Sorry to bomb the board here…
Are there any plans for a Romulan or Cardassian Sourcebook?
These are two cultures that I’ve always been more interested in than the Klingons, so I’m wondering if they’ll get some 'shine.
The Romulan sourcebook is definitely on the list as a possibility, nothing mentioned about Cardassians though I think.
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Yet, both have been requested multiple times. I still hope we get both, eventually; Romulans and Cardassians are two of my most favourite powers in the Star Trek universe. 
In the mean time, you will find some information on the Romulans in the Beta Quadrant Sourcebook, and information on the Cardassians in the Gamma Quadrant Sourcebook.
You know, I have to admit that I have a different vision of the Romulans than Berman and the writers of TNG did.
I see the Romulan Empire as an odd mix of Imperial Rome and the USSR. Hold on! Bear with while I explain!
I see most Romulans as everyday ‘folks’, just people trying to get along while being fed a steady diet of ‘triumphant nationalism’ style propaganda. They work their jobs, raise their families, and, above all, keep their mouths shut. After all, the Tal Shiar has a major task in internal ‘security’. And you never know who the local snitch is.
I see most of the Romulan military as mostly in the vein of the Romulan commanders in TOS… generally honorable, highly skilled commanders who occasionally have to get their hand dirty to get the job done. Then you have the ambitious types, such as Tomalak from TNG, who are the real SOBs of the bunch. They’ll use any means, the fouler the better, to get ahead in the Star Navy and are perfectly fine leaving a trail of wrecked careers behind them as a warning to others.
And the Tal Shiar is simply the KGB with pointed ears.
As in Imperial Rome, the Praetor [an emperor ‘elected’ among the Senators] and Senate are corrupt and usually propertied aristocrats with a thin leavening of old traditional idealists.
And somehow society must still function around the corruption, political maneuverings and interest groups.
And I think all this is why the Unification movement is so important to all sides on Romus and Remus. The personal example of Spock, his intelligence, his compassion, his serenity, is at diametrical odds with almost everyone else in Romulan society and offers a path to those seeking to maintain their personal integrity.
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I personally would like a Romulan Source book at least. For a year we had a player that was a Romulan spy pretending to be a Vulcan and it was very interesting when the rest of the group finally found out when the spy managed to return to a Romulan warbird much like what occurred in the TNG episode “Data’s Day.” His Virtues were very interesting, of course encoded so the other players wouldn’t what the real virtue was. One of course was don’t get exposed as a spy, but he also had act honorably so my family would be proud of me, and protect Romulan lives at all costs. The act honorably often had him protecting his fellow crew because even as a spy allowing those he is serving with to die needlessly felt shameful to him. Ultimately the first virtue and last ended up conflicting which is what led to him extracting himself as it was clear if he warn a group of Romulan raider that the Federation and Klingons were on to them it would expose him as a spy.
He found that as he was watching every little bit of material on the Romulans that they are very family, nation, and race focused even more than Klingons and he extended his racial focus to include Vulcans which led to interesting situations. But his opinion is the Romulans are the known unknown enemy. There is almost nothing known about Romulan society, what life is like in the empire for a common citizen, and the nuances of their culture. He found himself having to make great inferences from a line of dialog here and there. But he found being a Romulan faking being a Vulcan was easy. Romulans are very regulated, very uniform, they give large deference to the whole. And he found outlet for that passionate nature of a Romulan through art and combat training.
It was really a shame that Picard didn’t really give us more insight into the Romulan culture.
As an aside the group have ending up contacting the Romulan spy through back channels and they now occasionally exchange information if it is opportune to each others goals.
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I like it, Rusharn. Good plotline.
yeah Picard’s only real look at romulan culture was basicly “they really are sneaky and parinoid as a people!”
speaking of Picard though, I’m going to make a pitch for a romulan sourcebook. Make it a federation “romulan evacuation intelligence book” the book could cover three rough subjects. first of all it would be a “campaign book” for the evacuation of romulas era (giving us things like a Curiosity space frame and the Verity’s spaceframe) it’d also be a “romulan sourcebook” in the form of a UFP intelligence brief. And lastly it’d be a supplement for romulan campaigns.
