FASA Trek 3rd Edition - What would I do? Part I: Skill Roll Musings

  Space... The final frontier.  This was one of the first games I ever owned, and one I loved so very much.  Star Trek, by FASA Corporation.  My Big Three game producers when I was first getting into the hobby were TSR, FASA and Palladium.  Not exclusive, but they were the big ones.  I mean, of course I played some West End, and Steve Jackson, and other games here and there.  But these were the BIG THREE.  And FASA Trek was one of my first RPG passions that wasn't D&D.  My Mammaw and Pappaw Webb bought this for me at a B. Dalton in the mall, and I devoured it while watching TOS on VHS that we'd rented from Chic Le Blanc, a furniture store named after its proprietor in Lake Charles, LA that had a back room full of video tapes and later NES cartridges.  It was an 80s thing, when everyone was trying to get in on the video rental craze.

  With the gargantuan tomes that we see cranked out today by game companies, it's often hard to see how a box with one to three small books almost never more than 64 pages and certainly never more than 96 could constitute a whole game.  Looking back, though, many of my favorite gaming experiences came out of these kinds of games.  D&D Basic, Star Trek, Star Frontiers, Gangbusters, Marvel Superheroes, Gamma World, Traveller...  They gave you the basics, and your imagination did the rest.

  FASA Trek was a great game, but had a few warts even in my tween mind.  The Action Point system was a bit clunky.  The skill roll system seemed pretty straightforward, but there was an extremely odd curve to the listed proficiency levels.  The character gen was almost a Traveller-esque lifepath, but not quite.  Plus there were a few quirks of starship combat that needed fixing to help with the Star Trek feel of the game.

  In a perfect world, FASA would still be publishing Star Trek material.  At least, in my perfect world.  That would require (at least) a 3rd Edition of the Star Trek RPG.  What would that 3rd Edition look like if I wrote it?  Well, I'm of two minds about this.  On one hand, I'd want to keep it very close to the FASA-isms that made the original RPG what it was.  On the other, I'd love to go further afield and do a few different things with the game to smooth over a couple of the rough spots.

  Off the top of my head, my very first thought is to shamelessly steal the Ability Score and Proficiency rules from D&D 5e or just do it in Savage Worlds... but neither of those would have a very FASA-esque feel to them.  I'd better stick with something that looks like a 1-100 scale for attributes and skills.

  So, something that always vexed me was how skills worked.  Take a look at the following:

PROFICIENCY LEVELS IN ANY SKILL
Skill Rating	Proficiency In Field
0	Unskilled
1-9	Semi-Skilled
10	Minimum Proficiency
10-39	Qualified
40-79	Professional
80-95	Expert
96+	Acknowledged Leader

  So, there are some interesting skill rules about when to roll, and what to roll, and when no roll is needed.  In many cases these are different for each skill, necessitating a little description of each skill highlighting the various needs of each one.

  What about streamlining this system?

Easy, everyday skill rolls use a D10 to roll against the skill.  If you have a 10 or more, you're golden.  Then work out a system where more challenging rolls are done with a D40, D60, D80, and then D100.  Heck, maybe even D120 for "impossible" tasks.  Hey, wait... here's a Star Trek idea...

FASA TREK 3rd EDITION SKILL ROLLS
Situation/Difficulty	Die Rolled
Easy	D10
Standard Cruising	D40
Yellow Alert	D60
Red Alert	D100

Heck, the "boxed set" could even include dice in the appropriate colors for the rolls.  Since the "10s" die is a standard polyhedral, there would be no need for custom dice such as those used by some modern games by FFG, or odd polyhedrals like Dungeon Crawl Classic's D7 and D14.

This would be an interesting way of handling the strange conceit that 40 is "Professional" in a game that uses D100 to check skills under pressure.  Making a helm maneuver 4 times out of 10 doesn't seem very professional, nor does failing to detect something on sensors 6 times in 10.  With varying difficulty skill rolls above and beyond the D10 and D100 explicitly called for in the FASA Trek rules, this might be able to standardize things a bit without adding too much complexity, and it might even add some Star Trek feel while we're at it.

Treks Not Taken: FASA Trek What If?

  I've talked about my deep and abiding love of FASA Trek before.  One of the first RPGs I procured on my own, and one I played and read a LOT of during my "happy place" years of 1986-93.  Something I often wonder about - the "what if" scenario - applies to several games.  Things I might write about later.  What if the Robotech II: The Sentinels RPG reflected the way the Sentinels campaign would have actually played out?  Like, Cyclones from the get-go, Perytonian wizards, etc.  The VF-1V Vindicator was more than an animation error, that sort of thing.  I've often wanted to run that game "as written" forgetting all I know of the revised canon, the comics, etc.

  It's the same with FASA Trek on at least two levels.  Much like Star Fleet Battles and their divergent universe, FASA Trek had a lot of information that is now incompatible with established Trek canon.  The difference is that for almost a decade FASA Trek *was* licensed and official.  During the dry years of Star Trek, when there was only the films and novels, FASA created a version of Star Trek that will always be my head-canon.  I know this is true of many other fans, what with the Axanar fan film making some direct references to data from the FASA Four Years War supplement. 

