Heritage Star Trek and Different Worlds

With the exception of a very few more miniatures sets, this post will wrap up my coverage of Heritage Models and Star Trek adventure gaming. Frankly, I'm surprised I've managed to get this many words out of the subject. At this rate, it may take me 4 years to cover FASA!

As I detailed in my two part review of Star Trek Adventure Gaming in the Final Frontier, the game's biggest weaknesses were that a) it didn't feel like Star Trek, despite all the name-dropping, and; b) there are virtually no rules covering themes of exploration, character building, starships and starship combat. In the age before the Internet, it would require some fan-written works published in a magazine called Different Worlds.

Different Worlds began publication in 1979, amongst other adventure gaming magazines at the time such as The Space Gamer, Dragon, White Dwarf, Journal of the Travellers Aid Society and, shortly after, Ares. Despite the fact that it was published by Chaosium (Call of Cthulhu, RuneQuest), it remained remarkably independent in its focus on fantasy, sci-fi and horror games regardless of publisher, thanks in no small part to the vision of its editor Tadashi Ehara. It's also the only gaming magazine I remember that had a wonderful industry gossip column, "A Letter from Gigi". For someone like myself who was 15 years old at the time, it was really the only way I knew who was who working for whom on what way back when. Did I mention there was no Internet yet?

In Issue #4 (Aug/Sept 1979, above) DW published "A Star Trek Scenario Report: Kirk On Karit 2" by Emmet F. Milestone. The three-page tongue-in-cheek article is a little bit review of STAGFF, some background on the one-shot adventure the author created to run at DunDraCon IV, and special rules he created for STAGFF.

Kirk has Spock run a survey scan of the space surrounding Karit II. The sensors show the presence of a Klingon scout and an entirely alien vessel which appears to be a derelict from its utter silence on all the EM bands. Kirk decides that investigation of the geological disturbances has top priority, so he leaves Scotty in charge of the Enterprise and beams down to the planetary surface with Spock, McCoy, Lt. Uhura, and four security guards. The landing party materializes in front of the only entrance to a huge white dome.

As the people of the starship accustom themselves to the new environment of Karit II, the great double doors of the dome burst open and a group of figures comes flying from within. Three giant humanoid insects are obviously pursuing the lead entity, an orange floroid resembling a carrot, all using jump harnesses. The insects open fire with their disruptors and scorch the plant-man, who dives for cover.

The insectoids, it turns out, are Dreenoi from the 1974 sci-fi miniatures game Starguard (a game which still lives today!). Milestone provides STAGFF statistics for Dreenoi Warriors and Brain Bugs as well as the carrot of Karit II, Karitan Alpha. The noble crew of the Enterprise must infiltrate the mysterious dome, fighting off Dreenoi and Klingons, and repair a machine before the planet destroys itself. And along the way, Kirk may have to seduce a female Klingon lieutenant. In order to pull this off, Milestone created two additional mechanics for STAGFF, "Falling in Love" and "Making a Pass", noting that "Kirk never has luck in love, and can't add his Luck modifier" to his scores as a result.

In Issue #18 (January 1982, right) DW published the more serious and useful "Star Trek: Beyond the Final Frontier" by Paul Montgomery Crabaugh, one of the most prolific writers of gaming articles at the time (see Jeff Rients' Gameblog for two posts about the late, great Mr. Crabaugh). The article almost accomplished more in its six pages than STAGFF did in its 30+ pages. How much?

Written to supplement Star Trek: Adventure Gaming in the Final Frontier role-playing rules, this variant covers a wide range of topics including Experience, Skills, Aging, Salaries, Price Lists, The Referee 's Role, Chain of Command, and World Generation.

Not only that, but Crabaugh included tables for determining crew member species, rank, bonuses and skills, type of starship, warp speeds, department assignment, tech levels and about a hundred more pieces of equipment. In short, Crabaugh single-handedly managed to take STAGFF and transform it into a role-playing game, one worthy of campaigns rather than one shot, landing party dungeon crawls. It's an amazing achievement, eclipsed only by the fact that FASA's Star Trek The Role Playing Game would come out later that same year.

