Personal Log on Amazon

What is the Personal Log? I saw it on Amazon.. i was wondering if this item is for real

It's a notebook/diary. A lot of empty pages in a Star Trek cover for you to write on.

That's it.

I was going to order the Starfleet Operations Manual from Amazon (because like I said in another thread, it's impossible to get Star Trek materials where I am for some reason). But when I go there, it says that it's not yet been released and they'll ship it when it comes in.

The problem is, I was going to order Aliens and Starships from them too, and I don't want to wait for this mythical "release date" that already happened. The second problem is the ISBN for it. They (Amazon) show it as ISBN 1-58236-905-4, yet if you do a search online it shows up as ISBN 1-58236-904-6! So I go to Amazon and do a search for ISBN 1-58236-904-6 (which is supposed to be the Operations Manual) and it comes up

(hence the tie-in to this thread)

The Star Trek Personal Log.

So now I don't want to order from them as I don't want to get this blank book, but they are the cheapest I've found, with free shipping!

Can someone, perhaps, who has the Operations Manual, check it out and let me know what the ISBN really is?

Sure thing: ISBN for SOM: 1-58236-904-6

See, now I don't know what to do. I can't get the thing without ordering it, I get free shipping from Amazon, and it's dirt cheap, but they have it down as not yet released and with the wrong ISBN to boot! And I don't want to pay to ship back some Star Trek diary if they send the Personal Log instead.

Why, oh why did the STRPG have to die out around here? I swear my wife, my two buddies, and I are the only four playing the game in the whole area.

Thanks for the info.

You might try sending a mail to the amazon customer service telling them about the problem with the wrong ISBN. I am sure they will correct their error.

I tried that. They assured me that the ISBN no. was indeed correct (which it isn't) and that it has not been released yet (which it has). They don't seem very concerned with accuracy.

Quote:

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Originally posted by Fab
See, now I don't know what to do. I can't get the thing without ordering it, I get free shipping from Amazon, and it's dirt cheap, but they have it down as not yet released and with the wrong ISBN to boot! And I don't want to pay to ship back some Star Trek diary if they send the Personal Log instead.

Why, oh why did the STRPG have to die out around here? I swear my wife, my two buddies, and I are the only four playing the game in the whole area.

Thanks for the info.

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Hey Fab,

SOM on Amazon hasn't been released on Amazon yet.. i know.. i guess they're pretty slow at catching on. But they do have the other stuff available..last time i checked Starships was a popular seller. But anyhow, you can always order the item from decipher directly from their store at decipher.com... you can also try barnesn and noble (bn.com).

Yeah, I thought about that, but Amazon has Aliens and Starships for $24.47 (USD), the same books at B&N are $34.95, the same price as from Decipher.

I'd like to be able to get the SOM from Amazon too, and with free shipping all three only come to $62.91, which is a fantastic deal. If I get all three from B&N that same price tag comes to $89.95. That difference is basically the cost of a book, and I'd rather pay for two and get three than pay for all three.

Of course, if the SOM isn't released yet from Amazon, it either means I'll have to wait for it's "release" before they'll ship any of them, or at the very least have to wait for the SOM. I'm an instant gratification kind of guy, so I don't fancy waiting. Plus I'm cheap. :rolleyes:

Is the SOM that good? I mean, is it an indespensible gaming aid? If so, I'll pay the extra ten bucks and order that from B&N seperately. If it's not all that important, I'll just order it from Amazon, tell them to ship them seperately, save the ten bucks and wait for it. But in the back of my mind I'm still worried I'll get the Personal Log accidentally. Maybe it's best to spend a few extra bucks and at least know that what I ordered is what I'll be getting.

Starships & Aliens are okay, I ordered those two plus Player's Guide & Narrator's Guide all thru Amazon...got to me fast ! :)

I plan on writing a review of SOM tomorrow night.

Quick answer, is....it depends.

If you have Starships, 8/96 pages are obsolete. If you use Don's (or someone else's) char sheet, 4/96 pages are obsolete. (Although I am glad they included them if for not other reason than listening to complaints about the official ones in the PG)

There are 7.5 pages devoted to day to day operations about a UFP/SF ship or facility and also the broader range of goals, such as intelligence.

There are 4.5pages of color uniform drawings of SF personnel, covering Enterprise through the end of the Dominion War, total of 16 uniforms.

There are 14 pages that add new skills (such as some armed and unarmed combat styles) as well as revisting and expanding existing skills like System Operation. There are also 2 new ship-related traits introduced.

There's a 2 page "cut away" view of a Galaxy class bridge, as well as a legend describing what position is where.

There are 7 pages of expanded professional abilities, covering the Starfleet Officer profession.

It has 3 pages detailing some new advancement packages and alternate promotion rules.

8 new races are included (in 16 pages), including the Tellarites and Alpha Centaurians.

New suggestions for acquiring equipment cover 3 pages while new equipment is detailed over 9 pages.

