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Post by rickno7 on Apr 7, 2013 14:40:53 GMT -8
A room full of non-Star Trek fans can't think of a way to make Star Trek fun? Surprise there Anyway. I'm not going to get all too nerded out on you guys. I'm not going to bring up the Dominion War or even go into Voyager vs Borg stuff where they did turn the show into an action series with rifles, special forces raids, and all that. Instead I'm just going to put forth one idea and let other people do others(if they do indeed have ideas for it) CSI: Star TrekThis is perfect for a group of players that do not want to try and emulate Star Trek's military styled utopia. The group of players travel and investigate murders and crimes throughout the Star Trek universe. You get to visit space stations, ships of all kinds, maybe even non-Starfleet because it is more likely a citizen is going to die on non-citizen ships. You're not stuck on just one ship the entire time, and the settings can change for every "episode". There is no bother of PC Captains or people higher rank among the PC's. There's plenty of intrigue and mystery to solve. I have yet to see an episode where a body was vaporized with no trace and the killer is never found. There's all sorts of geeky mumbo jumbo that is made up to make things just vague enough so that mysteries get solved. And OF COURSE you can say "why not just play Traveller" but that is coming from sorta or non-fans. You can say that about anything. Why play the LOTR setting, you could just play stock D&D. You have halflings and wizards, same stuff, right? Why play Star Wars, add lightsabers into a GM made Space Opera and be happy, right? Sometimes players just do not want to get invested in a GM created world, and its no slight against GM's. Sometimes people might come together specifically to want to play in a world they like. Big Star Trek fans aren't going to need to learn new technobabble. When you talk about positronic brains(yes I know its originally Asimov), tachyon beams, transporter buffers, particle resonance traces, and all that crap; fans will have an idea. You don't have to supply a dictionary of the made of words your GM has taken 3 months inventing. Anyways. I know its close to nerd-raging on that, but I've played several Star Trek based games and my players and I have seemed to have fun just fine in them. I probably wouldn't have gotten all ragey if ONE person spoke up and wasn't shot down. Then when Stork thought of a possible solution(all Klingons), the whole "well just play Traveller" came out. Well maybe I don't WANT to play Traveller, maybe I WANT to play Star Trek. As inconceivable that apparently is.
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Post by malifer on Apr 7, 2013 15:12:50 GMT -8
First off what started this rant? Is it the current HJ episode? I have been slowly messing around with a Savage Worlds Star Trek, mostly inspired by the free microlite20 "Where No Man Has Gone Before". www2.abillionmonkeys.com:3389/trek/It's probably awesome enough to play on its own, but I'm currently enjoying the Pulp-y Savage Worlds flavor. Why not play Traveller? Because they are completely different in my view. Traveller is gritty and more simulationist than I want a Star Trek game to be. Death is for Red Shirts. Although I must say when I envision a Star Trek game I like the idea of more episodic stories as wacky as some of the Original Series, like the episode where the go down to Gang-World High jinks ensue.
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Post by jazzisblues on Apr 7, 2013 18:48:21 GMT -8
Yes it was the current episode. The question was were there ip's that we wouldn't use because we didn't want to ruin the ip for ourselves. Star Trek came up (by me) because I said I was unlikely to run a Star Trek based game.
I wasn't asserting that a Star Trek based game wouldn't or couldn't be fun, just that I probably wouldn't do it. My reason for that is all of the constraints placed on the game to make it a Star Trek game. It really has little to do with it being a Star Trek game per se, but things like having such a fixed command structure and such are not things that I find work well for my games.
JiB
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Post by malifer on Apr 7, 2013 19:08:39 GMT -8
Yes it was the current episode. The question was were there ip's that we wouldn't use because we didn't want to ruin the ip for ourselves. Star Trek came up (by me) because I said I was unlikely to run a Star Trek based game. I wasn't asserting that a Star Trek based game wouldn't or couldn't be fun, just that I probably wouldn't do it. My reason for that is all of the constraints placed on the game to make it a Star Trek game. It really has little to do with it being a Star Trek game per se, but things like having such a fixed command structure and such are not things that I find work well for my games. JiB Ahh...thanks for the clarification JiB. As far as the command structure this is another reason I think The Original Series is better inspiration for a game. I like most of the Star Trek shows, but I think the newer shows were much more of a military organization than the original series when it comes to the federation and it rules. This may be due to just having more canon to follow, but I think there is probably a TOS episode for every different type of Rank purposely disobeying the person above them if not Capt. Kirk himself. Sure if it was the big "plan" the characters debated about it, then the low ranking characters tended to fall in line, but not before giving Kirk a piece of their mind. Because they thought of each other as friends or equals, before what color shirt they wore. I like a Star Trek based game for the same reasons I liked Stu's Ghostbusters game. It is a world so iconic everyone knows the basics. Also as GM you can pretty much do whatever you want and make it fit.
