/STG/ - Star Trek General

Mirror-universe humans (and their mini-skirts).

They never said Andorians had four sexes, just that their marriages require groups of four.

Aenar. At least in principle. The strange otherworldly offshoot of the other best race that is the Andorians.

Would have been nice if hey were actually blind rather than Daredevil blind. Maybe have them make an annoying clicking sound when they walk to detect walls and shit, psychic abilities used actively rather than passively to detect smaller scale things.

Having them see by another name perfectly and in colour was not how I would have done it.

Which is odd because in TOS they had a blind psychic that used a psychic sensor net to detect her surroundings so it wouldn't be unprecedented to do something similar for the Aenar.

Cardassians. I like how they evolved from "Evil Space Fascists" to a a deep and complex culture that's been on the shit end of the stick one too many times.

Not odd at all.

It's like warp 10 lizards or the Galactic Barrier or the planet at the center of the galaxy [insert Kolob joke here].

To acknowledge that the episode with the blind telepath human took place would mean that they would have to admit that at some point humans started to develop psychic powers and then between 23c and late 24c lost them. Why did humans spontaneously develop telepathy out of nowhere? Why did it fade away again?

Easiest way to do so would be that the ambassador's father was a Betazoid and that she was the result of a deep space one night stand before official contact with that world, or some other less annoying psychic species.

But that would require too much effort.

Could be that several humans do develop the ability from exposure to strange elements from space travel (a few too many milliseconds near an exposed warp core or "a strange energy phenomenon". Hell, even saying "Q did it for the lulz" is plausible).

How about some illegal genetic engineering?

Alternately: The psychic power was in the sensor net itself, but the tech didn't pan out and VISR equivalents got introduced instead.

Always possible too.

It could be easy and in keeping to explain with Q if you treat all the extra-dimensional magic space gods as the same "species". They are all more or less interchangeable in what they are from our perspective as we should be from theirs. Hell, even the silicon sand computers and the Tholians think all humanoids are the same fucking thing "ugly bags of mostly water".

Q are the authoritative main government with the Prime Directive that stops the others from turning all of creation into their amusement park. Organians are the green peace pacifist hippy Q that went to go live on a commune near the Klingon border. That one that Picard encounters that exterminated the hurq in a moment of grief stricken rage was a hippie bum going on a an Eco-holiday and fucking a native just before she got killed in some inter-tribal warfare, he then comes in with an AK and some body armour and genocidess a tribe. Q that torments Picard is the Q version of Kirk playing hard and fast with the rules to save a beautiful, wonderful, stupid people that he loves; lets call him Renegade Q.

Renegade Q starts making random humans have psychic powers because they are dear to him and they are going to need every advantage they an get in a hostile universe.

The others eventually find out that the humans can into pychic when should not telepath. This makes them suspicious. Renegade Q be all like "oh fuck the pigs found out! Shut it down! SHUT IT DOWN!" and no more humans are born with telepathy and Renegade Q pretends like he is as shocked by this as everyone else.

Renegade Q is Prometheus + Loki. He's a twisty, bastard with at best dubious methods but he is on out side. And he was punished for that.

>To acknowledge that the episode with the blind telepath human took place would mean that they would have to admit that at some point humans started to develop psychic powers and then between 23c and late 24c lost them. Why did humans spontaneously develop telepathy out of nowhere? Why did it fade away again?
Because it's really fucking rare and no humans we see in TNG, DS9 or VOY have it to any measurable extent.

Ahh, the classic 'a wizard did it' with a star trek flair.

Star Trek always had magic and wizards and gods like those of antiquity ever so petty and cruel.

