Greetings!
A while back I traded some old gaming books for a huge bundle of Decipher Star Trek books (Player's Guide, Narrator's Guide, Aliens, Creatures, Mirror Universe, Starfleet Operations, Starships and Worlds). I've never been all that interested in Star Trek and have only watched the various TV series now and then over the years. I liked it, don't get me wrong. I just wasn't ever really a Trekkie.
My gaming group on the other hand love it and almost led an armed revolt when they found out I had the opportunity to get the books and hesitated to do it. Now I have the books and since my wife stepped down as GM for a while that means I'm taking the helm again. Now Star Trek is up for our next RPG campaign.
My main reason for posting is that I never expected to find an active forum on Decipher's Star Trek (CODA system, right?) so I have to let you folks know I'm really glad I have some place to go for support. It's been a while since the Decipher dropped the line as I understand. So I'll try to offer what I can to this community as this campaign goes along.
Coming off of several consecutive Cortex campaigns over the last couple of years (Serenity, Battlestar Galactica and some homebrews) this system will take a little bit of adjustment. Cortex is far simpler and completely lacks anything like "classes". Still, the gang is gung ho so I don't see a problem making the adjustment. I surely don't want the hassle of trying to convert and the CODA system seems fairly good from the once-over I've given to it anyway. Mainly my group demands roleplaying elements integrated into the adventures and lots of deadly action, especially following all those Cortex system campaigns. So I've decided to go with a slightly altered timeline thing featuring the Earth/Romulan war. The campaign then will be a bit more militaristic than your average Star Trek campaign then and we may even lose a PC or two along the way.
So here's a very rough outline for what I have in mind:
First I'm basing a lot of this alternate timeline/universe thing of the Enterprise series (Archer, Tucker, T'Pol, etc.) and justifying the division from canon with interference from the events of the Temporal War that played out in that series. To that end I'm putting the focal point of the branch off with Tucker and T'Pol's baby in the Demons and Terra Prime episodes. In my universe that baby lived, Tucker and T'Pol quit Starfleet and their daughter went on to join Starfleet a little over two decades later (enough time, you think?). This works out well for me since my wife insists on playing T'Pril Tucker.
Hey, give me a break. Even the Narrator has to make some concessions now and then.
Available races then are Andorian, Denobulan (though I think that's a bit of a stretch and I'll probably drop them), Centaurans, Vulcans and Humans. I'm starting the campaign just prior to war breaking out between that coalition and the Romulan Star Empire, around 2175-2180 on my alternate timeline. That puts the war off for a bit to allow whatever I want to take place and I have a few ideas to shake things up, making a real alternate universe out of it. Were there any other races available during the time of the standard Earth/Romulan war that my players can pick from?
Anyway, if anyone's interested I'll be glad to drop a few lines here and there as I come up with things. It's likely I'll be posting a few things on the campaign on our old website. If I do (and there's any interest) I'll drop a link to it when I have anything there.
By and large, if this forum is as active as it seems to be I'll probably be coming here now and again for advice and input so I want to thank all you find folks in advance. I've already found http://strpg.patrickgoodman.org/ and grabbed just about everything there. If anyone has any other online material I can raid then I'd appreciate it too!