So is this going to suck shit? Has anyone had experience with the 2d20 system who could be able to comment...

So wait, X-Wing and Attack Wing are made by two different companies? That's weird. Aren't they basically the same system?

The 2d20 system actually works alright. I have the Mutant Chronicles RPG book and having looked through it the system seems pretty solid. It certainly seems to lend itself better to story and narrative than it does combat, but even then it still seems functional.

Holy shit, that is a lot of licenses for Modiphius to float. Don't they remember what happened to Guardians of Order?

The only 2d20 game that I am familiar with is 3rd ed Mutant Chronicles. At the very least, a 2d20 Star Trek game should have a great lifepath character creation system.

This 'living campaign' thing is setting off alarm bells, though.

Starships & Spacemen is my current go-to Trek RPG.

>Apparently it relies heavily on three different kinds of plot points being passed around, and a pretty high amount of metagaming is built into the system.

I'm not familiar with the iteration of the rules as used in the Conan game; but in Mutant Chronicles, there is only a pair of plot point type of things used, and they are mirror images (one for heroes, one for villains).

Combat in the new MC is okay, just much more abstract than the old editions (and unlike Warzone). I find it's better for Freelancer parties as opposed to Doom Troopers, but deep down I'm a Siege of the Citadel sort of fellow - so sometimes I want to have grid squares or hexes instead of zones.

We had a thread recently questioning if Star Trek is a setting that will work as an RPG. If they can solve the problems raised in that thread, the RPG will turn out well.

Attack Wing is based on Sails of Glory/Wings of Glory, while FFG made X-Wing without explicitly tying it to a preexisting ruleset.

Yeah, chargen in MC is fucking wonderful and if it's used for this as well I think we'll be in god a good time.

I like that the combat is more abstract, but then I'm not a fan of minis in RPGs. I prefer things be left to the imagination. Also allows for more dynamic storytelling during emcounters.

I am stoked about the new Siege coing out, though.

The D20 system has some issues but none of them are the type of dice it uses.

>Star Trek ships available like Star Trek: Attack Wing

FUCK

I play Attack Wing. It's fun, but the models need work.

>Worse, the scale is completely off.
Physical scale is completely out of whack in Star Trek. The difference in scale is shrunk significantly in Attack Wing.

It wouldn't actually work with To-Scale ships. There's really big low-tech and really small high tech that can go toe to toe anyway. Then when it's portrayed in the show, you often can't quite see a solid size comparison and they both appear to operate the same anyway.

Infinity and Conan have three different kinds of points: momentum, good guy points, and bad guy points. Momentum goes up and down every round and stores extra degrees of success that the players roll on skill checks, meaning that the GM has to be really careful when to ask the players to roll dice, since a pointless skill check generates as much momentum as a critical one. If a PC takes a defensive reaction, like to dodge or parry something, the GM gets one or more bad guy points, and each PC can do this an unlimited number of times per round. This means that sometimes PCs will be ridiculous kung-fu monsters fending off armies, and sometimes the PCs will just stand there and let enemies hit them for reasons that only make sense out-of-game. It's just really awkward and doesn't lend itself to a particular narrative at all.

Mutant Chronicles 3E wasn't all that bad. White Star feels kinda shoved in for some reason but it's overall pretty nice.

Well gotta have the obligatory all Russian faction.

Probably my only real gripe with the new fluff.

I get that having all ships at one scale (like 1/270 used by non-epic X-Wing) wouldn't work due to the vast size differences but they could at least make the ships at a relative-scale to one another (like Armada).

The fact that the Defiant is larger than the Constitution-class is inexcusable.

I wish they WOULD've at least given some provision for playing in the new J.J. Abrams timeline. I liked the aesthetic, if nothing else.

So just run a game set during the original series except always tell your players there are lens flares everywhere.

I am familiar with the momentum mechanics, I just don't consider that system to be a 'plot point' system, unlike the hero points and the Dark Symmetry points.

Also, why would you want to stop your players from generating momentum? Are you an antagonistic gamemaster?

