The Shape of Things to Come

I've previously mentioned Patrick Goodman's invaluable CODA Support Site which, along with the TrekRPGNet Forums, has kept Decipher's Star Trek Roleplaying Game the most current and relevant of the Trek RPGs. Patrick and contributors to his CODA site have been pumping out a lot of great new material over the past few months and last night, he gave us another preview of a project he's been working on: Starships of the Star Fleet Technical Manual.

Last month he gave us a look at the cover (JPG) and a single page for the Constitution Class (PDF). Last night, as a gift to the community for his birthday, he previewed the starship (PDF) that IMHO best defines my nostalgia for Franz Joseph's wonderful book.

I won't say anymore so as not to spoil the surprise. Just note that there are two pages, and Patrick is working hard to finish the project by May 8th (to coincide with the release of the film). Thanks, Patrick, and Happy Birthday!

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Get an Entire Trek RPG for $35

Well, sure, you can pick up one of the original FASA boxes on eBay for about $10 these days, but that really only gives you enough to run and play Trek games in the TOS timeline (not that there's anything wrong with it). What if Voyager is the way you roll? What if you want to compare, say, the Mugato! to the Malgorian of Bajor? What are the stats for Species 8472? Then Decipher's Star Trek Roleplaying Game based on their CODA system may be for you. And there's probably never a better time to pick it up -- all of it!

6 hardcover books and a Narrator Screen were released from 2002 - 2003, and apparently they've entered the mysterious void known as remaindered stock. Probably the best deal on teh Interwebs is that to be found at Hill's Wholesale Gaming, where they're offering the entire lot for $35 plus shipping. Just need one or two? $6 each. Considering the MSRP for the books was about $25 each when they came out... well, you do the math. My brain is tired today.

Here's what's available:

• Star Trek Roleplaying Game Player's Guide (2002) DCR 900


• Star Trek Roleplaying Game Narrator's Guide (2002) DCR 901


• Star Trek Narrator's Screen (2003) DCR 103339


• Starfleet Operations Manual (2003) DCR 103525


• Starships (2003) DCR 103527


• Aliens (2003) DCR 103604


• Creatures (2003) DCR 103607

By the way, when creating the image above, I inadvertently included included Worlds which, along with Mirror Universe: Through a Glass Darkly, was not published, but only released as a PDF in 2005, and now long gone. Don't expect to get it with your order!

To be clear, I'm really not fond of the mechanics of the CODA system, which is really similar to the d20 approach but using 2D6 for resolution. I also prefer the "era specific" approach of other games as I feel that different eras are going to be played differently. Finally, the errata was out of control to the point where I'd say it was nearly unplayable out of the box (see below). But at this price they're certainly worth it just as an awesome resource, especially if you're building your own Trek campaign for your favorite system. The fluff is excellent, the advice for gamemasters is considered and well-written and it's a helluva lot less expensive than tracking down an equivalent amount of the LUG releases. And they look reelly purty, too.

Also, I'm not pimpin' for Hill's Wholesale Gaming. In fact, I had a bit of difficulty with them on eBay when they had a very difficult time just filling an order correctly. Twice. It all worked out in the end, and you can look at their eBay profile to see that they're generally fine to deal with; but be aware that they're high volume and possibly a little prone to error or slowness at times (the books, once I got them, were immaculate). Great place to go right now for Decipher's Lord of the Rings RPG and Mongoose's Babylon 5 RPG, Conan RPG, the Starship Troopers Miniatures Game and the Starship Troopers RPG. They, too, have gone beyond the Rim...

If you do decide to hop on board the CODA express, get yourself right over to Patrick Goodman's CODA Support Site where you'll find a wealth of great resources for CODA Trek including an ICON to CODA conversion guide, extensive errata for a number of the books, character generation aids, 10 issues of the Beyond the Final Frontier netzine, and more. Patrick's done the Trek RPG community a real service by keeping this stuff available, plus he's been adding a great deal of new material over the past few months, with more to come (including one eBook that's going to be fantastic!). Bookmark it.

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The Nail in Decipher Trek's Coffin?

(Note from Robert: Credit to Taliesen at the TrekRPGNet forum for posting the link to this story and adding some verification to it. Very sad. No wonder CBS doesn't have faith in dealing with any potential licensees for a Trek RPG right now. Not to get all political, but it's thieves like this that have helped dump our economy where it is now. It's thieves like this that do damage to the RPG industry and its reputation. It's thieves like this that left books unpublished and writers unpaid. What a winner.)

