Where has all the Glory gone...?

I'm currently converting this old FASA adventure for a convention to the LUG rules. Haven't played it before but it seems to be a real great adventure so far. I was wondering if anyone around has played it and can share his experience with it?!

Furthermore I'm looking for ideas how to convert stats for the PC/NPC write-ups and the star ships. I would rather make up all characters anew but this is quite a herculean effort. The same goes for the ships.

Does anyone know if there are already LUG or Spacedock stats for the Federation Chandley class and the Romulan Stormbirds of TOS era?

For any comments I would be very thankful!

Best reagards,
Storm

While I run Trek with the Coda rules, my limited ICON roleplaying experience indicates to me that character rules (in play if not in generation) are very similar. And having recently run the FASA module Decision at Midnight I have been working on a character conversion model. I don't know if anyone else has attempted this but here's what I've come up with so far.

Although the names have changed, the FASA stats are fairly well represented in Coda:

Strength=Strength
Endurance=Vitality
Intelligence=Intellect
Dexterity=Agility
Charisma=Presence
Psi=Psi

The only clunker is the FASA Luck stat, but since the other six are a perfect match, lets just say Luck=Perception.

Now, a max score in Coda is a 12 (before species modifiers) and FASA uses a percentile system. So by dividing the FASA score by 8.3(repeating), you get an approximation of the Coda equivalent.

For the skills, I just find as close a descriptor match as I can. Rather than use the stat formula, since some of the FASA skills are god-awful low in terms of rating, I just divide by 10 and follow the rounding rule to determine the ranks. For example, a FASA skill of Starship Helm Operations 56 translates to a Coda skill of System Operations (helm or flight control) 6. This is just the ranks, I then apply attribute and Edge modifiers.

Its not perfect, but its workable and so far I've had no problems with it. Again, I know that you're not using Coda but I hope this helps out.

Hey Mr. Carlson!

Thanks for the reply. ICON works in ways quite differently from CODA, at least, as you said, regarding character creation, though it's clearly visible that the one evolved from the other.
Nevertheless your hints made me think and I guess I can come up with something relatively easy to convert characters according to your idea. A good thing in ICON is that Skill lvls are not that mightily important so a rough conversion is fine in any case. It's more a question of specializations and these can be added easily.

So, for that, already thank you very much!

How did you convert the ships in Decision at Midnight? I do have this adventure also but can't remember it clearly. There are ships in there aren't they?! What would ST be without ships...?!

How did your players respond to an adventure written and printed in the 80' ? Did they like it? I'm a big fan of the old FASA stuff since it's a great read and it's so damned crammed full of information that you immediately have the feeling the universe springs to life. S.th. I rarely experience with todays games that mostly lack "depth".
And yet I'm not sure that todays players, used to easy-peasy action-filled adventures are up to the challenge of playing games of complicated intrigue, information gathering and moral dilemmas - things very important to "a good game" in my humble opinion.

So how did your players receive the adventure? Did they like it?

Glad to help out Storm. Especially since there is no official "living" Trek rpg, we the fans must keep the fire burning.

Since you are using the ICON rules, I don't know how helpful my ship conversions will be, because Coda and ICON seem very different animals when it comes to ship design and combat. But I have been amassing fleets of old FASA ships in the Coda system by borrowing a few key statistics: the ships' size and crew complement. The starship construction rules in Coda are a breeze, easy and fun in a way I've not seen since West End Games' version of Star Wars 2nd ed. I do try to stay as close to source material as possible in regards to weapons, speed, shuttle loadout, separation systems and cloaking but I do tweak here and there.

The ships are posted on the Crimson Hand Gamers website, one of my groups which has a website (the only one actually). The link is in my sig line.

Access to the downloads section does require registering at the site, but Patrick Goodman, Coda Trek supporter and all around great guy mirrors the downloads on his site that does not require registry and is found here. Mr. Goodman is very diligent at keeping up to date with my postings on the CHG. The only ship class featured in Decision at Midnight that is not already up on Mr. Goodman's site is the Klingon D-18 Klingon destroyer, and it will be hitting the interwebs soon. (As a side note, the Loknar-class I have posted up is a tv era TOS version, and the players are currently in the movie era at 2278. I have a thing about my online offerings needing a picture).

