STAGFF update/clone project

[Starbeard]

Now that I've got an internet STAGFF game going, I'm hoping the experiences of that will culminate in an OGL-style retroclone. So far I've gone through the rule book and the Different Worlds articles and written up a rather bare bones and straight-forward rules compendium; as I give them the old OGL shakedown I'll post the refined rules here as a project.

Here's a list of the ideas I've put up so far:

1. Task resolution and difficulty levels
   
2. Skills

If anyone is interested in it, I'd be more than happy to hear your feedback, ideas or even collaboration.

[Starbeard]

For starters, here are two aspects of STAGFF+DW that I'm house ruling for my game:

The STAGFF rule book is strange in that even though virtually all task resolution in the game is handled by rolling 3D6 under the character's attribute score, it isn't actually presented as the default or universal mechanic. Each time a 3D6 vs Attribute-type roll is needed, it gets described again as if it were for the first time. Moreover, it can also be 4D6 instead of 3D6 (such as one of the Vulcan psionic powers), inferring that a more difficult task is handled by adding dice to the roll. But still, sometimes the difficulty is made by adding or subtracting pips to the roll (like the tricorder reducing your roll by -5 when attempting to learn about an unknown), or even from the attribute TN (like most psionic powers).

I'm not sure how I'll handle the various types of modifiers in the long run, but one thing I would definitely like to do is make the 3D vs 4D aspect more apparent:

'Probability of success, Mr. Spock?'

• Very simple (1D vs attribute)
• Simple (2D vs attribute)
• Average (3D vs attribute)
• Difficult (4D vs attribute)
• Very difficult (5D vs attribute)

Note that if the player rolls all 6s on a roll, then he rolls another die and adds it (repeating this process so long as 6s continue to be rolled)—this is to allow at least some degree of failure to risky actions that are still considered highly probable by the eminent Mr. Spock.

In fact, maybe there's a nice TOS-themed way of referring to the difficulty levels. Maybe something along these lines?:

• High probability
• Probable
• Adequately probable
• Low probability
• A very risky supposition

[Starbeard]

Skills

The DW campaign rules article lists a total of 36 'special skills', plus the single skill used in the original game, Hand-to-Hand. I tried simplifying some of the skills by organizing them into broad categories with 6 skills each, which you can see in my play-by-post game here. From that list you can see that there's quite a lot of granularity between skills (engineers have separate skills for working with impulse drives, warp drives and antimatter energy) and I'd like to cut down on that. I managed to cut the skill list down from 37 total to 24, grouped into 6 broad categories, each one dedicated to a specific type of duty on ship. Many of these skills (like psychology) will have little or no rules systems tied to them; skills more vital to ship operations (like Deflectors operation) will be featured in the simple party-oriented starship rules I'm currently writing up.


1. Engineering

• Antimatter (used for handling engines, reactors, drives, etc.)
• Deflectors (for deflector screens and similar technology)
• Transporters
• Electronics (a catch all for repairing, using world-si

2. Research sciences

• Physics (including astronomy)
• Planetology (anything relating to planets, including geology, etc.)
• Biology (again, very broad)
• Psychology

3. Practical sciences

• Logistics
• Computer
• Sensors
• Physiology (Dr McCoy's catch-all medical & research skill)

4. Command

• Strategy
• Anthropology
• Linguistics
• Diplomacy

5. Bridge

• Communications
• Weaponry
• Instrumentation (i.e., piloting ships)
• Navigation

6. Field training

• Hand-to-hand
• Energy weapons (not sure if I want this, since it might actually break the ranged combat rules as they are)
• Ancient ranged weapons (ditto)
• Survival

[Falconer]

I must admit my fandom of STAGFF was put on hold until I could ever see a copy of Starfleet Voyages, the later, more developed (and unofficial) version. But I could never seem to get a hold of it. :-(

[aramis]

Mar 17, 2015 11:05:02 GMT -5 Starbeard said:

Now that I've got an internet STAGFF game going, I'm hoping the experiences of that will culminate in an OGL-style retroclone. So far I've gone through the rule book and the Different Worlds articles and written up a rather bare bones and straight-forward rules compendium; as I give them the old OGL shakedown I'll post the refined rules here as a project.

Here's a list of the ideas I've put up so far:

1. Task resolution and difficulty levels
   
2. Skills

If anyone is interested in it, I'd be more than happy to hear your feedback, ideas or even collaboration.