As far as "official canon" goes, I almost want to be that guy and say Klingons, but it's very much a "depends on the writer" kind of thing. I really enjoy them when they're the Proud Warrior Race guy that loves honor, but still has a fair amount of hypocrisy, such as their usage of cloaking devices. But I hated how as the shows went on, the Klingons became more and more retarded, to the point where it was essentially written that they shit on anyone in the empire that isn't a warrior, including the scientists that are supposed to be designing their ships and waepons, or the doctors that keep them alive. I liked the earlier implication that essentially every Klingon that served in the military was a warrior, regardless of position. Them shitting on anyone who isn't swinging around a bat'leth just raises up too many questions on how they're as successful as they are, such as them curb-stomping the Federation in DS9. Brute strength only gets you so far.

A friend of mine told me the books outline Klingon society in that every Klingon is a warrior, just with different opponents. Like, a farmer's a warrior in that he fights the elements, a doctor is a warrior in that he fights disease, a lawyer is a warrior in that his battlefield is the court room. I thought that was a neat idea.

But as far as unofficial canon goes, my absolute favorite are the Gorn in Star Fleet Universe. I love how they have the appearance of your typical scary barbarian aliens, but are actually just as intelligent and diplomatic as anyone in the Federation, and their general cultural outline is interesting to me as well, with the pseudo-communistic structure.

Incidentally, I really hated STO's portrayal of the Gorn, since it was bland as hell. The single cultural trait they gave them was an autistic obsession with territory/. That didn't stop me from maining one, though.

...

Tholians. I kind of like how they are kind of generic space invader species but don't actually do that much. The unique design and later implications of their interests alternate realities are also big

SFB does Gorn really well. They managed to avoid the standard lizard people tropes for the most part, hell they managed to make them fucking good guys and solid allies of the Federation, in spite of their only appearance as antagonists.

Have any of you guys played Star Trek Adventures? Is it actually good or should I forget about ever playing it and what I've designed for it?

Yeah, I'm a sucker for characters/races that have that contrast of "scary monster" and "actually pretty cool guys."

I prefer the contrast of "totally normal" or "exceptionally beautiful" and "actually kind of horrible" in sci fi. Like that super shitty episode from the first season of TNG.

Yep, got at least 2, maybe 3 groups (or members of) here playing both online and IRL.

General consensus seems to be good. Personally I'd rate the system design as better than both LUG and Decipher Trek games. Suitably simple yet capable of dealing with a wide array of stuff and critically: without information overload. It condenses the required information down really well whilst still letting characters have that very TV style of characters being able to at least try and do whatever is required or at least help out the specialist. Which good for gameplay because it means you're not gonna get the classic hacker problem of one character being able to access gameplay others can't and that shutting out the game, which with a setting requiring so many technical specialists, could be a real risk if the game design wasn't up to scratch.

I'd say the neat part that stands out for me is the parts of character creation where you define your own specialities, rather than picking from a huge list of skills, and character personality definitions.

Oh yes Cardassians. The "fellow assholes just trying to make this nation-state thing work" of the setting.

A large part of that has to do with first contact. The Borg Queen, Borg becoming spacevampires who turn you into one of them by sticking their fangs... no hand tubes into your bloodstream and need to assimilate biological lifeforms that became massive out-of-character obsession later on.

Also in Voyager they ruined perfectly fine waifu by cleaning her up and putting her into that weird-ass silvery jumpsuit. What the hell Berman & Braga

Great, now I'm hoping I'll actually be able to find a group to play with during grad school (assuming I even get in, I really need to do well this semester). I really like the base storyline I have which I'd suggest to a DM since I really want to play it instead of running it (which is assuming I do well enough running fate this semester to warrant ever DMing again).

>Like that super shitty episode from the first season of TNG.

Well that narrows it down.

I really like that they didn't make the monster people monsters. They didn't go unfeeling lizard, but gave them a huge collective guilt complex, and capable of cooperation and not subjugating other races like most of the big name race-focused empires.

I also am ok with their ship design and at some point will try and do a 24th century take on it

The one where they almost killed Wesley.

