Anyone else running TOS? Roll Call?

[vegasthroat]

I've looked over the boards and it seems like I may be the only person running in the TOS era.
I get the feeling that other people my age (mid-late 20's) prefer TNG-era because it's what they grew up with, then again that may be my bias as well, I love TNG, but I remember being 10 and watching re-runs of TOS on the tv and when I think Star Trek, I think Kirk, Spock, etc.

Most of my friends have shown a preference for this era as well, are we genetic misfits? weirdos?

just curious as to who else is running TOS.

If I haven't mentioned it before, I think the Decipher stuff is great, but I use the LUG Original Series book for my background, setting material, etc.

So who else is rocking the old school Trek?

[Dan Stack]

I'm not running Trek right now, but I've run a few TOS-era games in the past. They were pretty fun. Were I to do it again (always a possibility), I think I'd actually crank up the cliches a little bit. I myself grew up on TOS, not TNG, but most of my players have been TNG-era fans. However, I've had at least one player remark that he found the TOS era a bit more accessible - easier to understand, less politics (no, in Seasons 3-4 the Borg arrived, it was 4-5 that had the Klingon Civil War and the Khitomer accorss ended in DS9 season 3... )

[Fab]

I'm in a game now. It's post TOS (after the movies) but well before the Next Generation. I wanted it to be TOS, but another guy in the group wouldn't play if it was, so we splite the difference.

Personally, for my money, the original series is a perfect setting for an RPG, even more so that TNG. In my mind, TOS IS Star Trek, everything else is or was trying to match up to its standard.

[Lt Cmdr Matt]

I am....how did my friends put it? A youngun(14). I have tried to like TOS and just can't. It just doesn't work for me. This is coming from a person who loves Voyager and Enterprise. It is not the technology because I like Enterprise Era stuff aswell. Something about Kirk that I hate in the show. I like the movies though.

And yes I did grow up with TNG, VOY, and ENT. I have never seen DS9 though.

[Ineti]

I've never tried a TOS game. I've thought about it, but I grew up on TNG and DS9, so those are Trek to me.

Maybe it's a generation/age thing, I dunno.

Maybe it's the velour uniforms...

[vegasthroat]

see. I'm only in my late 20's.
I was YOUNG when TNG was out and I watched it religously.

Maybe its because I'm a hard-sf fan and dont consider Trek to be 'science fiction' in a lot of ways, that's probably why I enjoy the sort of campy, 60's aesthetic of TOS. The pseudo-science babbledygook on TNG , DS9 and VOY makes me cringe, but in TOS it flows like warm butter....

I like TNG, and I loved DS9. but it's that old school tv scifi vibe that makes it for me as an RPG....

[Kirok]

well, I'm working up a game set just after the events at the beginning of Generations. Does that count? I'm a mongo TOS fan, but opted not to run a game set in the years of the original series because I'm really cranking up the cliches and it seemed like doing that in that setting would get old pretty quick, so I'm blending cliches from all the shows and setting it all on the 1701-B.

[Fab]

I think it depends on people's ages and what they first watched and associated in their minds as being "Trek". Much like who is James Bond (Sean Connery, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, or Pierce Brosnan), the answer depends on what actor is first associated with James Bond.

I like the original series more than any of the others. The later incarnations of the show seem to rely more on technobabble than on solving the plot. Compare how many unknown terms are in a TNG episode, or a Voyager, with how many are in a TOS episode. TOS solved their problems in a 20th century manner in 90% of the cases, where I would say TNG and later relied more and more on futuristic plot devices to get out of trouble.

Not only that, but TOS had no budget to speak of, yet they came up with some great special effects (for the time), and some very interesting plots to the shows. I've seen more than one TOS plot recycled as a TNG episode. For that, TOS will always hold a higher rank than the others in my mind.

Last, the acting, and the styrofoam rocks, and the painted purple skies on the planets they visited were cheesy. That makes you focus on the story. I don't watch TOS because I think Shatner is God's gift to Hollywood, or because that Gorn looked like a real lizard with the strength to lift that obviously very heavy rock, or because I believe 80% of all the aliens in the galaxy look exactly like humans and speak English. I watch it because the stories are good. It's like going to a high school play. There will be bad acting, poorly put-together props, uncomforatble seating, and so forth. So why go (besides the fact that your son is playing the lead)? Because the story was written by some great playwright and it's a good story DESPITE all the bad acting and bad props. They lost some of that with TNG and beyond, they concerned themselves more with fancy sets, nice special effects, and technobabble than they did with the stories.

And just for the record, I'm 30 years old, and as a child of the 70s and early 80s, James Bond (for me) is Roger Moore; and reruns of TOS were all the Star Trek that existed in the world for my first 15 years.

[vegasthroat]

interesting.

so who out there is running/playing in a TOS era Trek game?

that was the original question..

I want to create a little cabal of us TOS-Narrators so we can toss around some genre specific stuff for that timeline...