You're well into pseudoclone territory. Not that that's a bad thing; C&C does quite well, for example.

[aramis]

Mar 18, 2015 10:54:41 GMT -5 Falconer said:

I must admit my fandom of STAGFF was put on hold until I could ever see a copy of Starfleet Voyages, the later, more developed (and unofficial) version. But I could never seem to get a hold of it. :-(

I don't think it's even hit the pirate scan sites.

[Starbeard]

Mar 18, 2015 18:03:00 GMT -5 aramis said:

Mar 17, 2015 11:05:02 GMT -5 Starbeard said:

Now that I've got an internet STAGFF game going, I'm hoping the experiences of that will culminate in an OGL-style retroclone. So far I've gone through the rule book and the Different Worlds articles and written up a rather bare bones and straight-forward rules compendium; as I give them the old OGL shakedown I'll post the refined rules here as a project.

Here's a list of the ideas I've put up so far:

1. Task resolution and difficulty levels
   
2. Skills

If anyone is interested in it, I'd be more than happy to hear your feedback, ideas or even collaboration.

You're well into pseudoclone territory. Not that that's a bad thing; C&C does quite well, for example.

That's quite true, actually. I realize that I'm not attempting a retroclone in the strictest sense of the word (or the only sense of the word, depending on who you ask), but—to begin with at least—I'm trying to start with as few rules changes as possible and going from there. Ultimately I think (both legally and conceptually) it would be best practice to try and take STAGFF and give it an OGL D20 treatment, which would at best necessitate a few structural changes to the rules, at worst create a completely different game. I'm finding the whole process much more of a problem than I thought it would be!

Ultimately, I'm still undecided on how much I'd like to alter, or even what to alter, since many of the basic concepts in STAGFF are very unclear about how they interact or even if they actually exist. I can't quite even decide whether having such vaguely interpretable rules should be constricting or liberating!

Mar 18, 2015 10:54:41 GMT -5 Falconer said:

I must admit my fandom of STAGFF was put on hold until I could ever see a copy of Starfleet Voyages, the later, more developed (and unofficial) version. But I could never seem to get a hold of it. :-(

I really wish I could get my hands on a copy of Starfleet Voyages, as well; it would certainly solve a lot of ambiguities, and also give me options to choose between SV's campaign rules and STAGFF's campaign rules.

My first thoughts on skills and task difficulties are prime examples of how difficult it is to work on this without Starfleet Voyages.

Skills only show up in the Different Worlds article, and only as a list of skill names—no rules are given, period. I thought I could base them on Hand-to-Hand (the only skill in the rulebook), but combat rolls use entirely different mechanics from non-combat rolls, so even that's out of the question. Considering that there seems to be evidence of only one person ever running a STAGFF campaign by the DW rules (that being the article author himself), I also have to decide whether a literal reproduction of his rules (or lack of rules) is even the best way to present a useable clone to an audience.

With difficulty levels for general tasks, I do believe the game's implied concept is that you usually roll 3D, except when it's particularly difficult where you roll 4D instead, but that's still debatable because it's never actually stated. As a result, I might get rid of my expanded difficulty range, and just stick to to ranges: 'Normal checks = 3D, Difficult checks = 4D'.

[Starbeard]

Mar 18, 2015 18:03:52 GMT -5 aramis said:

Mar 18, 2015 10:54:41 GMT -5 Falconer said:

I must admit my fandom of STAGFF was put on hold until I could ever see a copy of Starfleet Voyages, the later, more developed (and unofficial) version. But I could never seem to get a hold of it. :-(

I don't think it's even hit the pirate scan sites.

I've certainly never seen a scan. As far as I know it was published by Michael Scott Kurtick himself under Terra Games Co., so I doubt there'd be any licensing issues with rereleasing it as a PDF or in print. I'd snatch up a copy of both if it were.

[Falconer]

Starbeard, I am reading your ideas with fresh eyes since I have been running STAGFF a lot lately.

I definitely do ability checks on 3d6 usually, occasionally adjusting difficulty on the fly, usually to 4d6. It works great.

One rule of thumb I have been keeping in the back of my mind is to require 3d6 if you have a skill related to the ability check, 4d6 if you don’t have the skill but are posted in the correct department, and 5d6 otherwise.

For example, the other night there were two players trying to operate a damaged computer console; if one of them had the computer skill, I would have had him do a mentality check on 3d6. But neither of them had that skill, so, I required 4d6 from one of the players because at least he was in the engineering department (it was a console in the engineering department). He failed, so I required a 5d6 from the other player, who was in the security department (she passed).

