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Post by talysman on May 23, 2018 18:08:26 GMT -6
One of the digital broadcast stations (Heroes & Icons) shows Star Trek six nights a week, one from each of the live-action series every night (TOS, TNG, DS9, VOY, ENT) + the Animated Series on Sundays, all shown (mostly) in broadcast order. I wanted to refresh my memory on the old stuff and fill in gaps on newer stuff (I skipped almost everything from DS9 and significant chunks of TNG, VOY, and ENT when they first aired,) plus I've always wanted to write my own space RPG, so I watched them all in order. And then I started rewatching the first 20 or so episodes of TOS, because I noticed there was something about the early episodes that i liked a lot, even though my favorite episodes are much later, acknowledged classics like "City on the Edge of Forever" and "Amok Time". I had some ideas, but I wanted to narrow things down. I used geoffrey 's thread on the Yeoman Rand canon as one of my guides, because I had a feeling that some of the things mentioned there may have a bearing. Indeed, Yeoman Rand herself represents one thing I feel is significant: the enlisted ranks, and the day-to-day routine ship duties. We see more of both in the earliest episodes, and it makes the Enterprise feel more like an actual ship with a large crew and lots of support activities. As the series went on, we see hardly any of this anymore, and in fact the series focuses more on the bridge crew/senior officers, occasionally with another officer who gets killed or betrays the captain. When Yeoman Rand disappears, I don't think we ever hear the word "yeoman" again, even though there should be others. We don't hear the word "crewman" much, either, and only see one moments before they die. Another factor, of course, is the shifting characterizations of Kirk, Spock and McCoy. The earliest episodes (at least in production order) don't have Spock and McCoy at each other's throats. There's at first professional disagreements, then mild ribbing, escalating to angry tirades which seem a lot less funny these days than they did when I was younger. Kirk acts more professional, no-nonsense... like a believable starship captain, instead of an over-the-top crazyman. There's a noticeable exception in "The Enemy Within", where the story calls for more extreme reactions. I get the feeling Shatner told the producers "Gimme more of that, I like it." One feature of the early episodes that oddly I liked was that there's no mention of the Federation. We don't hear about it until "Arena" (17th aired episode, 19th in production order.) Before that, we get mentions of a United Earth Space Probe Authority ("Charlie X" and "Tomorrow Is Yesterday") and Space Central ("Miri") or the Space Service ("Balance of Terror".) When the Enterprise encounters The First Federation (Balok) in "The Corbomite Maneuver", Kirk identifies his ship as a "United Earth Ship". There's a lot of talk about Earth colonies, some of which are sparsely populated (or automated and uninhabited mining operations, as in "Where No Man Has Gone Before".) Only a few other intelligent alien civilizations are mentioned or seen. It makes space feel ... emptier, and civilization smaller. Points of light in a huge cosmos, with ships traveling thousands of light years without running into other races most of the time. And when one is encountered, it's a momentous, sometimes mysterious event. I have always liked that kind of space story better than space opera or galactic empire style science fiction.
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Post by geoffrey on May 23, 2018 22:38:24 GMT -6
One feature of the early episodes that oddly I liked was that there's no mention of the Federation. We don't hear about it until "Arena" (17th aired episode, 19th in production order.) Before that, we get mentions of a United Earth Space Probe Authority ("Charlie X" and "Tomorrow Is Yesterday") and Space Central ("Miri") or the Space Service ("Balance of Terror".) When the Enterprise encounters The First Federation (Balok) in "The Corbomite Maneuver", Kirk identifies his ship as a "United Earth Ship". There's a lot of talk about Earth colonies, some of which are sparsely populated (or automated and uninhabited mining operations, as in "Where No Man Has Gone Before".) Only a few other intelligent alien civilizations are mentioned or seen. It makes space feel ... emptier, and civilization smaller. Points of light in a huge cosmos, with ships traveling thousands of light years without running into other races most of the time. And when one is encountered, it's a momentous, sometimes mysterious event. I have always liked that kind of space story better than space opera or galactic empire style science fiction. Your entire post is insightful, but this part really resonates with me. I hadn't thought of this before, but now that you mention it, it seems so obvious in hindsight! Great stuff.