[Balok]

I run post DS9, but since I am a big TOS fan, and grew up on it, I have been known to bring in elements from that series. Some concepts I am developing into ideas:

- Kirk significantly violated the Prime Directive on a number of occasions, but some in particular stand out: what repercussions might there be from his forcing the Morgs and Eymorgs (men and women) of "Spock's Brain" to live together, without their technology, after centuries of established patterns? What if the tables are turned and the Eymorgs are now the slaves? Except for a few who somehow figured out how to use the Teacher, and are angry at the Federation for the societal wreckage it left behind?

- The society controlling computer Landru had lasted 6,000 years, more or less, before Kirk arrived. It's therefore extremely unlikely that he managed to talk it to death. What if all he did was trick one node of an extremely distributed system into destroying itself? This might temporarily paralyze the system. But now it has restored itself. A large segment of the society yearns for the happiness of Landru's control, and voluntarily puts itself back under that control -- and now there's a war for control of the planet. What should the Federation do about it? What if Landru regains control of the planet, and decides to move beyond it, using knowledge that has long been stored in dusty old memory banks?

- Where, exactly, did the entity that fed on anger and rage go (Day of the Dove) when it left the Enterprise? And what kind of mischief did it stir up there?

- Were Sargon and Thalassa (Return to Tomorrow) really destroyed? Or did they simply wish Kirk & co. to believe that? And if they did survive, what are they doing?

- What did Richard Daystrom (The Ultimate Computer) do with himself after he was cured of his psychosis?

- Trelane (The Squire of Gothos) has graduated from cosmically powered brat to cosmically powered juvenile deliquent. All of the power, more brains, and even less restraint.

[Owen E Oulton]

First, I vehemently disagree that the Morgs and Eyemorgs would qualify for protection under the Prime Directive. The remnants of an extremely advanced culture who still retain the vestiges of FTL flight and use it to raid ships? Not in my Federation. This is a seriously damaged culture, not a normally developing one (and that criterion comes directly from on-screen comments).

Second, I really doubt that the Federation just blithely ignored these planets. I suspect that withing a few weeks or months there were cultural anthopologists crawling all over the place trying to figure how to steer the culture back onto an even keel. This would be done sub-rosa, of course, to do lessen culture shock.

In fact this might be an interesting series of adventures within a campaign. A group of Starfleet officers (probably led by a woman, for practicality) infiltrating the Morg/Eyemorg society, studying surviving records of the original culture and guiding the inhabitants back towards a healthy, stable culture.

With Landru's planet, there was already a movement within society which resisted Landru's influence. I see thios culture as a prime candidate for self-reform. What I don't see is a real proability of it devolving to the level you suggest.

[Balok]

Owen:

All I meant to offer was some ways in which the TOS era solutions could go wrong, resulting in adventure possibilities downstream. Certainly, one might equally well assume those solutions worked fine. And, as you suggest, one might concoct adventures that revolved around fixing Kirk's occasionally slapdash solutions. I don't want to take this thread too far off course, so I'll refrain from additional commentary, although I don't entirely agree with some of your points. If you'd care to discuss it further, we should start another thread.

[Antonsb214]

I played Prime Directive a few times recently with my players, it seems to fit the TOS mold quite easily, and it's amazing how often groups of people armed with all manner of 23rd century boo-boo makers end up in a fist fight.

[Dan Stack]

Somy of my favorite TNG-era adventures have been sequels to TOS episodes. I especially enjoyed doing on to "A Private Little War" -the Federation and Klingons were all friends, but the natives they had armed were still duking it out...


As for my own advice to a TOS game... I would suggest reading to Horatio Hornblower series, especially "Beat to Quarters", where Hornblower is on the Pacific coast of Nicaragua - the only British ship in the area - a great way to enfore the "only ship in the quadrant" feeling.

I'd also suggest giving some thought to era. There are a few sub-eras...

- The Pike era - You lose the brighter uniforms and the Romulans, but you have the interesting issue of no Organian Treaty with the Klingons. Lots of opportunity for some battles with the Klingons, much like the skirmishes between the British and the French. This era is also good if you want, in my opinion, a little more of a pure-SF feel - I always felt the technology of "The Cage" looked more realistic than that of TOS.

- The Kirk TOS Era - The most obvious era. However, I have found this to be a little tight - the time of TOS is only a few years and you are locked into quite a few changes in politics - the Romulans returning, Organian Peace Treaty, etc. However, if you want a 60's feel, I would definitely go with this. It is probably the most accessible of the eras too. I'd play on the camp a little, but I feel TOS at its best took itself seriously - not too seriously, but not as a joke like some make it out to be. Adventure is the word I would use.

Early Movies - Around TMP or STII - good for some more agressive conflict with the Klingons.

Late Movies - Good for that TNG-bridge feeling - you can really set things up for TNG - who says you can't have first contact with the Cardassians? I also feel this era is perfect for modern-day allegories - the Klingon Empire in shambles, selling their weapons on the black market, not all houses coming into line, perhaps a little terrorist activity by minor powers purchasing weapons from the Klingons - good way to introduce the Tzenkethi.


Heck, after our Star Wars game runs its course I might try another TOS game.

[Dave]

I'm always running a TOS universe in my head. And I can't stop it.

"Brain and brain! What is Brain?"