Characters from the Shows as NPC

[redwood973]

The attached character sheet represents Simon before the events in Drum Head . I have included a sidebar text detailing his life after the show, however, I left it very open in terms of detail to allow you to adapt the character as needed for a guest (or regular) appearance in your sessions.

For anyone playing post Drum Head pre Dominion War simply make the following changes: Substitute Bad Reputation (Romulan Heritage) [Openness Renown] -2 for the Dark Secret Trait; add between two and four more tours of duty (adding 10 to 20 DP’s); add an additional three Renown points per year past the events in Drum Head (adding 3 to 12 Renown Points); add an additional Experience point per year past the events (adding 1 to 4 Experience Points).

For those playing post-Dominion War incorporate the changes listed above, plus adding additional tours, Renown, and Experience Points appropriate for the number of years past the events in Drum Head which you are playing.

Now that Simon is completed. . .whom should I do next? I know someone did Ro Laren a time back (I have been yet able to find it here, but I know someone did). Anyone else have any characters that LUG left out (or never got around to)? Please point them out, and I’ll see about putting them into .pdf file.

[LtCdr Kagan]

Questions

1) How did you go about extrapolating the scores for a guest star?

2) How would you go about extrapolating the scores for a guest for a time period either a decade before the episode or a decade after the episode?

[Dan Gurden]

Originally posted by LtCdr Kagan
Questions

1) How did you go about extrapolating the scores for a guest star?

2) How would you go about extrapolating the scores for a guest for a time period either a decade before the episode or a decade after the episode?

A lot of this is down to personal opinion. A few of the main characters appeared in LUG books, but spekaking for myself and the established characters that I built for either the Maquis or Psionics source material I went through the established biographies to build a character. And then chose the best rioute through the character gen process to match the established facts, any gaps were filled with either known skills/abilities or through extrapolation (again based on personal opinion).

On the whole most of the well-known NPC's will end up looking similar no matter who builds them. The one-episode appearance characters however will differ a great deal as a lot of personal opinion goes into them

Simon Tarses as above, for examp-le, has recently appeared in the relaunch of DS9 as Bashiers second in command, although this is only in name, little actual 'screen time' has been assigned in the books.

When bulding NPC's with a significant time lapse between their appearance in the show and their appearance in the game even more personal interpretation comes into play, in this case it depends on the character.

for example. In my Psionics sourcebook. I present my opinion of Laxwana Troi, among others. Anyway, I tried to present Laxwana as a generic template suitable for any period that she is available, while others, were based far more on snapshots of their characters as they appeared in the shows.

I hope that helps a little.

[Owen E Oulton]

for example. In my Psionics sourcebook. I present my opinion of Laxwana Troi, among others. Anyway, I tried to present Laxwana as a generic template suitable for any period that she is available, while others, were based far more on snapshots of their characters as they appeared in the shows.

Of course, one of the primary things to do is to spell the character's name correctly - It's Lwaxana. (Sorry, couldn't help myself - you made the same mistake in the Psionics Sourcebook.)

Mini-rant:
There seems to be a tremendous temptataion to overestimate skill levels for iconic characters, even in official rules books. If the character being reconstructed cannot be created using the rules, then either the intertretation of the character or the rules themselves are broken. Yes, the Iconic characters are the heroes, but in the game, the PCs are the heroes, and should be be capable of being every bit as good as Kirk or Picard or Archer.
End mini-rant.

[redwood973]

1) How did you go about extrapolating the scores for a guest star?

--LTCDR Kagan

For Attributes and Skills I simply followed the basic character creation rules using an appropriate number of tours for the age of the character at the time of their appearance.

I assigned an age of 22 to Simon as that was the age of Spencer Garrett (the actor who portrayed Simon) when the episode was made. In fact the birth date, parents names, height, weight and some background information is simply the real life stats of Spencer [ain’t it scary what you can find out about a person on-line?].

A copy of the script for the episode the character appeared in helped. While not much about Simon was revealed in the episode, there was key information from the script which I used in the character sheet.

[I had not realized it before now, but I had intended to increase Simons’ negative Openness Renown by at least three points but forgot to do so before putting the file into .pdf form.]

2) How would you go about extrapolating the scores for a guest for a time period either a decade before the episode or a decade after the episode?

--LTCDR Kagan

The same way I did above, but with fewer (or more) tours of duty as appropriate. In addition decrease (or increase) the Renown and Experience Points as appropriate.

That’s how I go about it anyway.

Very general answers I assume, but as Dan said it really is opinion. I can go into more detail I guess if you need to know more, such as why I did something the way I did. Just let me know.

[Dan Gurden]

Originally posted by Owen E Oulton

Of course, one of the primary things to do is to spell the character's name correctly - It's Lwaxana. (Sorry, couldn't help myself - you made the same mistake in the Psionics Sourcebook.)

OK, thanks for picking that up. Are you going to do a find/replace on that one? As I dont think her name is mentioned that often?

And I wouldn't want to look a fool. No more than the useual anyway.

[Doug Burke]

Originally posted by Owen E Oulton
[i]Mini-rant:
There seems to be a tremendous temptataion to overestimate skill levels for iconic characters, even in official rules books. If the character being reconstructed cannot be created using the rules, then either the intertretation of the character or the rules themselves are broken. Yes, the Iconic characters are the heroes, but in the game, the PCs are the heroes, and should be be capable of being every bit as good as Kirk or Picard or Archer.
End mini-rant.

Mostly Off Topic (this being the ICON board), but that's one of the reasons I like the wite-ups in the CODA Narrator's Guide. Sure, Kirk (for example) has 66 advancemenets, but only one skill is above a +9 (at +10) when the skill maximum is +12. And all 12 interpretations were made using the character generation process.

Okay. I'll run away now. Sorry for the OT comment...

[Capt. K. Vaughn]

DanG or Owen,

I gather the Psionics book mentioned above will be going up on Memory Icon some time in the near future?

Regards,
CKV.

[Owen E Oulton]

Hopefully, the Psionics book will be going up soon - the latest delay is due to new information on Vulcans and their psionic traditions from the Kir'Shara stpory arc on Enterprise. I'm doing a synopsis to send to Dan G (sometime next week) for him to insert into the manuscript. Then I'll finish up the layout for Dan to approve, and it'll go up.

[Capt. K. Vaughn]

Cool! Looking forward to reading it. It will give me something to look forward to besides the Romulan SRM for Spacedock.

Regards,
CKV.

[redwood973]

Not a Trek character, but one I have always liked and wanted to introduce as a NPC but never got the chance too. (This was just practice as I have not done any character creations for awhile, and to test out a new format [not printer friendly as it's intended to be kept on the computer for reference as needed].)

[redwood973]

This character was the Cardassian guard seen in "Sacrifice of Angels." Made using the fan made Cardassian Sourcebooks. Should anyone desire to use him I have left 8 DP unspent to allow some personalization, and left his character history fairly open by providing just some basics. Before play his Vesala should be adjusted as well as it reflects his point total from creation and does not reflect any use what so ever during the characters life before play.

[Oh, yeah. This is not printer friendly either. . .was another test of the new format.]