My current group is Cartel, and they do a fair bit of investigation/intrigue/schmoozing, so we have a lot of momentum going into rolls in those situations. When the action explodes, my players do cool stuff to get momentum. It's worked well so far.

Here, this should help.

...

How would JJtrek handle it? Aside feom the screaming and lens flares, of course.

Hostile Alien: I'm going to r
Kirk: Chekov, fire the Enterprise's full complement of photon torpedoes at that ship!
Spock: Captain, I find that decision to be highly illogical and in violation of 73 different Starfleet protocols.
Kirk: Fuck off Spock; seriously you're my 'bro' and all but shut the fuck up. Fire torpedoes!
Spock: I still find this course of action to be illogical, immoral and perhaps illegal, yet I will do nothing. Also I'm fucking Uhura.
[Chekov fires torpedoes at enemy ship. Entire screen lights up LED-bright white for two seconds blinding most of the audience.]
Scotty(Over Intercom): Captain, the lens flare 'as completely blinded our ship's sensors! She's going to crash inta the moon!
Kirk: I let you down dad.
[McCoy grimaces/drinks]

Every PC making a separate roll to each do a different useful thing during downtime is one thing. What you have to avoid is the habit of every PC rolling a separate Perception check upon entering a new area, or having a PC roll a knowledge check each time they have a trivial question about the setting. Instead you have to use the teamwork rules whenever multiple players want to make the same kind of check, and just tell the players what they see or what they know without rolling when it's something that doesn't matter to the adventure.

Remember when destorying the Enterprise was a big "OH FUCK!" moment?

I actually think using a D20 is the biggest problem with the D20 system. It makes combat, task resolution and everything else that involves dice incredibly 'swingy,' you have to stack an absurd amount of modifiers before you make the odds of anything happening much better or worse than a coin toss. If you halved the difficulty of every skill check and to-hit roll and used a D10 you'd have a game that was much less reliant on random chance, especially at lower levels

You forgot the part where Spock yells and everyone is yelling

WAIT A MINUTE, where's the all important Sisko rape negotiations?

Would he negotiate ?

They'll dedicate half an episode just to the brainstorming behind the negotiations

GoO wasn't killed by it's licences, user. IT was killed by the value of the Canuck $ vs. the American $ at the time.

DP9 almost died too because of it. It's more rabid fan base though managed to keep it afloat. Taking on water, yes, but the damage control was holding.

From what I gathered it works basically the same as Infinity The war game only with...well...2d20. Roll under one is a partial success, roll under both is a full success.

Haven't played it but seems perfectly functional.

And then he'd full-on rape the aliens with the Defiant. Sisko was the second-greatest captain next to Kirk: just the right balance of diplomat and warrior.

Hostile alien: I'm going to rape your mom.
Sisko: Major, open a channel to the Provisional government. See if they can't explain what this...thing is.
Hostile alien: And your dad.
Sisko: Is that a threat?
Hostile alien: And you.
Sisko: Mr. Worf, lock weapons onto our alien friend out there. Let's see if he can still rape after fourteen quantum torpedoes have pounded into his anus.
Kira: Sir, we've received a response from the Provisional government. They have no idea who or what this man is.
Worf: Whoever they are sir, they are without honor.
Hostile alien: Now listen, perhaps we can come to some sort of arr-
Sisko: FIRE!
(Alien gets pounded in the anus by pulse phasers and quantum torpedoes; dies from CGI rape overload)
Odo: Captain, I think I have someone who would like to talk to you about our friend out there. Tell him, Quark.
Quark: I-I-I can explain, Captain...

But what about Odo and Garak? What do they have to add to the episode?

Surely Sisko would call in a favor from Garak ro get a whole penal colony full of rapists released onto the enemy ship to rape all the aliens in retaliation before both groups died horribly of Ventrusian space crabs. Odo would grumble. Sisko would leaen to live with it.

>Garak reveals that the rapists released were all Cardassian war criminals, when Kira objects she's subjected to a rant about the morality of conflict while everyone else sorts of looks

Meanwhile Chief O'Brien is in the holodeck with Dr Bashir flying spitfires and trying to forget his suffering for a short while.

