I've seen a pretty fair number of Star Trek games on RPOL but I've rarely seen any based (in part, piece or whole) on the Starfleet Battles Universe.  I was wondering if anyone could venture a reason why?

I understand that the SFB setting is pretty dense, as are the rules for the RP setting but no more so than other ST games or settings.  I'm just curious as to why no one has adapted them to another Star Trek game system or use the GURPS adaptation?

I'm asking because I'm considering running a game set shortly after the Dominion War and Starfleet is toying with new procedures and ideas in the fragile peace post-conflict.  Most of those doctrines, policies and procedures have a much more SFB feel to them than regular Star Trek.  So I was wondering how that might go over with Star Trek players?

I think it might be because the central thing about SFB is the tactical ship-to-ship combat. While in a PbP environment you'd have plenty of time to analyze the map and account for all the factors, it might also be too slow to use effectively.

I've been on the fence about running a classic Car Wars game for this reason. Sure, you'd be able to take your time with your actions, but a single match would take a very long time.

I wasn't referring to the purely ship-to-ship combat aspect of SFB.  I was actually referring to the setting and 'grittier' aspect of life in the 24th century and the more military aspect of Starfleet.

To be more clear in my ramblings:

Is there an interest in a Star Trek game set just post-Dominion War that is a bit more military inspired?

There's been a few here and in pre-rpol days that played around with the post Dominion what if. A common thread for several was to use DS9 wormhole to open up the Gamma Quadrant play. Lets the GMs have a whole fresh realm while still drawing on the ST content.

As for Star Fleet Battles a problem you may find is how many people even know what you are talking about. However, one doesn't need 100 players. All you need 4 - 6 - 8 and you'll have a lot going on.

I made a simpler 1d6 system for here on RPOL that is in use with one or more games I can send to you if you'd like. As someone else as started to point out the amount of 'crunch' of SFB doesn't do well when it can be 1-2 days between question to answer. Hence why I prefer, and recommend, simpler game mechanics for play by posts.

The feel of SFB really is closer to the original Star Trek. If you talk about it like that you'd probably have more people understanding it. SFB is an alternate reality of TOS. They style of SFB with DS9 setting isn't too much of stress.

Post DS9 there would be big questions of what to do with the militarized Star Fleet. Formerly it was an exploration para military not a war fighting force. You could say that the Federation decided to have a stronger military. Perhaps not all of Star Fleet would convert. No I don't mean wave the over used elite flag. Rather think of it as a pre-organized Defense Fleet. Many of the same ships. Defense fleet organization would be an unfilled template that when needed would be filled up with Star Fleet and local ships.

You could add Star Fleet Marines. I few folks will get anxious saying they already exist but the shows never had permanent foot soldiers other than 'security'. That was part of Gene Roddenbury's vision. That large scale infantry fighting would be gone. However, the reintroduction of DS9 era invasions, like the invasion of Betazoids, could be used to justify their existence. Planets might have their own armies, perhaps already having them, but not as part of exploration Star Fleet.

Also you will definitely want to set up some game threads on 'game canon'. There was already a massive amount of Star Trek interpretations even before the recent movie reboots.

Speaking of the movies. Some games have thought of playing around with the movie reboot setting. With so little written it is fresh territory. You lose though some of the DS9 war developments but you can always say they have gone more SFB.

Speaking of SFB I always did like the idea of a Prime Team. A preselected bunch of folks for unusual landing parties.


Hope these ideas have helped.

Thanks for the input.  I'd forgotten how obscure even the subject of SFB can be at times...

  Prime Teams were definitely an addition I intended to include.  That idea always made so much more sense than sending flag officers and department heads into unknown dangers at every stop.

  I figured that fresh from the Dominion War would be a good setting to explore a more militarized Starfleet and the repercussions of such a thing.  I wasn't thinking of setting out into the Gamma or Delta Quadrant but remaining in the fringes of Alpha since Starfleet Command would want regular oversight of such an initiative.  It wouldn't be a "Brave New Starfleet" but it would be a departure from Next Gen philosophies.

  I definitely didn't intend on using any of the SFB combat rules, just the more atmospheric qualities, alien races and political edge as backdrops.

I don't see as many Star Trek games on rPol as I used to.  I was gauging interest in a game like this.

I'd check the game out, as always. But Star Trek games generally seem to struggle on RPOL, for various reasons and outcomes. I feel the TV series set-ups don't translate well to play-by-post RPGs. Having PCs as department heads and senior officers causes chaos when PCs inevitably disappear. Starting them at low ranks is safer, IMO.

I imagine Starfleet Battles just isn't on many people's radars. There are all the other systems available and other options, while SFB is less well known. It just looks like a serial-numbers-filed-off clone of the Trek universe, and its diverged greatly. I know very little about it and I wouldn't ever think of it.