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Post by malifer on Apr 7, 2013 19:29:33 GMT -8
HA!
I should have finished listening to the podcast. TOS for the win.
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Post by rickno7 on Apr 7, 2013 20:18:41 GMT -8
My post was a bit more tongue in cheek on the rage part. It still just seemed to me to be very short sighted with the conversation around, but that's fine. I don't consider myself a trekker, I don't own a single bit of Trek memorabilia. Most of the "its too popular I hate it" usually has at least one side that sticks up for it on the show. With Lord of the Rings you get Kimmi. With Star Wars you have pretty much everyone that isn't Stu defending it. With Trek, it just felt like it was unanimous that it was a horrible setting for RP'ing. I'm not here defending everything as possibly a good subject for a game.
I felt like someone needed to defend the Trek, and I have devoted some time thinking of scenarios for Trek before that kind of lives in that universe without having to make it so militarily rigid. Though I'm not opposed to having a group of 4 fresh Lieutenants trying to impress their NPC Captain, and keep the ship out of trouble.
DS9, which I was never a huge fan of, did open up some non-Star Fleet focus. Quark's bar deals with smuggling in a remote outpost, and continues to do shady things even during the war. *SPOILER* when the station is taken over and the bar appears neutral, he risks a lot to help his old allies. Running a bar in space during a war would be awesome, if you have 4 people that really know Trek, why not do it in Trek? I can say "2 Klingons walk into a bar" and everyone knows that shit is going down. In my own made up world, it would probably end up "two aliens walk into the bar, you know them as Giga-Tampons, a "Klingon" like race I made up yesterday to take the dwarf/Klingon role in our world"
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Post by ayslyn on Apr 8, 2013 21:24:15 GMT -8
I played a LUG Star Wars game at GenCon in 2000. It was a blast. We all played Klingons on a ship. We found a tapestry detailing the legend of Kahless' bat'leth. It was awesome, including a decision which totally threw the LUG guys for a loop. I was hoarse for the entire next day. ^.^
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Post by gina on Apr 10, 2013 16:11:30 GMT -8
A room full of non-Star Trek fans can't think of a way to make Star Trek fun? Surprise there I don't consider myself a trekker, I don't own a single bit of Trek memorabilia. Bummer that you thought it was all Trek hate, as there was at least one actual fan there. In point of fact, I wanted to discuss that particular topic from the writer's email before we moved on because I was curious about the POV of the others (there & in the chatroom). "... have you ever run into the issue of not wanting to use a setting because you like it?
Allow me to clarify. There are certain IPs that I don't want to explicitly play in because I'm afraid that the experience I have loved with the book/movie/series/video game in question won't translate quite the same way. I worry that expectations clashing with reality could hurt enjoyment of the game, or worse, tarnish thething I originally loved..."I could identify with the writer's dilemma a bit, feeling that the game experience has a higher potential of being a bummer because you like the IP. I heart the Trek. (And, while I don't own a uniform or phaser or such, I have every single episode of every single version of ST on dvd, including the fairly goofy Star Trek: The Animated Series.) Don't know if I think it'd tarnish my enjoyment of the actual IP but because I've had an experience as such, signing up to play as a fan of an IP in what was a sucktastic game, I approach those situations with a bit more caution. P.S. I freakin' love DS9, feel free to disregard everything I just said on that fact alone.
