FASA Star Trek

who used to play the FASA Star Trek RPG? What did you like about it- what did you dislike about it?

go!

gads, it was a clunky system. character creation was the most fun about it. i still prefer coda

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I always thought it was pretty cool. A service path system that didn't get you killed during generation like that other sci-fi game (*cough*Traveller*cough*). Percentiles are easy and I know other people don't like it, but I enjoyed the combat/movement system.

As far as the Tactical Combat Simulator, heck, I still play it. It only took a few patches to fill in some holes (like tractor beams), and off you go.

-- Daniel

Man, I loved FASA at the time. I grew up with that game, and played it for years and years. :) Of course, I went with the better systems as they came along (first Icon, now Coda...never liked SFB/PD), but I still have my books and pull them out from time-to-time.

I like the character creation part, albeit geared toward making an officer of the Federation Starfleet, or Klingon Defense Force (in the Klingon supplements).

My dislike? The three phases per turn in the Combat Simulator.

I liked the character creation and starship combat (detailed but faster and more 'cinematic' than Starfleet Battles.) With the rule supplements, you could make Klingons, Orions, Romulans, and Civilian trader/explorers. I wish Paramount had given it real support, especially when TNG came out. We could be playing FASATrek 3rd edition by now. Sigh. I always had alot of fun with that game.

I prefered FASA to Icon -- then again, I always knew I was in the minority. ;) I never really liked the "6 as Max" for stats level. Gradations and shadings all went away. The personal combat felt a bit odd at first, but I quickly grew to love it as it felt very much like TOS combat. I LOVED the space combat! The biggest problem I had with the game were the "uber-races" created in some of the later supplements.

FASA's Character Generation system had a lot of room for tweaking. Equally, despite the trend in rpgs, I like having some random elements in creation process. As I have seen far too often in this world, some people get the breaks, some don't.

I like the CODA system, no problem there, but there are a lot of changes I made for my (short-lived) game to fit the tastes of both myself and my players.

Actually I had someone ask me the other day if I would like to be in a game that actually used the FASA rules. I may take him up on it. :)

Chello!

Loved it and grew up on it also. Only real problem was with the AP system for movement and actions in combat.

Still the only ST RPG to print a Klingon supplement (and it had 2 editions-both of which I have!).

Tony

"Action Points..." *shudder*

Loved chargen, however. Lobbied to mimic it in Coda but got shot down. :)

Actually, I found FASA to be the easiest of all the Trek games to run and ran multiple campaigns for years. System wise I think it's still my favorite.
My main complaint with FASA was with the creative people working on it. AFter a while the line slipped into a "Men's Adventure/Espionage novel" mode. All the stories were covert ops and counter-espionage blah blah blah. Creeping Crypto-Fascism was FASA's worst problem in general. (don't get me started).
Their philosophical excesses polluted the Trek line and functionally killed it. Pity.
I love the attitudes of the ICON Trek and had a great trust for the personalities behind it. They knew what "Trek" was supposed to be, demmit!
CODA? bleh.
CODA ain't done nothin' yet to win my heart.

FASA gave us our first Klingons games, Romulan characters, even a whole suppliment on Orions! (what nifty fun! Still prefer parts of that background to anything else done on the Orions. What little there's ever been since...) The later suppliments were vastly inferior to the earlier ones, but overall, it's probably the most complete and easiest to run Trek system ever published.

I shed a tear for it, I do.

Never cared for it. My players and I rapidly created our own homebrew based off it, then never opened the books again. Once LUG and CODA replaced it, I sold all the FASA stuff off.

For some odd reason, I still have the TNG First season sourcebook. Need to do something with that.

How much are you selling for the TNG First Season Sourcebook?

1st RPG i ever Gm'ed, Loved Character creation and Ship Combat (And Ship design system), Rules were ok, character advancement was awful, AP's sucked. Great backround material!

Loved some of the species they created and map of the Federation they created

FASA-Trek is one of the games I suspect I got the most mileage out of in the 80's - we used to play that a lot. I was a huge fan of it. I keep thinking I should sell my old stuff but I can never bear parting with it...

Like others, I was very fond of character generation. I tended to ignore APs, though I admit I prefer them to the attack action, full-round actions, and 5-foot steps of D&D 3E. ;)

My only beefs with the system were...
- During character generation, very hard to gain new skills outside your speciality - you tended to only improve
- No rules for unskilled or default use of skills


I also liked the FASA incarnation of Doctor Who - nice simple game, easy to play.

