 years old at the time.

Nowadays it might be fun to run a game in the Trek universe, just to see what kinds of shenanigans my players could come up with using all the super technology. Once players have beaten Portal, giving them access to transporters is dangerous.