Post by Jack Photon on Mar 18, 2022 14:26:01 GMT -5
EDIT 2023: Earlier this year I released my 4.0th Fantaversary Revision that supplants this 3rd Edition Framework.
No rules changed, but some number ranges were tightened and more importantly some 60 page of Stardate magazine and other source materials were added into the three primary books. The 4th edition is much better overall. The links below mostly still work for those that don't want to version up.
Live long and prosper.
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Hey there, all.
I've just been informed of this forum and am glad to find it after all these years of poking around.
Yesterday saw the release of a very long term passion project of my mine, the complete tear-down and rebuild of the 1st and 2nd edition FASA rules into a new, cohesive game system that focuses exclusively on TOS/TAS; a "3rd Edition Framework", if you will.
Why 3rd edition? I saw that the Starship guys were using the moniker; so with horse long out of the barn, I went with that. I was originally calling it a 'Glueage Extract' to describe how this project would have been produced back in the day before desktop publishing as we know it today came along.
Why 'Framework'. This harkens back to 1st edition text where the authors used that very word themselves to describe what they had wrought. Indeed, decades later in internet interviews the surviving members were still using the phrase to describe their work. My project is not 'definitive' and therefore best described as a Framework to hang and dress your campaign upon.
Let's face it, 1st edition needed some polish for the exceptionally short writing/production window of some six months. 2nd edition made the simple more complex and generally loused things up for the schizophrenic duality of shoehorning the movies into a system written for TOS/TAS. That FASA brass were anti-Fantasimulation and wanted to drum them out, imo, added to the mess. I can't blame John Wheeler, but his name does top the masthead as editor-in-chief so his name is most often associated with my distress of 2nd edition. Neither edition was complete enough on their own and both together were a mess for the conflict.
Even in that regard, 2nd edition is still the better choice for FASA movie era until I can address the needed tailoring to bring it into this 3rd edition framework.
The work is broken into three books and 2 supplements. Future releases will follow.
Book1 is character generation; completely revised while adding Enlisted and Citizenry. Now with more Herbert! (and medals, awards, lifepath tables, herdedity, contact team, new and revised attributes and so much more
Book 2 is the game mechanics; Bits of 2nd edition intermixed with mostly 1st edition and some tweaks of mine, including 'The Latimer Ruling' to redefine END <01 situations, comprehensive psionics to give the GM some truly scary baddies, gosh, there's so much little stuff here and there sprinkled throughout to really say.
Book 3 is the appendices for character generation and GM tools, charts, forms, blank templates, etc.
Supplement 1 is the complete set of Federation character sheets.
Supplement 2 is a new set of mix-and-match GM screens.
Next year for the game's 40th anniversary, I'll be looking to release "Book 4, Adversaries". The idea there is to de-2nd edition the baddies into 1st edition mindset and then warp them into this 3rd edition framework.
And that was a prime motivator out of all this, to "de-Wheeler" the game back into the Fantasimulation flavor while inserting my house rules from over the years to patch over things the game system missed (like falling damage) or offer alternate rules such as Lt. Latimer compared to 1st edition's Lt. Greentree.
I will never do anything with ST CBT as that has been handled for decades by fans much more into it than I ever got. That said, the 1st edition simple system is still present, now with Stardate Crit hits and similar spices to flavor.
So, just as tearing down and rebuilding a car engine, so too here there is a lot that was in good shape. Injectors needed cleaning, cylinders needed a re-bore, new plugs and belts and now we're good for another hundred thousand parsecs, my friend!
Medium quality pdfs are available for download, but are not suitable for printing. They are best for a quick look to see if you want the Full quality pdf masters. All pdfs have been zipped into .rar format for easy deliverability.
So where is all this wonder?
Please do have a glance around while visiting, but the pdfs are linked through the House Rules header.
Live long and may the Force prosper with you.
-JP