I don't know that the dilemma is with "todays" gamers, because of the three groups I am currently a member of, all of them embrace role-playing over hack and slash, kill and collect which as you point out is needed to run a truly "Trek" game. Thats not a slam on any particular game or game system, but some games and settings do require more effort on the players' part.

The players in the group who recently ran through Decision at Midnight had a great time. I take it as a compliment when the players are expressing eagerness to play again at 1 AM after a 5 and 1/2 hour-long session. I was worried because I went through the module in a bit of a rush; I will not be able to game at all in this, my last semester of undergrad work so I didn't want to leave that long of a cliffhanger.

Somewhere in all this, I've got a (very) rough FASA-to-CODA skill conversion guide I got somewhere ages and ages ago, K.G. I dunno how accurate it is, but I could email you a copy if you liked.

Then you'd have to work out how to backward-engineer it to get to ICON....

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Originally Posted by PGoodman13

Somewhere in all this, I've got a (very) rough FASA-to-CODA skill conversion guide I got somewhere ages and ages ago, K.G. I dunno how accurate it is, but I could email you a copy if you liked.

Then you'd have to work out how to backward-engineer it to get to ICON....

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That would be great! Look forward to seeing them.

Since I do own the CODA stuff also and are quite familiar with it I would be interested in this conversion sheet also so I might salvage it for some ideas on converting FASA to ICON. If that's ok for you PG?

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Glad to help out Storm. Especially since there is no official "living" Trek rpg, we the fans must keep the fire burning.

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Thanks again...and that is actually what I'm trying to do over here in germany. This year there are several events planned for the "bigger" conventions - which are nothing compared to the ones in the states anyway.
There is a LARP-group based in Cologne who have a beautiful Enterprise-D mock-up. They will be a t some of the conventions and we will run ST rpg games in tandem to their presentation. All stylish in uniforms and with props and stuff.
I'll post pictures when we are through with it.

And btw. thanks again for compiling all that ship data. I might even use them "as is" and just use ship combat ec. from CODA together with the rest of ICON. But I haven't decided that yet.

The Old Star Wars was great fun indeed. I still have most of the books on my shelf. There are just two or three that I really miss like the Spec Ops for example.
Unfortunately their "ship construction" rules have never been very detailed so the only thing you could most probably do was modifying existing ships with the rules for jury rigging and upgrading. Great game! Some of my best gaming-memories are tied to WEG Star Wars.

I've got a relatively comprehensive conversion document on my site for characters: http://coldnorth.com/owen/game/start...se/convert.htm - It has a full walkthrough using a FASA character.

Conversion of ships is dirt simple. The biggest task is adapting the Warp Factors from WF^3.3 to WF^3, but that's just high school math, easy with a modern calculator.

And here I go, trying to help reinvent the wheel....

Try making the wheel triangular, that way there's one less bump than the square wheel. :p

One difference between FASA and CODA is that in FASA, a attribute of 40 is considered human average, and Starfleet characters are designed to be a cut above average people. So a 40 in FASA would equal a 7 in CODA.

In a similar vein, skills in FASA have proficiency levels, with higher proficiency level meaning fewer skills rolls being required. A 40 skill in FASA is the minimum proficiency level and what characters start off with in their main brach skill. In CODA , characters start off with +4 in their branch skills. So a FASA skill of 40 is equivalent to a +4 in CODA.


Factoring in for these differences, are the following two charts:

Attributes
FASA: CODA
01-08: 2
09-16: 3
27-23: 4
24-31: 5
32-39: 6
40-50: 7
51-62: 8
63-74: 9
75-86: 10
87-95: 11
96-100:12

Skills
FASA: CODA
0-9*: 0 (specialty)
10-19: 1
20-29: 2
30-39: 3
40-49: 4
50-59: 5
60-69: 6
70-79: 7
80-84: 8
95-90: 9
91-95: 10
96-98: 11
99-100 12


* A semi-skilled character is treated as having no ranks in the skill, but some specialty of the skill.

