Darth K'Trava
First Post
Ottergame said:
Or, like the ones I know, play D&D instead.....
Why aren't Star Wars and Star Trek dominating the RPG market?
Or, like the ones I know, play D&D instead.....
barsoomcore
Unattainable Ideal
Of course, the real reason is that while those RPG.net hosers THINK they're fanboys, and while Lucas-lovers THINK they're fanboys, the "DDDAS" (Deadly D&D Assassination Squad) are the REAL fanboys. Here's why we're so cool:
We flip out and kill people ALL THE TIME. Especially people who play Star Wars and Star Trek RPGs.
And we're mammals.
We flip out and kill people ALL THE TIME. Especially people who play Star Wars and Star Trek RPGs.
And we're mammals.
If you want to RP Star Trek, but either don't like previous systems or you're worried Decipher Trek may go the way of it's predecessors, you have an alternative. GURPS Prime Directive is also VERY adaptible. Even if you don't care for the alternate history universe it is set in (sort of a war torn version of TOS), the mechanics can easily be used to reflect "Enterprise" or TOS. The "Next Generation" era can be extrapolated with minimal effort.
D20 Star Wars is quite serviceable in my opinion, and it is being supported. I am really looking forward to the new miniatures game.
D20 Star Wars is quite serviceable in my opinion, and it is being supported. I am really looking forward to the new miniatures game.
shoplifter
First Post
Aust Diamondew
First Post
(Psi)SeveredHead said:
Star Craft d20 would be so freaking awesome
. Too bad it won't happen . They should make Star Craft 2, just look at how many people still play it on battle.net, 7 years after the game was released (and I don't want to play a shooter game in the star craft world ie Ghost, I want Star Craft 2 the RTS game). Star Craft d20 wouldn't be too hard to make...Anyway back to the topic the fact is that most star trek or star wars freaks aren't role playing geeks, it's an uncommon combination (though we have 2 big star trek fans in my group).
It's true that the Star Trek sims (see eg pbem.com) are immensely popular; "It's an RPG, Jim, but not as we know it" - they're freeform exercises in collaborative writing combined with a very rigid rank/fleet structure (almost all post-TNG era); taken deadly seriously, a whole Internet sub-sub-culture that seems to have a very large number of rabid Trek-fanboy adherents. There may well be as many or more Trek simmers as there are regular players of the published Trek RPG.
orchid blossom
Explorer
I avoided those rigid sims, luckily. The couple I participated in were not part of any fleet or group, just a few people getting together who wanted to write Star Trek. They're harder to find, but they're out there. I ran screaming from those over-organized groups.
Steel_Wind
Legend
I am a little surprised by this thread. Maybe it's just me, but I think that the vast majority of the posters here have never GM'd a Star Trek game, so there are some obvious points that are eluding discussion.
First - it has nothing to do with the system. LUG (Last Unicorn Games) had an excellent Start Trek RPG. It was hardcover, good artwork, with a flexible rule system that worked well. There were a large number of products available for it and I bought them all. I was a major fan of LUG.
Wizards of the Coast bought LUG and Paramount pulled the license and Decipher bought it. It has languished ever since. (This sucked a lot at the time and I am still bitter about it).
It is not about the rules system. LUG Trek was a VERY playable rules system.
The problem with maintaining a Star Trek game is two fold:
#1 - The Players: The organization of StarFleet can place some players in "charge" of other players. It is the military, after all. Having to take orders from another player in game does not jibe with the democratic urges of many younger players.
Over time, this can become an issue and some players hate it (younger players hated it in Birthright too). Mature players deal with it a lot better then younger ones - but there is no disputing the fact that there are some players who chafe at the restrictions of StarFleet. That said, this is a minor problem in comparison to point #2, however
#2 - It is DAMNED difficult to run a Sci-Fi game, especially one like Star Trek on a weekly basis. The reason is pretty simple: it is ALWAYS a story based game which requires thorough preparation. You don't "adlib" a story arc in Star Trek. An "episodic" approach to Trek requires the GM of the game to work out the story and craft it well before hand. It needs rich personalities, good settings, a compelling plot. And it needs that **every time you run it**, without fail. You cannot use random encounters and combat as a mini-game to paper over these holes as you do in an FRPG.
