Trek, Over the Edge

[Hastur]

I am not a numbers guy. I was never into D&D, and I don't think you could pay me to play Rolemaster. I like things simple, and as a GM, I like to focus on the story and the characters, not on stats and skills.
So I tried something a couple years ago that worked really well. I used the Over the Edge (Atlas Games) game system to run a game of Star Trek. Other than my players not really being into Trek, things went great. The system works very well to capture the feel I wanted.
For anyone who knows the system, you just pick a race and job (Human Starship Captain, or Orion Pirate, or something like that) to use as your primary trait, then choose two secondarys (Computer Genius, Martial Arts, Master Chef, etc.), and you're almost done.
I set the game at about the time of Wrath of Khan and the story was my take on H. Rider Haggard's book She.
I hope to run a game again some time, but I can't find enough people who are willing to play Trek.
I wanted to know if anyone else had used Over the Edge (or a similar, simple system like Tri-Stat, or Fudge or something) to run Trek.
And I guess, while this might be better in a differnt section of the forums, how have you interested people in Trek? I know that in this area, there isn't much of a fan following, and what there is, tends to creep me out a bit. Has anyone had luck getting people who weren't die hard fans to try it out and have fun?

[Tobian]

Getting players to play Trek is going to be hard if they don't particularly like it, no matter what system you use! The system it's self is irrelevant to the gameplay style you run.. If you want to run it fast and loose, with as little treknobabble as possible, then do that, but owning the Trek game books helps you for when you do need to be technical, they are also good resources for material, ideas and pictures.. not just rules!

If you're running it and it's working, then keep it up, but I wouldn't normally advise someone just to make up their own rules set, it's hard work when you don't have all you need!

As for the players not being fans.. what exactly is it they don't like about the genre? I know some of my players don't like the Federation *squeaky clean* feel, so to cope with that I a) allowed them to be non starfleet (allowing anything allowable in the rules, with the proviso they are knowingly making a character who will be working with Starfleet) and b) present a harder universe around them: Maybe they don't like preachy moralising from Starfleeters, but it's better than Cardassian Justice or a Klingon honour fight because you looked at him funny!

I guess what I am saying is know what it is about the genre they do like, and make adventures which appeal to that.

[Hastur]

I dig what you're saying about the game books. I actually own most of the FASA and Last Unicorn books, and lots of other odds and ends, like tech manuals, and the Klingon dictionary. I mine them all for inspiration when putting together a game, but I'm just not into remembering how a system works, that's why I like Over the Edge so much. There's really nothing to it, and converting something into it is ultra easy (but it's not for people who like to min-max or in any other way "play the system").

I think what I've run into around here with Trek is a general dislike/lack of understanding about the setting. I mostly run into Star Wars fans who don't like Trek because they seem to feel you can't like both (It's sort of like when a Republican says something and a Democrat has to disagree or the other way around). But I like both, and many other sci-fi series as well.
I even have players who like what I do, and have enjoyed playing in many of my games, but simply will not play in Trek (It's sort of like my refusal to ever play D&D again, no matter who is doing it). That's why I want to look at people I wouldn't normally think of to try to attract into my game. And why I wanted to know if anyone has had success in bringing in people that might not otherwise have played, and how they did it.
I do actually run a more "shades of grey" Trek setting. I've never been a fan of Black or White, Good vs Evil, or any of that. So I don't think that's what the problem is. I'm not really sure. I think people just sort of have a bad taste in their mouth from Trek, because of some fans, and what many see (I have to admit I'm one of these) as a poor handling of the franchise in the last few years. 'Course, that's why I have a bad taste in my mouth from Star Wars, too.
I also tend to like to set my games in the Original Series era (though I loved Next Gen, and Enterprise), and I think that turns some people off.
When I ran Trek using Over the Edge before, everyone seemed to have a good time, but when the story was over, no one wanted to keep going. They wanted to move on to a different setting.

[RaconteurX]

I have narrated Star Trek games using everything from Over The Edge (I was in one of the original playtesting groups, and hence am quite fond of the game) to Time Lord to FATE (a terrific FUDGE variant) to Risus (S. John Ross of course wrote the Andorians book for ICON, a book as dear to my heart as John M. Ford's Klingons book for FASA) to a nearly freeform set of rules called Maximum Game Fun. These have proven great for convention games, since they do not require that the player be experienced or even a roleplayer at all. In fact, I once designed a MGF scenario called 'Crisis of Infinite Wesleys' for Penguicon, a local convention, specifically to coax Wil Wheaton himself into playing. Wil had to cancel his appearance, alas, so the game never ran.