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I’d love to see a sourcebook with that kind of structure. Generally speaking, I’m not that interested in the Romulans, but I’d definitely buy something along those lines.
it’s why I suggested it TBH, a romulan core book ala the klingon one might be a hard sell, but a book that was basicly a combination “romulan roleplaying rules” “Nemisis to Picard era book” and “general in depth romulan background” would proably be reasonably popular.
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There are several sourcebooks I’d like to see both of events in the ST timeline but also race /culture books.
They wouldn’t even have to be major print efforts… maybe a Drive Thru POD would work.
Some examples would include
- The Cardassian War, with details on the Cardassians, Bajorans, and Maquis
- The Dominion War [OK, this one WOULD require a major print effort]
- A series of PDFs on the Founders of the Federation: Andorians, Centaurans, Humans, Tellarites, and Vulcans. LUC did a fantastic pair of books on the Andorians and Vulcans that have since been superseded by series programming, but it’s worth a revisit.
- A Borg sourcebook
The list goes on.
I think some people would argue the alpha and gamma quadrant sourcebooks covered your first two lines pretty well. And I feel the delta quadrant book covered the borg fairly well… that said a book that perhaps covered the dominion war’s aftermath in a bit of detail could be good.
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I would like to see a product focusing on the early years in some form (could include discovery as well without need to produce a full product while that show is still on air). Enterprise Era has been one of my favourite games so far.
I don’t know that I need a book on each race though since the internet/other games’ products are out there.
There’s already a good amount of detail on the others in the existing quadrant books, but interested to know what else would be considered worth doing a book for?
Well, unlike some ST fans, I rather liked the DS9 Dominion War storyline. For that matter, I liked most of DS9’s writing. I’d like to see some of that in game form.
The commander of a station can’t just drop a charming quip or speechify from the moral high ground of his ship’s bridge and fly off to another moral and ethical problem that desperately needed the Federation’s ‘assistance’. On Deep Space 9, command decisions had consequences and Sisko and Kira didn’t have the luxury of quoting some Starfleet regulation and taking off… they had to sit there and see what their decisions led to.
You know, just a little bit closer to real life and all that.
In addition, I LOVED the writing where the Federation is trying to uphold its lofty ideals all while fight a losing war they simply don’t have the tools to win. Between the Borg and the Dominion, this particular generation of Starfleet officers and commanders have left a lot of frozen blood floating in the light years between Earth to Bajor and it will be interesting to see how Starfleet changes after its very first war to the knives.
By 2376 [the year after the Treaty of Bajor] a LOT of 'Fleet crewmen are looking at their ships like they’re coffins and their uniforms as if they’re burial shrouds and they’re wondering WTF is gonna come out of space to kill them in job lots next.
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Wouldn’t it be a kick in the butt if Modiphius included Axanar info in a Four Year War pdf?
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If you mean using things from the kickstarter production (when/if it is ever finished) then that sounds like an excellent way of risking angering the license holders.
No comment on the production itself (this forum is not the place), but given the legal implications and the fact Modiphius would have to do a deal with the production, there’s no way that would ever get published.
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CBS would pull their lisence so fast it’d never arrive in your hands
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I agree that it would be far more trouble than it would be worth from any number of angles.
But, credit where it’s due, the Axanar Ares class is a pretty design as TOS ships go and it would be a shame to let it lie fallow. It reminds me of several FASA ‘Ships of the Federation’ designs that had a certain ‘frigate aesthetic’… a ship designed to go lookin’ for a fight.
Speaking of the FASA starships, I’ve made some fanmade conversions of several of the FASA Star Trek starships. You can find the write-ups of them here. I’ve also made and compiled (with the assistance of Mr. Gone and Cory Belote) a number of starship sheets using the starship outlines of various classes. The original forum topic announcing this can be found here. The sheets are form-fillable and many of them have been pre-statted and can be found here.
Apologies for the late reply. 
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I’d imagine a Romulan Sourcebook would just be a dagger and instructions for placing it in someone’s back.
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MY list of wants definitely includes the Dominion and the Romulans.
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