I loved FASA Trek when it was out. Back then I thought it was one of the coolest game systems out there.

Recently I revisited the old rulebooks and realized that either my system tastes had changed or that the game hadn't grown old gracefully. Either way, FASA Trek no longer holds the same level of esteem it once did. Its alright but not something I would play anymore.

I like CODA and Icon better, although I think that FASA still has the coolest character creation system of the three.

I have lots of fond memories associated with the FASA game. It introduced me to gaming in general. It arrived at a time when what little trek merchandise existed was sold out of the Starlog classifieds. The creators did a great job and they still have a lot to offer in the way of cool game stuff.

I remember tearing the Rebels off my Hoth battle diarama (still can't believe I did that) and painting their shirts red, blue, and gold so I could use them on the 15mm deck plans, hehe.

Ah, the memories, the memories !

Character generation was a pain, but it allowed you to write your background as you went along. AP´s were never used the way they should be, and I used a method of averaging skills and attributes to get some defaults. Some people in my groups actually thought that was an official rule :)

The only larp I´ve ever enjoyed was played using FASA Trek.

I still use many of the concepts of the game, like the Triangle Zone - but others like the Fusion Klingons and Imperial Klingons were just lame.

Never developed a taste for Prime Directive (which was a rather odd game, IMO) and I think ICON was the best incarnation of all Trek rpgs. It has it´s bugs, like all others, but they were very manageable.

My favorite Star Trek RPG system. Had both 1st & 2nd editions.(preferred 2nd & still use it.) Had losts of trouble finding anything new on the net for it.Never have gotten to like ICON or CODA ,but I'm trying w/ CODA.(I'm working on a campagin using CODA if I can get my players to give the system a try.) I found a link off of TERKRPG to a site run by Paddy Sinclair who put out a cool update of the charaGen rules. really takes into account the fact that Star Fleet officers are heavyly cross-trained. It works best for TNG+ games (Which is where most of my games take place now.) I'm slowly implementing it in my campagins.Still looking for any & all things I can fine for FASA Star Trek rules updates & ship write ups.

How did I miss this the first time around?

I loved FASA, at the time, now I think I prefer much more streamlined systems.

I felt that the basic game captured the flavor and action of the Original Series but, as time went, it became far too militaristic in its tone. ("We come in peace. Shoot to kill. Shoot to kill.") The fan stuff leaned even more in that direction.

When FASA's Next Generation sourcebook came out, it just didn't feel right and didn't capture the tone of the new series. I feel that FASA lost the license at just the right time.

I feel had the TNG era never come to be the FASAverse would have continued on just nicely :)

To this day it remains what I know Trek as first, before I became a Treker :) I started playing having only seen TMP when it came out and Star Trek II, had missed III

Of course I had seen the TOS show, but not so much a fan as I was getting off on staying up late to watch it on CBC :)

Wasn't FASA Trek the 2nd most popular RPG after D and D?

by the way, I loved FASA and stuck with it up till a year and half ago. I left it for CODA mainly because there was no support for FASA on the web or anywhere else. I think i made the right move though ;). But anyhow, i'm going to use some of the starship counters for CODA game and FASA had some pretty tight ships excpet for the stuff they did for TNG (those dudes must have been smokin crack or something). Character generation was nice but yeah, it was focused on the Federation and action points didn't really work out. Overall a good game if you want to play TOS series.

I miss FASA and felt ICON was a worthy Sucessor.

CODA is the new kid and while he is good, I prefered the others style of Character creation :)

FASA was my first rpg and I grew up with it too. I really enjoyed all the TOS material. Met my wife while running a FASA game - yes, in college I was the "King-of-the-nerd-herd.

I really do miss FASA!:(

TNG did come over to Fasa via the Star Trek: The Next Generation Officers Manual (A great book, but total ‘fiction’, and perennial ‘straw’ which broke the franchises back…still, those ships:)…Hmmm Crunchy[add Homer-drool noise]) and the Year One Sourcebook (Ah, damn Paramount/Gene…pulling the plug as a Year Two Sourcebook WAS ready, complete with…THE BORG).

