I never actually did the RPG-Tactical Simulator thing. I did the RPG thing, and played *loads* of the Tactical Simulator in its default "skirmish" mode (for want of a better phrase) - each player with a ship, or more.
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FASA's Star Trek RPG
- Thread starter Morrus
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I never actually did the RPG-Tactical Simulator thing. I did the RPG thing, and played *loads* of the Tactical Simulator in its default "skirmish" mode (for want of a better phrase) - each player with a ship, or more.
We used Star Fleet Battles for when we wanted to focus on tactical skirmish play.
The RPG play was fun when the people doing the work misinterpreted/reinterpreted the captai's orders.
"Now we have them. Fre!"
"Um, captain, we don't have any weapons charged."
"Engineering, where are my phasors?!?"
"You said all available enregy to the shields! That was available energy!"
The RPG play was fun when the people doing the work misinterpreted/reinterpreted the captai's orders.
"Now we have them. Fre!"
"Um, captain, we don't have any weapons charged."
"Engineering, where are my phasors?!?"
"You said all available enregy to the shields! That was available energy!"
TGryph
Explorer
Keep in mind this was 30 years ago (yes I am old). We were using the FASA rules, so circa 1983. We gamed in my friend's basement in Michigan, so we could more or less leave things set up as we needed them.
We had chairs set up around tables so as to approximate the bridge stations on the Enterprise...I mean Excaliber. Each week we would bring our computers to the game and hook them up beforehand.
As GM, I ran the Science Officer. This enabled me to give out information to the players, and yet keep the atmosphere of the Bridge Scene intact. The Science Station on the Excaliber was run by a Commodore 64, rigged with a database program containing everything I needed for the week's game. Whenever I (as GM ) needed to alert the captain to a fact, I punched it up on my screen and showed it to him, or read it as Science Officer. I was into programming a bit, so I would include charts and graphs, making it look as Star-Trek as I could.
The Engineering Station was also run on a Commodore 64. Primarily used in combat, it had a nice Bar Chart for each station. In the FASA Game an Engineer's job was to allocate the ship's available power to each station to power weapons, shields, etc. Each station was also represented as bar graph. The little program we designed would (at the Engineer's command) allocate whatever power points he desired, then deduct it from the Total Power Bar. In the game, the Engineer could make a Engineering Skill Roll to squeeze a little more power from the Engines. The program also performed this role.
The Navigator was in charge of the Shields. I believe he ran a Vic-20, but all it had to do was show a simple diagram of the ship, with the power each shield had allocated to it. If the ship was hit, he deducted the amount from the shield. It also made his Skill Roll for Shield Efficiency.
Communications did not have a computer, but a tape recorder. The Communications Officer was an NPC, so I would operate the tape for incoming messages.
But Helm...ah the Helm Station was a marvel. My friend had a TI-994A...an old Texas Instruments computer that actually had some pretty good graphics capabilities. My friend (even geekier than ME) programmed several enemy ship silhouettes that would appear on the TV screen we used as the Main Viewscreen. During battle, he had his Helmsmen Skill rolls programmed into the computer, so when ever the Captain ordered the phasers fired, little beams would actually streak towards the ship on the screen. If he made his programmed roll, the screen would flash red. If he missed...nothing. He did the same thing for photon torpedoes.
As I said earlier, we I only ran the game for a summer. Due to family.job constraints, we had to choose between that game and my D&D game I also ran for them. We all chose the D&D game, and put away the PC's.
As a side note, I ran D&D for that group of guys for 25 years before I moved from Michigan to North Carolina. I have a great group now, but you just couldn't beat those guys.
TGryph
We had chairs set up around tables so as to approximate the bridge stations on the Enterprise...I mean Excaliber. Each week we would bring our computers to the game and hook them up beforehand.
As GM, I ran the Science Officer. This enabled me to give out information to the players, and yet keep the atmosphere of the Bridge Scene intact. The Science Station on the Excaliber was run by a Commodore 64, rigged with a database program containing everything I needed for the week's game. Whenever I (as GM ) needed to alert the captain to a fact, I punched it up on my screen and showed it to him, or read it as Science Officer. I was into programming a bit, so I would include charts and graphs, making it look as Star-Trek as I could.