There's four sexes in the books. Two 'male' equivalents, two 'female' equivalents. IIRC, the two 'males' have to fuck one of the 'females' to get her pregnant, then she has to fuck the other 'female' so that the fertilized egg can be carried to term.

that sounds like so much effort it would be obliterated by natural selection pretty quick

Yeah, it's been a long-running plotline that they're going extinct. I think by the TNG era, there's only supposed to be five thousand left in the galaxy and they're looking at being totally wiped out because they keep dying in fights rather than having kids.

I remember seeing a gorn running around in a Mr. Rogers outfit with a squad of modestly dressed Orions on Nimbus a few years back.

Disregard that number. Doublechecked Memory Beta.

>From an initial population of 3 billion, there were only 90 million Andorians by 2376. (DS9 novel: Andor: Paradigm)

This was also before they temporarily left the Federation so they could genetically engineer the FUCK out of their species and get rid of that shit.

Did they manage that? I forget.

I think they were gonna focus less on reducing their genders and more on making sure that they were fertile for longer.

I am designing some characters and a few missions for an exploratory one-shot right now and I can echo a lot of what says about the system and add a few other notes.

Character creation is a lifepath system, but unlike other lifepaths (Traveler, MechWarrior 3rd) it is not possible to have a crippled/dead character or a useless character. EVERY character the lifepath system generates will be highly skilled at something, or at worst, pretty competent at a lot of stuff, which is an extremely nice touch to the system and represents Starfleet crew members very well. Each character also has some Values and Focuses that the player just picks out of thin air and help shape the character, which is extremely cool and a great way to kinda build a character up from nothing. The game actually sold me on lifepath systems being good when multiple other systems failed.

The ship creation is quick and easy (in fact, I made my own statline for best ship, the Steamrunner, and it took all of five minutes) and provides a surprising amount of options for only being one book. There are lots of enemies/non-Federation aliens in the book, lots of ships and monsters and stuff you can use out of the box, and it even comes with a precon mission if you want to just see how they do missions, which is pretty neat.

The system feels very much like the TV shows in design: there are challenges with a myriad of ways to solve them since the dice system is flexible and open-ended and everyone can be relevant if they think about how to apply their strengths or focus on what they're good at in each scene. Characters feel like they matter in most scenes and there is a strong undercurrent of "we are friends and we are allies and we out there exploring for the Federation" which is a nice change from other, more conflict-riddled, games.

If you like Star Trek and you like RPGs and you own some d20s and d6s, give it a shot.

Damn it guys. Now I kinda need to play this at some point. I mean a true Federation warship (designed for that specific purpose in case certain groups attack) partially designed by a Romulan experiment who now serves as the chief engineer where the main antagonists are probably the Breen with the remnants of the Borg (insane after the events of Voyager), Tal Shiar (multiple factions trying to take control and return to pre-Shinzon, being supported by Sela), Obsidian Order (same idea as Tal Shiar but being stamped out by Garak), and Dominion (mostly cold war with some factions, mostly Vorta).

I'm putting together a short series of introductory missions for my group that are based around being the shakedown crew on the prototype Steamrunner in 2371, as Starfleet Command is rolling out the Steamrunner as a high speed border patrol, blockade runner, and intel gatherer ship for operations against the Dominion and possibly the Borg.

The missions I have so far are as follows:
-Testing out a new experimental weapon system, tricobalt torpedoes (a nice shoutout to the Armada games). This will take place against automated drone ships, but goes sideways when an Orion privateer decides to interrupt and try their luck at stealing the torpedoes (boarding actions and everything!).
-Testing out a new powerful dilithium injector system that vastly increases the Steamrunner's impulse acceleration and warp cruising speed. However, it taxes the structural integrity fields, causes injuries among the crew, and might even send the ship somewhere unusual thanks to unforeseen warp bubble effects.
-Finally, testing out a new and very powerful gravimetric sensor suite, capable of detecting ships and systems are unseen before ranges with extreme fidelity. However, it might be giving false data, so they crew has to go check it out and since we're testing it in the Gamma Quadrant, there's the risk of Dominion entanglements, not to mention possible first contact with who/whatever it identifies.

