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Thoughts and Notes from the
Guardian
March 2006
Starship Combat II- after 10 months,
I guess I can put it to bed! I've gotten a good review or two,
but it looks like acceptance in the FASA Trek universe may take a little
time. For years, it drove me nuts trying to get new players to hanker down
and work the STCS, and found that it was ME doing the hankerin' and workin'!
It's a simple dice duel with a few modifiers, and I think it works fairly
well. Much easier to throw in the middle of an rpg adventure than
the STCS, to be sure, and much less vague than the 'quick roll' system
in the back of 2nd ed. 'Boarding Actions' is my next project, finishing
off the starship combat project, I think. It's looking like what someone
online described as 'Trek Risk', which was unintentional, but fairly accurate.
At least it gives the Security Chief something to do from now on!!
Ships with troops become more instrumental in the scope of starship
combats. Hopefully by summer, fleet manuevers and attacking starbases with
troops will be possible as an evening scenario!
June 2005
I guess we're gonna make these
updates an annual anniversary event! Lotsa stuff's happened since last
year. With the help of the guys at the Yahoo! group, we've upgradedand
expanded the npc and planetary generator to incorporate some 2nd
edition stats.As always, the group has donated lots of neat material availble
for download. Also, there are several new adventures to be had there. The
website has been revamped and streamlined to accomodate Yahoo!'s bandwidth
restrictions, thanks to Mark from Xon Gaming for all his hard work!
'Enterprise' has come and gone.
I'm not too upset. Altough the last season showed a little more promise
than the preivious 3. Oh well, they were stealing my plot ideas anyways...:)
Projects on the horizon: I've
dabbled into creating an alternate version of the Starship Combat system,
the first draft is available at the Yahoo! group and TrekRPG.net. A boarding
party system based on those rules is in the design stage. A player character
generator for MSExcel is under construction. Unlike other versions around
the net, this one will hopefully guide you through the skill selection
phase (it IS giving me a little trouble...).
The Essex campaign, sadly, has
stalled. Personal commitments has really wreaked havoc on my schedule,
and we haven't played much.Also, one of our players has bowed out, Big
John (aka Security Chief Sergio Leone) for personal reasons. I haven't
seen or talked to him for almost a year, so in the event he is reading
this, I hope everything's okay and if you need anything, feel free to contact
me.
I guess that's about it. Until
next year, then!
June 2004:
Talk about putting it off! We kicked
off another series of adventures in May, and despite a slow start, I think
we're hitting a decent stride now. I've invested in a PDA, and I've been
using it to write little adventure notes whenever it comes to me- damn
helpful. I've got about 3 completely finished, one has a couple things
I need to work out and one is still in the planning stages. I've changed
a lot of things around on the web and on the group. The first edition rules
I've scanned and is available on the site. I've worked out a game map for
player reference, also on site. I've created an NPC generator for ms excel,
it's not perfect, but it has uses, that's at the Yahoo! group for members.
I've had several requests for a PBEM campaign, I'm mulling it over- it's
not like I've got loads of time on my hands, considering my last entry
was 2002! Please chime in with any thoughts, I'd love to hear them- good
or bad. 'Enterprise' is really starting to piss me off! There are a couple
of story parallels between my campaign and some episodes, and they keep
messing with the timeline! What's with the Klingons and the bumpy heads!?
September 2002:
I updated the Links page by request;
some of the owners have changed their addresses. There's also a copy of
the Tricorder/Sensor Interactive Display booklet on the Yahoo! group. It
comes in 2 parts to accomodate Yahoo!'s 5meg upload limit. I didn't want
to scan it on a lesser resolution for fear of making it illegible. We're
still in our AD&D campaign, so, I'm putting off my Trek plans for awhile.
May 2002:
Sorry to say that I've been busy
lately and haven't updated much. The game is still on standby while our
gaming group tries its hand at AD&D 3rd edition. I've tried to take
advantage of the time off by doing some ST:RPG projects I've been putting
off. The biggest of these is the text scanning of the original ST:RPG rulebook
so that everyone in the group can have a copy. Not easy. Having a maleable
copy of the rules will make changes and additions so much easier. I hope
to start the campaign up sometime over the next couple of months, at least
in a part time capacity. I removed the FNN pages from the website. It was
very novel but required a little more maintenance than I wanted and it
took up quite a good amount of free space on the site. The logbooks will
serve pretty much the same purpose without the glitz.
