FASA Adventure modules

[Capt Daniel Hunter]

OK, I'm on a bit of a nostalgia kick here, thanks to the TOS ships thread

So I was wondering what's everyone's favourite old FASA adventure module/s, and why?

[Diamond]

"A Doomsday Like Any Other", no doubt about it. I loved that module.

Why? SPOILERS FOLLOW!!!! WARNING!

Good adventure design. FASA wrote in their Narrotor's Book about the benefits of the "Tinker Toy" scenario design, but the mix of directed action and free form action was tough to pull off even in their own modules. Plus a big deadline gave needed urgency and spurring on of the players, driving the plot well.

Interesting NPCS. With good motivations that put them in conflict with the PCs without being stupidly villanous.

Smart resolution. I always give extra points where non-combat skills are vital to the plot. Exploring the Doomsday machine let a LOT of skills be used, with good balance between the character types. Scientists, engineers, AND each ship's position was vital.

A killer climax. It's hard to beat the adventure's climax... fighting a Romulan fleet in starship combat on the outside while simultaneously resolving a TRIPLE-cross within.

All three legs of the content tripod. When I'm looking at a sourcebook or adventure module, when something is mentioned I want three things in the book. An image, a text description, and game stats. This module had all three for pretty much everything, even including minor NPCs. That's what I want when I GM, that's what they provided, I liked it.

[Capt Daniel Hunter]

I have to agree. Doomsday is one of the best they made. I've run it several times, altering the scenario to incorporate different elements. It's never let me down.

Another I think is well worth mentioning, is Decision at Midnight. I didn't run this one but I did play in it. It was atmospheric, had excellent NPCs, an excellent external setting witht he political situaion going on around the chratcers, and it had deckplans (albeit fairly basic ones) for the wonderful Loknar class.

Another excellent adventure was Imbalance of Power, which was a Klingon adventure. Years later, my group still vote it as one of the best published modules they ever played.

I've always wanted to run it again, only with two groups, one playing Federation, the other Klingon, and see how it goes. I probably will do so soon, once my TOS campaign reaches the motion picture era.

[AslanC]

Where Has All The Glory Gone?

That is my fav.

Love the Chandly...

Add in the Romulans

[Capt Daniel Hunter]

Where has all the Glory Gone was a classic as well. Another good batch of NPCs and a good moral dilemma. The tension on board the crippled frigate was a great source of role playing goodness.

One thing I did think was a problem (albeit easily fixed), was that the module writers seemed to think players would be easily fooled into thinking that the distress call was from a Federation station.

[AslanC]

Fair enough...fair enough

But easily worked around.

I think I will use all those great old adventures if I ever run a movie era game.

[Capt Daniel Hunter]

I'm about to haul them out for my TOS campaign. Since a lot of those players are new ones

[Captain Blake]

I used both Doomsday Like Any Other and Where has All the Glory Gone for the starting adventures in my FASA Next Gen game.

I gave them a Constellation Class ship, and let them go to town.

The PC captain, when she got the distress call in Where, did exactly what that group of players always did, think "Heh, the adventure starts, I must go with the plot" and then do so.

They were across the Neutral Zone before the XO had a chance to say, "What's going on?"

Ah, what fun, what fun.

Alex

[Owen E Oulton]

A Doomsday Like Any Other was good, and I'm in the process of updating it as an adventure for the crew of the Challenger. A really nice little "locked door mystery" adventure was The Vanished. That one was the basis for the FDR 39 deckplans in the Campaign Sourcebook on the Star Trek Universe section of my site.

Another good source of SF adventure fodder is old GDW Traveller (original edition) modules, like Night of Conquest, Twilight's Peak, Shadows (reworked with the xenomorphs from Alien), Research Station Gamma and Annic Nova.

[Capt Daniel Hunter]

Originally posted by Owen E Oulton

A really nice little "locked door mystery" adventure was The Vanished

I'm trying to get hold of a copy of that one at the moment actually. I rather like the sound of it.

[Phoenix]

First, the training excercise "Kobiashi Maru" was a blast (almost beat it once...only had 1 more hex to go. Got my seat warmer handed to me the other 5 times). The only mod. I ever played though was "The Dixie Gambit".

[Diamond]

I liked "The Dixie Gambit" too. I ran it as a one-shot at a gaming weekend, and it did well. Unfortunately, it's hard to adapt to a "standard" campaign. It's nitche is very specialized... your PCs need to not only be Starfleet Intel types, but of the Klingon specialty as well or you have little hope.

That said, it has many of the strengths of "Doomsday" that I listed above... just slightly less so in my opinion. Still, a very good module, and the specialization isn't a problem if you run it as a one-shot.

[Capt Daniel Hunter]

OK, so I am officially in a good mood. I just won a copy of The Vanished in an auction.

As my hero Homer would say "WOOHOO"

Now if I can just get Conflict of Interests......

[Diamond]

I lost my copy of the "Orion Sourcebook". I'm usually very careful about my gaming books, but I lost it years ago and definetly regretted it. Not that I used Orions a lot, but the sourcebook was still well done. It always amazed me how much FASA could fit into such a thin book, compared with modern gaming source materiel. Of course, the font was a little hard to read.

[Capt Daniel Hunter]

I loved the Orion source book, and it saw quite a lot of use in my game. I still use it for bits and pieces to this day.

The FASA game had a lot of problems, but somehow it captured the 'feel' of Trek very well.