New page added to the Prime Directive section: Landing Parties.
Starships rarely beam down their entire command staff as a landing party. There are enough technical specialists on board a vessel to provide numerous landing parties for almost any situation.
Added a few new GURPS Prime Directive templates: Star Fleet Enlisted and Civilian Starship Crew.
While most "unrestricted line" officers come out of the Star Fleet Academy's standard course of study, certain specialty officers (doctors, lawyers, scientists, supply officers, and construction engineers) come out of specialized Star Fleet schools affiliated with the Academy. As a category, these are known as Auxiliary Officers, although the term is rarely used in personnel records. In simple terms, these officers have fewer of the "military" skills and more of the skills of their specialty. These officers are also unlikely to ever command a starship unless they attend a Command School.
The only changes to the basic Academy template is in the skills. Attribute, Advantage, and Disadvantage requirements remain the same.
Note: This template was orginally published in Module Prime Alpha using GURPS 3e rules. I've made changes to the template to bring it in line with the GURPS 4e rules.
Primary Skills: Administration (A) IQ-1 [1], Astronomy (H) IQ-2 [1], Beam Weapons (Pistol) (E) DX [1], Computer Operation (E) IQ [1], Computer Programming (H) IQ-2 [1], Electronics Operation (Transporter) (A) IQ [2], Electronics Operation (any) (A) IQ [2], Electronics Repair (any) (A) IQ [2], Engineer (any) (H) IQ-2 [1], Expert (Xenology) (H) IQ-2 [1], First Aid (E) IQ [1], Free Fall (A) DX-1 [1], History (Federation) (H) IQ-2 [1], Judo (H) DX-2 [1], Law (Federation Military) (H) IQ-2 [1], Leadership (A) IQ-1 [1], Mathematics (Applied) (H) IQ-2 [1], Mechanic (any) (A) IQ-1 [1], Physics (VH) IQ-3 [1], Pilot (Shuttlecraft) (A) DX-1 [1], Research (A) IQ-1 [1], Savoir-Faire (Military) (E) IQ [1], Spacer (E) IQ [1], Survival (any) (A) Per-1 [1], Vacc Suit (A) IQ-1 [1].
New page added to the site: Campaign Notes
These are a few short notes about what I've changed or adapted from both the Star Fleet Universe and the official Star Trek setting.
Prime Directive: Campaign Notes
I got a chance to work on ADB's GURPS Prime Directive team. Part of the work was on their Free RPG Day product Dread Pirate Aldo. In recognition of my work, I received an award from ADB.
The game that I probably have the most "stuff" (books, games, magazines, PDF files, bookmarked websites, etc) for is Traveller. Its even greater than my collection of GURPS books and SFB items.Classic Traveller and MegaTraveller are my two favorite versions, followed by the GURPS version. T4 comes next simply because its fairly similar to Classic Traveller and its got that neat Pocket Empires book that appeals to the emperor-wannabe in me. I've seen some T20 stuff, but never got around to buying the book.
Like GURPS, CT and MT are very flexible systems. With a little modifications to the rules, any number of different settings can be handled. Also, I'm one of those people who can spend hours entertaining myself by designing worlds, star systems, vehicles, and other items. Most might never be used, but some find their ways into other campaigns.
Things I like to do with Traveller --
I haven't had as much time recently to play with the system, but every once in a while I look at the Traveller bookshelf and find myself wondering if there's anything else I could play around with in that universe. Traveller is another game that I'm thinking about using on the message boards.
Twilight: 2000 was one of my favorite RPG games in the 1980s. Set in 2000, the world was ruined by a 5-year war that began with a Sino-Soviet conflict that spread to Europe when Germany reunited. The introductory adventure had the players as part of the devestated 5th Mechanized Division, trapped behind enemy lines in Poland after their unit was destroyed. Later adventures expanded the scope of the game to the Mid-East, America, and other parts of Europe.
I ran my first T2K campaign while I was still in high school and another after I graduated. Both campaigns used the introductory scenario as a background, although the second campaign was much more successful and fun. I ran a third campaign set in the Mid-East which had a much more structured environment for the players
(The Mid-East campaign also allowed me to introduce one of my favorite NPCs, Colonel Yuri Brekov -- a perfect foil for the players and one that drove them crazy a few times. I'll have to write a blog about him sometime ...)
By the early 1990s, GDW switched T2K over to a new system; one completely different from the first edition (T2K 2.0). While it had a number of good points, it never caught on with myself or the group and the fourth campaign barely started before it was done. GDW did yet some more tweeking to the system (T2K 2.2) to bring it in line with their other RPGs (Traveller: The New Era and Dark Conspiracy).
