You mean LUG Trek was not the first?

[AllenS]

Cmdr Powers, my sincere apologies I had no idea someone who wrote that game was on here or I would have been far more tactful.
To be honest, that game was the VERY first RPG I ever tried to run, and so that may be why I was so addled by it My attempt was such a dismal failure, btw, that was two years before my friends would let me try again

Also, to be honest, I think the game may have suffered from bad editing, as I to this day believe some of the character creation rules had been chopped out of it.

Star Fleet Battle Manual, on the other hand, was an AWESOME game that we played literally til we wore it out I have fond memories of crawling around my friend's basement on my hands and knees lining up shots and trying to figure out how to slow down <g>
That was a game I would buy again in a second.

Allen

[Cmdr Powers]

Thanks for the kind words about SFBM. It was a fun game. I deeply regret that Lou never let it be updated. Of course, his reasons were sound- lack of a legitimate license- something that doesn't seem to have stopped ADB...

As for Star Trek: Adventure Gaming on the Final Frontier- it was a piece of hackwork, make no mistake! It was based on a much more elaborate ripo... er game inspired by Tunnels & Trolls. It was meant to be simple and dirty and quick and help sell miniatures (of which I still have a few). When I read it now, I have to really, really remind myself that I was a lot younger then. As a matter of fact, when Heritage went belly-up, the rights (such as they were) reverted to me and I re-released the game as Starfleet Voyages with spaceship combat rules included. I'm happy to say that there are no more copies available. It was better than what Heritage released, but not much.

In other words, apology not necessary. I'm just glad someone actually remembered that there was something before FASA!

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"The best diplomat I know is a fully charged phaser bank" -Montgomery Scott

[Imagus]

Hey, wow! Another actual designer - cool... Thanks for the correction - the exact relationships between all those were always confusing Never played SFBM myself, but I actually quite liked SFB (crawls off to hide in a corner ).



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Slartibart-Jon

[Paxton]

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by Cmdr Powers:
[In other words, apology not necessary. I'm just glad someone actually remembered that there was something before FASA!
[/B]</font>

Hey, I, too, had a copy of this game, or rather, my brother did. We never got to play, although I do remember him setting up a campagn once. Trouble is that when we did get around to play with friends, the FASA rules were out, and we used those.

You were right about the Heritage rules being mostly an excuse to sell miniature. I just found some of my old ones the other day--still got some Phylosians and Kzin!

Man, you are really making me date myself, Powers, you know that?

Incidentally, what ever happened to Uncle Duke Seifried, anyway?

Paxton

[Cmdr Powers]

No idea. I'd be interested to find out myself.

In regards to crawling around on the floor playing Star Fleet Battle Manual- I tried several variants. One involved playing under black light, using flourescent fishing line for phaser fire. The ships were mounted on white compass cards so that they glowed too. We also played with the full-sized AMT models out in a city park. That was a blast! Especially when it drew a crowd or too. While Lou Zocchi and I didn't publish more than the 8 ships that came with the game, I did produce prototypes for a pile of other Star Trek ships and they were used in group play- including a scale, punch-card programmed Doomsday Machine.

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"The best diplomat I know is a fully charged phaser bank" -Montgomery Scott

[Sheliak Bob]

CMDR. POWERS! You wrote the Heritage Trek RPG! Sweeeeet Hey-Zeus! I not only owned (own) a copy of that game, but I RAN it on and off for TWO YEARS! Did a very prolonged storyline with Federation officers investigating a Kzinti plot, running afoul of Orion pirates and a mad Phylosian geneticist! I had the Skorr as the next major villains and that storyline filtered into my FASA game years later. Good heavens.
Why, that mild-mannered li'l Heritage game (I also owned and ran the John Carter game that came out at about the same time) laid the very foundation for what the 'Bob would later grow into!
*sniff* It's like finding yer long estranged Father...
*sniff*
DAAAAAADDDDYYYYYY!

[Cmdr Powers]

Uh...Thanks...I think...
Shucks- 'twern't nuthin...believe me...

OTOH, I'm glad someone got some use out of it. This just goes to prove my hypothesis that its not the game, its the game master.
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"The best diplomat I know is a fully charged phaser bank" -Montgomery Scott

[This message has been edited by Cmdr Powers (edited 06-06-2001).]

