Where has all the Glory gone...?

[Storm]

I'm currently converting this old FASA adventure for a convention to the LUG rules. Haven't played it before but it seems to be a real great adventure so far. I was wondering if anyone around has played it and can share his experience with it?!

Furthermore I'm looking for ideas how to convert stats for the PC/NPC write-ups and the star ships. I would rather make up all characters anew but this is quite a herculean effort. The same goes for the ships.

Does anyone know if there are already LUG or Spacedock stats for the Federation Chandley class and the Romulan Stormbirds of TOS era?

For any comments I would be very thankful!

Best reagards,
Storm

[K.G. Carlson]

While I run Trek with the Coda rules, my limited ICON roleplaying experience indicates to me that character rules (in play if not in generation) are very similar. And having recently run the FASA module Decision at Midnight I have been working on a character conversion model. I don't know if anyone else has attempted this but here's what I've come up with so far.

Although the names have changed, the FASA stats are fairly well represented in Coda:

Strength=Strength
Endurance=Vitality
Intelligence=Intellect
Dexterity=Agility
Charisma=Presence
Psi=Psi

The only clunker is the FASA Luck stat, but since the other six are a perfect match, lets just say Luck=Perception.

Now, a max score in Coda is a 12 (before species modifiers) and FASA uses a percentile system. So by dividing the FASA score by 8.3(repeating), you get an approximation of the Coda equivalent.

For the skills, I just find as close a descriptor match as I can. Rather than use the stat formula, since some of the FASA skills are god-awful low in terms of rating, I just divide by 10 and follow the rounding rule to determine the ranks. For example, a FASA skill of Starship Helm Operations 56 translates to a Coda skill of System Operations (helm or flight control) 6. This is just the ranks, I then apply attribute and Edge modifiers.

Its not perfect, but its workable and so far I've had no problems with it. Again, I know that you're not using Coda but I hope this helps out.

[Storm]

Hey Mr. Carlson!

Thanks for the reply. ICON works in ways quite differently from CODA, at least, as you said, regarding character creation, though it's clearly visible that the one evolved from the other.
Nevertheless your hints made me think and I guess I can come up with something relatively easy to convert characters according to your idea. A good thing in ICON is that Skill lvls are not that mightily important so a rough conversion is fine in any case. It's more a question of specializations and these can be added easily.

So, for that, already thank you very much!

How did you convert the ships in Decision at Midnight? I do have this adventure also but can't remember it clearly. There are ships in there aren't they?! What would ST be without ships...?!

How did your players respond to an adventure written and printed in the 80' ? Did they like it? I'm a big fan of the old FASA stuff since it's a great read and it's so damned crammed full of information that you immediately have the feeling the universe springs to life. S.th. I rarely experience with todays games that mostly lack "depth".
And yet I'm not sure that todays players, used to easy-peasy action-filled adventures are up to the challenge of playing games of complicated intrigue, information gathering and moral dilemmas - things very important to "a good game" in my humble opinion.

So how did your players receive the adventure? Did they like it?

[K.G. Carlson]

Glad to help out Storm. Especially since there is no official "living" Trek rpg, we the fans must keep the fire burning.

Since you are using the ICON rules, I don't know how helpful my ship conversions will be, because Coda and ICON seem very different animals when it comes to ship design and combat. But I have been amassing fleets of old FASA ships in the Coda system by borrowing a few key statistics: the ships' size and crew complement. The starship construction rules in Coda are a breeze, easy and fun in a way I've not seen since West End Games' version of Star Wars 2nd ed. I do try to stay as close to source material as possible in regards to weapons, speed, shuttle loadout, separation systems and cloaking but I do tweak here and there.

The ships are posted on the Crimson Hand Gamers website, one of my groups which has a website (the only one actually). The link is in my sig line.

Access to the downloads section does require registering at the site, but Patrick Goodman, Coda Trek supporter and all around great guy mirrors the downloads on his site that does not require registry and is found here. Mr. Goodman is very diligent at keeping up to date with my postings on the CHG. The only ship class featured in Decision at Midnight that is not already up on Mr. Goodman's site is the Klingon D-18 Klingon destroyer, and it will be hitting the interwebs soon. (As a side note, the Loknar-class I have posted up is a tv era TOS version, and the players are currently in the movie era at 2278. I have a thing about my online offerings needing a picture).

I don't know that the dilemma is with "todays" gamers, because of the three groups I am currently a member of, all of them embrace role-playing over hack and slash, kill and collect which as you point out is needed to run a truly "Trek" game. Thats not a slam on any particular game or game system, but some games and settings do require more effort on the players' part.

The players in the group who recently ran through Decision at Midnight had a great time. I take it as a compliment when the players are expressing eagerness to play again at 1 AM after a 5 and 1/2 hour-long session. I was worried because I went through the module in a bit of a rush; I will not be able to game at all in this, my last semester of undergrad work so I didn't want to leave that long of a cliffhanger.