In fact, I would go so far to say that STAGFF combined with Crabaugh's "Star Trek: Beyond the Final Frontier" resulted in the first true Star Trek role-playing game as we know it.

Things coming up on Groknard: FGU's Starships & Spacemen, ADB's Prime Directive series yesterday and today, more FASA and Citadel miniatures, another surprise, two hybrid "role-playing boardgames" and -- in two weeks! -- my inevitable reviews of the new Star Trek film and its CD score by Michael Giacchino. Today, however, I'm off to EndGame in Oakland for their 6th Annual EndGame Auction!

But wait! There's more.....

Welcome!

"Explain yourself, Mr. Scott!"

So, what's this all about?

About two months ago, I started work on a conversion of the original Star Trek series for my favorite game of 2008, Rogue Games' Thousand Suns by James Maliszewski. When it comes to RPGs, Star Trek seems to be the place Where Everyone Has Gone Before, yet here we are in 2009 with no official licensed version. I began to wonder about all of the Trek RPGs I'd missed or skipped over the years, and started to do research. What worked? What didn't? What was really good and could be adopted into my project?

As I dug deeper into boxes in the closet and searches on the web, I started finding all sorts of things I'd never known before on the subject. I made one tremendous find earlier this week that, to my surprise, didn't seem to be documented virtually anywhere. At that point I realized that I needed to start writing this stuff down.

And what better way to do that than to create a blog around it? Sure, I could wiki it (and still might), but I'd rather have a discussion about it with readers... if any! I'll admit this blog is strongly inspired by James' Grognardia, which I've found to be a great way to reminisce about "the good old days" through adult eyes. My hope is that I'll learn even more about this subject through that discussion.

What to look forward to? Right now, my intention is to focus primarily on Star Trek RPGs -- both licensed and those with the serial numbers filed off -- from the 70s and early 80s. We'll start off with Star Trek: Adventure Gaming in the Final Frontier (Heritage, 1978) and its later expansion in Chaosium's Different Worlds magazine. There's a lot of interesting material that came out between that and Star Trek The Roleplaying Game (FASA, 1982). I haven't decided yet if I'll really go much beyond the 1st Edition of FASA's STRPG. By the time 2nd Edition came out, the game was a certified hit which changed both the industry and Trek itself. Its history, as well as that of the game material of Last Unicorn Games (1998) and Decipher (2002) is fairly well documented and still easily available, so chances are I'll only discuss them in passing or in the context of the older games.

Other material I'll be reviewing are the not-Treks, Space Patrol (Gamescience, 1977), Starships & Spacemen (FGU, 1978) and Starfleet Voyages (Terra Games, 1982). These were the systems that friends and I used back in the day to roleplay Trek, or at least to try.

Every once in awhile, I may take a break from purely RPG-related matters to talk about other types of games or related material such as one of the main inspirations to the genre, Franz Joseph's Star Fleet Technical Manual, the first Trek-ish wargame Star Fleet Battle Manual (Gamescience/Lou Zocchi, 1977), magazines from the period, generic supplements such as the Spacefarers Guide to Planets Sector One (Phoenix Enterprises, 1979), the mini-game Star Explorer (FGU, 1982) and even a look at a little known Japanese SF consim, Star Trek: The Invasion of Klingon Empire (Tsukuda Hobby, 1982). I probably won't be talking much about the Star Fleet Universe of Task Force and ADB, again because they're so well-documented elsewhere.

And to spice things up, I'll occasionally drop in images and the occasional topic related to the Star Trek 25mm figure miniatures of Heritage, Citadel and FASA, as they were often tied to the games themselves.

So I hope you'll find this entertaining, and hope you'll come back. Oh, and speaking of pictures, here's a peek at that "tremendous find" I mentioned earlier, from 1983... more to come!

But wait! There's more.....