Some Noob Questions, Captain

[Extemper]

Greetings to all Board-Users and Trek-Fans out there,

Let me introduce myself as a somewhat experienced RPG player and GM (some years up to now), but a complete newbie to the Star Trek RPG. I just ordered myself the Deciper's Player and the Narrators Guide online, and thus still got some time left, to wonder about some things, till the books will arrive here.

First question of mine: What in the name of Trek is the unshortened form of CODA? I'm reading it on this board quite often, but don't know, what it is.

Second one: How many player species will be contained in the two books, I ordered? Therefore, is it useful to buy the Aliens Sourcebook?

And last one: I searched around for quite a time, but I wasn't able to find a downloadable charactersheet on Decipher's site. Is there such a thing at all? If yes, I'd be very pleased, if somebody could put a link to it in my thread. Thanks so far.

[Identity Crisis]

Originally posted by Extemper
First question of mine: What in the name of Trek is the unshortened form of CODA?

CODA is CODA, it's not short for anything, it's just the name used for the system used by the Star Trek and Lord of thr Rings RPGs.

Second one: How many player species will be contained in the two books, I ordered?

PG contains Bajoran, Betazoid, Cardassian, Ferengi, Human, Klingon, Ocampa, Talaxian, Trill and Vulcan
NG contains Andorian, Orion and Romulan

So whether you need the Aliens supplement depends entirely on whether the above covers all the species you and your players plan to use.

And last one: I searched around for quite a time, but I wasn't able to find a downloadable charactersheet on Decipher's site. Is there such a thing at all?

There's one on the Decipher site, linked to from the bottom of this page: http://www.decipher.com/startrek/rpg...ide/index.html

I'm sure people will be along soon with more printer-friendly versions...

[C5]

Welcome aboard!

You can find also some character sheets on these boards. Just do a search using "character sheet coda" and you may find most of them.

As for the meaning of CODA, I think one of the developpers of the games once said it was related to the musical meaning of the word, possibly because some point of the rules states that one die must be rolled until a certain result comes out, but I don't know it this was a joke or not. Anyway, it's not an acronym, just a name that happens to be in capital letters

[Balok]

The NG also contains the rules for "building" alien species, so that you know how powerful they are and/or can balance them to be PC suitable species (the species presented aren't all exactly balanced, but they're pretty close).

This means that Aliens is a convenience, not a requirement (although I bought a copy).