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Post by talysman on May 24, 2018 12:46:57 GMT -6
One feature of the early episodes that oddly I liked was that there's no mention of the Federation. We don't hear about it until "Arena" (17th aired episode, 19th in production order.) Before that, we get mentions of a United Earth Space Probe Authority ("Charlie X" and "Tomorrow Is Yesterday") and Space Central ("Miri") or the Space Service ("Balance of Terror".) When the Enterprise encounters The First Federation (Balok) in "The Corbomite Maneuver", Kirk identifies his ship as a "United Earth Ship". There's a lot of talk about Earth colonies, some of which are sparsely populated (or automated and uninhabited mining operations, as in "Where No Man Has Gone Before".) Only a few other intelligent alien civilizations are mentioned or seen. It makes space feel ... emptier, and civilization smaller. Points of light in a huge cosmos, with ships traveling thousands of light years without running into other races most of the time. And when one is encountered, it's a momentous, sometimes mysterious event. I have always liked that kind of space story better than space opera or galactic empire style science fiction. Your entire post is insightful, but this part really resonates with me. I hadn't thought of this before, but now that you mention it, it seems so obvious in hindsight! Great stuff. Thanks! It's not even that I think Star Trek should be human-only, or that there shouldn't be a Federation. The impression I get from those earliest episodes is that space is so big and the number of space-faring species so small, exploratory vessels can pass by each other, or miss all sorts of interesting stuff even along standard flight routes. The starfaring civilizations interpenetrate, and stellar cartography missions cover just the basics, so there's actually a whole bunch of unexplored area within their own "territory". Charlie X was stranded for years on a planet that was along a standard travel route, and recovered by freighter that was just making a routine run. Earth was setting up remote bases in what turned out to be Gorn territory, but neither race had heard of the other, and the Gorns didn't even notice for a couple years. Earth and Romulus had a "war" in which neither side actually saw each other, only their ships. It was probably a lot like the encounter the Enterprise had with a Romulan ship: no space arnadas, just hit and run attacks on small outposts and one-on-one skirmishes. In such a universe, the Federation isn't so much an interstellar governments as it is a really tight alliance between a couple starfaring races who bumped into each other a lot. They mostly operate their own ships that are mono-species, but occasionally you get an individual who decides to serve in another planet's interstellar fleet, like Spock serving in Earth's Starfleet. (I get the impression, in these early episodes, he's on a human vessel because he's half-human and for complex personal reasons, decided he was better off living among humans than among vulcans.)
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Post by Deleted on May 24, 2018 15:21:16 GMT -6
As I've said before, over the last couple of years I've been watching lots of the old rocketship TV shows: Space Patrol, Tom Corbett Space Cadet, Rocky Jones Space Ranger, etc. I am struck by how much the early episodes of Star Trek follow the same basic tone and pacing of these older TV shows only switching to a flying saucer from a rocketship and having a much higher budget. I can see why the show was such a hit. It was familiar but also new.
In effect, it did exactly what Star Wars did a decade later; taking a familiar film genre that had been relegated to B-movies and updating it with a decent script and state of the art special effects.
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Post by talysman on May 24, 2018 16:57:35 GMT -6
As I've said before, over the last couple of years I've been watching lots of the old rocketship TV shows: Space Patrol, Tom Corbett Space Cadet, Rocky Jones Space Ranger, etc. I am struck by how much the early episodes of Star Trek follow the same basic tone and pacing of these older TV shows only switching to a flying saucer from a rocketship and having a much higher budget. I can see why the show was such a hit. It was familiar but also new. Yep, I usually call the genre I'm looking for "rocket patrol SF". I think of the TV shows, I've only seen Rocky Jones (as MST3k episodes) and some Twilight Zone episodes centered on rockets/saucers, but I heard some radio episodes of Space Cadet (I think) and of course saw a lot of rocket SF movies like Rocketship X-M, Destination Moon, 12 to the Moon, etc. And Forbidden Planet, of course. And of course, there's Firefly. I avoided it when it was first run, and I'm not as super crazy about it as some of my friends (I think it has flaws,) but I do like it, and part of the reason is because it hits at least some of the same notes as rocket patrol SF or early Star Trek. Maybe space is not as empty, although it's a much, much smaller region... but the ship's crew is much smaller, so you don't run into the same problem as later Trek, where you're focusing on senior officers and ignoring a whole bunch of miserable, expendable crewmen.