  At this point in fandom, there was quite a bit of cross-pollination of an ideas.  The FASA Trek canon followed the Star Trek Space Flight Chronology by Rick Sternbach, and in turn a lot of Shane Johnson's information from Mr. Scott's Guide to the Enterprise found its way into FASA canon and vice versa.  It was not as tight as the Star Wars EU that existed from the Thrawn Trilogy until Disney dismantled the EU-as-we-knew-it, but it was close.  With nothing more than a cartoon series and a feature film every 2-3 years there was a long, dry period of Trek where things like the RPG, novels and the DC comics run sought to fill our yearning for more Trek.  FASA did an amazing job with this, introducing the best take on Klingons that has ever existed, that of John M. Ford.  Though most modern Trek fans know only the Biker Vikings of TNG and later, the Klingons of FASA Trek were much more nuanced, much more akin to their Cold War Soviet roots from the original series.  A rich culture that revolved around more than just warriors appeared in the FASA books, and in Ford's excellent The Final Reflection. 


  The story goes that FASA started to get into hot water with Paramount and Gene Roddenberry himself over the "militarization" in the RPG.  Now, in the defense of FASA, gamers tend to solve problems with their fists/swords/phasers, so it's not out of the realm of common sense that the game would have some combat themes.  After all, the Tactical Combat Simulator boxed set wouldn't be much fun to play with if there was never starship combat.  It was about this time that Star Trek: The Next Generation came about, and FASA's last two official Star Trek products were TNG books that, also according to legend, pushed them over the line and caused Paramount to refuse to renew the license.

  I recently spoke to one of the authors of these two books, and asked about some of the decisions that were made in writing them.  One major problem was that Paramount itself had not quite decided on many of the particulars of Star Trek: The Next Generation as the books were being written.  Compound that with gamers wanting more and more information and FASA was forced to make up some details that were later proven by canon to be wildly inaccurate.  This brings me to my idea to run the game "as written" and forget about all the canon past Season 1 of TNG, which is the point at which the FASA material stops.  The differences between the books and what we saw evolve in TNG are intriguing.  I'll go over a few of them below, and you can see what I mean, and the feel of the TNG game I'd like to run.

  Among the things you'll find in the TNG Officer's Manual that jump right out at you are immediately apocryphal representations of rank insignia, uniforms and ships.  The fun part is a lot of these would be really useful had they actually appeared in the series.  The idea of diamond-shaped pips for enlisted rank insignia would have neatly solved the problem of Chief O'Brien wearing a single hollow pip (when the costume department didn't have him wearing lieutenant's pips) until they invented CPO rank insignia for DS9.  In fact, the hollow pip stood for the rank of Ensign Junior Grade in FASA's book.  Now, I have no idea what the function of an Ensign j.g. would be, but it'd be fun to work in there.  There's pay scales (which make perfect sense to me, since Starfleet personnel have to be able to interact with cultures that aren't post-scarcity) and mentions of enlisted training centers and alien integration programs.  All pretty neat stuff that makes for good story fodder.  In these books, the Ferengi are still menacing, not the buffoons they became, and the game makes some attempt to explain brand new bridge roles.  It was actually the bridge roles that made me contact the author and ask a question.

  So, new roles in Starfleet that might be fun for gaming.  The Ship's Counselor is mentioned, and it is stated that while Betazoids are in many of these positions Deltans and other psionic races sometimes fill the position.  Hmmm... a Deltan counselor.  And you thought Deanna Troi got people's motors running.  The role of the Tactical Officer is discussed, and interestingly while there is still an enlisted specialty for comunications, the officer specialty has disappeared in deference to the cross-training of the bridge officers.  Now, I've seen Worf described as a "Warp Propulsion Specialist" in various Season 1 resources, but if that were his role, why isn't he wearing a mustard uniform from the get-go?  I think Worf and Geordi both fit the description of a brilliant concept FASA created to explain the interchangeable officers in Star Trek: The Next Generation.  That idea is the Bridge Command Specialist. 

  The idea behind the BCS was to explain how we saw Worf and Geordi bouncing between stations.  We also saw Geordi, as a Lieutenant (j.g.) placed in command of the Enterprise at least twice during Season One (Arsenal of Freedom and Angel One) when there were explicitly more senior officers aboard, like Lieutenant Logan, one of the revolving door of chief engineers the Enterprise-D had in Season 1.  So why place a Lieutenant (j.g.) in command when more senior personnel are available?  Well, this, too is part of the Bridge Command Specialist training package.  A BCS gets a familiarization with Starship Combat Strategy/Tactics along with Astrogation, Helm, Communications and Sensors skills.  A jack of all trades, capable of at least normal operations at any given bridge station.  So, even at such a junior rank, the BCS is already on track to have the broad skills a starship commander needs.  I really, really like this concept.  It means that your PCs can do what the characters in TNG tend to do- and that's swap stations like mad at need.  By using elective rolls during character creation and spending advancement rolls during the campaign, each PC will develop preferences and specific skills that edge up into the expert ranges, but they will be broadly competent in case a player can't show and a key station goes unmanned. 