Twilight: 2000 also spawned a sci-fi game: 2300 AD (intitially called Traveller: 2300). 2300 took the T2K history and looked at what would happen in 300 years. While it had some good, hard science and an interesting setting, one aspect of the background killed it for me (France as the world's superpower?!? Right. Not unless somebody clones Napoleon.) there were a few other little bits I found hard to believe as well.
Aparently, there is a new version of Twilight: 2000 in the works for release sometime next year (Twilight: 2013) and a d20 version of 2300 AD (2320 AD) is still being worked on by another company. Although I'm not really looking forward to either version, it might be interesting to see how the new versions are presented. Twilight:2000 was always a gritty game and I can't see it being powered by a cinematic system like d20. 2300 AD was gritty as well, but later adventures and supplements began emphasizing the cyberpunk aspect of the game, so I could see it as a d20 system.
The reason why T2K is on on my mind is that its one of the games that I'm thinking about running as a PBP on the message boards. I still have a lot of fond memories of the game, even if its setting and history have relegated it to an alternate history. Or an alternate Earth.
Hmmm .. isn't there a GURPS book about alternate Earths ...
Recently on one of the message boards I belong to, someone started a thread about advice for GMs, DMs, and Referees. Naturally, I can't avoid a topic like that, so I tossed a few ideas out there. And since I thought it would be a good topic, here's my contribution in no particular order --
I took a long break between the last online campaign and the current ones. I really didn't have a lot of time in my life for gaming and I was pretty unsure of what kind of campaign I wanted to run. Eventually, I started the GURPS WWIV campaign and suddenly everything came together. I had a good core group of players, a setting that they were all interested in, and a lot of new ideas to run with.
One of the things that I kept from my first online campaign was the individual games with the action mainly being described in e-mail (with occasional chat or IM sessions). Unlike the first campaign, this one had all of the players working on the same side and moving toward the same goal. This made it a lot easier to keep track of what was going on and even led to more than a few cross-over adventures where the various players would meet up, resolve an adventure, and then continue with their own plot lines. It made things interesting and it made it easier on the players. If Dennis couldn't participate for a couple weeks due to reserve duty, it wouldn't affect anyone else. I could devote time to the players who had the time to game and let those who needed more time relax and not feel like they were under pressure.
Eventually, I added some more to my plate by introducing a Prime Directive campaign. While the RPG side is moving ahead slowly, my original idea of having a Federation & Empire strategy game as a backdrop to the campaign kind of fizzled. Instead, I'm going in a new direction with that -- the F&E game will still be used, but more as a flavor for the RPG side rather than determining what will happen in the campaign. Of course, this may change if I suddenly end up with a lot of wargamers in the group.
As the current campaigns continue (and no doubt the number of players will change as the game progresses) I find that I am enjoying this format more and more. While I still want to get a regular group of players for an actual tabletop campaign, for now this is more than satisfying.
The third online campaign was known as "The Great Space Game" (an unofficial but accurate description). It was a grand political, economic, and military campaign set in the same GURPS Space universe with the players taking the roles of the various national leaders. It was ambitious, it was grand in scale, it covered diplomacy, it had conflict, it had role playing.
It was seriously unbalanced.
The game had one huge nation, which I tried to balance by giving it to the most social player (Amanda), and a whole bunch of little empires. The problems started when Amanda tried to reach out to the other players and was snubbed by almost everyone right away. After a few turns of this, she decided that she had a large enough economy and military to do what she wanted without any of the other players. And she was right.
Like I said, it was seriously unbalanced.
It should have been balanced, but the game was set in my campaign universe and things weren't exactly balanced there. What made for a good role playing environment really didn't translate well to a large-scale conflict game.
It was a fun game, even if it only covered a few years of the game's history. It inspired me to make a few changes in the RPG game and brought a little more flavor into the setting. Even though the campaign failed, I still think it was a fun little experiment. For years afterwards I would still have players mention things that happened in the game, or bring up their own ideas on how a game like that should be run. Every once in a while I would spend a night or weekend trying to make a better campaign setting or work up better rule. Although I never quite got it the way I wanted, or ran another game like that again, I still would like to give it a shot someday.
The second online campaign I ran wasn't quite as large as my first attempt. In fact, it consisted of one player. Amanda played a starship captain in the first campaign and we decided to carry on with the character. I was still running the tabletop game at the time and having a player pursuing a separate plotline than the main game was pretty interesting. The online campaign even outlasted the tabletop group when that broke up.
Running the second game was a lot of fun. With a one-on-one campaign, I could focus a lot of time and energy on one single aspect without worrying about if any of the other players would get bored. For both of us, the game was pretty much a mutual story writing series (although I was the one who knew what the overall plot was).
That game eventually ended but it showed me how much fun a one-on-one session between a player and GM could be. Virtually all of my RPG experience until then had been with groups (typically 3-5 people, but sometimes much more), so this was a new experience for me.