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Post by chicagowiz on May 25, 2018 8:17:02 GMT -6
Now it makes me wonder what an "alternative canon" Star Trek universe would look like if they'd stuck with the "distant points of light, rare encounters" theme that you've touched on.
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Post by talysman on May 25, 2018 11:06:14 GMT -6
Now it makes me wonder what an "alternative canon" Star Trek universe would look like if they'd stuck with the "distant points of light, rare encounters" theme that you've touched on. Been wondering the same thing... I think they were worried that it was going to become Monster of the Week, basically a re-skinned Lost in Space. But they could have avoided that by including rescue missions, colony vs. homeworld politics, emergency situations caused by unexpected phenomena... a lot of things they did, anyways, but with less focus on Starfleet hierarchy and big interstellar conflicts. Some later episodes like "Devil in the Dark" wouldn't need to change at all. A few would need cosmetic changes. Planets like Eminiar VII ("A Taste of Armageddon") or in fact any "human" planet become settlements established by Earth sleeper ships sent out 200 years ago that established their own offshoots of humanity. In some ways, Star Trek: Enterprise has some of that feel. But they made two mistakes... well, more than two, but only two relevant mistakes: the dumb Temporal Cold War arc and the rush to include as many other franchise elements as possible. They should not have brought the Klingons in, in any major way, even though the Klingon episodes did turn out well. The Romulans were handled poorly in the series. It's a similar effect to TV and movie adaptations of Superman, Batman, Spiderman, or any other long-running series from another medium: they bring in too much too fast and run out of places to go.
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Post by chicagowiz on May 25, 2018 11:09:09 GMT -6
Sounds like the perfect alternative approach for a Star Trek campaign!
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Post by dragondaddy on May 25, 2018 21:25:57 GMT -6
Okay, I know some of you here probably remember this. I actually bought a copy when it was first published, a copy I subsequently lost in 1985, however, earlier this year, I picked up a new first edition copy priced just three dollars more than when this was brand new, and originally published on Stardate 7511.01... Concerning the founding of the United Federation of Planets Stardate 2161 Articles of FederationWE THE INTELLIGENT LIFEFORMS OF THE UNITED FEDERATION OF PLANETS DETERMINEDTo save the succeeding generations from the scourge of Intra-Galactic war which has brought untold horror and suffering to our planetary social systems, and To reaffirm faith in the fundamental intelligent life-form rights, in the dignity and worth of the intelligent life-form person, to the equal rights of male and female planetary social systems large and small, and To establish conditions under which justice and mutual respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of Interplanetary Law can be maintained, and To promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom. AND TO THESE ENDSTo practice benevolent tolerance and live together in peace with one another as good neighbors, and To unite our strength... yada yada yada... HAVE RESOLVED TO COMBINE OUR EFFORTS TO ACCOMPLISH THESE AIMSAccordingly, The respective social systems, through representatives established on the planet Babel, who have exhibited their full powers to be in good and due form, have agreed to the Articles of Federation of the United Federation of Planets, and do hereby establish an Interplanetary organization to be known as THE UNITED FEDERATION OF PLANETS CHAPTER 1 PURPOSES AND PRINCIPLESArticle 1 The Purposes of the United Federation of Planets Are; 1. To maintain the Interplanetary Peace and Security within the Treaty Exploration Territory, and to that end: To take effective collective measures for the prevention of threats to the peace, the supression of acts of aggression, and to bring about peaceful means, and employing the principles of Justice and Intra-galactic Law, Adjustment or settlement of Interplanetary disputes which might lead to a breach of the peace. 2. To develop friendly relations among planets based on respect for the principle of equal rigghts and self-determination of Intelligent life-forms, and other appropriate measures to strengthen universal peace. 