Remembering STAR TREK Roleplaying Games

CarlZog

Explorer

• Mar 9, 2015

• #51

Lwaxy said:

The whole SW:CCG thing had different backgrounds, basically they wanted too much influence over the cards and rules and the frequency they came out. There were, if I remember right, a lot of negotiations but eventually Decipher gave up.

Loss for Lucasfilm, really, as the weird game WotC made after the switch was doomed to fail.

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It's worth noting here that Decipher ported the game mechanics from the SW:CCG to a new, original sci-fi setting they called WARS. Despite having the worst name ever, the WARS ccg is an awesome game. I never played the SW ccg, but my understanding is that WARS stripped out a lot of the extraneous and confusing bloat in the rules. Unfortunately, without the appeal of a familiar setting, WARS only lasted two years through two set releases.

 

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Kannik

Hero

• Mar 10, 2015

• #52

TrippyHippy said:

Hmmm…..like Traveller, methinks…..the game that essentially invented life path based character generation….

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And, in Megatraveller, if memory serves, also was the game that invented the possibility of your character dying (!) during the life path rolls...

roll well,

Kannik

 

Dannyalcatraz

Schmoderator

Staff member

Supporter

• Mar 10, 2015

• #53

Kannik said:

And, in Megatraveller, if memory serves, also was the game that invented the possibility of your character dying (!) during the life path rolls...

roll well,

Kannik

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Actually, it goes back to the very first edition of Traveller.

 

T

TrippyHippy

Hero

• Mar 10, 2015

• #54

Yep, it was the original Traveller that had that. It’d had largely been ironed out a major issue by the time of MegaTraveller, although it is still there to a degree even in the Mongoose edition (take the ‘Iron Man’ chargen option).

 

TarionzCousin

Second Most Angelic Devil Ever

• Mar 12, 2015

• #55

My friends and I played a few mini-campaigns using the FASA Star Trek system. When the cat race PC's player was moving away, the GM had his character suddenly die of a hairball.

Meow!

 

mattcolville

Adventurer

• Mar 14, 2015

• #56

Lots of companies have a license to make both Trek and Star Wars merch.

The issue between WotC and Decipher when it came to the Trek license was just that Decipher knew people higher up at Paramount than WotC or LUG did.

So when the license came up for renewal, Decipher convinced Paramount they were the best people for the job.

WotC later went to Paramount and showed them the error of their ways, but at that point the deal was done (though WotC didn't know that when they were pitching).

 

Stormonu

Legend

• Mar 16, 2015

• #57

I got into ST gaming via FASA's Starship Combat game. Shortly thereafter, I picked up the FASA RPG. However, the two didn't mix well, and my game fell through.

Years later, I picked up the LUG Next Generation book and fell in love with it. When it switched to Decipher, I cautiously switched. I was happily surprised that it seemed so similar, and the Decipher set seemed like a "cleaned up" version.

Sadly, I let a really bad GM run the game. It was a horrible railroad where you just watched the plot steamroll to its conclusion regardless what you did, with a GM NPC Admiral in charge of a Sovereign class w/ quantum shields, transphasic torpedoes, a "borrowed" Romulan cloaking device and who was a half-Q and married to Deanna Troi. My character was a Klingon exchange officer from the Empire (because I can do a damn good impersonation of Warf's voice). I derailed the whole game when I got fed up with the whole thing and led a player mutiny against the GM - which I utterly surprised the GM with by starting at listing every flagrant violation of the Prime Directive his admiral had undertaken, before I uttered, "And I am hereby relieving you of command - and the GM's seat".

 

Lwaxy

Cute but dangerous

• Mar 16, 2015

• #58

CarlZog said:

It's worth noting here that Decipher ported the game mechanics from the SW:CCG to a new, original sci-fi setting they called WARS. Despite having the worst name ever, the WARS ccg is an awesome game. I never played the SW ccg, but my understanding is that WARS stripped out a lot of the extraneous and confusing bloat in the rules. Unfortunately, without the appeal of a familiar setting, WARS only lasted two years through two set releases.

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Yeah I liked the game, too - but I was too frustrated with SW:CCG ending before they made an Anakin card so I didn't really get into it because the machanics were too similar. We have a complete collection though, I should dig the cards out again.

I also didn't follow the switch Decipher made to the new ST:CCG version, despite the cards being partly compatible.

 

qstor

Adventurer

• Jun 19, 2015

• #59

Too bad none of the games had a bigger following.

 

aramis erak

Legend

• Jun 19, 2015

• #60

qstor said:

Too bad none of the games had a bigger following.

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At its' peak, FASA's STRPG2E was readily available. It was stocked by Game Keeper and Hobbycraft at the in-house distributor level (as were all TSR and GDW RPGs), and by Waldenbooks, and both major mail order stockists (Zocchi and another whose name escapes me at the moment).

Their license was cancelled by Paramount for violations, not because it was too expensive.