As Brygun says, very many Trek games on RPOL do the post–Dominion War thing, with a revised Starfleet that is either more military or back-to-basics exploration, usually of a new sector or beyond the wormhole, and all run into political friction and conflict between the interstellar powers. Some of them introduce SFB races like the Kzinti/Lyrans. So it would be a well-trod concept, if so many of those games didn't die. (Space anomalies, alien gods, mad computers, and TOS-style zaniness would actually be novel at this point.) For a more military, wartime Starfleet, actually setting it during the Dominion War could be more beneficial. Those starship troopers actually need someone to fight, after all.

Within SFB there are the patrol boat type vessels. Proper name escapes me at the moment.

A mother ship, Cruiser size like the Enterprise, would carry/support 6-12 of them.

Translating to mainstream would a Runabout carrier. DS9 also introduced 2-man fighters for star fleet. We did some gaming with them. Useful for smaller missions and the crews could be more important to the story. The downside was if the fighter wasn't involved, like at diplomats party, the pilot was somewhat neutralized.

If you consider the TV shows each episode focused on 2-3 characters at a time with a B story for a few others. The more player characters you have the harder it gets to have situations where they matter.

That is part of why I liked the prime team. It was the leading landing party. They could be useful for all sorts of things. If it was a more focused mission, like the diplomats party, they might in the area as a 'just in case' weird things like a plot happens. Prime team having a commander, security, science, medical and engineer. They can quickly get started on handling a huge range of strange situations. Larger operations they can still blend into things like large scale security sweeps.

I always found it inappropriate how in the TNG era they made the ship gunnery 'security' the same as the infantry 'security'. I really felt it left out that both have specialized skills. For example infantry combat tactical actions involve room sweeping motions, digging fighting holes, stealth walking and wilderness survival. The starship gunnery involving high energy electronics, anti-matter explosives, torpedo casing sensor arrays and the effects of space distortions on those sensors. While they both shoot stuff with phasers there is ALOT that is not the same.
This message was last edited by the user at 21:24, Mon 01 May 2017.

I think conflating Tactical and Security positions was primarily driven by the television format.  Don't introduce extraneous characters when you can combine roles.  I totally agree with Brygun in that the two roles require totally separate skillsets.

BadCatMan and Brygun pretty much nailed the premise I had in mind.  Post Dominion conflict is a popular setting and one that everyone other than Paramount feels a need to explore.  Hadn't thought about setting the story within the Dominion War itself.  There should be plenty of room to tell some interesting stories there but I'm not sold on the idea just yet but it is growing on me.

Not everyone, witchdoctor. There are plenty of fans who loved Enterprise (and even the Abrams timeline), and feel that TNG/DS9/Voyager didn't reflect the classic liberalism of Star Trek.

I thought Enterprise was such a wasted opportunity.  I feel bad for the direction it took during the Xindi storyline.  Such potential completely wasted...

I do like the Kelvin Timeline version of Star Trek as well.  It's a much harsher version of the Trek mythos, in some ways more "grounded" if that term could even be applied to Trek.

I do understand that later iterations of Trek got away from the underlying optimism of the Federation and the more visceral morality of the original.  I think that was an effort to make the newer series more 'complex'.  I don't wholly agree with that divergence, but they arose in the 90's...when that sort of thing was more in Vogue.

I think you are talking about Pseudo-Fighters, aka 'Gunboats'. Problem with them is that they weren't capable of long-range operations on their own, relying on tenders for interstellar travel.

There were Escort-sized ships though, and above them Frigate/Destroyers, then light cruisers, before reaching ships the size of the Enterprise. If you take the usual 2/3 assumption (each class is about 2/3 the size of the next larger class, a Light cruiser would be crewed by about 290, a Destroyer by about 190, and an Escort would have a crew of about 125.

What system would you recommend for a Star Trek game?  There have been a few issued over the years but they all have their strengths and weaknesses.

Would you recommend something with more 'granularity' or less?  Would you recommend something with a system or free-form?

For my money, it's Decipher's CODA system first, followed by FASA. I've been running a playtest of the new Modiphius Star Trek Adventures rules (their 2d20 system), but it doesn't translate over to pbp very well (however, for a live game, I think it'll do just fine...it captures the spirit of Star Trek); I'd still put it above the ones below, though.

LUG, if you must, but I avoid that one myself. I've briefly played in a Far Trek game, and that leaves a lot to be desired.

My b6 is available if you want. For brevity I won't post it here. It was simplifying things for a larger grain and less number crunching. If you are interested I'll send it by PM (or you can PM me an email to send it to).