3. To achieve Interplanetary cooperation in solving Intra-Galactic problems of economic, social, cultural, or humanitarian character; in promoting and encouraging respect of intelligent life-form rights; and for the fundamental freedom for all without distinction as to culture, sex, life-form, or religious belief; and 4. To be a center for concilience of the actions of all social systems in the attainment of these common ends. There are 108 more Articles of Federation, I'll write up any specific request for any of the article, ...if so asked. There were 43 signatories to the original Articles of Federation, all of which made up the Supreme Assembly of the original Federation Council, each sending five representatives. The Federation Council shall consist of eleven (11) members of the United Federation The United Nations of Planet Earth The Planetary Confederation of 40 Eridani The United Planets of 61 Cygni The Star Empire of Epsilon Indii and the Alpha Centauri Concordium of PlanetsShall be permanent members of the Federation Council. The Supreme Assembly shall elect six (6) other members of the United Federation to be non-permanent members of the Federation Council. The Aliens from Andoria, Tellar Prime, and Vulcan were also among the founding members of United Federation of Planets. By Stardate 2373 there were over 150 signatories to the Articles of Federation. Star Fleet Command is organized under the Federation Council, of course.
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Post by talysman on May 26, 2018 0:19:50 GMT -6
Okay, I know some of you here probably remember this. I actually bought a copy when it was first published, a copy I subsequently lost in 1985, however, earlier this year, I picked up a new first edition copy priced just three dollars more than when this was brand new, and originally published on Stardate 7511.01... Yep, I had one back in the day. Lost it in one of many moves. It came out after both the original and the animated series were both off the air, when there was a huge hunger for Star Trek material and a growing fan-generated "extended canon". Some of the material has since been more or less adopted as near-canon for the series, for example the idea that 40 Eridani = Vulcan. But all of it is a later development, much later than what I'm talking about: the feel of the earliest episodes. There's no Starfleet mentioned until "the Menagerie", no mention of the Federation until "Arena". Instead, we hear a lot about Earth colonies and the "United Earth Space Probe Agency". Star Trek went through a process, adding material to its backstory, much the same as an RPG campaign. There are 108 more Articles of Federation, I'll write up any specific request for any of the article, ...if so asked. No need. It's not exactly relevant. To draw an analogy, it's like late AD&D setting books. I'm interested in the LBBs of Star Trek.
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Post by Finarvyn on May 26, 2018 19:31:04 GMT -6
I actually have 2 copies of the Technical Manual -- one original in the plastic sleeve and one reprint from a decade or so ago. Part of my annoying "keep the original safe and read a beater copy" habits that I've developed over the decades. I don't mean to be a collector … honest!
For a long time my group regarded the Technical Manual as our "Star Trek Bible" of factoids and wisdom, and it was a little traumatic when Star Fleet Battles chose to deviate in a few places from what we felt was canon Trek.
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Post by Stormcrow on May 27, 2018 9:28:16 GMT -6
The Articles of Federation are just a recast version of the United Nations charter.
The Star Trek format was famously modeled on Wagon Train. This meant the ship was traveling through the frontier, coming upon frontier towns (planets), dealing with frontier peoples, everything far, far from help "back east." Even the phrase "back east" gives you a clue: the place the main characters come FROM doesn't have to be fleshed out, just the place they're currently AT. The Federation as we understand it was an entity that emerged from the various stories that talked about "back east," not something that was deliberately added to the show's mythology. Likewise with the mostly human Star Fleet: it's only an emergent fact that the Star Fleet isn't an Earth organization; it wasn't thought up this way from the beginning.