There is a two page feature on using a tricorder.

There are 7 pages which flesh out the various fleets of Starfleet and give some insight into how those fleets are organized.

While I'll have my full review up in a day or two, I'd say in a nutshell that the part of the SOM that deal with the rules or flavor a executed very well. Some of the content may of minimal use to you if you pick up another book like Starships or Aliens (assuming that Aliens contains the races in SOM - I don't know if it does) or use some of the online content availble like uniform galleries or alternate character sheets.

For the price, I really wish it were either softbound (and presumably cheaper - obviously irrelevent if it wouldn't be cheaper) or even better, chock full of more content.

As I said, the "crunchy" game material is good. The "fluffy" game material is also good and helps convey a sense of playing a SF character. I just wish there was more of it instead of bits that are duplicated or rendered obsolete elsewhere.

I realize that's a marketing/strategy issue. I am only saying that as a fan as a paying customer...who seldom care about such issues. I'd have loved for it to have had more content, even with a price increase.

Thanks for all that useful info on the SOM. One comment though, Barned and Noble claim that the SOM is paperback. Are you saying it isn't? They have it as being $19.95.

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Originally posted by Fab
One comment though, Barned and Noble claim that the SOM is paperback. Are you saying it isn't?

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Yep. All Decipher products (save the Narrator's screens and the Hero's Journal for LOTR) have been hardback.

There are other places to go to get these items online including ebay. On ebay alone there are two or three copies of each book and some are being sold with a discount price. Amazon is not always the best place to go...in my experience anyways.

Also, off the top of my head, there's 5 species in SOM that are not in any other book: Centaurans, Grazerites, Regulans, Tiburonese & Zaldan...FYI

try the Star trek fan club store... they sell Star Trek RPGs

Trekkers haven

I went ahead and ordered the two books from Amazon (because they were a full ten bucks cheaper - each - than any other place I've seen), and then ordered the SOM from Barnes and Noble because I couldn't trust Amazon to get it right after the screwed up website, the e-mails, and their lack of willingness to even acknowledge that they might have been in error in the least.

Thanks for your help.

Hi, I am a new member and wanted to respond to Amazon's Starfleet Operations Manual/ Personal log descrepancy.
*(Sorry but I tend to write long so if you don't want to read it all just read my bottom line at the bottom of my writing)
Heres the story:

I just started narrating a Star Trek RPG campaign. I decided from the very beginning that I was going to buy the whole series up to Creatures. So after ordering PG, NG, and NS I went to Amazon ( because it is the cheapest)
and found the Star Trek Personal Log and the Star Trek Ops Manual. I ordered them both even though it said that ops manual hasn't come in yet because I thought it would be shipped when it comes in.
Two things happened (well actually three). Several days later I received an email saying that ops manual wasn't coming and that personal log would still be coming (with the the free shipping still added may I add). So I decided to order SOM off of Decipher.
When Personal Log finally came I got (and get this) a hard cover book with the title of Starfleet Operations Manual!
Now I was mad! I was going to get two SOM books! I first thought that Amazon got the books mixed up. So before contacting Amazon I went back to the sight and found this:

* Amazon says Personal Log is a Hard cover book and SOM is a paperback! Now this is weird because I would have thought a little Log book would have been paperback and SOM would be hardcover (as with the rest of the decipher books). On top of this I looked at the ISBN number for both books and they're identical!
Bottom line:
Starfleet Operations manual is(or was) Identical to Personal Log!
(Amazon has finally corected this problem and doesn't even have personal log any more)

That does sound like a bit of a pain Gamage.. I was never entirelly sure what the personal Log was anyway? I've seen it dotting about, but only on Amazon, so I suspect it doesn't exist and it was just a clerical error.

I had heard the personal log was a book of blank lined pages in a Starfleet format. Sort of a diary for Star Trek fans, definitely not a role playing help, unless you wanted it to take notes in.

I thought so, but it's rather expensive for note paper - I'd rather just buy some plain paper. I think it would take too long for me to write anything as I'd feel pressured to write neatly on expensive paper :D

As best I recall from those dim, dead days when Decipher was still advertising it - and from what the ex-LUG crew would mention when posting here - the Personal Log was supposedly a more detailed set of character sheets that allowed an individual history for all stages of development to be written down, rather than synthesized into a couple of sentences.

Frankly, on the presumption that it's going to be a good long time before such a document gets released, either in hardcopy or PDF, I suggest using Patrick Murphy's excellent sheets designed for the Icon system. With very little adjustment - aside from the stats and skills frontpage - they should be usable in Coda format. Either way you cut it, character history is character history.

Decipher was at one time planning an expended character sheet called "Personal Log". However, that prodcut is no longer on the product schedule (no doubnt due to the lackluster response the LOTR "Hero's Journal" received). The product called "Personal Log" available on Amazon, therefore, is not a Decipher product. :)