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Any thoughts on the old FASA system? I have a lot of the books and like them for reference, however the skill levels for beginning characters seem way to low for players. Not that players should succeed at everything, but I think that a few specialties should be pretty high, like maybe one or two skills at about 70-80%.
Thoughts?
Chello!
My experience with FASA (and it goes back to the good old 80's, as I'm sure yours does), is that every thing works out well for starting PCs UNLESS they are department heads. But I'v enever really worried about it...the players get better as they play! ;)
OTOH, I can't remember if this is in FASA or I just adapted it from another game (they tend to blend together these days and I'm too lazy to check my boxed set!), but one thing you can do is to double their percentage chances for routine use of skills. That is, outside of combat or a critical situation.
One thing I don'y like is the AP system...I just went with d10 rolls and whatever actions sounded reasonable.
Later,
Tony
The one thing that most people forget to do is add the appropriate modifiers to the skill rolls (I can't remember where the modifiers are listed ATM...must go look that up). The mods are what make the skill system work (and actually make sense), IMO.Quote:
Originally posted by nocac
Any thoughts on the old FASA system? I have a lot of the books and like them for reference, however the skill levels for beginning characters seem way to low for players. Not that players should succeed at everything, but I think that a few specialties should be pretty high, like maybe one or two skills at about 70-80%.
Thoughts?
For routine situations, non-crisis non-combat "basic use" situations, the FASA rules call for as follows: If you have a 10 you can succeed normally. For lesser skills roll a single d10. BUT you can still roll the percentile dice - if you roll higher than your skill but less than 40 a "close call" occurrs.Quote:
but one thing you can do is to double their percentage chances for routine use of skills. That is, outside of combat or a critical situation.
Welcome to the club dude![SIZE=4][FONT=century gothic][COLOR=deeppink]:D
And 40 or greater in a skill is considered professional. No roll is required for routine use.Quote:
Originally posted by Diamond
For routine situations, non-crisis non-combat "basic use" situations, the FASA rules call for as follows: If you have a 10 you can succeed normally. For lesser skills roll a single d10. BUT you can still roll the percentile dice - if you roll higher than your skill but less than 40 a "close call" occurrs.
I really liked the FASA system. I liked the character development rules, I liked the skills and skill progression. If this game were still being produced today (i.e. there were a large enough pool of players in my area), I would definitely be using this for tabletop.
It lacks a real "Next Gen" component (yeah that Officers Manual or whatever but I never got it because it looked practically useless) and there was no way to create Non-Commissioned officers in the book (although there was an article from Challenge magazine that I used for that) but those are not terribly problematic to deal with. I like the TOS/Movie era that the game covers and other than NPCs, the NCO issue rarely comes up.
Yeah I'm with Pub on this one. Minus the AP system FASA trek was a simple to use and "star trekish" enough system. I ran 2 successfull Klingon games with it and worked fine. Only lacking feature was the tactical board game was great on it's own but got a little too"crunchie" with pc's on board.
Really? After a couple games I felt I worked just fine. Sure, another level of stuff to deal with though. ;)Quote:
Originally posted by IceGiant
Only lacking feature was the tactical board game was great on it's own but got a little too"crunchie" with pc's on board.
I always liked the RPG itself. Quite a change from most other games of the day. I especially liked the development/tours of duty system. Back in the '80s I always named my characters after bass players -- say hello to Capt. Alex Lifeson :D
The FASA Star Trek game was the first roleplaying game I ever played or ran. That's right...I wasn't a product of D&D, *I* was a product of STAR TREK! :D
I liked the system a lot. Percentile was my favorite type of system for a long time. I still actually like it over something like the usage of a single die roll (like a D20 or something).
The skills were great, with lots of variety and a good feel for Star Trek officers. As was mentioned, it didn't do a very good job of providing a suitable generation of enlisted characters, but for officers it was great! With that said, I ended up playing Star Trek while in college and I gamed with some guys that had drastically expanded the character generation. When you were done making a character with their generation system, you really KNEW your character. It wasn't quick, by any means, but it was neat and worked flawlessly with the game system.
The biggest thing I loved about the FASA Star Trek was the depth of information they provided on everything. I loved their Klingon and Romulan supplements. I loved their ship manuals. Even if I didn't play the Star Trek 3: Tactical Combat Simulator game that much, the ships created for it were a wonderful thing to throw into the games for players to either fight against, fly in, or simply see at port or in space.
I picked up another version of Star Trek (can't remember the name of the company that put it out...it was the one before Coda, I think) but it didn't really do it for me like the FASA Trek did.
All in all, the game rocked!
I've purchased...
FASA
ICON
CODA
PD
...and even...something called STARFLEET VOYAGES...
Still nothing like FASA to me. I've used the others for story ideas and the tweaking of a chart here or there, but as a GM...it's still FASA. Not knocking the others, I'm just more comfortable with FASA.
Starfleet Voyages... wow, that brings back memories! Michael Kurtick designed a number of games back in the late 1970s, including Star Patrol (published by Gamescience)... which served as the basis for his later Star Trek: Adventure Gaming in the Final Frontier for Heritage. Starfleet Voyages was his Wrath of Khan-inspired treatment of the Trek idiom, although I recall the system differing from his earlier efforts.
Yes, I still use Starfleet Voyages for: 1) random space encounters, 2) generating star systems and sectors on the fly, 3) the algebraic warp travel time system, and 4) the random development of alien species. Its system is much closer to D&D than his other attempts. Every once in a while, I check to see if anyone is selling their old system on EBay...never seen one for sale. RaconteurX, you're the only other person I've known who even knew what I was talking about. :(
Since it came out about the same time (mid-1980s) as FASA's Star Trek: The Role Playing Game, I purchased both. Fell in love with the FASA system, and filled in the blanks with Starfleet Voyages...until LUG and Decipher came out to fill the rest.:cool:
I've been a FASA guy since the '80's. I still use it, granted only the 1st ed., but I ignore quite a bit of the system. The AP system just had to go. I don't do a lot of firefights, but when I do, we as a group bumble our way through it. The starship combat system had to go, too. Move this counter, move that one, add this, subtract that, fraction this, fraction that--opportunity action--, all that just made a combat slow and unwieldly (one combat may take an entire session--or more!). Then God forbid if your character dies-you'll need an entire session o roll up another one! Then all the supplements that FASA put out contained so many inconsistencies and changes that you spend a great deal of time figuring out which ones use and which to ignore. Hmm..perhaps I should reconsider my position about what system I should use...
To its credit, the 1st ed rules are fairly complete and only about 130 pages, which is nice when you get players who are unfamiliar with the game or the setting.
http://www.geocities.com/ufc465537/ufc465537.html