STAGFF

[Falconer]

Okay, I ordered this on eBay about a month ago. Still haven’t got it. Hopefully I will. Anyway, until I can give you my review, here is an excellent review (and related blog posts) by Robert Saint John:

Heritage Models' Star Trek RPG - First Impressions
Heritage Trek RPG - 2nd Edition Cover
Not-Trek
Space Patrol (Gamescience, 1977)
Comparing Character Stats (Part 1)
Heritage's Star Trek RPG In-Depth (Part 1)
Trek RPG Auction of the Week - 3/13/09
Heritage's Star Trek RPG In-Depth (Part 2)
Heritage Star Trek and Different Worlds
Trek RPG Auction of the Week - 6/2/09

Interested?

[blackbat242]

I found this line (in the "in-depth part 2" article) humorous:

There have been a number of online discussions lately as to whether Trek is really suitable for roleplaying at all, especially when you have players (and GMs?) that focus on Trek-nology and do things like transport a photon torpedo over to the enemy's bridge (RPGnet thread).

A few years ago, in a Traveller game I was running, a PC did exactly that (with his teleport psionics skill and a missile warhead (using the modified psionics system I was experimenting with).

[Falconer]

Simple. The first time it happens, you reward the PC’s ingenuity. The second time it happens, oops! The enemy has caught on and developed anti-transportation shielding!

[Falconer]

The reviews are helpful; as informative as I’ve found online, anyway. Robert Saint John (the reviewer) obviously already has an idea of what a Star Trek RPG should be (he seems to have lots of experience with later Star Trek RPGs), which, I imagine, makes his spin different from what someone with more of an OD&D background would see. He mentions several times that, in his opinion, STAGFF doesn’t count as a real RPG!

This strikes at one of the core differences between “Old School” and “Evolved” RPGs. The Evolved gamer looks at an Old School game and sees a miniatures wargame that doesn’t even explain the concept of role-playing (i.e. improvisational storytelling), let alone provide rules to facilitate that whole aspect of the game. To the Old School gamer, this lack of rules means the role-playing aspect is truly improvisatory. The Old School gamer looks at an Evolved game and sees its rules which supposedly facilitate role-playing as simply reducing real “role-playing” into “roll-playing”.

Robert, if you’re reading this, I’m just waxing philosophical, not meaning to give you a hard time. As I said, I haven’t yet seen the rulebook. You could be right and I’m just taking you out of context.

[finarvyn]

Jan 5, 2010 2:17:03 GMT -5 Falconer said:

Simple. The first time it happens, you reward the PC’s ingenuity. The second time it happens, oops! The enemy has caught on and developed anti-transportation shielding!

I find that this is good advice for any RPG, actually, and certainly the way I run my OD&D games. The advantage of a rules lite system is that players can think outside of the box and in fact are encouraged to do so. Rules heavy systems (in my experience) often do the opposite as players tell me what they can't do rather than the other way around.

[Falconer]

Yeah, it seems like a solution that is obvious to us old schoolers, but might be simply impossible if things are over-codified in the rules. IMO, Star Trek just works best if things are not over-codified. Not the universe, not the tech, not the lore. It helps to remember how stand-alone the episodes are. Regards.

[allensh]

I have a very soft spot for this game as it was the first RPG I ever tried to run (with disastrous and hilarious results). I have the Space Patrol version too and would like to get the others, but Starfleet Voyages was $50 at Noble Knight and someone got it before I could

Allen

[allensh]

Is anyone up on what the actual differences between the Star Trek game and Space Patrol are?

Back in the mists of time when I tried to run ST, I found it confusing...and decided it was badly written or organized or something. It's odd now that, after 30 years of running and playing RPGs...It's still badly written and organized But I understand it now. And it's actually not a terrible little game for what it does. Space Patrol is, if anything, even MORE badly organized, but it has a few things the ST version doesn't have. It looks to me like the only thing Star Trek has that Space Patrol doesn't seem to is the "Hand to Hand Class" rating...which is essentially the only skill rating in the game.

Allen

[finarvyn]

Jan 24, 2010 9:19:02 GMT -5 allensh said:

It's odd now that, after 30 years of running and playing RPGs...It's still badly written and organized But I understand it now.

This is the same complaint I hear about OD&D all the time. I think that modern games are better organized and have layout intended to teach the game better, while older games tend to be poorly organized with layout not really thought through because it was assumed that you learned a game by having someone teach you instead of trying to just read the rules. The net effect is that older games (or editions) tend to be thinner while newer ones tend to be much thicker because of the examples.

Actually, once I master a game (such as OD&D) I can almost throw out the rulebook and only keep a DM screen or sheets with just a few key charts on them. If the game is so complex that I need the actual book, it's probably not a game I'm interested in running anyway!

I still like the old ones better, poor organization and all.

[Starbeard]

Hi all, I've lurked for a while, but haven't posted yet. Might as well change that now!

I once ran the basic game scenario from STAGFF, but using the advanced rules, and thought it went down pretty well. Since then I've got my hands on the extra content from Different Worlds and have been itching to run a campaign, just to give the game a chance to breath in the open air and see what it's like. I'm trying to start a play-by-post game over on Unseen Servant (call for players here), and I thought that if I advertised it here to see if any Star Trek players would be interested.

I want to first run one of the three published scenarios to give everyone a chance to get into the spirit of things and learn the rules, and if that goes well, and if enough people want to continue, we'll take to the stars and try an open, 'Star Fleet career'-oriented campaign.

If it gets off the ground that means I'll also be play testing my starship rules for STAGFF (I don't have Starfleet Voyages, so I've got to come up with my own rules). As those rules get fleshed out I'll want to post them to this forum. At the moment they borrow little ideas from FASA Trek, SFBM and SFB, but I've generally tried to build it from the ground up using STAGFF and the Technical Manual.