None of this sounds like a tall order to any of you right now. It certainly didn't to me. I had a whole canoe full of ideas when I started my Trek campaign...and we played through a lot of them.
But for a bi-weekly game, it gets to be a lot of work. You soon realize the little random encounters and diversions you use out of habit in a FRPG to spice things up and paper over the holes are missing in a starship based game.
It's not that you can't work around the problems that this sort of setting throws at you. You can. But to do so is a lot of work - a lot MORE work than running a FRPG.
So Star Trek campaigns die not because players don't want to play them, but because most GMs have difficulty in keeping it interesting on a weekly basis without spending 3-4 hours of prep for every 1 hour of play. Like any campaign you come to as a fresh thing - a GMs enthusiasm at the beginning will smooth that over for the first half-dozen sessions or so...but then the task starts to become daunting. And it starts to become a whole lot more like work and a whole lot less like fun.
So why isn't Star Trek ruling the roost? Because many younger players don't like being told what to do by other players, and most of all, because it is a lot of work for any GM to keep interesting on a weekly basis when compared to a FRPG.
While problem #1 can be made to go away in Star Wars, problem #2 persists in both genres.
First - it has nothing to do with the system. LUG (Last Unicorn Games) had an excellent Start Trek RPG. It was hardcover, good artwork, with a flexible rule system that worked well. There were a large number of products available for it and I bought them all. I was a major fan of LUG.
Wizards of the Coast bought LUG and Paramount pulled the license and Decipher bought it. It has languished ever since. (This sucked a lot at the time and I am still bitter about it).
It is not about the rules system. LUG Trek was a VERY playable rules system.
The problem with maintaining a Star Trek game is two fold:
#1 - The Players: The organization of StarFleet can place some players in "charge" of other players. It is the military, after all. Having to take orders from another player in game does not jibe with the democratic urges of many younger players.
Over time, this can become an issue and some players hate it (younger players hated it in Birthright too). Mature players deal with it a lot better then younger ones - but there is no disputing the fact that there are some players who chafe at the restrictions of StarFleet. That said, this is a minor problem in comparison to point #2, however
#2 - It is DAMNED difficult to run a Sci-Fi game, especially one like Star Trek on a weekly basis. The reason is pretty simple: it is ALWAYS a story based game which requires thorough preparation. You don't "adlib" a story arc in Star Trek. An "episodic" approach to Trek requires the GM of the game to work out the story and craft it well before hand. It needs rich personalities, good settings, a compelling plot. And it needs that **every time you run it**, without fail. You cannot use random encounters and combat as a mini-game to paper over these holes as you do in an FRPG.
None of this sounds like a tall order to any of you right now. It certainly didn't to me. I had a whole canoe full of ideas when I started my Trek campaign...and we played through a lot of them.
But for a bi-weekly game, it gets to be a lot of work. You soon realize the little random encounters and diversions you use out of habit in a FRPG to spice things up and paper over the holes are missing in a starship based game.
It's not that you can't work around the problems that this sort of setting throws at you. You can. But to do so is a lot of work - a lot MORE work than running a FRPG.
So Star Trek campaigns die not because players don't want to play them, but because most GMs have difficulty in keeping it interesting on a weekly basis without spending 3-4 hours of prep for every 1 hour of play. Like any campaign you come to as a fresh thing - a GMs enthusiasm at the beginning will smooth that over for the first half-dozen sessions or so...but then the task starts to become daunting. And it starts to become a whole lot more like work and a whole lot less like fun.
So why isn't Star Trek ruling the roost? Because many younger players don't like being told what to do by other players, and most of all, because it is a lot of work for any GM to keep interesting on a weekly basis when compared to a FRPG.
While problem #1 can be made to go away in Star Wars, problem #2 persists in both genres.
Last edited:
GoodKingJayIII
First Post
d4 said:
It's good that you make that distinction. I think that's important for anyone running a game with some kind of canonical background. It could be Star Wars or it could be The Forgotten Realms. It's incredibly easy for someone to say "No, that couldn't possibly have happened, because R.A. Salvatore wrote that Drizzt was doing X at point Y, so how could he have been decapitated by a seal?"
The fact of the matter is, if the DM wants Drizzt decapitated by a seal, Drizzt gets decapitated by a seal. When a someone spends time and effort building adventures or campaigns, I would not give that person the run-around for contradicting something already written. It's a game to enjoy, not belittle.
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