Coda question to LUG veterans

[Razuur]

Hello,

I have never played the LUG version of Trek, only the old FASA. So I walk into my gameshop to pick up my awesome (*and I mean awesome*) Players guide, and I see a whole shelf full of LUG products. I have already picked up a couple supplements (like the Vulcans supplement), and found them to be pretty rules lite, thus portable.

I was wondering if any of you who own both could reccomend whether picking up any of the old LUG stuff would be worthwile. They are pretty expensicve, and I plan on picking up all Decipher trek products too, but I was just curious if anything else out there would really work well as supplemental.

They have all three previous trek RPGs. The have the Starfleet academy supplement boxed set. They have a variety of others.

Are any of these meaty enough in info, or are they completely rules heavy. At 35.00 a pop I want them to be useful.

Any help you all give is appreciated.

Razuur

[Don Mappin]

Wow. Really great question.

First of all, the systems are pretty compatible with a minimum of fuss. (The conversion document, which should be out Real Soon Now™ will hopefully show this.)

I’m curious why the store hasn’t marked the product down, considering LUG has been dead for well over a year now.

Off the top of my head, the good stuff:
Romulan Boxed Set—rocks on toast.
Starfleet Academy—utility is determined by what you plan to run.
All Our Yesterdays—another great sourcebook
Planetary Adventures—Great adventure book with lots of plot ideas.

On the bubble:
Price of Freedom—Much of this is going to be redone in at least 3 upcoming Coda books. Plus “Enterprise” is rewriting canon every week.
Narrator’s Toolkits—The screens aren’t of any use, but the advice inside is. The TOS one is generally considered the best.
The Vulcans—Lots and lots of BG material which you may or may not use.
Raider, Renegades and Rogue—Okay book but utility is limited to your campaign style
Planets of the UFP—Coda planets book coming out makes this of limited use.
The First Line—All about Starfleet Intelligence. You may or may not want this.

Avoid:
The Core Game books—Really, there’s nothing there that Coda won’t have in short order
The Andorians—Good luck finding this one. Not much value to me.
A Fragile Peace—Would take a lot of work to convert these adventures, which weren’t mind-blowing good to begin with, over to Coda.
Holodeck Adventures—Uuum, no comment.
[edit]Players' Guide--Avoid. Lots of rules and the non-rule material already appears in the Coda PG. Coda species book will do the rest.

NOTE—I have a few of these books NEW. I would be happy to sell them at, say 20% off cover price plus shipping (or best offer). Please contact me if anyone is interested!

[C5]

From one who bought almost all of them (save for the one on Starfleet Intellignece, wich disappeared the day I decided to buy it ) :
The Player's Guide (no, not that one ) is very rules-oriented. There are many optional rules and specialisations. However, there are twelve interesting (and easily convertible, I hope) alien templates and histories.
The Price of Freedom has extensive info on the Federation and its core members politics. There is also a quite interesting chapter about the Merchant Marine, and some infos on the ship. On the whole, much of it is rule-free or easily adaptable.
The Way of Kholinahr (the Vulcans) has extensive info on the Vulcans, and very few rules.
The Way of D'Era boxed set contains a whole book on the Romulans (not too much rules-oriented), and another book of scenarios (always adaptable).
The extension on time travel is very good, but relies moderately on rules.
The extension on the holodeck is interesting for its advices and scenarios (both easily adaptable)
TNG and DS9's Narrator guides contain good advices and not too many rules.
Planets of the UFP has a lot of planet descriptions, and relies on the rules only as far as aliens templates are concerned.

Hope this can help

EDIT : Not fast enough, grasshopper! Don beat me to it. Disregard this post, then.

[Dan Stack]

Regarding the core books, I'm inclined to agree with Don. I'd definitely avoid the TNG book if you are using Coda-Trek.

The other two, DS9 and TOS, you might get some information out of - they both capture the unique feel of their settings well, especially the TOS one. But they both are really rules-heavy- I'd probably avoid paying full price for them and even then I'm not sure they'd be worth the price. (All are fine books, just not certain if they are worthwhile from a sourcebook perspective)

The "Way of the Clans" Andorian book is quite good in my opinion, but destined to be contradicted by Enterprise - Andorians were quite safe to make up stuff for at the time LUG had the license but now, with their prevalent role in Enterprise, details are being filled in which never had been before.

For others, my personal opinion would be that Way of D'Era and the Time Travel book (All Our Yesterdays) are both great supplements and definitely portable to Coda-Trek. Way of Kohlinahr is good too, but probably more likely to get contradicted.

[Razuur]

Thanks. You answered all of my questions perfectly.

I really appreciate it.

And Mr. Mappin, they did have all of the books (sets) you mentioned and at full price (except the romulan set).

Small game shop...

Razuur

[BonzaiGopher]

Hiya Razuur,

Count yourself lucky to have a store like that!!! I've never seen half the LUG stuff that you mentioned - forget about having it all in one store!

Enjoy,

Bonzai Gopher

[qerlin]

Big time disagree with Don on the Andorian book. Love it; they've become one of the favorite races for our group.

[Greg Smith]

If you're looking for adventure seeds go with the Planets of the UFP. It has 2-3 for each planet, giving you dozens of ideas for episodes.

Don't forget the Cardassian book and the Dominion War sourcebook available as downloads. The Cardie book rocks (I was one of the authors ). The DWS is pretty darn good too.