Owen - thanks for the link! It's great!!! Especially with your convertion-walk through. Thank you very much!!!

Since I'm not sure that you're cruisin' the Coda forum, Storm, I thought I'd let you know that the Klingon D-18 Gull-class destroyer is up on my group site, probably soon to appear on PGoodman's Coda Trek support site.

Thanks for the info K.G.! I'll check it out as soon as it's on PG's website. The convention is still a couple of month away so there is plenty of time for preparation and, as it seems, quite a lot to do.

I just read the last couple of paragraphs of the adventure again and noticed that the authors envisioned a play-time somewhere between 4 to 10 hours. I almost fell from my chair, laughing! In most gaming groups, considering my experience, this adventure would definitely take somewhere between 2-4 sessions...ending most probably with a total loss with all hands on board. VERY dangerous! But after all it's the RMZ, isn't it?

So it's a great adventure for a three day convention. :D

It's a good scenario. I ran it way back in the day & it formed the 'framework' for most of my FASA Movie-era campaign (we wanted to steer clear of Project Genesis. Way clear)

This was back when the Klingons were the sneaky & treacherous foes and the Romulans... well, they hadn't been touched on since TOS.
Neutral Zone tours were always edgy. I had a tape set up to play 'now hear this... now hear this... deck six will remain at yellow alert...' & similar stuff. Really played up the Cold War feel.:D

I have bad memories about this one. The GM ran it kind of strangely, with the "Commodore" doing a routine inspect of a ship, with a PC captain (me).

During the "crisis" the NPC took command. Things went badly, in part because the GM ran the man as very cagey. Practically all of his behavior was something that could be rationalized.

What didn't help was that the guy playing our Chief Medical Officer wouldn't take a stand on the Commodore's mental state. Since the ship's doctor wasn't willing to go out on a limb and state that the Commodore was unfit for command, it make it all but impossible for anyone else to relieve him of command.

In the end, as acting XO, I had to back the crackpot during the mutiny, until he went catatonic and left me in charge to get us all out of dodge.

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Originally Posted by Nuclear Fridge

It's a good scenario. I ran it way back in the day & it formed the 'framework' for most of my FASA Movie-era campaign (we wanted to steer clear of Project Genesis. Way clear)

This was back when the Klingons were the sneaky & treacherous foes and the Romulans... well, they hadn't been touched on since TOS.
Neutral Zone tours were always edgy. I had a tape set up to play 'now hear this... now hear this... deck six will remain at yellow alert...' & similar stuff. Really played up the Cold War feel.:D

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Yeah, that module is really more of a campaign starter kit than a mere adventure module. When the game picks up again I will definitely be spending some campaign time along the neutral zone.

Even if the Romlulans are hardly visible at all in Movie-TOS (first appear in 5 I believe), the FASA ships were just too cool not be be put into play.

Kudos on an awesome game prop with the recordings.

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Originally Posted by tonyg

I have bad memories about this one. The GM ran it kind of strangely, with the "Commodore" doing a routine inspect of a ship, with a PC captain (me).

During the "crisis" the NPC took command. Things went badly, in part because the GM ran the man as very cagey. Practically all of his behavior was something that could be rationalized.

What didn't help was that the guy playing our Chief Medical Officer wouldn't take a stand on the Commodore's mental state. Since the ship's doctor wasn't willing to go out on a limb and state that the Commodore was unfit for command, it make it all but impossible for anyone else to relieve him of command.

In the end, as acting XO, I had to back the crackpot during the mutiny, until he went catatonic and left me in charge to get us all out of dodge.

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My Crew were not that advanced in rank yet; the aspiring Captain was a Lt. (spent advancement picks after adventure to bump to Lt. Comm. as he is now the XO). The group really handled it well. I played the Regulan/Caitian XO as competent but a little blindly loyal and so the players had to work to convince her to relieve the Captain. Good times, great roleplaying.

I have the opposite problem with my player who is the medical officer. He's just itching to relieve someone of command. I have to remind him on a regular basis that if a board of inquiry finds him abusing his authority as medical officer, he'll probably end up as a nurse in a Tellarite STD clinic.

