Saturday, March 21, 2009

Trek RPG Auction of the Week - 3/21/09

Gamescience SPACE PATROLI'm finishing up my piece of Heritage's Star Trek RPG (and laundry), and here's its daddy on eBay: Lou Zocchi presents Space Patrol by Michael Scott Kurtick and Rockland Russo, released by Gamescience in 1977. It went on to spawn various games: Heritage's Star Trek: Adventure Gaming in the Final Frontier (1978), Gamescience's Star Patrol (1981), and Terra Games' Starfleet Voyages (1982).

Although not officially licensed, Space Patrol made some tongue-in-cheek use of the terminology and setting of Trek, referencing Kirk, phasers, Klingons, landing parties and so on. At the same time, its ambitions went beyond Trek-with-serial-numbers-filed and also included references to Niven's Kzinti, Asimov's Foundation, Heinlein's Starship Troopers, Flash Gordon, Pournelle's Falkenberg's Legion and -- in a last minute addenda -- the new kid on the block, Star Wars.

Not a great game, but definitely a piece of RPG history, and a less expensive way to get virtually the same rules as the first Trek roleplaying game.

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