Originally Posted by
D.S.McBride
Thank you for the reply, Chris. With regard to your commentary on the actual Coda system: Yes, it certainly did and does have its adherents, and the thing wouldn't have as sold as well as it did if it didn't have at least some degree of robustness in the game engine. My difficulties with Coda - and yes, I should have indicated that this is far more a personal reaction/opinion rather than a generally-held consensus - lie with its d20-with-the-serial-numbers-filed-off origins, and the seeming belief that a "class'n'level" system would duplicate (as much as possible, anyway) the world of Star Trek just as well as a "stat'n'skill" (to use Owen's very apt phraseology) outlay. I recall one of LUG's original owners/designers stating on this site, back in '00-'01 or thereabouts, that the d20 system was now the "lingua franca" of the RPGing world, and that we'd better get fricking used to it.
Our group gave DecipherTrek a three-game runthrough; at the end, we concluded, en masse, that, "It just doesn't feel like Star Trek." Rather, it felt as though we - and Decipher - had attempted to fit a round, warp drive peg in to a square, team-of-horses hole. Not that there's anything necessarily bad about teams of horses as a game engine; just that they don't hold any interest for me - and our game group - in terms of powering starships and charging phasers/disruptors/whatall. I can't, unfortunately, make any statement with regard to how well or badly Coda might have turned out with LotR, as a comparison point; I and we had zero interest in pursuing that angle of Decipher's corporate strategy, and it remains a big - and not terribly interesting, for me - question mark.
I will apologize not at all for the past, current and future crapslinging that I - and others, to be sure - have given to Decipher as a company, in terms of how it handled Star Trek as a licensed corporate property. The events of '02-'07 will stand as a cautionary tale to current and upcoming RPG companies, with regard to wasted talent, squandered potential and utterly bulls***-headed profit-driven corporate idiocy.
Nevertheless, I should have made it clear that the above criticism of DecipherTrek is a purely personal/group one. That aside, I am still charged up with regard to Modiphius' take on matters, and hope that we can get something that captures the best of Icon's character-building system and Coda's starship combat.
