An interesting discussion

[Allensh]

http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=430377

Mongoose Traveller Prime Directive?

Mongoose Traveller Star Trek (or at least as close as one can get and not get sued)?

interesting ideas expressed there...

Allen

(Please note the inclusion of the above link is not an attempt to draw people away from this forum or to 'promote' another forum, merely to start discussion here of ideas expressed there).

 

[aramis]

My view:
1) anyone who thinks traveller is plain vanilla is dead wrong. Vanilla-nutmeg-clove cookies, perhaps, but not plain vanilla.

2) Most of the RPGnet makes the worst days here look nice.

3) SVC is unlikely to be happy with whatever TD looks like, and since it won't be able to be CALLED TD, it won't reach the target audience by default.

4) TD won't be the Trek that most people are looking for

5) TD won't have decent ship rules, nor even Ships compatible with other Traveller designs.

 

[saundby]

Traveller isn't plain vanilla, but it's not hard to make it suit the game you want, either. What's a lot harder is writing something up that others will accept as a conversion.

I've only just started running a 3I game since I started using MGT (and got the CT CD--prior to that all I had was the first three LBBs.) The first few games I ran back in '77 were vanilla Traveller, but then I did my own blend of Doc Smith, Harry Harrison, and Jack Vance and ran that until last year. The only rules I actually rewrote were the shipbuilding rules. I dropped jumpspace isolation since I had inertialess drives instead of jumps, but transit times were the same. There was no general ansible tech, as in Traveller, but it cropped up a couple of times as one-off tech--sadly destroyed and lost in the course of the adventure.

Most of the game differences were a matter of emphasis rather than outright changes to the game. I probably could have kept the Traveller shipbuilding system, again just substituting inertialess travel for jumps, meaning interstellar encounters are possible.

Doing Trek doesn't need to be much different. It wouldn't even be hard to bring in existing Trek rules like ships and combat from Star Fleet Battles, using the Traveller rules for the RPG elements. Before I rolled my own I used both Triplanetary and Warpwar rules for shipbuilding and space combat with Traveller.

*shrug*

I guess what people are really talking about isn't so much rules as a bunch of pregenerated content for the game.

I don't know. I've never really understood people saying "I wish they'd do..." pick your milieu. A well-defined and simple core set of rules like Traveller are easy to adapt, IMO. And it's less work than starting with something totally generic like the original BRP (I'm not familiar with newer ones, so I can't speak for those.)

 

[mike wightman]

The FASA ST game had some of the best ship combat rules form the player's perspective I've seen - similar in a way to how T20 makes the players have something to do.
Very easy to graft onto Traveller.

Since so much ST tech is just magic plot device of the week it's pretty easy to make it up too.

 

[rust]

Indeed an interesting discussion.

It seems there could be a lot of potentially useful material "in the pipeline",
at least enough to ruin my roleplaying budget completely.

 

[aramis]

The FASA ST game had some of the best ship combat rules form the player's perspective I've seen - similar in a way to how T20 makes the players have something to do.
Very easy to graft onto Traveller.

Since so much ST tech is just magic plot device of the week it's pretty easy to make it up too.

MoTrav Draft 3.2 had an equally involving system

Battlestations! (by Gorilla Games) has a similar system as MoTrav 3.2...

in both, every action of the ship is done by a character at a workstation.

 

[Rhialto the Marvelous]

Is Battlestations a fun game? I've been on the fence forever now. It looks funky.

 

[DaveChase]

BattleStations is a cool fun game. Has some neat little twist with the races and you can always play it as a RPG, miniatures or both game.

I never got the supplements (money issues as in lack of on my part).

Dave Chase

 

[infojunky]

Is Battlestations a fun game? I've been on the fence forever now. It looks funky.

It is funky, but fun.

Very campy role playing like we did when we where kids. No high drama, just shoot-em until they are dead.

 

[aramis]

It's not quite an RPG, not quite a starship combat board game, and not quite a starship boarding actions game, but a fun hybrid in the middle zone.

Supplements are worthy, bits are mixed bag, but plenty of them, and minis to replace the bits are expensive but available in 15mm.

It's Trek-ish and Traveller-ish without being either, but could easily be played in either style.

You have to have a character at a workstation to do anything of note on the starship scale, it's easier if you're in the right place. Starship actions are resoled by the character instigating them. Each "boarding turn" is also a starship combat impulse; the terminology is centered on the starship scale.

I've had one session go flat with it, and 20 sessions go great; no mediocre ones.

 

[spinwardpirate]

I have always wanted to try a Traveller/Trek game. Problem is, my players believe Trek is a horrible universe to rpg in, especially if they have to play Starfleet.

I really liked the original FASA Trek. Of course, being the SFB and Franz Joseph geek that I was, the lack of Franz Joseph ships was a bit of a bubble burster to me. Ha ha ha... if I had known then what I know what... just how many times can one's Trek bubble be burst?
:rofl:

I also took a liking to LUGTrek. I thought it caught the flavor of Classic like no other game. Sadly, never got around to playing it.

But someday, mark my words, I will play Traveller/Trek.

 

[aramis]

Personally, rules-wise, my preference is Prime Directive 1st Ed. VERY cinematic, very much fun.

I find trek a lot of fun to Roleplay in, provided everyone's on board. Buy-in is vital, and for some, difficult.