One thing that would have been completely awesome, if they could have continued: miniatures. FASA was going to produce a Ferengi Marauder and Galaxy Class Enterprise…in scale to the rest of their line (I read the Ent-D would have been a foot in length…imagine her width:)).

Don’t know how true that assessment is Space_Cadet, some would say Champions was next, others…well, say other things/games.

Qerlin and Captain Novaes, you're both right to a degree about the character creation. Even the supplement in the ST:TNG Year One SB didn’t help. Luckily, I did find a MUCH better one online:
http://www.cix.co.uk/~mr-flibble/rpg/resources/
(the top two Doc files)

Dave, are you serious, those guys are responsible for Micro-Tatix…that is SO COOL!!! I love their Cityscape Set…

All in all, I say it was ‘good’ but kinda needed a overhaul (more info on exploration, less on combat, better character creation...).

And; funny enough, I don’t really miss Fasa’s ‘Star Trek’ as much as I do the semi-supplemental magazine a company use to put out called Stardate (later Stardrive). This beauty had a great amount of addition info for the game: new ship designs, NPCs, rules, and so on. THAT’S what I miss…

As the vote selection says " a good system, with some holes." FASA has fond memories all around. :)

From your text;

"To be brutally honest, I became a Trekkie because of the game, and not the other way around. . ."

I cannot agree with this more. I would say the excact same thing is what happened to me.

I think this is why I never got bothered by the more "agressive" aspects of the FASAverse.

Nice stuff BTW, but dame is that font small ;)

Well, I never really played the RPG aspect of FASA Trek. I and my friends usually just played the Starship Combat Simulator Game, which was accompanied by supplemental products like the Starship Construction Manual and the Recognition Manuals.

Probably the only thing I didn't like about the FASA Starship Combat systems was that, even when FASA did start incorporating the TNG data into the game, it never made rules for the Picard Maneuver. We basically had to make up our own rules on that. Of course, I don't think FASA got beyond first season TNG with any sourcebook.

Something interesting people may wish to note: When FASA had the license to do Trek, it was actually supported by Paramount for a time. Unlike Task Force Games' Starfleet Battles, the FASA Star Trek RPG was an officially licensed product.

Does anyone remember "Mr. Scott's Guide To the ENTERPRISE"? (Hereafter referred to as MSGTTE.) That was an entertaining technical manual released in the late 80's, updated with data from ST IV: The Voyage Home. However, the data in that manual was largely based on information that Fantasimulations Corporation (FASA for short) had divined. That is why there were arguments over the names of various starship classes. "MSGTTE" had declared that the
motion picture incarnations of NCC-1701 and NCC-1701-A were "Enterprise" class starships, because they based that off of the "FEDERATION STARSHIP RECOGNITION MANUALS" of FASA. And they even used the nomenclatures of weapons and warp systems in the "MSGTTE". FWG-1, and FH-11.

Sorry, that is another tangent. But, my final opinion is that I enjoyed FASA's Trek back then, and still kind of incorporate some of their ideas into the LUG Trek (simplified, core rules) Starship Combat System.

Then again, that is the flexibility of RPG's and Strategy Games: wing it.

Did I make any sense? I hope so. :D

Respectfully,
General Chang

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Originally posted by Modem


One thing that would have been completely awesome, if they could have continued: miniatures. FASA was going to produce a Ferengi Marauder and Galaxy Class Enterprise…in scale to the rest of their line (I read the Ent-D would have been a foot in length…imagine her width:)).

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Yes, I too sorely miss those miniatures.... I used to have the misnamed "Enterprise" and "Reliant" classes, which we have come to know as "Constitution" and "Miranda" classes...and the FASA created "Remora" class.

However, the 1 foot in length "Galaxy class" would have been a grave error. In fact, does anyone remember when the 6 inch die cast "Enterprise D" was released by Galoob? (I'm sure it was Galoob back in the late 80's.) Anyhoo, that six inch die cast toy was actually in scale with the movie era FASA miniatures. One could have set a movie era "Constitution class" on the saucer section, and it would have been to perfect scale with the Galoob toy. Just FYI. I am not doubting that you saw that they were going to release a 1 foot long miniature of the "Enterprise D", but the scaling would have been waaayyyyy off. :D

Respectfully,
General Chang

I loved the tone of the old FASA game, but I was never much of a fan of the rules, and as others have said, they lost the plot entirely with their TNG stuff.