[Starbeard]

Tying difficulty to whether or not you have a skill is intriguing. Are you giving ranks to skills in the same way that hand-to-and uses ranks? Would those ranks add to your attribute score, or reduce the number of dice even further? In my own couple of games I usually found myself deciding that anything easy enough to be require 2d6 might as well be automatic.

From your example, it also seems like another possible rule of thumb might be to increase the dice for each subsequent attempt. If a character failed on 3d6, another can try at 4d6, then a third can try at 5d6.

In all it makes a pretty solid working system.


I'm afraid I never got around to finishing off my starship rules quite to my satisfaction. They remained either too fiddly and esoteric or too abstract and bare. Good enough for ruling a space mission or two on the fly, but not as anything to use longterm. Have you had any luck with Starfleet Voyages?

[Falconer]

Apr 12, 2020 23:06:01 GMT -5 Starbeard said:

Tying difficulty to whether or not you have a skill is intriguing. Are you giving ranks to skills in the same way that hand-to-and uses ranks?

Nah, you either have the skill or you don’t. That’s enough granularity for my games.

Apr 12, 2020 23:06:01 GMT -5 Starbeard said:

From your example, it also seems like another possible rule of thumb might be to increase the dice for each subsequent attempt. If a character failed on 3d6, another can try at 4d6, then a third can try at 5d6.

Yes, I’ve done that a couple of times. I think sometimes I have made it easier instead of harder (first making them wait), or just kept it the same chance. Depends what it is.

Apr 12, 2020 23:06:01 GMT -5 Starbeard said:

In all it makes a pretty solid working system.

Yeah, it really is my speed!

Apr 12, 2020 23:06:01 GMT -5 Starbeard said:

I'm afraid I never got around to finishing off my starship rules quite to my satisfaction. They remained either too fiddly and esoteric or too abstract and bare. Good enough for ruling a space mission or two on the fly, but not as anything to use longterm. Have you had any luck with Starfleet Voyages?

No, I am moving forward with great confidence, kitbashing the rulesets that I have, and don’t really have a lot of interest in looking at another ruleset, especially one which is so insanely obscure that it’s hard to feel like I’m missing out on anything important. So I’m hoping Starships & Spacemen can provide that aspect satisfactorily, otherwise I will homebrew it somehow. I don’t know if you caught this in any of the other threads, but, The Lucanii Drift has some neat rules about how each player functions in a ship combat. It needs some work (and/or winging), but, flavor-wise it’s a great start.

Anyway, I appreciate you setting on the right path. STAGFF has a lot going for it, especially with BTFF, and it really does click for me.

[Falconer]

A rule I have now added is that the lowest possible roll is always a success, and the highest possible roll is always a failure. Yes, this means a 18 Mentality is the same as a 17 Mentality because an 18 rolled on 3d6 is always a failure — but this only applies when the roll is 3d6. Often I ask for 4d6 or 5d6, in which case the 18 would be a success if your Mentality is 18. I also occasionally ask for 2d6 if something is supposed to be a matter of course, though actually this is worse for people with 18 Mentality because they have a higher chance of “fumble”.

[Starbeard]

That all seems fine. Thanks to writing conventions, it's almost a universal rule in Star Trek that routine procedures are more likely to go awry, so you could say that the dice peculiarities you mentioned actually make sense in a thematic way.

[captainpike]

Interesting discussion. I don't have Starfleet Voyages but I do have Kurtick's Star Patrol (1982) that was published about the same time. I should get that out and compare it to STAGFF.

[Falconer]

Aug 18, 2020 11:57:18 GMT -5 Starbeard said:

That all seems fine. Thanks to writing conventions, it's almost a universal rule in Star Trek that routine procedures are more likely to go awry, so you could say that the dice peculiarities you mentioned actually make sense in a thematic way.

Great point!

Aug 19, 2020 12:54:39 GMT -5 captainpike said:

Interesting discussion. I don't have Starfleet Voyages but I do have Kurtick's Star Patrol (1982) that was published about the same time. I should get that out and compare it to STAGFF.

Man, lucky. I looked for reasonably-priced copies of Star Patrol and Starfleet Voyages for years, without luck. It kind of stalled me from starting a STAGFF campaign, because it irked me that I had the incomplete rules. Eventually I just got over it.