[Cmdr Powers]

BTW, speaking of the John Carter game- didn't you just love the idea of 'princess points' and the elaborate table that gave the results of your introduction to your princess?

For those of you who don't know what the hell I'm talking about- John Carter of Mars was about the ERB adventures on Barsoom. Each player was a potential hero who would eventually try to rescue his true love. He went through adventures gaining 'princess points' rather than experience points, to see just how much he would impress the princess when he finally gets formally introduced to her. The hilarious table ranged from tripping over your own tongue (and other embarrassments) to having her rip off your cloak and have her way with you right there in the Helium throne room. Great game. Anybody still have a copy...?

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"The best diplomat I know is a fully charged phaser bank" -Montgomery Scott

[Sheliak Bob]

Yup! Got endless hours of fun, and no little frustration off of that table.
Sadly, the group I first tried to run the game for, after fighting Green Martians, investigating ruins, fending off hideous beasts and a planned invasion, flubbed their rolls on the table. BADLY. Being adolescent gamers, they talked it over, then decided they'd just kidnap the Princess, spirit her out to the ruins and have their way with her!
Geez. Those guys went from being the heroes of the game to the villains of the next scenario I ran overnight. Kids.

[Paxton]

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by Cmdr Powers:
For those of you who don't know what the hell I'm talking about- John Carter of Mars was about the ERB adventures on Barsoom. Each player was a potential hero who would eventually try to rescue his true love. He went through adventures gaining 'princess points' rather than experience points, to see just how much he would impress the princess when he finally gets formally introduced to her. The hilarious table ranged from tripping over your own tongue (and other embarrassments) to having her rip off your cloak and have her way with you right there in the Helium throne room. Great game. Anybody still have a copy...?
</font>

Oh, yes indeed, I still have a copy! And as it's the only John Carter RPG ever to come out, I'm hanging on to it. Wonderful stuff. It's hiding right inside my SPI John Carter of Mars boardgame, which is a lot of fun in and of itself (general review of my friends who played: "That's not a _game_ of John Carter of Mars; that _is_ John Carter of Mars.")

Man, I loved those Green Martian miniatures...

Paxton



[This message has been edited by Paxton (edited 06-07-2001).]

[Lord Kjeran]

Chello!

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by Dan Stack:
What drives me nuts about the SFB universe is the constant and never-ending war. I understand it is a game of ship combat, but I just can't see the Federation staying even remotely idealist after so many wars...</font>

I don't think it did...after almost 20 years of war, the Federation starts making the SCS (Space Control Ships) with scads of fighters and PFs and really cool names like the SCS Napoleon and SCS Julius Caesar....



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"We are Klingons!"

Cmdr. Kruge, ST III

[Cmdr Powers]

Well, sorry about that. I wonder if this might be a problem for Vulcans...nah, their society doesn't change much from one eon to another.

The Star Fleet Battle Manual is played with 4"X4" cards- 1 per ship. On a card is printed a circular compass rose. A length of fishing line or thread is attached to the center of the rose. You use the line to rotate the card to a new heading, to see if your angle-plotted phaser fire hits the enemy ships, and to measure if your phasers are in range. For example: If you plotted a turn to starboard of 25 degrees, you would pull the line taut and move it to the right until it was over the 25 mark, then rotate the card until O reaches the line. You then move the ship the plotted distance for that turn. Phaser fire is eye-balled by looking down on the card and deciding what angle might hit an opponent. You then stretch out the line over that angle. If the line reaches the enemy, you're in range. If the line is over the angle you wrote for phaser fire AND crosses the enemy ship silhouette, you made a hit. Your phaser fire reduces his shields, etc, etc. Did that help any?


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"The best diplomat I know is a fully charged phaser bank" -Montgomery Scott

[Sheliak Bob]

So, all this nostalgia made me root around in my Trek gaming box and lo and behold! not only did I find my old Heritage Trek, but I also found my original First Trek RPG campaign notes! Oh Yippeeee! Twenty some years old and they're still as fresh as...well, crumpled faded, slightly mildewed notebook paper! Weeeee! FLASHBACK!