>/stg/ now actually discusses board games regularly.

Well how about that.

Star Trek: Adventures is an excellent system that manages to actually feel like a Star Trek episode. Combat is fast paced and meaningful, the Momentum track makes players feel like they're building towards a goal and the Threat track lets the GM build an appropriate response. The Escalation system for breaking out the really useful equipment is one of my favorite touches because it makes the players actually have to worry about going straight to the phaser rifles, photon grenades, and Bat'Leth. My players are actually taking noncombat options for their games.

I will shill it forever

>The Escalation system for breaking out the really useful equipment is one of my favorite touches because it makes the players actually have to worry about going straight to the phaser rifles, photon grenades, and Bat'Leth.
So the better toys you pull out the more high end stuff you might be going up against?

Those are pretty cool. The ship that I was talking about would have been rolled out after all that, around 2380 instead of 2370.
That's why despite my character being intended for a warship his standard loadout (with the item talent) has a knife and plasma torch for extra armament.
Certain weapons and all armor has an escalation cost which automatically gives the DM threat through making the party seem more likely to be hostile. The system has pools for the players (momentum) and DM (threat) which can be used to modify a situation. Players earn momentum by doing well on tasks (excess successes build it). If they don't have enough momentum, they crit fail (and the DM decides not to punish them for it), an NPC builds momentum, or the situation is dangerous enough the DM can add to their threat pool. Players start with no momentum while the DM starts with 2 threat per player.

Basically. There's a system called Threat, which are points the GM accumulates. Among other things, the GM can spend them on letting enemies roll an extra die on a check, call up more opposition, etc. The players have a similar pool shared among the party called Momentum. It's good for almost everything, but just for an example I've attached a pic of what the players can spend Momentum on in combat.

Since currency doesn't exist in Star Trek and the players can usually replicate what they need or pull it from ship's supplies, equipment is controlled through Opportunity Costs(takes momentum to get) and Escalation Costs(generates Threat when you get it). For an example, players always have access to hand phasers, but a phaser rifle has Opportunity Cost 1 and Escalation 2, so it costs 1 momentum and generates 2 threat. (For example, the GM can spend 2 threat to have two basic Klingon soldiers show up.)

There's also a full system for Social Combat if you want to talk down your opponents instead of going in guns blazing, a writeup on the scientific method for dealing with the negative space wedgie of the week, and a whole system for making Innovations to deal with science problems(like rigging up the main deflector dish into an anti-borg particle blaster)

Forgot to attach the pic...

In case anyone's curious, here's the equipment list.

The TR-116(that traditional gun Ezri used) came up in my game, and I ruled it had the same stats as a phaser rifle, worked when phasers didn't, but couldn't deal nonlethal damage. (Version the players used didn't have the transport-bullets mod)

That's just the weapon list, there's a lot more equipment.

So if you have say Worf with a Mek'leth and Phaser Type-2 there's no escalation?

Yeah, you actually see things like that in the shows. He'll be armed like that and nobody bats an eye until he actually draws on somebody.

Nope. The Mek'leth is a Blade(there's a Talent players can get that lets them permanently keep an Opportunity 1 weapon on them) and the type 2 phaser is of course standard kit for all players.

>Mek'leth OP, pls nerf

We just had to keep the home fires burning long enough. I play PnP RPGs regularly, just not Trek ones. I might give the new one a look since I like the Threat system everyone's been talking about, but I'm still not super convinced Trek works as an RPG setting without a long list of caveats and group composition assumptions.

Incidentally, I bought Attack Wing, and it's okay. The model quality is pretty poor, especially for the starter box. The Galaxy is especially bad when compared to older sculpts that were toys (like the Micro Machines from the 90s).