But, they produced some of the best Star Trek adventure modules ever, IMHO. It was also the first RPG I ever played, back when I first went to college back in 1988.

ICON probably had the best Trek character generation, with FASA coming in second.

I loved pretty much everything about this game except for APs and the Starship Combat. The Starship Combat was fun but it did not have the feel of the shows in my opinion.

I loved a number of their adventures and have recycled many of them over the years, one of the most frequent being "The Strider Incident".

In fact, the only reason I switched to ICON was because the mechanics were simpler to teach complete newbies to gaming. I tend to get alot of those. Beyond that, the FASA history still forms the dominant background for my campaign's universe. With a few major events to allow for certain events that I thought were cool in the LUG timeline.

Icon is just above the FASA system and if we had not moved into the TNG era I probably would still be using FASA-trek but we'd been playing post-movie into the TNG era for years so the switch was made to use the new material. A switch that I do not regret given the number of Trek Fans that ICON has helped me bring to gaming. Though I can see me pulling out the FASA game and running an episode or three at some point in the future.

I doubt FASA or LUG will ever truly be dead for me. CODA I will use for potential background and Fluff.

Regards,
CKV.

I jump in glee as I find a fully intact Second Edition FASA Star Trek RPG, complete with Tactical Starship Combat Simulator and all counters. I have it on hold at an undisclosed Hobby shop and will pick it up ASAP! WOO HOOOOOOO!!!




Ahem.

Respectfully,
General Chang


woo hoo

Here's something I bet you never hear of every day: (sarcastic)

A friend and I used to play the FASA Tactical Starship Combat Simulator over the phone. LOL! It was the poor man's online deathmatch.

There were quite a few times when we could not get together at the other's house to play TSCS. The cool thing was...both of us had the Second Edition kit. So what we would do is call each other up, have our maps laid out in front of us, inform each other of the necessary set ups (ship type, Combat Efficiency limit, etc.)

Then we would play. We would set up the appropriate counters and have the appropriate display panels ready. Since the star map was numbered, it was easy to convey where you and your opponent(s) were. We would have to describe the type of movement, (forward, backward, sideslip, how many hexes, etc.) This also made cloak ships a lot more interesting to play.

The super cool thing was...the honor system. We both respected each other as fellow gamers , and took each other's word for what we were doing. It really worked out well when we could not get together to play the combat game. Sometimes you're the Klingon, sometimes you're the Toilet Paper.:D


Another fond memory of FASA Trek was the 18 ship, three sided starship battle we ran one night. (Six players, with three ships each) It took eight hours to resolve. And hard as it may be to believe, I came out of the battle with only a few dings to my ship. In one fell swoop, I had destroyed a Klingon Great Bird, and a Romulan Battleship. (Gotta love those starship explosion rules.) I was a Federation Battleship (Kirk-class) called the USS Lethality. (I know, not very Federation like....but I constructed this thing from the FASA Starship Construction manual.)

At one point, my friend whom I had played TSCS over the phone with, and I also had Construction Manuals (well, I photocopied the manual for him) :D We had constructed Torpedo cruisers.....ships which were mostly photon torpedo armed, maybe one or two phaser banks. The reason was obvious enough.....power to damage ratio. 1 point of power to arm a photon torpedo...20 points damage from an FP-10, or Klingon Equivalent. However, our battles did not last more than two or three rounds.....since our ships were dealing on the order of 200-400 pts damage in one volley. So we therefore made a ruling that future ships constructed could have NO MORE than 40% of its total armament consisting of missile weapons. These ships were also subject to approval by the other player as well.

Anyhoo, just thought I would share fond memories of FASA Trek with you all. And I soooooo cannot wait to get a hold of that Second Edition box set I saw at that store. I know it'll be rough finding FASA players, but I actually have grander schemes in mind.

My plan is to combine the FASA and LUG Trek rules (as I am unfamiliar with CODA's system).

How's this for ingenuity?:

Remember in the FASA Second Edition system, which came with the Starship Combat Simulator, that it had hexagonal counters to represent ships? Well...of course, there were no Next Gen ships made. HA! Problem solved!

I have Activision's Bridge Commander for the PC. I was able to take screenshots of a top-down view of each of the ships in the game...all of which were Next Gen. Any other Next Gen ships I could not find in the game were taken off the internet. Now, I have made Hexagonal templates of those ships as well. As soon as I can find some gamers of Trek in the area I have moved to, I will be able to make the counters, and get some serious Starship Combat happening.