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Post by talysman on May 27, 2018 19:54:03 GMT -6
The Articles of Federation are just a recast version of the United Nations charter. The Star Trek format was famously modeled on Wagon Train. This meant the ship was traveling through the frontier, coming upon frontier towns (planets), dealing with frontier peoples, everything far, far from help "back east." Even the phrase "back east" gives you a clue: the place the main characters come FROM doesn't have to be fleshed out, just the place they're currently AT. The Federation as we understand it was an entity that emerged from the various stories that talked about "back east," not something that was deliberately added to the show's mythology. Likewise with the mostly human Star Fleet: it's only an emergent fact that the Star Fleet isn't an Earth organization; it wasn't thought up this way from the beginning. Yep. Roddenberry even mentions "Wagon Train" by name in his proposal. And at first, Star Trek has a very heavy frontier feel, although there are varying representations of the scope of exploration ... a lot of the colonies and outposts appear to be reasonably close, within a couple hundred light years, but some break that pattern and are around 1,000 light years away, with one trip being "to the edge of the galaxy" (although it's not clear whether they mean the galactic rim, or the closest edge along the axis 90 degrees to the galactic plane. As we go along, things start feeling more structured as they fill in the backstory. And when The Next Generation comes out, it feels entirely different: space feels more crowded, there are lots of alien races, and the Enterprise seems more about keeping things in order instead of encountering the unknown. I think one reason behind both DS9 and Voyager was a desire to get back to a frontier exploration feel, although I think they still didn't recapture the feeling of the earliest Trek episodes.
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Post by Stormcrow on May 28, 2018 12:17:00 GMT -6
By the late '80s, when The Next Generation first aired, nobody was watching westerns anymore. There was no reason for them to return to Wagon Train.
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Post by talysman on May 28, 2018 12:59:06 GMT -6
By the late '80s, when The Next Generation first aired, nobody was watching westerns anymore. There was no reason for them to return to Wagon Train. There have always been westerns on TV, even in the '80s and '90s (Lonesome Dove, The Young Riders, Dr Quinn, Medicine Woman, a Zorro reboot, among others.) But it's not about westerns or Wagon Train. That was just Roddenberry's pitch, and part of his inspiration. It's about the Star Trek franchise basically switching from exploring the unknown to exploring its own canon. Which is why I think of comparing the 3LBBs and the rather sketchy "setting" implied within it to much later AD&D material, or even later edition material, where designers keep going back to the same material and adding more detail and explaining all the mysteries. Again, what I want in a SF RPG is not Star Trek TNG or any of the later Star Treks, nor is it 2nd season TOS, or even second half of 1st season TOS. Nor is it some kind of space opera, or an interstellar empire or bureaucracy. That's one of the downsides to Traveller, for me. There's too much established backstory. I want something more like what @hedgehobbit was talking about: rocket SF. Rocky Jones, not Star Wars. Heinlein's The Rolling Stones, not Heinlein's Citizen of the Galaxy.
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Post by Stormcrow on May 28, 2018 18:26:52 GMT -6
By the late '80s, when The Next Generation first aired, nobody was watching westerns anymore. There was no reason for them to return to Wagon Train. There have always been westerns on TV, even in the '80s and '90s (Lonesome Dove, The Young Riders, Dr Quinn, Medicine Woman, a Zorro reboot, among others.) Yes, yes, but TV audiences were no longer obsessed with westerns the way they were in the '50s and '60s. Westerns were a novelty by this time, nothing more, and they didn't last as long as the fourteen seasons of Bonanza or the eight seasons of Wagon Train, etc. Yes, this happened, but the format made this switch in large part because viewers were no longer interested in the lonely-do-gooders-wandering-the-dangerous-frontier format; they wanted more complex characters and more detail in, as you say, the show's own canon. They wanted to know more about Klingons and Romulans and so on. Or at least, the executives thought they did. I think they did. Television as a whole had changed in the twenty years between Star Trek and Star Trek: The Next Generation.So just make up your own universe from scratch the way you like it, and forget trying base it on something else. Do what the creators of D&D did: steal ELEMENTS from various sources and mix them in. Gygax et al stole Tolkien elves and Anderson trolls and Howard superheroes and so on and just threw them all together without regard for their original stories. You can go ahead and steal Star Trek Vulcans and Star Wars Wookies and Lost in Space robots and Heinlein Space Cadets or whatever else floats your boat, completely ignore the fact that these things don't have anything to do with each other, and declare it a game. You want fundamentalism? That's fundamentalism. I don't see the point in complaining about how Star Trek fails in something it never claimed to be doing.