The new RPG kind of has you covered if you build a team that can't cover everything. The other characters would all be supporting characters. They also cover the case where the characters aren't senior staff, are enlisted, or aren't even star fleet. I do wish the other supplements were out though.

Still have a bunch of those Micro Machines models from when I was a Kid. They really are quite good.

I want a greatly expanded ship creation system because I need my autism satisfied.

Agreed, I also want more info on other races especially more talents and the like. Imagine if they gave us info on the horta.

I expect these will come along in time, this feels like a system that's gonna get expanded upon. And if not officially, the mechanisms behind stuff seem like they could be reverse engineered (if they've not already been) for people to just make their own.

More like a paper tiger and an actual tiger. Galor is a joke, even an Excelsior should be able to match it. Vor'cha is the real threat here.

There are approximate release dates on memory alpha. We should get one or two more books (command division supplement and maybe the beta sector expansion) this year and all of the others (ops, alpha, sci, gamma, delta in order) next year.

1.) IRA O'Brien
2.) ATTENTION BAJORAN WORKERS
3.) Janeway is a murderer who killed Neelix
4.) Barclay posting
5.) Keiko's weird plant thing
6.) I assure you I'm... quite fertile.

9000.) O'Brien and Bashir singing
9001.) Fat Riker
9002.) Dukat did nothing wrong

100000.) Commander, tell me about your sexual organs

1. Black Meat In Your Wormhole
2. Commander (Of Believers)
3. Change Bling ft. Odd Hoe
4. Behind Bars (Of Gold Pressed Latinum)
5. Trill Ass Nigga
6. BJore
7. Run (About)
8. Profession Prophet
9. E-N-H-A-N-C-E-D ft Dr.B
10. Accessory To Murder
Bonus Tracks
11. Authorities Defiant
12. Crack Spoonhead (Cardassian Diss)

I thought the Excelsior-class line was supposed to be good?

Excelsiors are basically cruisers.
You don't build an entire fleet out of cruisers. Excelsiors have the equivalent of support from subs, destroyers, and battleships. Galors don't have shit.

Shitty jungle music and the track on the album art isn't on the actual album. Go back to baneposting.

Technically the Excelsior is a BB that suffered from the fleet growing in tonnage while it was serving.

It is. The image has the caption caught between a rock and a hard place, and the implication is that it is the Excelsior that is caught. Which is kinda funny because unless it takes place during the very brief Klingon-Cardassian war when the Feds came in on the Cardie side, then at any other point in the timeline the Klingons would be allies of the Federation and it would be the Galor up shit creek here.

At any rate, given how well we know that Excelsiors could be updated and keep up with more modern ships (Lakota vs Defiant), and how shitty Cardassian ships are, if it is the Excelsior that is "trapped" here, it certainly isn't between a rock and a hard place. The Galor is a Paper Tiger just like the Cardassian Union as a whole, and the Vor'Cha is the actual threat.

Minor correction Feds didn't go to Cardassian side, they where forced there by Klingons when they had a shitfit when Federation refused their Remove Spoonhead call.

Those ships are from the board game, right? Star Fleet Battles? I doubt they are canon anymore. If Gorns ever show up again I bet they'll have a totally different ship design.

That take on the Klingons dovetails very nicely with the Soviet propaganda of "heroically doing your part for the motherland" and all that jazz, given that TOS Klingons were expressly Soviet analogues to the Federation's Space America (see ST:VI, entire plot thereof).

Mine are the Cardassians. DS9 was the first series I was old enough to remember coherently as a kid while it was airing, which is probably part of it, but I loved the Cardassians even back then. They're so much better fleshed out than most other Trek races, and /stg/ had a good thread about that a while ago. At one point as a little kid I got James Taylor and Gul Dukat mixed up in my head. I still remember that for how weird it was.

