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Prime Directive in Mongoose Flavour?

S

Scarecrow

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So it's sort of official, not only a version of Starfleet Battles for Mongoose's 'A Call To Arms' starship combat games but a Prime Directive (or 'Not-Trek') supplement for MGT.

There's something symmetrical or maybe cyclic about this as Traveller is what most folks used to play Trek before FASA came along :)

I've mixed feelings about PD. On the one hand, I think it's better suited to gaming than 'proper' Trek rpgs because it's based around specialist away teams or 'Prime Teams' that can easily all be the same rank and can all be low rank aswell. So you don't get the old conundrum of who plays the Captain and why does he keep beaming into hostile situations?
On the negative side, it always felt a bit too 'HOO-AH! SIR, YES SIR!' militaristic, which doesn't really feel like touchy-feely Star Trek (even TOS wasn't that bad). I guess it's easy enough not to play it that way, though. The other thing of course, is that all of ADB's ship designs (ie the ones not derived directly from classic Trek) are laughably awful and Prime Directive features no less than five (that's FIVE) cat people races. One is pushing it in my book, but five!?.

I suppose, if I'm honest, none of this should concern me because I won't buy it or play it. I use Savage Worlds for my own Trek homebrew and it works just fine, but I'll be interested to have a look at it, when it arrives and it will do wonders for SFB/ADB/SFG (how many bloody names have they got?) and Traveller in general I think.

Crow
 
Scarecrow said:
There's something symmetrical or maybe cyclic about this as Traveller is what most folks used to play Trek before FASA came along :)
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I have been wanting to do this game ever since we brought Traveller out.

Scarecrow said:
Prime Directive features no less than five (that's FIVE) cat people races. One is pushing it in my book, but five!?.
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How many races of humans does the Third Imperium have? Just what do you have against cat people, eh? Eh?
 
They're the stupidest and laziest alien idea next to dog people? :p

Actually I've always had a soft spot for Caitians (and Aslans (and Vargr)) but five cat races?

Crow
 
To be clear, old school SFB has two MAJOR cat races (Kzinti and Lyran), and gobs of minor cat races. It should be no surprise then that an RPG based on that universe would then have 5 cat races.

And dog people aren't lazy, we just have a different set of priorities.
 
Crow:

1) you've mistaken PD1E for the PD2 family... GPD and PD20/PD20M are NOT focused upon the prime teams. They're generic SFU RPG's, using other people's systems. MGTPD will invariably be the same defocused text as GPD, PD20, and PD20M, save for the rules mechanics.

2) Even in PD1E, prime teams were NOT similar ranks. Ranks of prime team members ran from Specialist to MCPO and Ens to Lt, with LtCdr possible for experienced PC's. It was as diverse as many Traveller games.

3) the big difference between the SFU (used in PD and SFB) and "real Trek" is that militarism. With that militarism also one gets the General War... 20 years of constant warfare. Other than that, which can be easily ignored, to be honest, the SFU has the most realistic approach to ships of any trek setting.
 
Yes, someone on another board said that the other versions of PD were less Prime-team centric. Fair enough. Allah loves wonderous variety :)
Whilst I realise that Prime Teams members could be different ranks, I was under the impression that they could be the same rank if so desired. Or is that not the case?

Crow
 
Scarecrow said:
Yes, someone on another board said that the other versions of PD were less Prime-team centric. Fair enough. Allah loves wonderous variety :)
Whilst I realise that Prime Teams members could be different ranks, I was under the impression that they could be the same rank if so desired. Or is that not the case?

Crow
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Under 1E, one would have to have a lack of diversity and some odd luck for all to have the same ranks... as in PD1E, rank is randomized, and different specialties have different ranges of possible ranks.

Here's the table, it uses 2d6.

Naval ___________ JPO ___ SPO ___ MPO ___ CPO ___ Ens ___ LtJG __ Lt ___ LtCdr
FComm ___________ --- ___ --- ___ --- ___ --- ___ --- ___ --- ___ 2-5 ___ 6-12
Command, Flt ____ --- ___ --- ___ --- ___ --- ___ 2-3 ___ 4-7 ___ 8-12 __ ---
Engr. or Ops ____ 2-3 ___ 4-6 ___ --- ____ 7 ___ 11-12 __ 9-10 ___ 8 ____ ---
Medical __________ 2 _____ 3 ____ --- ____ 4 ____ 12 ___ 10-11 __ 5-9 ___ ---
Marine __________ 2-3 ___ 4-6 ____ 9 ____ 7-8 __ 10-11 __ 12 ____ --- ___ ---
Marine HWS ______ 2-3 ___ 4-6 ___ --- ____ 7 ____ 8-9 __ 10-12 __ --- ___ ---
Psi _____________ --- ___ --- ___ --- ___ --- ___ 2-4 ___ 5-9 __ 10-12 __ ---


In 2E, it varies by which ruleset... in GPD, it's buy rank with points, and so can be anywhere from illogically flat to illogically dispersed. I'm not familiar with the PD20 nor PD20M rank determination process. GPD does mention prime teams, but also makes it clear the game isn't of need fixated on them.
 
Wow! I didn't realise it worked that way, I figured your rank was whatever rank you had when you created your character.

Crow
 
My thing about Trek is that it does have so many primate races, that are all mysteriously interfertile... :eek:o:
 
According to a post on the Federation Commander webforum, Mongoose is also going to be redoing all of the miniatures for Federation Commander with new computer controlled sculpts (probably like the Shapeways). I wish they would redo the FASA minis. That would rock if we could get all the ships from the movies. (hint hint)
 
Scarecrow said:
Wow! I didn't realise it worked that way, I figured your rank was whatever rank you had when you created your character.

Crow
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In fact, it's just the opposite pattern in PD1E. Your rank gets you a few extra points with which to buy skills... Determine race (pick), determine specialty (pick), determine rank (roll), take skills from specialty, buy up skills with points from rank.

I love PD1E. It's a really good system... which sadly, SVC can't grasp the mechanics of, so it's been abandoned.
 
I'll certainly look at it, and if the art is nice I may even buy a copy. I haven't run a Trek game in a jillion years, and while I've kicked around the notion of doing GURPS PD, the one time I flipped through it the art left me cold, so it went back on the shelf.

And then there's the lack of miniatures for characters that I have to contend with. If someone made a really good classic Trek figure I'd be more willing to run a game. Thank god for Scarecrow's paper mini builder! It saved the day when I needed a bunch of Trek garbed types for my GURPS Infinite Worlds campaign.
 
aramis said:
Good luck... SVC has been adamant in public that all of the non-rules text be identical in all editions of 2nd ed. All he allows to be changed is the system mechanics text.
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We (myself and the team working on the actual book) are looking at three styles of play out of the box - away teams, bridge crews and 'wandering adventurers.'
 
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