Look What I Found!

[Megamanfan]

A Star Trek RPG book called "Prime Directive", put out by Task Force Games.

Anyone know if it's any good?

[Karg]

It's based on Star Fleet Battles and really dosen't follow Trek Cannon per se.

As such if you are a fan of Star Fleet Battles or The more Military aspects of Trek then yes.

[toadmage]

If you are doing a TOS game . It is a good book for backgound but lacks the touchie feelie view point of reg trek.

[Identity Crisis]

Prime Directive was published in the early '90s.

It's part of the Star Fleet Universe which as an interesting relationship with the Star Trek universe. Basically, due to a complex licence situation the SFU can use material from TOS and TAS but nothing else, so history has taken a very different course in that universe. Also, because the main SFU product - Star Fleet Battles - is a wargame the history has lots of wars, with everyone fighting everyone else at one point or another, in order to facilitate scenario design.

There were five books published for PD: the main rules; a Federation sourcebook; Prime Adventures 1 (a 'magazine' style sourcebook containing a variety of material); Graduation Exercise (GM's screen plus scenario); Uprising (scenario). There's an article in using PD as a resource in LUG games at http://home.gci.net/~aramis/lt/PDuse.html that would still be mostly relevant for CODA games.

PD has recently been relaunched using the GURPS rules. So far three books are available: GURPS Prime Directive; GURPS Klingons (remember these are TOS Klingons...); Module Prime Alpha (magazine style supplement in the mould of Prime Adventures).
See http://www.starfleetgames.com/ (but they haven't updated the PD page in ages).

PD, and the SFU in general, are a good source of extra races (including UFP members, Klingon subject races, and minor interstellar powers) and of TOS-era ships and equipment. It also provides lots of material for running military-heavy campaigns. Oh and all the GURPS-PD books so far have included full deckplans for a starship which are always nice to have.

[AslanC]

I'm one of the playtesters on this

Still I preffered the original to this one.

[J T]

I've found that the GURPS Prime Directive rules work just fine for my ST TNG era gaming needs. I'm changed both my Starfleet Academy campaign and a Section 31 Campaign from ICON to GURPS PD and found that they worked even better (IMHO).

For me, the attention to detail in GURPS nicely complements my own attention to ST continuity and real science that I obsess in my stories.

The only trick was making states TNG era Phasers for GURPS (which I'll happily post if anyone is interested).

[nickgb]

The next two products for Prime Directive will be Module Prime Beta (similar content to Prime Alpha since it is obviously the next in the series, rules, game ideas, new equipment, deck plans, etc...), and GURPS Romulans (Romulan background, ship stats, deckplans, equipment, maps, etc...).

Originally MPB was to be out in a month or so, and Romulans later this year. However, due to the announcement of GURPS 4th Edition due out in August, both products were also moved to August so that they can incorporate 4th edition rules and materials (kind of silly to put out 3rd edition stuff at this point). In fact, they will be the first published GURPS books to use 4th edition stuff after the release of the 4th ed. rules themselves in August.

So PD fans will have to wait a bit for new books, but you will get two new ones out at the same time under the new edition.

[nickgb]

Oops, I forgot about one product. There will indeed be one printed in May (next month).

The Klingon G1 Fast Patrol Ship deck plan pack. This will be published by ADB like all Prime Directive products, but will be done just like the GURPS Traveler deck plan packs.

This is actually the same set of deck plans as found in previously published GURPS Klingons, but will be done at a much larger scale on fold out pages. If you have not seen the other GURPS deck plan packs, these will have 1 yard sized hexes printed on one side and squares on the other (for differet RPG systems), and will include a set of GURPS Cardboard Heroes (little guys you cut out of cardboard, fold in half so they stand up, and are sized to fit on the deck plan sheets), and in this case will be klingons and such to crew the G1 PF.

This product is still on schedule since a set of deck plans is rather independent of the RPG system used and does not need to be delayed until 4th edition is published by Steve Jackson Games.