For just a moment, I was going to post excerpts from those notes. Then I wondered just how many people would actually be interested in stats for a game so long out of print and impossible to find that it might as well be mythical to most of ya'. Yeah. That's what I thought too.

But, this was the gist of the campaign:
PC's were the crew of a small "Police Cruiser" ship patrolling the Kzinti borders. The Kzinti were contained after losing wars to the early Federation (check the computer core for updated info on Kzin in Trek). The PC's boss, Commodore Mundey (who talked like Sgt. Friday from Dragnet...) sent them in to investigate some unusual trafficking across the Kzinti-Federation frontiers.
They were to "cooperate" with local Kzinti authorities, but could pull rank when necessary. Along the way they stopped Orion slavers from raiding an isolated outpost. They encountered a Klingon vessel, commanded by a Komissar Krell, basically Klingon MP doing the same investigation, but following up more advanced leads. Despite repeated efforts and much evidence that the Feds and the Klingons were on the same basic side, they never did anything but fight when they ran into each other.
The crew went from planet to planet, finding and fighting a wide variety of indigenous space monsters that attacked them for no particular reason (the game has a really fun quick random generation system for aliens!)and piecing together clues. They fought with everyone. Section 31 would have loved these guys! Finally, they unearthed a scheme between Orion slavers, an out of favor Kzinti noble and a mad Phylosian geneticist (named Dr. Bega---from "Rutabega" gosh! I was SOOOO clever back then!). They were using Kzinti DNA to unlock a mechanism to make females in other species "non-sentient" thereby allowing trade in sub-sentient female slaves to sneak by under the "Exotic Pets" trade. (HEY! I was 16, give me a break! I got more sensitive later! Besides, these WERE the Bad Guys!).

Highlights included many memorable (if unnecessary) firefights. A crew made up of every exotic Federation species EXCEPT Humans. (The game is pratically TAS the RPG!)
One of the few Human PC's got himself killed the very first night by accepting a Kzin's challenge to a hand to hand fight. The Kzin killed him, then ATE him. Much to the horror and outrage of the other players.
That player subsequently opted to play as a PC the tame Mugato that the crew had rescued earlier and kept as their ship's mascot. There was a gruesomely ugly bit of comeuppance when the Mugato and the previously mentioned Kzin male met on a planet. (By the Way! I had a Mugato "crewman" long before that hack novelist Peter David ripped me off! Beat him by twenty some years! Nyah!)
The campaign ended with the crew (and Klingons, not as allies but "cobelligerents") storming the enemy science base. Dr. Bega sealed himself in a lab with a Vulcan officer then activated a Stasis Field. Everyone outside the lab was frozen, while time went on as normal inside the lab. Dr. Bega gloated, he looked forward to watching his Vulcan nemesis starve to death.
The Vulcan smiled and told Bega that his "logic was flawed". Vulcans are stronger than humans, or Phylosians. Bega was a dangerous criminal who MUST be stopped. And, Vulcans are VEGETARIANS.
The field came down seconds/a year or more later. Out came a fairly chubby Vulcan officer with an inscrutable smile. No villain in sight. The unfortunate Pon Farr crisis that loomed was solved by the availability of a convenient female Vulcan "test subject". *cough*
About half the crew went on to battle Skorr warlords. The other half "adopted" several test subject "pets", then retired to live out their days in a couple of Orion mansions "seized" in the course of their operation.
sigh.
Violence. Cannibalism. Misogyny.
The hallmarks of my early games.
(I got better. Really!)

[Sheliak Bob]

So! STARFLEET VOYAGES was the name of that upgraded version! Ah-Hah! That is, in fact, the only Trek RPG (or supplement) that I do not own.
The Quest is ON!

[redwood973]

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by Cmdr Powers:
The ships were mounted on white compass cards...
</font>

What's that?
*
All I know is the sruff from the TV shows and the LUG:TNG Source Book. No offence guys, but sometimes you confuse the hell out of me talking about stuff before my time. (D'ho! I just lost any friends I had on these bords didn't I? So much for me joining the diplomatic corps!)



[This message has been edited by redwood973 (edited 06-07-2001).]