The Engineering Station was also run on a Commodore 64. Primarily used in combat, it had a nice Bar Chart for each station. In the FASA Game an Engineer's job was to allocate the ship's available power to each station to power weapons, shields, etc. Each station was also represented as bar graph. The little program we designed would (at the Engineer's command) allocate whatever power points he desired, then deduct it from the Total Power Bar. In the game, the Engineer could make a Engineering Skill Roll to squeeze a little more power from the Engines. The program also performed this role.
The Navigator was in charge of the Shields. I believe he ran a Vic-20, but all it had to do was show a simple diagram of the ship, with the power each shield had allocated to it. If the ship was hit, he deducted the amount from the shield. It also made his Skill Roll for Shield Efficiency.
Communications did not have a computer, but a tape recorder. The Communications Officer was an NPC, so I would operate the tape for incoming messages.
But Helm...ah the Helm Station was a marvel. My friend had a TI-994A...an old Texas Instruments computer that actually had some pretty good graphics capabilities. My friend (even geekier than ME) programmed several enemy ship silhouettes that would appear on the TV screen we used as the Main Viewscreen. During battle, he had his Helmsmen Skill rolls programmed into the computer, so when ever the Captain ordered the phasers fired, little beams would actually streak towards the ship on the screen. If he made his programmed roll, the screen would flash red. If he missed...nothing. He did the same thing for photon torpedoes.
As I said earlier, we I only ran the game for a summer. Due to family.job constraints, we had to choose between that game and my D&D game I also ran for them. We all chose the D&D game, and put away the PC's.
As a side note, I ran D&D for that group of guys for 25 years before I moved from Michigan to North Carolina. I have a great group now, but you just couldn't beat those guys.
TGryph
pming
Legend
Hiya.
TGryph...we did the same thing in my friends basement back in...'93? No computers, but we had his basement set up like the bridge. The Science Officer made a cool little "viewer thing with a blue light in it" that Spock use to look into on the bridge in the TV series (our campaign was set in the original series timeline...probably somewhere in the middle). One of the nutty things about that game was that all of us had characters that had the initials "J.T.K.". My character, the Captain, was Jaccob T. Kaplowski, the engineer was Jesus T. Kalikez, etc. Anyway, we all had the two-page print outs for our station and had the indicators to move over the numbers and whatnot. One time, my brother played his logically-psychotic vulcan security officer. Wow. Not emotional about anything, obviously, but he didn't dingle around with people/things he logically deduced were "behind it all". He once spaced an entire loading bay of space-hippies because their leader had mentally controlled many key personell and had threatened me (Captain) with deadly mutiny if I didn't do what he wanted. He deduced that it made more logical sense to space 'em all to avoid death of star fleet personel who were controlled and would fight to the death against us. Oh, his name wasn't JTK...he had a single name. Larniak. To this day his name is spoken with a slight tint of fear...
All in all, one of the most memorable RPG campaigns I've ever played in (and I actually played and didn't GM!
).
TGryph...we did the same thing in my friends basement back in...'93? No computers, but we had his basement set up like the bridge. The Science Officer made a cool little "viewer thing with a blue light in it" that Spock use to look into on the bridge in the TV series (our campaign was set in the original series timeline...probably somewhere in the middle). One of the nutty things about that game was that all of us had characters that had the initials "J.T.K.". My character, the Captain, was Jaccob T. Kaplowski, the engineer was Jesus T. Kalikez, etc. Anyway, we all had the two-page print outs for our station and had the indicators to move over the numbers and whatnot. One time, my brother played his logically-psychotic vulcan security officer. Wow. Not emotional about anything, obviously, but he didn't dingle around with people/things he logically deduced were "behind it all". He once spaced an entire loading bay of space-hippies because their leader had mentally controlled many key personell and had threatened me (Captain) with deadly mutiny if I didn't do what he wanted. He deduced that it made more logical sense to space 'em all to avoid death of star fleet personel who were controlled and would fight to the death against us. Oh, his name wasn't JTK...he had a single name. Larniak. To this day his name is spoken with a slight tint of fear...
All in all, one of the most memorable RPG campaigns I've ever played in (and I actually played and didn't GM!
).
MortalPlague
Adventurer
Mustrum_Ridcully
Hero
I made this very simple one-page PDF which summarizes character types from various books/sources. I think a Triangle based campaign with a range of characters (a trader, a spy, a Starfleet officer, a Klingon, etc.) could be fun. Especially if you used the Ship Construction Manual and had them build and maintain their own ship.
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Erekose
Eternal Champion
I always wanted to run a campaign like this one but the group disbanded (we all went to University!) before I had chance to do it!
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