Tell Me About FASA Star Trek

[vladtolenkov]

I've been curious about the old FASA Star Trek game as I've been toying with the idea of picking one up. I've fond memories of playing the game in the early nineties in a short campaign run by a friend of mine (we went to that 20th century Roman planet among other things).

I don't really remember much about the rules or the particulars of the boxed set we played. We did get into some starship combat, but it was very narrative-oriented and we didn't break out a hex-grid or anything like that. Excepting Mekton Zeta it is the best space combat thing I've ever done in an rpg. However, I'm not sure we were using the starship combat rules from the game or was it something our GM just put together??

Thoughts, opinions, and stories about the game would be great.

[vladtolenkov]

Fin,

Please move this to the Science Fiction section! I'm not sure what happened as I thought that's where I was posting this!

[vladtolenkov]

Thanks!

[coffee]

One of the cool things about the game was the way you'd create your character with his full service history. It would be possible that you would have served with another player character/officer previously in your career. So I enjoyed.

One seriously bad thing about the game was that it used the standard FASA "Action Point" system on a square grid for combat. (I pretty much ignored that when I ran it, because it was really too awful to use.) But it should be pretty easy to graft another combat system on, if you want a lot of fighting. We did more problem solving and roleplaying than fighting, but the series was action/adventure, so fights can and will happen...

Anyway, that's what I recall.

[vladtolenkov]

I've got the FASA Doctor Who roleplaying game, and it has a similar system for combat involving a grid, action points, and lots of modifiers. The Doctor Who game uses an "Interaction Matrix" to resolve all of the Skill and Combat checks in the game (it was the mid-eighties so that universal chart fever was in full bloom).

The Star Trek game just uses percentiles doesn't it? I suppose you could do away with the grid and run it something like Basic Roleplaying.

[coffee]

I think it just uses percentiles, yes, but I'm not sure.

If I were going to run it again, I'd use it as a sourcebook and convert the whole thing over to BRP.

[thorswulf]

I played a lot of this with my old roomies "The Bachelors of the Apocalypse". We never bothered with the action points, just winged it with sensible modifiers. We had a lot of fun in the mirror universe.

[vladtolenkov]

I'm still curious about starship combat. What sort of system do they include in the basic game? Or is it left out entirely?

The starship combat game that comes with deluxe version (and which was sold seperately)--how good is it? Does it come off feeling like a seperate starship miniatures game? Or is it more narrative? Does it feel like the sort of starship combat we see in the original series and Wrath of Khan?

[Alex]

I haven't played the RPG version, but the seperate product I have and it was developed from expanding the RPG version. It is unique in that it involves each of the PCs (assuming they are bridge officers and department heads that hang out on the bridge during emergencies as you'd see in TOS) in the rolling and bookkeeping. However, as Star Trek starship combat it fails on pretty much every level for me. The battles that result are nothing like any of the TV or theatrical battles we witness. The game is slow, cumbersome, and is an exercise in Power Allocation accounting that would keep a CPA smiling. The mechanics are such that the only tactic is to creep into weapons range and sit still with shields at full and weapons at full, and rely on being able to deliver more damage per turn than your enemy. In my opinion it is a very unsatisfying game. It is much like Starfleet Battles but even LESS tactical. (And it was my only starship combat game from age 10 to 30, so until I had exposure to other options I was in favor of it despite the shortcomings. Perhaps if you play up the RPG element and downplay the starship combat mechanics it is more rewarding.)

[Thorulfr]

Aug 31, 2010 12:50:56 GMT -6 vladtolenkov said:

The Star Trek game just uses percentiles doesn't it? I suppose you could do away with the grid and run it something like Basic Roleplaying.

It has been many years, but if I recall correctly, it used a modified percentile system. For routine tasks, you just rolled 1d10; if your skill was over 10, you succeeded automatically.
For non-routine tasks, however, you rolled percentiles.

It was not uncommon to see a skill level of 10 or less. In NPCs, this was frequently used to humorous effect. (For example, Lt. "I'll take you home again, Kathleen" Riley had a Singing skill of 02.)

Ship combat used an interesting mechanic to simulate the 'real time' "fog or war": Each player had a duty - there was the captain, the Engineering officer, the helmsman, the weapons officer, etc. Each player then had a "board" - a sheet of paper with various tracks on it, and you put markers on them to indicate the state of various ship's systems.
At the start of the turn, the captain had a very short amount of time to give orders to the crew, and then each player would set their boards accordingly. The engineer had only so many points of power that could be allocated to the different systems, so they would have to be divvied up - he then told the other players how many points they had to play with. Since I believe the captain couldn't give micromanaged orders ("OK, we have 10 points, so I want 5 to go to shields, 2 to maneuver, and 3 to weapons..."), the Engineer was a very important role (Captain: "More power to the shields" Engineer: "I'm giving it all I can, cap'tn..."
The helmsman actually moves the miniature, the weapons officer makes the targeting decisions on the weapons and rolls to hit, etc.
All in all, it gave all the players something important to do during the combat, and really emphasized the cooperative nature of role-playing games. The few times we played it, it was quite enjoyable, but the games we played were not ship combat-heavy.

[vladtolenkov]

Alex, Thorulfr: That's very helpful guys. One of my players was dubious about the combat because he couldn't imagine how it everyone would be involved. That gives me a much better idea.

When I get some money I'll probably pick up a copy of the basic game on ebay as my curiosity is sufficiently piqued.

[coffee]

The thing that I really remember about the book was that it fell apart in my hands when I first read it. I ended up sticking the pages in page protectors and sticking them in a 3-ring binder. I still have it, but I don't know where the rest of the stuff in the box is (think I still have the box somewhere.)

Hope that doesn't happen with your set.

[Alex]

I don't know how different my version is from the original. I only own FASA's Star Trek III Starship Combat Roleplaying Game. This is clearly a tabletop battle game first, with nods to integration into the main RPG in the last chapter, but I skimmed the FASA RPG once and it looked like the same system, just top-down vs my version's bottom up (ie, they only presented what was in the last chapter of my game box, but mechanically it looks similar).

Interesting, Thorulfr. I hadn't considered it in that light. The system might be more interesting if played in that way, where no one player can control the ship...to min/max the points (power, move, weapons, shields). The min/max-ability of the tabletop version is what turned me off after three or four scenarios.

[malchya]

I really enjoyed this one. I still have the 1st edition rules and the STII:SSTCS. I've played it many times both as a table top war game and as a role playing game. If you have a player in the center seat who doesn't micromanage, then it can flow amazingly and even feel as you're really on the bridge of a starship. If your captain does micromanage, though, it devolves into an endless wrangle over who shot John.

The character generation rules are still my favourite part of the game. I loved creating an entire career for a character complete with ups and downs along the way. I added the decoration rules from Space Opera which allowed the characters to have a chest full of fruit salad as well.

Sad admission time: I once rolled up complete characters for all 186 non player officers and ratings aboard the Nelson class scout Capstick....I had much more time on my hands and no life whatsoever.....