I've run the SFU using most of the trek engines available: PD1, FASA-Trek 1e/2e, LUG-Trek, D-Trek. I've not run GPD, as I know enough GURPS to know the feel will not work with my GM-style, and strongly dislike where it went mechanically.

I've also run every one of those in their native settings, as well.

And, I've run: Starships & Spacemen, which is a trek knock-off, an Excellent game for the first-gen; Zocchi's Star Patrol, also a trek knock-off, but rather lamer; Star Trek under MegaTraveller, which worked well enough for characters but not so well for ships...

 

[spinwardpirate]

Ahhh... I've run Starships and Spacemen too. That was lots of fun. Yeah, it's D&D meets Star Trek. But that being said, somehow it worked. Either that, or I was much more forgiving back in the days of my youth. Or had lower expectations.

Last Trek campaign I can remember running used FASA Trek, the original boxed edition. The last time I remember actually playing sort of Trek rpg was a simple Feds versus Klingons board action, using GURPS, but with the square-gridded Klingon battlecruiser plans from FASA. That was a bunch of fun.

I agree that buy-in is vital. And therein lies my woes... little to no player buy-in. It's a shame too, because I really have some fun Trek ideas to play out.

I never tried Prime Directive. Not sure why. I have picked up GURPS Prime Directive, but I wasn't sold on it. I think as I get older, I want simpler systems.

 

[Rhialto the Marvelous]

I always wanted to run FASA Trek back in the day, but since the idea was for the PCs to be officers of a ship, that led to unresolvable discussions as to who should be what. Not to mention the Captain Problem. Either the captain is one of the PCs, who is then the boss of the other PCs (unacceptable), or he's an NPC, who is then the boss of all PCs (unacceptable).

Players can be SO dogmatic. Especially when they're seventeen years old.

 

[aramis]

Not to mention the Captain Problem. Either the captain is one of the PCs, who is then the boss of the other PCs (unacceptable), or he's an NPC, who is then the boss of all PCs (unacceptable).

If both options are unacceptable, any form of military roleplaying is unacceptable.

Even at 16, I never had the "Captain" problem. Perhaps because

1. I and most of my players were in JROTC and/or CAP,
2. Most of my players were Catholic, Orthodox, Episcopalian or Lutheran (all having strong hierarchical systems), and
3. most of my players were military dependents.

In point of fact, the biggest issue was instead jockeying to get the ranking player to order the desired action so as to be insulated from the repercussions should it go poorly.

 

[Rhialto the Marvelous]

If both options are unacceptable, any form of military roleplaying is unacceptable.

Exactly. Sigh. :nonono:

My players were all over D&D, being as it is freewheeling anarchist--which is probably one more reason why D&D is so popular at a certain age... and beyond.

 

[DaveChase]

We had some diehard StarTrek Fans while I was at college. We played FASA StarTrek.

Some of the individuals were even military or military dependents.

Our biggest problem was finding someone who wanted to be Captain.

Most wanted positions in our group

Engineer or Science Officer (tied)
Yoeman (cause they got around, in many ways
Medical/Doctor
Captain and then Security

The only reason Security got lower than Captain, is because you knew that if you pissed off the Captain, you would be the first in on the next mission.

Dave Chase

 

[Klaus]

Trav Trek would be a pretty straightforward thing to do, what with warp engine rules and such.

Intriguingly, a MGT J-1 Warp drive is equivalent to Trek Warp Factor 5, and J-6 is Warp Factor 8.

The Constitution class Enterprise approximates 20,000 dTons (10k saucer, 7k engineering, 1.5k each nacelle, crudely divided). If you beefed up bay weapon damages and used the old skool 1 bay / 1000dTons, and, of course, homebrewed a shield system (there's 3 or 4 approaches that could be adopted from other MGT mechanics), and some crunch on anti-matter storage, a HG Enterprise comes pretty close to what we see on screen.

The flavour would come from good chargen tables though. While simple to make, they take a bit of crafting to get right, and I can see lots of PoVs emerging for battle.

A 30 page pdf woulf kick a Trav-Trek game off quite nicely.

 

[aramis]

Actually, Klaus, that depends a lot on baseline assumptions...

Warp 5 OCU = 125C. ≅ WF4.25 MCU. ≅ 5.54 days per Pc
J1=3.24*365/7≅164C ≅ WF 5.48 OCU ≅ WF 4.65 MCU

I can't recall if the parsec is 3.24 or 3.26; all the below use 3.24...

HOWEVER, sustained speed for jump is half that in normal ops.

J1 ≅ WF 5.5 OCU ≅ WF 4.65 MCU
J2 ≅ WF 6.95 OCU ≅ WF 5.7 MCU
J3 ≅ WF 7.97 OCU ≅ WF 6.48 MCU
J4 ≅ WF 8.78 OCU ≅ WF 7.05 MCU
J5 ≅ WF 9.45 OCU ≅ WF 7.55 MCU
J6 ≅ WF 10.05 OCU ≅ WF 7.96 MCU

OCU: Old Cochrane Units/Original Cochrane Units (TOS/TAS)
MCU: Modified Cochrane Units (TNG/DS9/Voy)

(MCU Calcs from http://home.att.net/~srschmitt/script_warpcalc.html )

Note that the most likely MGT Trav Rules will be a third WF scale; the scaling for the Star Fleet Universe of Star Fleet Battles/Prime Directive. It's OCU up to WF 4, at which point the exponent climbs.

How do we represent the Enterprise's (1701) Warp 6 cruise and warp 8 emergency speeds (Both OCU)?