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Originally Posted by K.G. Carlson

My Crew were not that advanced in rank yet; the aspiring Captain was a Lt. (spent advancement picks after adventure to bump to Lt. Comm. as he is now the XO). The group really handled it well. I played the Regulan/Caitian XO as competent but a little blindly loyal and so the players had to work to convince her to relieve the Captain. Good times, great roleplaying.

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In all fairness to the adventure, I think most of our problems were caused by the GM. Oh, and I'm definitely referring to Decision at Midnight, in case there was any doubt.
For one thing, he choose it as the opening adventure for a campaign. Not exactly a great way to bond a group of PCs together.

His homemade follow up adventure went even worse.

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Originally Posted by K.G. Carlson

I have the opposite problem with my player who is the medical officer. He's just itching to relieve someone of command. I have to remind him on a regular basis that if a board of inquiry finds him abusing his authority as medical officer, he'll probably end up as a nurse in a Tellarite STD clinic.

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In our group, the Medical Officer was a Caitian, and Vellicorp's Catian aide de Camp was using threats to keep the PC from acting. Had the PC Doc brought this out in the open, the rest of us could have acted. I'd had thrown the other Caitian in the brigand get an investigation under way.

My Security Chief was itching to remove the Commodore of command, but I kept reigning him in. I thought that any board of inquiry would fry us if we removed the man under grounds of mental incompetence without the support of the medical officer. I had visions of the Caine Mutiny, with the council for the defense asking about my qualifications in psychiatry.

In the end, most of us wound up defending the nutcase during the mutiny. It ended up causing bad blood between some of the characters (not the players), and split up the crew.

I guess I only "technically" used the Decision at Midnight as a campaign starter. I've found that running a Starfleet Academy mini-campaign when most or all of a group are new to Coda Trek works really well, and the background info in the module stated that the PCs had gone to the Academy together and this was the first time they'd reunited since. I had the players cook up their missing six years of backstory, which yielded some intersesting nuggets for future plot developments. So for my group it was more a campaign interrupted start.

When next we play they'll be shipping out about 4 months later game time, after the hearing for Capt Vellacora is concluded and he's off to the nuthouse.

Decision at Midnight was a sore point for me and my player group back then. Didn't help matters that one guy 'knew' the setting better than I did and 'Knew' the rules better than I did... He really wanted to unseat Vellacora.

I still shudder at his idea of mounting 'one shot' photon torpedo pods on the outside of a destroyer's hull.:eek:

Given 20-some years experience in gaming and real life, I now must say that Decision ought to be run for mature & sensible players, not ubergeek munchkins on a Rule The Universe kick...

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Originally Posted by K.G. Carlson

I guess I only "technically" used the Decision at Midnight as a campaign starter. I've found that running a Starfleet Academy mini-campaign when most or all of a group are new to Coda Trek works really well, and the background info in the module stated that the PCs had gone to the Academy together and this was the first time they'd reunited since. I had the players cook up their missing six years of backstory, which yielded some intersesting nuggets for future plot developments. So for my group it was more a campaign interrupted start.

When next we play they'll be shipping out about 4 months later game time, after the hearing for Capt Vellacora is concluded and he's off to the nuthouse.

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Oh, I think it can work. I just note that it didn't work for us, especially the way it was handled. Since the GM was trying to force the PCs onto different sides during the mutiny, it had the end result of splitting the group. My PC (the Captain in our group, although he got bumped down to XO when Commodore Vellacore assumed command during the crisis) didn't want anything to do with the multinous PCs. It's one thing when some crewman mutinies, but something else when your department heads turn against you.

The GM didn't expect that, and was surprised by how things turned out. He also ran things very heavy handed, and after taking control of the ship away from me on every mission, he was stunned when my character resigned from Starfleet.

His thinking was that if the "brass" didn't want to give him a command, why didn't they just keep him as a Commander? Likewise, if the GM wanted to run the ship, he should have wrote up a NPC Captain.

I see what you mean. And yes, playing the PCs against each other is tricky at best, better avoided all together.