Somewhere on Bajor a scientist has killed himself because he can't suffer being around that bitch Keiko any more.

And I might as well finish it...

Enterprise
Hostile alien: I'm going to rape your mom.
Archer: This is the United Earth ship Enterprise. Please repeat your message.
Hostile alien: And your dad.
Archer: Hoshi, anything?
Hoshi: It must be a problem with the translator, sir. I'm still working out all the bugs.
Hostile alien: And you.
Trip: Well it sure as hell don't sound like no translator bug I ever heard of.
Archer: T'Pol, thoughts?
T'Pol: Uncertain, sir. The Vulcan Science Directorate never explored this area of space.
(Alien penis disruptor hits ship, sperm wriggling on the hull.)
Archer: What the hell was that?!
Trip: Phase plating's holding, but whatever it was, it left something on the hull.
Mayweather: If I didn't know better, I'd say it looked like sp-
(Daniels bursts onto bridge.)
Daniels: It's an agent from the Temporal Cold War, Captain. Do not engage him!
Archer: Why?
Daniels: He's trying to rape history.
T'Pol: Illogical. The Vulcan Science Directorate has clearly stated that--
Archer: Cut it, Subcommander!
Hostile alien: Prepare your anus, Archer.
Phlox: I suggest you do as he says, Captain. He seems rather insistent. Plus, it would be a fascinating display of inter-species mating rituals. Most enlightening.
Archer: Hell no! Daniels, do some time shit to kill him.
(Daniels does some time shit, kills alien.)

But what shit does Daniels do?

Sadly, this is pretty much perfect.

God, how the fuck did the people writing Enterprise not get the memo about using time travel sparingly? TOS literally wrote that rule (along with the one about the evil clone being the one with a goatee)
That show would have been 100% better if they'd just cut all but maybe an episode or 2 of the time travel bullshit.
If nothing else, that would have then left enough time to do the Romulan - Federation war, and given the Enterprise it's midseason upgrade that results in it actually looking like a Federation Starship.

Nobody knows, everybody just rolls their eyes and changes channel whenever he comes on.

Voyager leaned pretty hard on time travel, too. Remember when they went back to Earth in the 90's and met Sarah Silverman for some reason? Or when the only interesting plot developments on the whole show were retconned into oblivion, along with the greatest villian the show ever had in the form of the dad from That 70's Show?

Voyager had a lot of problems, of which Too Many Time Travel Episodes were but a single facet of a multifaceted jewel of shit.

>trying to forget his suffering
You mean forget his wife, right

I suppose I should have read the damn black box.

There are two problems with scale Star Trek models. First, there's a huge spread in sizes of ships. Even among ships that are roughly equivalent in firepower. Like a D'deridex Romulan Warbird is a lot bigger than a Galaxy class. Though exactly how much bigger is unclear. Which is the second problem. A lot of ships don't have clearly defined dimensions. The shows and movies scale the same ships differently depending on what looks good in the shot.

FFG licensed the X-Wing system to Wizkids. Sadly that means low quality models, and point costs that are just the sum of the ship's attributes x2 regardless of any other factor.

doesn't know what he's talking about. The X-Wing rules clearly took ideas from Wings of Glory, but they're different systems. Attack Wing is the X-Wing system (poorly) adapted to Trek ships.

Just user Lasers and Feelings, it's the best star trek RPG who's rules fit in a napkin; there's no need for other star trek RPGs when you have lasers and feelings!

Remember when Tuvok wrote a holodeck simulation to help train the crew to suppress a mutiny, and the holographic Commander Chipotle was complaining about how Voyager needs to stop flying straight into every goddamn anomaly that comes along? It was those little fleeting moments of self-awareness that kept me going. The writers and cast were suffering right along with me.

Lasers & Feelings is great for a quick one-shot, but most people would want a bit more than that for a long term game.

But all a star trek game should be is a series of one-shots, just like the good TV serieses!

I like the plot tokens, as it's less "I get to do whatever I want free!" and more of a bribery system. You can pay for a success, or even go into debt for it, though the GM is in full control and can set a limit on how much you can pay and go into debt for.