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Post by Falconer on May 29, 2018 21:01:08 GMT -6
I thought it’s a very positive thread, positively identifying elements that contribute to the great and unique feel of the “Rand Canon”, and how to emulate them in a game.
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Post by talysman on May 30, 2018 1:21:30 GMT -6
I thought it’s a very positive thread, positively identifying elements that contribute to the great and unique feel of the “Rand Canon”, and how to emulate them in a game. Thanks! I thought I was very clear in my first post that I do like other Star Trek shows, and that some of my favorites in TOS were much later, like "Amok Time" and "City on the Edge of Forever". But I noticed that I liked certain elements from early episodes better, and wanted to think in more detail about what those episodes had in common, and why I liked them (and felt disappointed when they faded out of the series.) Not really sure why dragondaddy and Stormcrow are so opposed to divergence from the full canon of the franchise, or thinking about the series from a media criticism viewpoint. Maybe if they don't like "alternative Star Treks", they shouldn't join a discussion that's primarily focused on that? I'm sure you guys could get a thread or two started to discuss strictly canon Star Trek, if that's what you prefer.
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Post by dragondaddy on May 31, 2018 21:18:53 GMT -6
Not really sure why dragondaddy and Stormcrow are so opposed to divergence from the full canon of the franchise, or thinking about the series from a media criticism viewpoint. Maybe if they don't like "alternative Star Treks", they shouldn't join a discussion that's primarily focused on that? I'm sure you guys could get a thread or two started to discuss strictly canon Star Trek, if that's what you prefer. I'm not opposed to any divergence from the early canon. Just wasn't aware there was much available from the early days. I didn't watch Star Trek in the 60's as I was living in Wyoming/Colorado from 1966-68, and then California in 1968-69 and wasn't really watching much American television at that time as I was still speaking pretty much German only. The first time I really remember seeing episodes was on the Armed Forces Television Network in Germany in 1971 and 1972. And there was no published books or other material available for Star Trek in Germany. The series had been cancelled by NBC in 1969 and AFN bought rights from Gene Roddenberry to broadcast it in Europe as re-runs. I was back in the States in 1974, but don't remember seeing any published books until 1975, which was the Franz Joseph Technical Manual shown here. I thought that was published to clear up discrepancies with the early story lines. I suppose one could come up with quite a few variances with the 1966 season scripts, because then, Star Trek was very much like the Sci-Fi serials from the 1950's. At movie theaters, they used to show these shorts where each week if you went to the matinee, you could watch a serial before the main feature that was just a quick ten or fifteen minute chapter with a cliffhanger of uh, Flash Gordon, or Desert Hawk from Columbia Pictures, or Sky Raiders from Universal Pictures or Republic's Commander Cody: Sky Marshall of the Universe. I also remember Fu Manchu, Doc Savage, and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, in full color as well and many of these early serials featured sci-fi characters with military style uniforms. Star Trek adopted that, only the Enterprise crew uniforms were in glorious technicolor, instead of just black & white!