Long Live the memory of FASA Star Trek.

Respectfully, with head bowed in reverence :D
General Chang

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A friend and I used to play the FASA Tactical Starship Combat Simulator over the phone. LOL! It was the poor man's online deathmatch.

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Several years ago I was working a night guard job at Lockheed. I worked the lobby, and a buddy worked the docks. We had multi-line speaker phones, so in between checking people and trucks in, and taking other calls, we would have battles the same way. (I had made miniaturized maps that would fit on clipboards). After a couple games, it's just about as fast as playing face-to-face, and it definitely made stealth/cloaking a lot easier.

-- Daniel

Rock On, Shosa!

That was cool that you could do that at work. Wow. You must've miniaturized the maps. Would love to know what you did with the counters?

Playing it over intercoms must've made it seem even more Trek like. Hailing frequencies...LOL!

Way too cool.:D

Respectfully,
General Chang

Haaa the FASA shtuff... we played the SCTS to death. My original copy is extremely worn-out. I really loved the Excelsior MkII; besides the later TNG sourcebook designs it was, by far, the most powerful ship. We had fun using a MkII and taking on whole Klingon task forces.

The game was a lot of fun; you constantly had to outguess your opponents at many different levels. Where would their ships move, how they allocated the power units, would they fire or not during that phase, which shields are powered, which aren't, etc. Too bad the mecanics don't lend themselves at all to an update with the TNG-era ships, although with some serious re-working it could be done. As great as the system was I had a few gripes with, namely the shields were often useless and powered up as an afterthought. 15 pts shields didn't do much in the end when 75 pts of damage was coming the ship's way. The sensor damage rules didn't work well as when the sensors were knocked off you couldn't fire anymore and thus your ships became useless; and knocking off the sensors was too easy- a single hit from a FP-4 torpedo did the trick. We had an house rule giving a to-hit penalty if the sensors were knocked instead of not being able to fire at all. Also as the good general pointed out it was way too easy to design ships loaded with nothing but torpedoes. Well I have to admit we did that a couple of times and we had a blast (!) However even after all these years the game is still thrilling and every time new converts discover it they find it refreshing.

Quote:

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Originally posted by General Chang
That was cool that you could do that at work. Wow. You must've miniaturized the maps. Would love to know what you did with the counters?

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Didn't use counters. Laminated the maps and used eraseable pens.

Quote:

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Originally posted by General Chang
Playing it over intercoms must've made it seem even more Trek like. Hailing frequencies...LOL!

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Absolutely! :D It was always fun to yell "You Klingon bastard, you killed my son!"

-- Daniel

Snake and Shosa...

Wow...I wish we could hook up and play some good ol' FASA STCS. We could probably come up with some killer ideas to enhance the game. That is the thing I've always loved about RPG's and their ilk....if you don't like something, modify the rules so that you do like it.

I agree that the whole shield system in FASA was a bit lame...a single hit from an FP-4 could take down a shield side on most ships. So what we did was still play the three phased combat system, but the shields of the ships were tripled...the shields would batter down over the three phases. Shields were fully regenerated at the start of the next phase, if the shield generators weren't damaged.

I think LUG Trek got the idea right when it came to multifire weapon impacts on shields and internals. I am going to try to find a way to combine the rules of FASA and LUG.

I am also going to submit a simplified construction manual to Memory Icon for LUG Trek...using the statistics as found in the TNG/DS9 Core Rules, and The Price of Freedom.

Respectfully,
General Chang

I'm definitely on-line with the majority here: the character creation system and the starship combat were the definite high points of the game. I also have to give them credit in that they were one of the few games I knew of - back in '83, anyway - that eschewed the 3-18 point attribute system that had become more or less de riguer in RPGs at that point. I felt the 1-100 point system was way, way too clunky - and I remember how damn much we ended up concocting homebrew to get the hand-to-hand rules into something we could live with - but overall, it was certainly liveable. As the acknowledgements read in the LUG Core books, Guy McClimore and Greg Poelhien were the trailbreakers; the path they carved was rough, certainly, but they are to be commended for the effort they made.

That said, we're still using their character creation process from second edition to flesh out characters we're putting together with Icon. Some things are never really obsolete unless you want 'em to be...