Also, I see your point regarding the NPC takeover. Why taunt you with your own command if you're going to be co-opted from the start?

Bummer experience. Good to see you're still Trekkin' even after all that.

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Originally Posted by tonyg

Oh, I think it can work. I just note that it didn't work for us, especially the way it was handled. Since the GM was trying to force the PCs onto different sides during the mutiny, it had the end result of splitting the group. My PC (the Captain in our group, although he got bumped down to XO when Commodore Vellacore assumed command during the crisis) didn't want anything to do with the multinous PCs. It's one thing when some crewman mutinies, but something else when your department heads turn against you.

The GM didn't expect that, and was surprised by how things turned out. He also ran things very heavy handed, and after taking control of the ship away from me on every mission, he was stunned when my character resigned from Starfleet.

His thinking was that if the "brass" didn't want to give him a command, why didn't they just keep him as a Commander? Likewise, if the GM wanted to run the ship, he should have wrote up a NPC Captain.

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Ouch. :( That couldn't have been any fun to endure.

When I was GM'ing my FASA Movies campaign, I had a guy playing the Captain who had the 'Janeway DNA'. He had to be involved in everything that went on aboard ship - if not directing it hands-on. Sensor scans, helm duties, you name it.
It got so bad my brother - playing the XO - began to blue-book notes to me during play that he was off below decks to do some 'cargo-pod spotting'. Captain Amazing even tried to tell the CMO her job regarding a badly-injured diplomat she was treating.
I - as the CMO - tore him a new hole.

Things got even worse when we began a TNG campaign, but that's a tale for another day.:rolleyes:

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Originally Posted by K.G. Carlson

I see what you mean. And yes, playing the PCs against each other is tricky at best, better avoided all together.

Also, I see your point regarding the NPC takeover. Why taunt you with your own command if you're going to be co-opted from the start?

Bummer experience. Good to see you're still Trekkin' even after all that.

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The end result was positive.

The GM was impressed with my roleplaying, as I had told him that I was familar with the adventure, and then I ended up being "Commodore Crazy's" biggest supporter.

And the other players were much more appropriative of my GMing skills, as I tended to give them the freedom to do themselves in rather than do if for them.

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Originally Posted by Nuclear Fridge

When I was GM'ing my FASA Movies campaign, I had a guy playing the Captain who had the 'Janeway DNA'. He had to be involved in everything that went on aboard ship - if not directing it hands-on. Sensor scans, helm duties, you name it.
It got so bad my brother - playing the XO - began to blue-book notes to me during play that he was off below decks to do some 'cargo-pod spotting'. Captain Amazing even tried to tell the CMO her job regarding a badly-injured diplomat she was treating.
I - as the CMO - tore him a new hole

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That's one problem I didn't have. Generally most of my players used to resent the Captain since they were used to RPGs without a chain of command. So whenever the Capt. gave an order the other PCs felt slighted. Now whenever he asked people for their advice or suggestions, you could hear a pin drop, but that didn't matter.

This held until one day the Capt. let the rest of the PCs beam down to a alien planet while he stayed on the ship, where he belonged. While on the planet, the players developed a base case of "I've got that skill" and wasted a hour while the Doctor examined the weapons, the communication officer checked out the bodies in the cryo chambers, the Helmsman mucked around with the Antimatter generators, the Engineer was going over the computers, and the Science Officer played with the communications system.and so on, with no one making any headway (the difference between having the skill, and having it at a useful level).:p

Finally, the Science Officer got the comm system working, and gave a status report to the PC captain, who was more that slightly annoyed to find out that everyone was wandering around like idiots pressing buttons at random because they had 10% in a skill. The Captain promptly beamed down and reassigned everyone to operate the systems that they were actually trained at. PC then said, "You see, that's why I'm here. The Captain doesn't get to do anything, but at least he makes sure that something does get done, by making sure that the right character attempts it."

After that, the players had fewer problems with a Captain telling them what to do. :D

That does pop up now and then. No matter how much a GM 'hints', players sometimes go off on such a tangent you'd think they were being mind-controlled.:D