19th Level

In the late 1990s I resumed regular gaming for the first time since high school. The game we played was Star Trek: The Next Generation , published by Last Unicorn Games (LUG). We played all the incarnations of it - they came out with three RPGs for Star Trek. Their first release was for Star Trek: The Next Generation , covering 24th century Starfleet games. They later came out with releases for the original series and for Deep Space Nine . I really liked their DS9 game as it allowed for a variety of character types, much like the television show it was based on. When making this list, I gave some thought to all of the Star Trek RPGs I've played. I've played the FASA, Last Unicorn, and Decipher ones. I do have a place in my heart for the FASA game, though I found its extremely tactical combat system a bit of a mismatch for its genre. The Decipher game I didn't get to play all that much. It was the Last Unicorn version I got a ton of play out of. Like the FASA Star Tr...

I'd not really been plugged in to the fact that Seth MacFarlane had created a science fiction show until I started seeing people on my Facebook feed talking about The Orville  - some people claiming it was the "real" Star Trek show as opposed to Star Trek Discovery.  The Orville is a comedy-drama science fiction show strongly inspired by the original Star Trek . That's not surprising given MacFalane's well known love of that show. I'm not a huge MacFarlane fan - I've probably only caught an episode or two of Family Guy  though I will acknowledge Ted as a guilty pleasure. I'm sure Mila Kunis starring in that had nothing to do with it... As of this writing, The Orville has aired four episodes, so it's still a little early in the run. It is about the crew of the exploration ship Orville - no big surprise there. Her captain is Ed Mercer, a once up and coming officer whose career stalled after his divorce. The only first officer available to him...

It's been a very long time since I've played a Star Trek RPG - around a dozen years I'd estimate. I'd flirted with the idea of playtesting the new Star Trek RPG but we were in the middle of a campaign I was rather enjoying. With Star Trek Discovery about to premier I've been flipping through some of my old Star Trek stuff as well as the new RPG. There's a lot to recommend the Star Trek universe for RPGs. The original Star Trek and Star Trek: The Next Generation are great examples of episodic adventures. While I often dream of a 200-part campaign of tightly interlinked adventures, reality tends to make such things difficult in the extreme. A Star Trek campaign offers characters a mobile "town" that can visit adventure locations. One adventure can be high-octane adventure, the next can be an exercise in diplomacy, the next a murder mystery. Deep Space Nine showed that a 173-part campaign is possible in the setting of Star Trek, as an outpost becom...

Actually I've had this happen to me recently... Given my group has some folks younger than me, I've gamed with people who have never seen Star Trek  in any incarnation. That's not too shocking once I gave it some thought. Star Trek: Enterprise  debuted in fall of 2001, some fifteen years ago. And it was not a particularly popular Star Trek. Someone who is thirty now would have been around fifteen then. And Voyager debuted in January of 1995, so you're talking being under the age of ten for that! There's certainly a things I've not read or seen that are on other people's "I can't believe you've not read/seen that" so I've no judgment. With that caveat, there's a few other things I'd be surprised a gaming friend hadn't seen - Butcher's Dresden Files , the classic Star Wars trilogy (I know a number of people who swore off the prequels), Lord of the Rings (whether in film or novel form), and A Song of Ice and Fire (...

This isn't a full review of all the incarnations of Star Trek but rather some thoughts on my experiences with them. Modiphius has just announced that they will be producing a new Star Trek RPG which has gotten me talking with a number of people I know from previous incarnations. So to begin, my background. Once upon a time (around 1975) I was a preschool and kindergarten kid living outside of Syracuse, New York. My mom would want a little bit of peace and quiet while she made dinner. And as it so happened, the show with the guy with the funny ears was on at that time, which apparently was capable of entertaining me. And the rest is history. I had no choice but to be a Trekkie. FASA I discovered the FASA game while I was in high school, had some games then and several more in college. FASA used a percentile based system married to using "Action Points" to keep track of action - every round you had a pool of action points you could spend, breaking down your rou...

For this post I have two criteria: It be a game I used to play a lot The odds of ever playing it again are small I'd mentioned the Last Unicorn Games incarnation of Star Trek when discussing my favorite science fiction games . Those games  have a special place for me. Coming out from 1998 to 2000 they mark the point when I began regularly gaming again. Star Trek was at a high point of its popularity in the 90s and I feel Last Unicorn Games was a great complement to the Star Trek television shows. There was a great community which formed around these games, centered around the still existing trek-rpg.net site. Gamers discussed ideas, house rules, etc., the writers of the RPGs were regular posters, etc. In 2000, shortly after Wizards of the Coast acquired Last Unicorn Games, the license went to Decipher. Much of the team involved in the LUG incarnation went on to create the Decipher version, which was itself a fine game that I got a bunch of mileage playing, but I do fi...

Geez this one is really tough too. For a fairly long period the great bulk of my gaming was in the science fiction genre. I'm going to limit this to only games I've played or run - there's a number, like the Firefly RPG  that I'm really looking forward to trying at some point. Even limiting it to that gives a pretty broad range of RPGs. Off the top of my head, that'd include (in rough order of my first time playing them): Gamma World (2nd Edition) Star Frontiers Star Trek (FASA) Doctor Who (FASA)  Star Wars (West End Games) The Babylon Project (Chameleon Eclectic) Star Trek (Last Unicorn Games, various incarnations) Star Trek (Decipher) Star Wars (Wizards of the Coast, various editions) Serenity Star Wars: Edge of the Empire I'm pretty sure there's one or two missing. Interestingly, I've never actually played Traveller, though I have often borrowed from it for many games. There's two there that really rise to the top, though I...

It really isn't my fault that I'm a Trekkie. When I was a preschooler in the suburbs of Syracuse back in the early 1970s my mother would put WPIX Star Trek reruns (all the way from NYC, there was cable tv awfully early in that area) on for me while she made dinner every weeknight at 6 PM. I liked the funny guy with the pointy ears. My uncle and godfather was the family Trekkie. He took me to see Star Trek: The Motion Picture in 1979 . Truth be told my 8-year old self found it a bit boring. However in 1982 I absolutely loved Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan . That was a movie an 10-year old (almost 11 that summer) could appreciate it. Though seeing ear-worms on a giant drive-in movie screen was incredibly gross. By that time I had my first official D&D group. We used to meet in the Howard Whittemore Library in Naugatuck, CT. One winter I was hanging outside the library waiting for for my parents to pick me up after our game was complete when I ran into the GM of anoth...