[PGoodman13]

Somewhere in all this, I've got a (very) rough FASA-to-CODA skill conversion guide I got somewhere ages and ages ago, K.G. I dunno how accurate it is, but I could email you a copy if you liked.

Then you'd have to work out how to backward-engineer it to get to ICON....

[K.G. Carlson]

Somewhere in all this, I've got a (very) rough FASA-to-CODA skill conversion guide I got somewhere ages and ages ago, K.G. I dunno how accurate it is, but I could email you a copy if you liked.

Then you'd have to work out how to backward-engineer it to get to ICON....

That would be great! Look forward to seeing them.

[Storm]

Since I do own the CODA stuff also and are quite familiar with it I would be interested in this conversion sheet also so I might salvage it for some ideas on converting FASA to ICON. If that's ok for you PG?

Glad to help out Storm. Especially since there is no official "living" Trek rpg, we the fans must keep the fire burning.

Thanks again...and that is actually what I'm trying to do over here in germany. This year there are several events planned for the "bigger" conventions - which are nothing compared to the ones in the states anyway.
There is a LARP-group based in Cologne who have a beautiful Enterprise-D mock-up. They will be a t some of the conventions and we will run ST rpg games in tandem to their presentation. All stylish in uniforms and with props and stuff.
I'll post pictures when we are through with it.

And btw. thanks again for compiling all that ship data. I might even use them "as is" and just use ship combat ec. from CODA together with the rest of ICON. But I haven't decided that yet.

The Old Star Wars was great fun indeed. I still have most of the books on my shelf. There are just two or three that I really miss like the Spec Ops for example.
Unfortunately their "ship construction" rules have never been very detailed so the only thing you could most probably do was modifying existing ships with the rules for jury rigging and upgrading. Great game! Some of my best gaming-memories are tied to WEG Star Wars.

[Owen E Oulton]

I've got a relatively comprehensive conversion document on my site for characters: http://coldnorth.com/owen/game/start...se/convert.htm - It has a full walkthrough using a FASA character.

Conversion of ships is dirt simple. The biggest task is adapting the Warp Factors from WF^3.3 to WF^3, but that's just high school math, easy with a modern calculator.

[PGoodman13]

And here I go, trying to help reinvent the wheel....

[Sarge]

Try making the wheel triangular, that way there's one less bump than the square wheel.

[tonyg]

One difference between FASA and CODA is that in FASA, a attribute of 40 is considered human average, and Starfleet characters are designed to be a cut above average people. So a 40 in FASA would equal a 7 in CODA.

In a similar vein, skills in FASA have proficiency levels, with higher proficiency level meaning fewer skills rolls being required. A 40 skill in FASA is the minimum proficiency level and what characters start off with in their main brach skill. In CODA , characters start off with +4 in their branch skills. So a FASA skill of 40 is equivalent to a +4 in CODA.


Factoring in for these differences, are the following two charts:

Attributes
FASA: CODA
01-08: 2
09-16: 3
27-23: 4
24-31: 5
32-39: 6
40-50: 7
51-62: 8
63-74: 9
75-86: 10
87-95: 11
96-100:12

Skills
FASA: CODA
0-9*: 0 (specialty)
10-19: 1
20-29: 2
30-39: 3
40-49: 4
50-59: 5
60-69: 6
70-79: 7
80-84: 8
95-90: 9
91-95: 10
96-98: 11
99-100 12


* A semi-skilled character is treated as having no ranks in the skill, but some specialty of the skill.

[Storm]

Owen - thanks for the link! It's great!!! Especially with your convertion-walk through. Thank you very much!!!

[K.G. Carlson]

Since I'm not sure that you're cruisin' the Coda forum, Storm, I thought I'd let you know that the Klingon D-18 Gull-class destroyer is up on my group site, probably soon to appear on PGoodman's Coda Trek support site.

[Storm]

Thanks for the info K.G.! I'll check it out as soon as it's on PG's website. The convention is still a couple of month away so there is plenty of time for preparation and, as it seems, quite a lot to do.

I just read the last couple of paragraphs of the adventure again and noticed that the authors envisioned a play-time somewhere between 4 to 10 hours. I almost fell from my chair, laughing! In most gaming groups, considering my experience, this adventure would definitely take somewhere between 2-4 sessions...ending most probably with a total loss with all hands on board. VERY dangerous! But after all it's the RMZ, isn't it?

So it's a great adventure for a three day convention.

[Nuclear Fridge]

It's a good scenario. I ran it way back in the day & it formed the 'framework' for most of my FASA Movie-era campaign (we wanted to steer clear of Project Genesis. Way clear)

This was back when the Klingons were the sneaky & treacherous foes and the Romulans... well, they hadn't been touched on since TOS.
Neutral Zone tours were always edgy. I had a tape set up to play 'now hear this... now hear this... deck six will remain at yellow alert...' & similar stuff. Really played up the Cold War feel.