You can spend player tokens like fate points, or put "heat" tokens into the GM's own pool, which the GM uses to antagonize the players. So the players can work themselves out of a tight spot either by using up their own resources or having it bite them in the ass further down the line. I'm pretty sure players can also spend their player points to eliminate some of that debt, but they lose their ability to smooth over rough spots until they get those back.

Basically it's limited give and take between players and GM, a little bit of metagame to smooth out tangles in play and foster player involvement since they have a small but active part in shaping the direction of the game outside of what their character can do.

Nah, best way to run it would be like STO.
Set up a stpry arc that consists of a bunch of otherwise stand-alone stories. Give them an adventure that hooks onto the next adventure.

I'm sorry, but STO is trash like every other MMO and is absolutely against anything resembling what star trek should be, just becuase they couldn't be assed to come up with a better system than 'kill dudes, get loot'. The pcs in STO are mass-murdering psychopaths.

That's what you get when none of the ship's parts look like anything.

>The pcs in STO are mass-murdering psychopaths.
Where do you think we are right now?

Irrelevant.
The story structure is perfectly adequate for running RPGs in a Star Trek setting. Nobody likes doing nothing but one-offs over and over with no broader picture or progress.

No, it wasn't all bad, just mostly bad. Which is still pretty fucking bad.

> The writers and cast were suffering right along with me.

Remember, NOBODY fucking wanted to do Voyager, it happened because the Exec's at Paramount wouldn't let them do DS9 unless they had an episodic TNG/TOS style show as well.

And when the writers don't want to do a show, you can tell.

Year of Hell was supposed to be a full season long adventure (would have made everything getting retconned a massive kick in the teeth but that was probably the intention) but pressure from on high was "No, shorten it to a 2-parter, it needs to be more episodic" and we got what we got.

They literally didn't give a single shit about that show, and just threw whatever scripts they had lying around, season 4 of TOS, unwanted scripts for Season 9 for TNG... hell pretty any shitscribble fanfiction that the fans sent in would get made into an episode as long as it was in script format. It was a fucking shambles.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again, the guy I feel really sorry for in all this is Tim Russ, Tuvoks actor. That poor bastard had been trying to be a main character in Star Trek for almost 20 years, the man played speaking role bitparts next to every captain of an Enterprise until that point and was *this* close to getting the role of La'Forge before being pipped at the post by Levar Burton.

Then he finally DOES get a major role, but it's in fucking Voyager.

Grief.

5 seconds in google.

The end to the Iconian Storyline felt PERFECT for Star Trek, which is weird for an MMO when I wasn't expecting such.

After all this talk about breaking your codes and even the temporal prime directive by ending the war you are losing before the Iconians can fight back...you choose not to and to instead help people. By doing so, you gain the method to prove to the Iconians that you were the Others who saved them long ago in their history and help them realize in the present they've been fighting friends of theirs.

The entire war was about fear and misunderstanding and that people can work past both

Man, Tuvok was pretty cool, though. He showed more emotion than most of the cast, even though he was a Vulcan, just because most of the cast could not give two shits. Even if he didn't want to do Voyager, you can at least tell that he cared a little.

I also like how Tuvok composed killneelix.exe on the holodeck. That was when they introduced Crewman Chucky. I wish they'd done more with him. He also gave a shit.

On the topic of STO: It's kinda weird where of all the returning voice actors, you can really tell that Neelix's is the one who's really giving it his all. He doesn't care that it's an MMO, he's happy to be there and exploring his character/where he's been again.

>I also like how Tuvok composed killneelix.exe on the holodeck.

To quote wise Suvak on the release of emotion: 'The cause is sufficient'

Fucking Neelix is in that game? Jesus fucking Christ. Can you kill him?

No, you can't!

You DO get to see most of what he loves and cares about killed in front of his very eyes to make a political point though!

Didn't he already lose everything he loved and cared about once because he's a goddamn spineless draft dodger?

It's funny, I'd be very willing to sympathize with any other conscientious objector, real or fictional, but Neelix is a very special exception.

Damn, the Enterprise-J is A) enormous and B) ugly as FUCK.

