In re FASA Lifepath… FASA started life as a Traveller Licensee.
For those not familiar with the various lifepath types…
Follow the career in a simulation mode with lots of random
Follow the career in a simulation mode with many choices
Contracted random sim (usually with lots of choices)
random assignment of points to pools (and picks within those pools)
package selection to contract
random rolls for non-mechanical background data
and some examples by type
simulation
CT: Roll to enlist; failure to enlist results in draft; roll survival, roll promotion; calculate skills; pick table and roll for resulting skill; roll reenlist, decide if reenlisting (unless reenlistment roll failed), if needed, suffer aging, repeat
Sim with choices
TTNE: Roll to enlist; fail is try another or draft; roll injury avoidance, roll promotion/commission, roll for special duty, pick skills from career and special duty (if a SD was rolled) lists. If needed, rollaging saves. On successful reenlist roll, may pick to attempt entry into a new career, stay in current, or leave.
Contract with random
FASA Trek: contract with GM/group for final rank and position, picked school packages, picked skills by picked package in academy steps; after, random assignments until contracted rank acquired.
Random Points to pools
Mechwarrior 3 and Renegade Legion Legionnaire: pick some packages, then generate until a specified point; rolls put points into pools, pools are spent on
specific skills and abilities. I’m a little fuzzy on these; it’s been 15+ years since I read them.
Package Selection…
Burning Wheel: Contract for number or final package, and work towards it. Spend points on relevant skills from package
LUG-Trek: contract final rank, pick packages, spend points on skills from package list.
Arrowflight: roll or pick packages, 1 per step. Spend some extra on choice of skills.
STA: pick packages in specified steps, taking listed raises; select appropriate foci (not from list, but sample list provided)
Random Details
RTG’s Interlock: none of the entries provide skills/attributes, but provide story
D&D 5E can be seen as partly fitting this
Pendragon has a family history generation with a few special mods for the character, but generally just a lot of background details.
the question becomes, what do people mean when they say they want more details? I want more options for the existing, and.or RTG-style relationships and background,.
Folks, this thread is about products you would like to see created for the Star Trek Adventures game. If you wish to discuss other things, ie; civilion, pirate, non federation games and their justifications, please start a new thread.
Actually, a sourcebook about Klingon, Romulan or Cardassian Gaming Groups is something I, personally, like to see created for the Star Trek Adventures game.
Once again, agree with MisterX. Books/supplements for rival starfaring species/empires, and providing some crunchy and/or inspirational stuff for storytelling purposes is really top of the list. The other stuff, such as lifepath details and so forth…well, we can kinda futz that out as house-rule stuff if necessary. Would be nice to get something official out eventually, but I’ll wait until we’ve got The Damned Klingon Book - which has been promised, denied, promised, denied since the LUGTrek days like the arrival of an Abrahamic saviour - in our hands.
Parsing out threads of Star Trek lore to make a character is very interesting to me. A buddy wanted a character, so I suggested he make an offspring of Drusilla and Kirk, from Bread and Circuses. Another friend wanted a character that knew Kirk, so I recommended he make a character from Lt. washburn on the Doomsday Machine. If you really want to “go deep” as is popular to say now, get Larry Nemecek’s concordances, or the Okuda’s Encyclopedia of Trek.
Just putting this in - I should have added this in before, but the importance of such came to the fore just a while ago.
If we’re going to get something new coming out from Modiphius, other than works already in the queue, I would put up requests for a more detailed character sheet. The one we’ve got at current is certainly workable; it covers the crunchy aspects of Attributes, Disciplines, Focuses, Values and Talents elements, as well as Stress and letting us list the character’s name and general environment of origin.
What it does not do is provide space for personal details outside of the character generation engine. A new character sheet I’d like to see would contain all existing fields, but would also include the following:
Place of birth, meaning actual planet name
Character age and date of birth
Character height and weight
A couple of lines for special notes; e.g., Jean-Luc Picard with his artificial heart, Geordi LaForge with his VISOR, et al. This could also be the spot where results of chargen choices have been noted; names of previous and lost loves, individual rivalries and sworn enemies. Or the actual names of incidents that have become part of Federation/Klingon Empire/Romulan Star Empire mythology - these can be played on later for individual games
This situation draws to mind how Don Mappin put some much valued effort in and constructed a character sheet for Decipher’s Star Trek that fulfilled all the above points, including a number of spots for detailed descriptions of assignments. I don’t think something of that length and depth needs to be created, but having something that allows us to fill in a few blank spots on the character sheet at current would be much appreciated.
They are not all official sheets, but this thread might have something to help with what you are looking for. I agree with you on wanting a more detailed character sheet, which is one reason why I modified one myself and shared it. Extended Chacrater and Starship sheets Considering a number of people have done the same, I am not sure that Modiphius will put time and effort into doing it themselves, which is unfortunate for those who have not searched for or gone looking for either this forum or other fan sites.
Another one of my product wishes is a Shipyard and Starbase supplement, with more ship frames and mission profiles as well as starbase frames and mission profiles. Obviously those already provided in current packages need not be in it, but it would be nice to have alternate stats for alien & adversary ships. (Example being: Klingon/Romulan/Cardassian/Dominion Ship frames and faction-specific mission profiles to allow a quick and easy assembly of specialized starships.)