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Post by Deleted on Jun 3, 2018 7:12:58 GMT -6
Which is why I think of comparing the 3LBBs and the rather sketchy "setting" implied within it to much later AD&D material, or even later edition material, where designers keep going back to the same material and adding more detail and explaining all the mysteries. Again, what I want in a SF RPG is not Star Trek TNG or any of the later Star Treks, nor is it 2nd season TOS, or even second half of 1st season TOS. Nor is it some kind of space opera, or an interstellar empire or bureaucracy. That's one of the downsides to Traveller, for me. There's too much established backstory. What happened to the OD&D setting is similar to what happens to all game worlds; they expand the details presented more and more and more until the game world has a 300 page setting book and it's just about impossible to run an adventure in that game world that doesn't contradict some established lore. A few years ago, Modiphius released a Thunderbirds RPG. It's not a traditional RPG in any sense. It's method of adventure design was drawing cards from various decks. You would draw a Crisis card which told what the main mission was and then elaborated it with lots of additional cards: who the enemy was, where the crisis takes place, are there any potential allies, is there a complication that will change the mission, etc. All of these things are the results of cards. In a sense, this is creating an adventure similar to how an episodic TV show might be outlined. Now, if you had a sci-fi game that used this method of adventure design, you could expand the gameworld by adding new cards. When doing this, however, you are only adding things that could be of potential use in an adventure and nothing more. Compare that to a traditional game setting where the first thing that's done is to draw up a detailed geopolitical map and start filling in the areas with leaders and backstories and locations. This, by it's very nature, requires the DM to create vast quantities of source material that probably will never factor into any actual play session. The OSR response to this issue is to focus on a smaller area to make the details more relevant to the players, but the side effect of this is that it limits the possible adventures. Back to the topic ... the best way to capture the feel of early Trek isn't to use a smaller Star Fleet Technical Manual, but to abandon the Technical Manual approach to setting design and focus entirely on what sorts of adventures the players will be having, where those adventures take place, and who, or what, will be trying to stop them.
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Post by Finarvyn on Jun 3, 2018 8:08:57 GMT -6
Back to the topic ... the best way to capture the feel of early Trek isn't to use a smaller Star Fleet Technical Manual, but to abandon the Technical Manual approach to setting design and focus entirely on what sorts of adventures the players will be having, where those adventures take place, and who, or what, will be trying to stop them. I'm of mixed minds on this. (1) Using the early Trek episodes as a guideline is an interesting starting point, particularly if one looks at "Making of Star Trek" and/or "World of Star Trek" behind-the-scenes books which (for example) list off names of the original Heavy Cruisers and how one might generate Vulcan names. As has been noted, what's in and what's out is hard to define and thus is in the domain of the GM running the campaign. (2) Using the Franz-Joseph Technical Manual (and the Enterprise Blueprints from the same era) is also an interesting starting point, as it gives maps and lots of ship names, and other details which might have been glossed over in the series. Of course then you run into the potential contradictions where the series says one thing somewhere and the TM says another, and once again it's in the domain of the GM running the campaign. I remember running a "Star Trek using OD&D" style campaign in the 1970's (back when I just defaulted to OD&D as my go-to system for Star Trek, Star Wars, James Bond, or whatever -- I would just make up aliens/monsters and weapon damage and we'd play) and we had a similar discussion without ever coming to a resolution. I liked the TM's star map and used it in my game until the FEDERATION SPACE board game came out, and then FS's map became my "official" one because I liked it better and it had hexes for movement. I think that the TM also was the first source that I can recall which tried to tie Warp Factor together with the speed of light (e.g. speed = [WF^3]*c so that WF 2 was 2*2*2=8 times the speed of light, WF 3 was 3*3*3=27 times the speed of light, and so on) and this potentially messed up any hex map campaign so we disregarded it and assumed that WF 2 moved 2 hexes, WF 3 moved 3 hexes, and so on. So clearly we didn't assume that the TM was gospel canon, either. Not sure where I'm going with this, but I think that the key is to find what works for you and go with it without sweating too much over being "correct" as you go. Then, share it with us so that we can cherry pick from your ideas.
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Post by Stormcrow on Jun 3, 2018 20:12:50 GMT -6
I think that the TM also was the first source that I can recall which tried to tie Warp Factor together with the speed of light (e.g. speed = [WF^3]*c so that WF 2 was 2*2*2=8 times the speed of light, WF 3 was 3*3*3=27 times the speed of light, and so on) and this potentially messed up any hex map campaign so we disregarded it and assumed that WF 2 moved 2 hexes, WF 3 moved 3 hexes, and so on. So clearly we didn't assume that the TM was gospel canon, either. This was established in the internal Star Trek Writers/Directors Guide in 1967.