He gained new things to love and care about.

Then they all die too

Honestly, STO Neelix is a lot better than Voyager Neelix. He really feels like he's grown as a person and has some of the least annoying missions in the game. The missions with him feel a lot more 'What Starfleet should be doing' Helping his race migrate to a new home/dealing with issues along the way rather than 'Lets go blow up 20 klingon ships

It was from Enterprise, so yeah, it's shit.

time cop...He's in Star Trek Online right now

and then its time for more PATROL MISSIONS with Romulian spy fuckery!

FUCK THE FUCKING DELTA QUADRANT.

honestly that is where I hit a wall with my tos/JJ captain. its just such a drag to play that arc.

Yeah, I got a friend to help pound through it as I could at least talk with the friend while we mindlessly did it.

Someone picking numbers and making a chart out of it doesn't negate the fact that the shows where inconsistent about scale. That huge Dominion ship next to DS9 is a good example. It's the same design as a ship that was said to be "twice the size of a Galaxy-class" in dialogue.

A lot of those actors are doing this because they need the fucking money. That's why you will never hear Chekotay's actor in STO, because he recognised that Voyager was going to end his acting career and tried to get himself killed off by asking for bigger and bigger paychecks every time his contract came up.

Paramount just shrugged and agreed to them.

So, on the one hand his acting career is over. On the other hand he's retired to his palatial mansion because he's fucking monied to fuck.

Thats the main reason why Tasha Yar's actress was in STO, because Paramount fired her over starring in softcore and she really needs the money. It's probably the same for all of the rest.

Maybe not Tim Russ, as I said that guy's crazy about Star Trek.

Tuvok is the other major one who really feels like he's working for it. Him and Neelix don't sound like they are phoning it in.

Which is likely a lot of the reason why Tuvok and Neelix are by far the biggest Voyager appearances, the former getting an entire storyline/nemesis and the latter a major subplot.

TNG is the smallest appearance all of them, I'd say. Daniels is a HUGE character in stuff (As he's your main contact for time travel stuff)

heh

Too true. My local ABC station broadcast the whole first season of Voyager. I liked it and thought it had the potential to be really good, but that fell through big-time. Kinda sad really.

the breen invasion of earth mission was fun

I always found the whole Denise Crosby thing kinda ironic, considering what a cooze hound Gene Roddenberry was IRL.

Hell, Gene had a threesome relationship going with both Majel and Nichelle going at one point.

Gene and/or the lawyers of Paramount were dicks all round really. They added vocals to the intro theme so they wouldn't have to pay royalties to the composer, and when they persuaded Larry Niven to add the Kzinti and do a few episodes for the cartoon, they just went to an intern and had him rewrite the scripts slightly so they wouldn't have to pay him either.
That's the main reason why Amarillo Games are TERRIFIED of any potential breach of their license because Paramount are fucking assholes and they accidentially gave an amazing contract to ADB that never needs renewal.

Those were some definite dick moves.

>added vocals to the intro theme so they wouldn't have to pay royalties to the composer

This was from the same guy that sperged out and insisted that there would be absolutely no form of money in the future because humans would no longer care about material wealth.

Yep. Gene was pretty hypocritical, wasn't he?

YEP!

Remember when Kes was going through all the time-jumping shit in that Season 3 episode? She saw and warned the crew about the Kremin and the Year of Hell, even put it in a report. But when they finally met the Kremin, everybody was clueless?

I was just shaking my head the whole time.

Yup, it really rustled my jimmies, even as a 7/8 year old.

Pretty typical Hollywood leftist. Greedy and ruthless as hell, but utterly convinced they're enlightened, compassionate, and giving.

Like Leonardo deCaprio lecturing the world about global warming... at a Caribbean resort... that he flew to on his private jet.

Fuck those people.

I always wondered how ADB still had such an incredible license. Thanks user

It's amazing reading about the production of Voyager and seeing how damn near everyone on the show hated being there, with Chakotay's actor apparently making it worse for everyone.

Iconians can get fucked. Literally the worst people on the universe, and they only get a slap on the wrist for killing millions. I agree with the ending being fitting though.