Recently, I had a couple of players mention things that have happened in some of my previous online games. That got me to reminiscing about some of my earlier attempt at running RPGs online and I decided it would make a good blog entry.
I started running a GURPS Space campaign many years ago. This was sometime around 1993 or so (before I even got an online account). It was a tabletop game set in a universe of my own creation and it was fairly popular with the group I was running at the time. After a few years of running the game and getting some experience with the online environment, I decided to start an online version of the game. This was sometime in 1997 or 1998.
I realized from the start that the best way to run the campaign was by e-mail. I had read enough message boards and chatted with enough people to realize that trying to get folks together for a chat session would be almost as difficult as it is in real life. In addition, I was working non-traditional hours, so my free time wasn't the same as the rest of the world.
The campaign was designed to be a little different than the tabletop game -- that one had the players working together as the crew of a starship. The online game would put the players in high-level positions of authority -- fleet admirals, governors, and similar careers. I worked out a lengthy e-book with the background of the campaign (which was fairly extensive) as well as my own rules for creating characters.
The game struggled on for a few months before it eventually died. I had made a few serious errors with the campaign that most likely caused its death.
First of all, I had about six players in the game and I was trying to run each of them with a separate plotline. It was ambitious, but way to complicated for the campaign. Trying to keep sight of what everyone was doing and what their goals were was just a little too tough. Add in the fact that I lost a few players due to real life stuff and the whole thing just ground to a halt.
The second problem was that my overall story arc was too distant. I had the same story arc in the tabletop game, but it was in the background with the players working away at the edges of the story, slowly uncovering the truth. Those players were already vaguely aware of the overall theme. The only players were new to this universe and had no idea what was going on. Clues that would have been obvious to the tabletop group were lost on the online gamers.
So ended my first attempt at running an online campaign. I learned a lot from the experience and applied it to my future campaigns.
I picked up GURPS Traveller: Interstellar Wars yesterday. My impression from the first read-through is "Wow!" Lots of great background and setting for a Traveller era that I always thought was pretty interesting. And a fai amount of crunchy stuff that I really like is in the book as well.
If only they would have added a system for merging with the old GDW Imperium game.
Of course, I could always work up something.
As if I didn't have enough on my plate already.
The long wait for the GURPS 4e version of Traveller is almost over. The newest book is scheduled for February and the table of contents posted at the website makes this a "must have" for me.
Check it out for yourself.
I picked up d20 Modern recently and I've been reading through it trying to learn the system. I had borrowed the book several months ago from a friend and spent a few days looking at it, so I had a pretty good idea of what I'm getting into. Once I feel comfortable with the system (and after I've subjected Ellen to a few sessions), I might try to run something with it.
I won't be abandoning my GURPS campaigns. In fact, any d20 game might be run in the same setting.
I've got this idea for a Cliffhangers - Horror - Magic - World War II campaign. Think Indiana Jones, The Mummy, Tomb Raider and so on. It'd be set in the 1930s and involve the recovery of artifacts from around the world. I already have an idea of the number of artifacts (13, of course) and what some of them will be. Nothing "common" like has been done before. I have some unique ideas. I think it'd have a pretty cinematic flavor.
I'm not sure if I'd ever run this, but its an interesting idea. If I never get around to doing it as a GURPS campaign, I might do it as a 1PG game. That would make it a very cinematic setting.
For some time now, Sam has been asking me to run a new campaign like my earlier grand economic / military / political game. I've toyed with this idea off and on for a while and occasionally jot down a few notes on the subject.
First of all, the new game would have to be more balanced than the previous one. That one was based on an active campaign and was limited by the history. A new one would have to have all the players on a near-equal footing.
Second, based on things I've learned from running that campaign and others, I think I'd make the format a little different. No major changes, but just an evolution based on what I've learned. One thing I would certainly do is create a Yahoo group for the game. The group for the WWIV Campaign has been very successful at providing a place for the players to socialize and exchange
messages. I think I might make the new group a little more relevant to the game, kind of like a UN debate or diplomacy forum.
Third, rather than trying to convert the various editions of Traveller rules, I think I'd just used the BITS conversion guide. Its a simple way to convert all the different task rolls from one version to another. And with all of the older Traveller books available on DriveThruRPG (for about half their print price), it wouldn't be that expensive for the players to get the necessary books.
Finally, SJG has a GURPS 4e version of Traveller coming out early next year. I might wait for this to come out and make the campaign a 4e one.
And those are my thoughts.
For the past few weeks, I’ve been playing D&D (3.5 d20 rules). While the experience has been fun, it just reinforces my belief that I’m better as a GM than a player. It must be something in my personality that makes me want to run a game rather than play in it. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy playing, but I just find more satisfaction being the GM.