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Post by Finarvyn on Jun 4, 2018 7:28:52 GMT -6
I stand corrected. I'm pretty sure that I have a copy of the Writer's Guide but forgot that this was in there. Interesting that their math is incorrect for Warp Factor 3, as three cubed is 27 and not 24.
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Post by Stormcrow on Jun 4, 2018 9:39:08 GMT -6
What's up with that error? This isn't rocket science!
Oh, wait...
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Post by dragondaddy on Jun 5, 2018 15:09:24 GMT -6
Wow! Lovely! I'm totally using this for my Trek games as it will make it much easier to convey an authentic Star Trek experience. It is actually pretty good writing advice for working on stories from any sci-fi screenplay or game, actually.
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Post by coffee on Jun 11, 2018 23:49:53 GMT -6
See, now I'd heard of the Writer's Guide, but have never seen it in pdf before. Awesome! Thanks for that!
But I notice this is the third revision, that is, the 4th iteration of this document. It's well outside the remit of this thread. Does anybody have any earlier versions? (The original would be favorite, of course, but any earlier iteration would be nice.)
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Post by Stormcrow on Jun 12, 2018 5:17:00 GMT -6
Good grief! It's the contemporary internal memo telling writers what Star Trek is all about, and it's not fundamental enough for you?
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Post by Finarvyn on Jun 12, 2018 10:29:16 GMT -6
I notice this is the third revision, that is, the 4th iteration of this document. It's well outside the remit of this thread. Does anybody have any earlier versions? (The original would be favorite, of course, but any earlier iteration would be nice.) I have a printed copy that I got from a friend years ago. I'll see if I can find it to determine if it says which version. Good grief! It's the contemporary internal memo telling writers what Star Trek is all about, and it's not fundamental enough for you? I think that Coffee is just suggesting that there might be an even earlier version with minor differences, which could be interesting to see. Kind of like comparing Chainmail (3rd printing) to Chainmail (2nd printing) or Chainmail (1st printing). Sometimes there are changes and evolutions, sometimes not. In the same vein, I had a chance to read "Spice World" which is a pre-publication story that Frank Herbert eventually rewrote into the novel Dune. Some of the ideas were there already, some very different.
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Post by talysman on Jun 12, 2018 10:33:52 GMT -6
See, now I'd heard of the Writer's Guide, but have never seen it in pdf before. Awesome! Thanks for that! But I notice this is the third revision, that is, the 4th iteration of this document. It's well outside the remit of this thread. Does anybody have any earlier versions? (The original would be favorite, of course, but any earlier iteration would be nice.) Good grief! It's the contemporary internal memo telling writers what Star Trek is all about, and it's not fundamental enough for you? Lemme just cut you off right there. It might be fundamental enough for someone, but it's certainly well outside the topic of this thread. As I've said a couple times now, I did not start this thread to discuss official Star Trek canon, or to argue about trivial details. I started it as a continuation of geoffrey's Yeoman Rand thread to talk about the elements in the earliest episodes that I liked and wished hadn't been dropped later. It's a thread to talk about themes, or film crit, or comparison to space exploration in other media... things like that. So, on the topic of warp drive: it's definitely well beyond the purpose of this thread to argue about what the exact warp factors are or when they were firmly established in the canon, but it's well within the boundaries of the discussion to talk about whether faster warp speeds affects the feeling of ST or an ST-like setting. If starships are too fast and too plentiful, does that ruin the feeling of "points of light", tiny colonies scattered through a vast unknown? Or is it more a matter of communication times (subspace channels,) or an interaction between warp tech and subspace comm? Can you keep things under control as long as there's no instantaneous two-way communication?
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Post by Finarvyn on Jun 12, 2018 10:35:31 GMT -6
So I found something on an old hard drive. I can't recall where I got it, but it appears to be an earlier draft.
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