I told em that Prime Directive is slightly more oriented towards a military fiction emphasis, but that it otherwise picks up where TOS leaves off. they immediately "got it" and played along. Tone, tempo, and style are the key things I'm going for if I'm running a game.Īs far as the 20 people at Origins that played in my games. I intentionally pick scenarios that are not dependent on deep canonical knowledge as I don't have time to get into it. Every since I've headed that stuff off at the pass by playing all-new characters and races in alternate universes. It was terrible what with everyone saying each other's lines.
#Prime directive rpg forums tv#
The worst game I played was a Firefly session with the tv show's characters as PC's. You can get fairly close, but not close enough for the casual gamer trek fan.Īh well.
It doesn't even deliver the same capabilities for hand weapons. It's resulted in a very playable but not very trek-like canon, and each new add-on takes it further from being able to deliver that look and feel. Prime Directive has a tight canon, rigidly controlled by a big ego developer. His one, constant, and repeated answer is "Use SFB or Fed Commander." Like any time someone asks about playing ship-to-ship combat from the bridge officer perspective. stick close to canon.Īlso, SVC is happy to tell people they're doin' it wrong. They're the same mindset as most of the people writing fan fic. They want to know that security is red shirts, hand phasers can dissolve someone into elementary particles, and to have the races they've seen on screen in the universe. Not the original crew for the timeframe, but the same setting. Most of the people I know playing Trek want the canon universe. Trek tends to have a LOT of casual gamers, as well gamers for whom the differences will scream "NOT TREK!!!" It's very true of the OSR gamers playing Trek, but the OSR is still a minority. They both bring different things to the table.) I run my Prime Directive players through Traveller style adventures, so it's not a matter of which one is better. and I can never quite form a coherent picture from all the various flavor texts and contradictory rule systems. whereas most Traveller war games are not particularly well developed. I find it much easier to "fake" plot details when I am familiar with the games. and they present a coherent, gameable universe. The Star Fleet Universe is extremely well supported with extensively developed war games at both the tactical and the strategic level. Being in a variant universe means nobody can tell anyone else at the table that they are doing it wrong. As a referee, I am not going to get into any sort of continuity ******* match with any potential Trekkies. When people sit down to play a Trek game, they are more interested in tone and style than they are with "official" Star Trek cannon. This is the the strength of the game, in my mind. Prime Directive isn't really Trek, either - GPD is very tightly bound to the "Star Fleet Universe" from Star Fleet Battles, rather than to the Canon Trek Universe. Even then, you'll need to ignore large swaths of the setting info. If you're looking to do canon trek, it will require significant modifications for anything but ST:TOS. There is a good introduction to the SFU setting on Drive Through RPG and e23. It includes a minimal bit of inherited mechanics for active duty play from 1st ed. Even the naming of the regions of the galaxy is different.ĭue to SVC's prejudices, it's NOT aimed at ship senior officers it avoids ship combat rules. TNG/DS9 fans will find it missing the main enemies of that era. The Federation in the SFU is significantly more militant than in the CTU, or even the CTU Alternate Timeline. Of the alien empires bordering the Federation, 4 are from TOS (Gorn, Romulan, Klingon, Tholian), 1 from TAS (Kzinti), and 1 TOS one is ignored as "too silly" (First Federation). (TAS:Caitians and Edoans are missing.) A fifth, the deltans (ST:TMP) get renamed Deians, and get hair, but are recognizable a lift. Of the 12+ federation races, only 4 are from canon trek sources: Human, Vulcan, Tellarite, Andorian. Plus, there are the direct changes SVC made because of his own particular distaste for the Canon Trek Universe (CTU). It overlaps the Trek universe only a bit - it built off of the Star Fleet Tech Manual, ST:TOS, and ST:TAS, and expanded and extrapolated wildly from there. I'd estimate about 1/2 of Traveller players are Trek fans.Īnd my experience is about 1/3 of ST:TOS fans hate the SFU, and about 1/2 of TNG fans. I figure Traveller players are also fans of Star Trek.
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