Wednesday, July 9, 2014

Worlds Without End

Apparently my post on 5E touched a nerve. That or it failed to. No comments.

With that silly 5E business out of the way, let's talk about a game that matters. I am of course referring to Star Trek.




I mentioned recently that I will have the opportunity to run Star Trek in the near future for a group I currently play with as a player. We meet roughly ever two weeks, or so, to partake in my friend Dan's homebrew Superheroes RPG. We took a break from Supers last time we met to play a group of military officers fighting the supernatural in World War II Belgium. It was really a good session, and I am looking forward to the continuation of it.

That said, we are getting together this Friday night to play another Superhero session, this time focused on the Justice League Unlimited. My good friend, and reoccurring member of my regular group, Dave!, will hopefully be joining us for our JLU adventure. He's thinking of playing Vixen. I'm leaning towards Red Tornado, or maybe Blue Devil.

Now, where was I? Yes, Star Trek.




I am going to go TOS for this for sure. It's that kind of crowd. Especially Dan. Not only is he in my age range, but he likes that sixties sensibility; Dan noted that the Original Series implies that while all the different races and cultures of Humanity finally united, and further teamed up with alien allies, the viewpoint of the Federation is one of a distinctly United States bent.

The default belief system is that whether your a blue-skinned, white haired guy with antenna, or a silvery-green haired, space babe in a silver bikini, you have the 'inalienable' rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Furthermore, if some cave computer, or alien cloud entity, is denying you and your people one of those rights, our brave, intrepid Starfleet officers are going to go in there and kick its butt until you're free.

I am going to try to keep the adventure relatively simple and tight, although I would like to throw in a philosophical quandary to keep it in the right tone and atmosphere of the series. I am very likely to set the PC crew up with a non-canon ship design, something slightly smaller than a Constitution Class, but we'll. Dan and a few of the others have a definite love for the old girl.

That's it for now. Musing about for the time being.

If there are any ideas, questions, or other comments, please feel free to drop by and speak your mind. The more the merrier.

Boldly going for now...

AD
Barking Alien






6 comments:

  1. Go luck and boldly go! I, too, am a huge original Star Trek fan so I look forward to reading your adventures.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Your post about 5E seems to agree with the majority, everything there is OK, but nothing amazing. I'll add: they didn't go for amazing, they know their market ;-)

    Now, on this post, it astounds me how your aproaches are in the opposite end of the spectrum to mine within the same genres. Right now, I'm moving (temporarily) from a Star Trek game to a Mutants & Masterminds 3E:
    - The Star Trek one is set around Cardassian space in the post-Dominion war era, with cardassian terrorists, orion slavers and klingon hardliners being the major threats (but we have temporal anomalies, centuries-old probes and psionic computers, too). Jurisdiction, Prime Directive and peacekeeping are important words.
    - When I asked my players about the kind of superheros they wanted to play, I got the following references: V (for Vendetta), John Constantine, Witchblade and Darkness (both from Image), Takezo Kensei (from Heroes) and Wolverine.

    Meanwhile, you have TOS and Justice League. You are a classicist :-)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. "Meanwhile, you have TOS and Justice League. You are a classicist :-)"

      I'm the most new school old schooler your likely to meet. Or the most old school new schooler. Doesn't it matter? You get the point.

      While I have a love of all things Trek (yes, even Star Trek V and Voyager, to a much lesser extent), I have almost not interest in any of the superhero references you just made. Except Constantine. I like him. I liked Wolverine at one time, but he became overused, overexposed and ever new character had to be another Wolverine. He was everywhere, everywhen, and can do anything. Bleh.

      Witchblade and Darkness aren't Image, are they? I thought they were Top Cow or something. Hate those two characters. They should trip over their stringy, ugly designs, choke on their angst and die. Just thinking about them makes me want to take another shower. They make me feel unclean.

      By the way, I think that's Top Cow's next big comic character. 'UNCLEAN! To fight dirty, you must be filth yourself! Debuts soon at San Diego Comic Con!

      "they didn't go for amazing, they know their market ;-)"

      Believe.

      Delete
    2. "Witchblade and Darkness aren't Image, are they? I thought they were Top Cow or something."

      Yes, they are Top Cow, but since Image is the parent company and has (or had) several related studios, I typically use it as reference.

      The list was striking because none of us are hardcore comic fans, and you would think our references would be the most famous characters (I am surprised that Batman wasn't mentioned). Instead, we had an atypical list, but one that definitely pointed to a certain style. I am designing the campaing with that in mind, so it has been most useful.

      Delete
    3. A fascinating observation. Hmmm.

      OK, you've hooked me. I am interested to see what kind of campaign develops out of this.

      Delete