IF not that then you'll want to consider what game systems are accessible to the players. The more crunchy ones have a lot of choices in character creation. Those will take weeks/months of real life time to go through in play by post. Players can get zoned out of interest by then.

Some games may have legal access on the internet somewhere. The printed books will be hard to find for any but the current allowed licence.

Modiphius's 2d20 is almost unplayable. I can't say anything good about the Star Trek system, except to say where it's not as bad as their previous Conan system. Maybe they have the right feel or tone, but that's all they get right.

Where No Man Has Gone Before 2.0 is a free fan-made Microlite20 mod. I rather like it, it fits a regular or a comedic Trek game. It has enough of a starship combat system that it could work for this.

Far Trek is a fan-made 3d6 clone of WNMHGB2, it's bit more complex and nerfed, and sucks a bit of the fun out. Switching a straight d20 distribution to the bell curve of 3d6 while nerfing other bonuses means most checks become easy failures. It's hard to do anything well in it.

I was the second-last person using Brygun's d6 system (hi!). TBH, I mostly just used the results as a guideline for GM fiat. It's a bit like flipping a weighted coin to make a decision in an otherwise freeform game.

I might be the only one, but I have a perverse desire to see Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space (Cubicle 7's Vortex system) used for Star Trek. It's rules light has easy options for making new aliens, androids, and psychics of all kinds, and has a focus on chases, non-violent resolutions, and technobabble solutions, so I feel it's a good match for Trek. The combat system is rather limited, so it wouldn't fit a military, starship combat setting very well. Anyway, a good Star Trek RPG doesn't necessarily have to use a Star Trek system.

GURPS produced several sourcebooks for Starfleet Battles than lean much more heavily towards a rpg style format than a war game.

I have GURPS Prime Directive (the main sourcebook), GURPS Klingons and GURPS Romulans. They are all pretty fun, especially the Klingon one with its 'subject races' (minor civilisations within Klingon borders.)

In reply to RossN (msg # 17):

I actually have the GURPS Prime Directive book.  I really liked the adaptation and it was one of the big inspirations for wanting to run a Star Trek game.  I haven't seen the Klingon or Romulan books that went with it.

I'd thought about using GURPS but wasn't sure if I wanted to go with an actual system or a more narrative free form.  I'll definitely use Prime Directive for inspiration and source material though

Hi BadCatMan, glad you enjoyed it.

Yes, my own system was pretty light in keeping with a soft number crunching for more fluid text play.

Star Trek is almost unique in the number of RPGs, official and otherwise, made for it. Heck in the 70s and 80s it was Star Fleet Battle that kept it going. There were actually a couple other obscure RPGs with stylized, thus not copyright infringing, artwork that basically did the same thing.

When TNG appeared on the TV there was a new surge of interest. Now Star Trek is ~ 5 decades along.

One reason I generally favor the rules light idea is how easily you can pull in or make up new content. I later ran a Star Troopers game using a slight change to that system. Ended up with huge reams of gear to hand out as we generally didn't have to come up with a dozen game stats for each one. You can all roughly agree on the expectations for a .50 cal rifle or an engineer's demolition kit. In thick crunch systems you have to document alot of details and with each detail comes more game balance questions.

To me the rules should assist the narration. Computer simulations have the crunch to deeply model activity. The rules should inspire writing, by the GM and players. That's why I used a linear d6 rather than a bell curve 3d6. The flat odds mean the extreme low/high happen more often. It is those extreme events that make more exciting writing.

So bear that in mind when looking at bringing a tabletop rule system to play by post. Is it going to be one that makes the game happen or is it going to bog it down? Some players, and thus games, like the detail crunch of playing game system X.

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I'm also going to mention one of the other hurdles for STar Trek games: the ship.

I have seen some games spend months designing the ship, making up characters and OOC chatting. Then by the time the ship work up is at high detail it turns out several players already disappeared.

Some GMs seemed more into wanting to have their custom ship and never actually launched it into a story.

This is where you will want to consider what your rule system has for ships. Star Fleet Battles has tons of ship designs but not what appeared in DS9 (for example) that average Star Trek fans would know.

There are numerous websites: ADSB, Memory Alpha, Memory Beta

You want to consider that using a well understood ship, like a Galaxy class, allows you to reduce the 'set design' work load so you can focus on getting the stories going.

Besides...

You can always blow up the first ship once you have another on designed. It is a fleet after all.

Cool. :)

I think you can buy them online from Warehouse 23 but unfortunately they are a bit on the pricey side.

I agree about liking the Star Fleet Battles/Prime Directive background. It is similar to the mainstream Trekverse but with its own spin and it is probably easier to imagine non-Starfleet characters as PCs.