February 2002:
I opened a Yahoo! Group for the
gang and for anyone who wants to join to discuss the site and the campaign,
complain, share files. A lot of the reasoning behind the Yahoo! Group was
a bandwidth issue for this site. The adventure database was consuming the
daily allotted bandwidth for their free site, so, I opened the Yahoo! Group
to alleviate this problem. So, take the time to click on the button below
and join! The game is still on a post-holiday hiatus, wich serves me fine
for now. It's giving me an opportunity to update the site, especially in
the logbook section (there's still several adventures yet unwritten!).
I left them with a bit of a cliffhanger: An explosion at SB 2 has crippled
the base and the Essex and now they're both listing out of control... blah
blah blah. One of these days, I'm gonna write an essay on my gamemastering
philosophy and call it: "Dropping The Anvil". It's a long story.
January 2002:
I decided to finish a few things
left undone for a while in terms of getting adventures posted and finally
rework the site. It was becoming a little unwieldly, files scattered all
over the place and such. Anyways, I adopted a policy of 'more substance
than glitz' and discarded a lot of the images. Some of the pages are left
unfinished, such as the log page (which is an amalgam of several pages
from the former site setup), and the timeline page, a project I've been
meaning to do for a long time now. Currently, the Trek game is in hiatus
while we finish our superhero adventure, taking advantage of the GM who
has a little free time between college semesters. I'm plugging away...
the inviation still stands if anyone has an idea, as I'm always looking
for something fresh. If you're reading this far, go back to the main page
and sign my guestbook!
November 2001:
Looks like once again we're going
where no man has gone before. As a role playing group we try to rotate
the game mastering duties amongst ourselves, and it rotated back to me
already. That's not exactly a fair statement, because in the time I was
off, not only did I move out of state, I moved back, so a considerable
amount of time passed. Actually, I agreed to be a more of a "fill in" GM
on the weeks when the scheduled GM wasn't there, or didn't get a chance
to write up an adventure. I pretty much picked up where the game left off,
and I've got some material written that'll take the group into the new
year. I'm actually getting around to typing up all the previous adventures
and getting them ready to post on the site. Meanwhile, plot devices are
bubbling in the back of my otherwise inactive mind.
February,2001:
In January 2001, we finished the
Episode 6 of the Essex campaign. With that, the game has gone into hiatus
as I turned the gamemaster reigns over to another member of our gaming
group. As of this entry, we're playing a pretty neat superhero campaign
based in a Jack Kirby style setting. If he should create a site for it,
I'll add it to the links page. As far as the USS Essex goes, there may
be a cameo game here and there. I've left several subplot elements open
for future adventures: Capt. Curp has developed a relationship with a cute
little redhead; Lt. Flonnaise's mother discovered an artifact that may
have been left behind by the Preservers; Dr. Herronomous has had a rash
of disappearing appendages; Engineer McGillicutty's father has been lost
while on a trade mission near the Triangle; Barlok has a dark past that
even he doesn't yet know about; and there's something about that Security
Chief Leone that doesn't seem right..... In any case, whether we ever get
back to these things is up in the air. The group seemed pretty upbeat about
a Next Generation campaign some time in the near future. I'm not against
the idea, but, the only gaming references for that era are the two published
by FASA, and they're not all that encompassing. It would require a lot
of work on my part, hence, a lot more time. I was hoping to start conversion
to the LUG version of the game, but, then they lost the rights to Decipher,
and nothing has been heard since. I've been debating whether or not to
start another game in the same timeline running parallel to the Essex campaign,
or possibly one set in the TOS movie genre. The only drawback to that last
idea is that the majority of the players are better versed in the Next
Generation than the TOS era. For the time being, I'm content with just
playing and maintaining this humble little sight. I've been collecting
links to other Trek RPG sites in search of inspiration. I offer an open
invitation to anyone with ideas and suggestions for future campaigns; they
all come very appreciated.
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