Norfolk man pleads guilty to embezzling more than $1.5m

By Michelle Washington, The Virginian-Pilot
© March 10, 2009

As vice president of finance for Decipher Inc., Rick Eddleman controlled every aspect of the company's money.

His brother-in-law, Warren Holland, had founded the Norfolk-based company in 1983. It quickly took off, producing and selling a line of collectible and role-playing card games such as "How to Host a Murder," "Lord of the Rings" and "Star Wars."

Holland hired Eddleman to work part time on Decipher's computer systems. By the end of 1992, Holland asked Eddleman to become vice president of finances for the company.

Prosecutors say Eddleman embezzled more than $1.5 million from the company over nine years.


Click here for the rest of the story...

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Comparing Character Stats (Part 1)

Some of the folks over at TrekRPGNet were nice enough to admit reading this blog, and took some interest in my article on the Japanese Enterprise game I posted about earlier this week. Calastir over there has recently worked up some CODA character stats for the TOS Bridge Crew, and wanted to know how they compared to the classic character attributes in Enterprise.

Pretty cool idea! It can be interesting to compare the same character between different systems. It's especially interesting when one considers that not only was Enterprise the first Japanese TRPG, it was also arguably the first Star Trek RPG. Sure, Heritage had released STAGFF five years earlier, but it was more of a miniatures game with roleplay-like stats and features focused on combat, and some of the stats didn't have a material effect on the game. Enterprise, on the other hand, chose the traditional discussion-based roleplaying style to which we're more accustomed today -- and did so before FASA had released their Trek RPG!

Let's take a look at the stats for Captain James Tiberius Kirk for each of the five systems:

Star Trek: Adventure Gaming in the Final Frontier (3D6 based, 3-18)

STR 13, DEX 14, LUC 15, Mentality 14, CHA 16, CON 13

Enterprise (3D6 based, 3-18)

STR 15, DEX 15, IQ 13, CHA 16, LUC 15

FASA (3D10+40, 1-100)

STR 68, END 77, INT 84, DEX 79, CHA 94, LUC 98, PSI 29

LUG (Point spend, 1-5)

FIT 3, VIT +1, COORD 4, INT 4, PRES 5, PSI 0

CODA (2D6 random dice pool; or pick and spend, 4-12)

AGL 10 (+2), INT 8 (+1), PER 9 (+1), PRS 12 (+3), STR 10 (+2), VIT 10 (+2)

Phew. For an old school guy like me, just looking at the stats makes me want to translate Enterprise as quickly as possible!

Calastir asked that I post the Enterprise stats for the following 4 characters so that he can compare them to his own CODA versions. In Part 2 of this article, I'll post the stats for the other 10 TOS characters, along with some close-up scans and translations of those slick character cards.

Lieutenant Hikaru Sulu

STR 13, DEX 13, IQ 12, CHA 10, LUC 10

Lieutenant Commander Montgomery Scott

STR 14, DEX 14, IQ 12, CHA 9, LUC 11

Ensign Pavel Chekov

STR 12, DEX 13, IQ 11, CHA 11, LUC 13

Lieutenant Uhura

STR 11, DEX 12, IQ 13, CHA 15, LUC 14

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Star Trek RPGs - Other Voices

Ah, the joy that is The Google. I don't hit those "Similar Pages" links enough, but when I do it often seems to lead somewhere interesting I wouldn't have found on my own.

I'm certainly not the first or only person to ponder on the topics of "What is the history of Star Trek in tabletop roleplaying?" and, more to the point, "Does Star Trek really lend itself to RPGs?" Here are some other wise souls discussing the same questions:

From September 2006, Adam and Nate of the Roll 2d6 podcast discuss the early years of Trek RPGs, Trek vs the Star Fleet Universe and more. Hmm, they seem to be from the Bay Area. Why don't I know these guys?

From November 2007, Andy at The Lost Level contemplates Roleplaying in the final frontier: random thoughts on Star Trek and RPGs in this blog entry (after listening to the podcast above), and wonders why he never games in the Trek universe.

Good stuff. And now I have a podcast to listen to on the train this morning!

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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.....