I'll be lame and say Hirogen. I dunno, I think "The Predator" is a cool creature to put in Star Trek and actually explore their culture. I liked that the Hirogen were pretty high tech, but still ultimately a failed and dying culture. They tried to preserve their vitality with their hunting rituals, but ultimately just became barbarians with excellent equipment. I enjoyed the episode where they larp as Nazis and one of them rants about how they're going to exterminate themselves if they don't learn how to do something besides murder other sapients for sport. Also, I think there was a good bit in the first episode they show up where Janeway tries to drive them off by making attacking her suicidally dangerous, and the Hirogen attack anyway and die.
The Breen are cool, too.
This. Borg were great when they were a slow, inescapable, extinction level event. An intellect that could barely be comprehended, operating on a galactic scale rather than as individuals.
And then the Borg Queen came along and they were just flunkies for a sexy femme fatale. What a waste.

>This. Borg were great when they were a slow, inescapable, extinction level event. An intellect that could barely be comprehended, operating on a galactic scale rather than as individuals.
>And then the Borg Queen came along and they were just flunkies for a sexy femme fatale. What a waste.
This is mostly why I didn't mind the Borg starting off as two humans and an Organian(ish) scientist's bitch of an ex-wife, it's the logical conclusion of the shit First Contact started.

picard sucks he's scared of kids and cant get laid

sisko is the best captain he punched Q in the face once

Sisko had a kid, Kirk had a kid. Picard hates kids, therefore Picard hates Kirk & Sisko. Picard is worst captain.

ferengi. Who wouldn't want to be a space billionaire chasing profit wherever you please? Fuck exploration, I'd just want to eat exotic food and bang green women all day.
plus they received the most prejudice and racism from all the other races of the galaxy, even the "enlightened" humans of TNG and DS9 could only perceive them as greedy lechers, projecting their human values on them

very true plus his interests are boring pretentious shit like shakespeare, archaeology, wine and horseback riding. isn't there more fun stuff to do in the 24th century?

sisko's only real stupid quirk is he likes baseball, which is like someone today being obsessed with a sport from the 1600s. kind of lame but he's a badass

>kind of lame but he's a badass
That's because Sisko is a dad, therefore he has to have stupid hobby.

So apparently 7 has a pretty good chunk of brain missing.

Well she *did* marry Chocolatey.

the photo was funny but your puns ruined it
other than trill ass nigga

ITS BEEN A LONG ROAD

>Captain... I think we may have a problem on our hands.

>has sexual tension with Harry at first, then The Doctor, then Janeway kind of
>gets paired off completely at random with Boring McMonotone who changes his interests every week and is clearly not over getting friendzoned by Janeway

I will never understand Voyager.

>spock
>vulcan master dude from that tuvok episode
>diplomat lady from that one enterprise episode
Seems that as Vulcans get older their emotions mellow out so they are able to express them without being consumed by them. The "we don't have emotions" shtick seems more to be a control mantra than any statement of fact.

It's because her breasts are finally as large as she wants them to be.

I never liked the idea that people always equate Vulcans and their logical thinking to "no emotions". Even Nimoy said he never played Spock with no emotions (save the episode his brain got stolen). See pic attached.

For a split second I saw the "rage" picture as a >ishygddt

Woah..
Woah that's a really simple but logical explanation that does't dwell on it for fucking ever. Don't you know this is fucking science fiction?

I dunno I never saw the Borg Queen as all that different from Locutus. I know that's not the canon but I always just wrote her off as the Borg adapting to species obsessed with big leader guys.

It would've been nice if there was an episode where the Borg accomplished a goal while the Federation was busy dealing with the Borg Queen.

Either way you could simplify it down to "Andorians have big marriages because their warrior race bullshit put them in danger of extinction and now it's dishonorable to die before having kids."

...

>anymore

They're canon for SFB. That's all that matters. Up until the remastering for TOS, Gorn didn't even have a ship design that appeared on the show.

i'm pretty certain the Gorn will be a playable race in ST Ascendancy now.
only thing is, we have to wait 2 years

Thing is, they still only have one or two kids at a time, not batches of four.