SSiron, thank you very much for having provided the link. After examination, it appears TNG’s version is probably the best fit at current, although our particular game is set in a solid TOS era. Very unfortunate that Patrick “Mad Irishman” Murphy appears to have gone silent in the last several years; his expanded and much appreciated TOS, TNG and DS9 character sheets for LUGTrek were excellent works that played up very nicely on the genre styles for each period.
Although I don’t have Photoshop, PDF writer or any similar software applications, it appears I’m going to have to try to sneak into a friend/relative’s point of access for this and see if I can start to futz something together that fits the specifications I referenced. In the meanwhile, hoping that Modiphius can, in fact, put something together that leaves a bit more room for character detail, and aid in extending the basis of character determination and role-playing - rather than experience point accumulation and number-crunching advancement - that has been the STA 2d20 system’s hallmark.
Okay, have to fess up: there ain’t no requests or lists of works that I’d like to see coming out or put effort into over the next while - I’d like to think I’ve definitely given my pause for the cause in previous posts on this thread - but I did feel this was the most appropriate spot to put down a very quick and heartfelt point.
Modiphius, and all company staff and Developers: Thank you. Our gang - which has undergone some shifts in personnel since we started, true - has engaged in a number of STA games now, and which the boys and I have enjoyed the living heck out of. It’s been a bit of an adjustment, working with the 2d20 system, making up characters who don’t get experience points (gasp!), don’t go up “levels” or Advancements or however you want to phrase it, but do have adventures and engage in conflicts that, as our GM has stated - and still does - have a very cinematic edge to them. We’ve made some very productive game use of the Values, Focuses and Talents, and all this has demanded that players take just as productive, vocal and inventive a role in the game as the GM. Will our boys eventually go up a level or so in an Attribute or Discipline? Yeah, probably; but that’s more the outcome of character maturity creeping in rather than just it going from level 6 to 7. So, to the Modiphius gang: Again, all thanks, and looking forward to seeing more Star Trek Adventures work coming out over the next year. All best.
P.S.: I lied. I want Modiphius designing, manufacturing and releasing Star Trek Original Series and Next Generation Star Fleet uniforms by next quarter. With customizable ship insignias for Original Series; what, you think we’re all Enterprise crewmen or somethin’? Not what you guys are here for…? Well, think about it. Again, be in contact soon.
I haven’t gone through all the posts in this thread, so maybe this has already been suggested, but I would pretty readily buy a set of index cards that had the various stats for NPC starships printed on them. A set with the various NPC stats stats would also be cool. And Talent cards.
I plan on getting all the division supplements and quadrant sourcebooks -though just starting out. So, I suppose my suggestions are coming from a place where I haven’t even seen all that’s already out there.
With that said, I love SSiron’s suggestion of having a big Starbase/Shipyard sourcebook. It could have different stations for Federation and other major races. It could also include quite a few new ship designs for those races as well. Further, pack it full of useful ship combat scenarios and perhaps expanded options? Also, perhaps introduce some new ship talents to choose from in addition to the mission profiles. It may not be quite as large as the other sourcebooks, but would be awesome.
Additionally, I’ve seen some mention species specific book suggestions, like Klingon, Romulan, etc. Perhaps in lieu of that introduce an “Alien Empires” book that focuses on some of the major powers and just takes a deeper dive, introduces more NPCs, ships, planets, etc. Perhaps even have entries for Tal Shiar and Obsidian Order to iron out how they can be introduced into stories.
I’d also offer another vote for Mirror Universe Materials. Make a real meaty sourcebook that is basically a Core Rulebook, but for the Mirror Universe. Obviously doesn’t have to include all the content of the core Rulebook, but I imagine it would be large.
From there, I know some have mentioned putting in more info on pre-made planets, moons, and other environments. What about looking into that and also including some meat on how to build holodeck-based missions. I.E. come up with rules and details on how a holo program can go haywire as it oft did in the shows. Also could have the Nexus in there perhaps. Just introducing different pre-made locations for adventure that can save on some of the prep time. Not full-blown adventures, but pre-planned environments that can serve as a foundation for easily creating unique adventures.
Period books would be nice, Enterprise era use of the Orions as the “big bad”, essentially outlines of the state of the Federation and other powers and genre differences.
Would it work as a substitute for some of these to have something along the lines of an ‘Alternate settings’ book? With most of the main books focusing around the idea of a game based on a starship, having something that adds additional support for a station based games, or an non-starfleet based game, based in different eras etc?
Of course I’m all for those things getting their own products, but if we were given all of them on the current release schedule, Voyager may well find it’s way home quicker than we get to some of those books!
FOne thing I’d love to see is a book similar to the Narrators Toolkits that Last Unicorn put out. And specifically, in that book, take an episode from each series you have the rights to, and show how it would work as an adventure, including specific examples of combat, tests, etc (“Picard’s player spends threat to make this a lethal attack. That alien parasite has to die!”)