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Post by kaitoujuliet on Apr 11, 2013 8:23:03 GMT -8
I wasn't asserting that a Star Trek based game wouldn't or couldn't be fun You may not have been asserting that, but Stu sure was--and you backed him up on several points! You know, I have never had the slightest temptation to run a Star Trek game before; I'm not even really a fan, having been frightened by a TOS episode at age four and put off for my formative years as a result. But Stu's pooh-poohing it really made me want to do it just to prove him wrong! ;D Anyway, the point that I wished someone had made in response to Stu was that some people like that "squeaky-clean" stuff. There was a fascinating thread at rpg.net a little while back detailing different ways people have approached D&D-style fantasy over the years, and one of the styles that people spoke of most fondly was dubbed "Paladins and Princesses." I'll quote that thread's description of the playstyle: It seems to me that Star Trek would be an ideal setting for the sci-fi variant of this. It may not be a style that's congenial to all the podcast hosts, but not everyone needs rogues and ruffians in their party--and surely the Trek IP itself is proof that there is adventure to be found in that universe! (Unless you really think the various Star Trek TV shows and movies contained no adventure, in which case, I don't think we're on the same page at all.) Bummer that you thought it was all Trek hate, as there was at least one actual fan there. *raises hand* It really sounded like "all Trek hate" to me too. (As rickno7 said, everyone who tried to defend it was shot down.) I thought that was an interesting topic too. I think it depends on two things: first, how personal is your relationship with the IP? And second, do you think your game group views it similarly to the way you do? (Not so much "Is their relationship equally personal?" as "Do you mostly interpret it the same way?") If your answers to those questions are "very" and "no," then you probably shouldn't game in that setting, at least with your current group. If your answers are "very" and "yes," you might have a FANTASTIC game; but beware of tiny differences in opinion that can erupt into huge fan-wars. (See "Canonicity and You" for more.) If your answers are "not very" and "yes," you'll probably have a decent time with the game but are less likely to reach the level that "very/yes" would give you. And you may be willing to trade that for the decreased probability of fights. (I'd say this is where my group and I are with Star Wars, and we just wrapped up a very successful adventure in that setting.) If your answers are "not very" and "no," then you can still have a good time with game, but you'd probably be just as happy ... playing Traveler. ;D
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SirGuido
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Posts: 2,127
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Post by SirGuido on Apr 11, 2013 8:52:53 GMT -8
P.S. I freakin' love DS9, feel free to disregard everything I just said on that fact alone. I love Trek. DS9 was my second favorite series.... Enterprise was my favorite. Don't hate.
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Post by Stu Venable on Apr 11, 2013 12:38:13 GMT -8
Yeah, agreeing with me is likely to get you splashed by my shit storm. To clarify (and I think I said this, but it was probably when we were talking over each other): Original Series, yes, you could have a fun game. I think Gina mentioned Enterprise as well, which I would agree with. Enterprise was my favorite series by far (except for the title music). TNG and later? Fuck no. TNG was too squeaky clean. They had to introduce another whole race to justify self-interest-motivated characters. Okay. I'll make one concession. A ST:TNG game could be interesting if all of the PCs are Ferengi. There. Happy?
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Post by Kainguru on Apr 11, 2013 12:45:54 GMT -8
P.S. I freakin' love DS9, feel free to disregard everything I just said on that fact alone. I love Trek. DS9 was my second favorite series.... Enterprise was my favorite. Don't hate. +1 Enterprise for the Win If I ran a Star Trek IP it'd be I'm this era . . . Just after the last episode so that there are more vessels and an actual federation and less potential for canon conflicts . . . Aaron
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Post by Stu Venable on Apr 11, 2013 12:49:32 GMT -8
And speaking of Star Trek, my son was playing the Star Wars Lego game.
It was the part on Hoth when you have to trip up the big dog-lookin' things with the cables.
I kept telling him, "no go around their legs and trip them." He didn't understand, so I made him pause the game.
And we watched Episode IV, where there is no Hoth, or walkers or speeder things with cables.
Yeah, big fan.
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Post by greatwyrm on Apr 11, 2013 17:08:26 GMT -8
Okay. I'll make one concession. A ST:TNG game could be interesting if all of the PCs are Ferengi. I'm envisioning a reskinned version of Kobolds Ate My Baby.
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RobMITC
Apprentice Douchebag
Posts: 67
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Post by RobMITC on Apr 12, 2013 9:43:02 GMT -8
And speaking of Star Trek, my son was playing the Star Wars Lego game. It was the part on Hoth when you have to trip up the big dog-lookin' things with the cables. I kept telling him, "no go around their legs and trip them." He didn't understand, so I made him pause the game. And we watched Episode IV, where there is no Hoth, or walkers or speeder things with cables. Yeah, big fan. I love everything about this post.
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