  Now, there are a couple of hiccups with the BCS as written.  One is the odd Navigation/Helm skill that appears despite Astrogation and Starship Helm Operation both being present.  I was told this was due to the initial interpretation that the Ops station was actually a TOS-style navigation station and that helm and navigation were still separate jobs.  There is also a Sensor Analysis skill that appears in several training packages, but not in any of the writeups of the actual TNG crew, who would presumably have the skill if it were part of their training.  Of course, Worf lacks the Security Procedures skill, so...  Also, the BCS gets no specific leadership training, which I would argue should be part of the package.  Now, I initially thought that Sensor Analysis was a shortening or mislisting of Starship Sensor Operations, but no, both appear on the Science Specialist skill list.  Sensor Analysis does not appear in the Star Trek 2nd Edition Officer's Manual, either.  It's not on the character sheet.  So what is it?
 
  So, it's pretty obvious that I'm looking at doing some FASA Star Trek tinkering and upgrading.  Clean up some of these odd skill entries, tinker a bit with the skill lists for various bridge stations, and come up with a Season One (FASA Style) TNG RPG.  I wonder if this is a project worth doing?  I wonder if I'll get around to it?  This blog seems to be a great place to discuss the concepts and ideas for the game.

  OK, so back to TNG FASA Style as-written.  Well, first of all we have a Starfleet that is nowhere near as hard-core Roddenberry as what we got on screen.  They get paid.  There is still a Galaxy Exploration Command and a Military Operations Command.  Starfleet is explicitly both the Federation's military and scientific arm.  Now, it's worth noting that during Season One of TNG the show itself was a bit inconsistent about this point.  In "Encounter at Farpoint" Riker berates Geordi for not delivering his report from the position of attention, and himself braces to attention twice when dealing with Picard on their initial meeting.  A few episodes later Q derides Picard for being too used to "military privilege" and Picard doesn't snap back the familiar line from later episodes claiming that Starfleet is not a military organization.  Despite the uniforms.  And weapons.  And rank structure.  Etc.  I like FASA's solution - Starfleet both is and is not the military.  Any vessel may be used in a military operation at need, but the Enterprise belongs in Galaxy Exploration Command and is therefore assigned to those types of missions most of the time.  One would assume there are vessels that spend all their time on patrol and escort missions and very rarely explore strange, new worlds.

  So, the character and "feel" of Starfleet is a mixture of FASA-isms and what we see in the very early episodes of TNG.  We have Klingons that are still mostly of the John M. Ford model, in fact some of his ideas wormed their way into the first big Klingon episode, "Heart of Glory" in Season One.  As Klingons were fleshed out more in TNG, the Ford material got buried in favor of the now-familiar Warrior Race rhetoric.  I find the more cunning and calculating Klingons to be a lot more interesting.  The Ferengi are presented as an actual threat to the Federation economically, socially and militarily.  The Romulans are described as "satanic" in their machinations.  So, we have a very hazardous galaxy.  The Klingons are part of the Alliance with the Federation, but there are a significant minority of rogue Klingons who yearn for the older days of Klingon supremacy.  This sounds a bit like those who pine for the days of the Soviet Union, most of whom weren't alive when the Soviet Union was in full swing.  But anyway...

  We have, through descriptions of what happened between ST:IV and TNG, a very different view of the TNG realm.  We have writeups for NPCs like Simone VanGelder, granddaughter of Simon Van Gelder of the Tantalus Colony.  We have an early writeup of Noonien Soong.  We have some starship classes that we never did see, due to FASA kitbash creativity and no budget in TNG.  We have a group of new character "classes" that are greatly increased in breadth but lack the depth of expertise of Kirk's time.  In a way, I like this since the bulk of specialization will occur in play, allowing for more character growth and player-driven specialization.

  How would a campaign "feel" if run using these assumptions?  If the Cardassians did not exist, and the Ferengi were the big bads?  If the Klingons still had some nuance, and the Romulans were much more of an active subversive, calculating threat?  Can a Starfleet that focuses on versatility do the same quality job as the Starfleet of yesteryear that focused on razor focus?  Would you make a PC of the ship's Crewmaster, the officer in charge of wrangling the families and dependents on a Galaxy-class ship?

  We'll explore some of these ideas more as I have time.  I am really in a FASA-Trek mood.

Tech Marches On... Mekton Musings and a problem with Battletech.

  I'm a huge fan of both Mekton and Battletech.  Both are great games, and I've been eagerly awaiting the completion of the Mekton Zero Kickstarter for literally years.  It was expected to deliver in 2014... and we're still waiting...

  In the meantime, I've been giving some serious re-read to the Mekton material in hand.  Specifically, the advanced construction books, Mekton Techbook for the Mekton II edition, and Mekton Zeta Plus for the Mekton Zeta edition.  The latter is a revision and expansion of the former, but lacks the extremely interesting and fun listing of mecha from the Archipelago War on Algol.  As I've given these books a thorough re-read I've found things I prefer to Battletech and things that Battletech might just do better.  For example, without adding a Ground Effect System or similar to a Mekton, it's impossible to get the spread of land movement speeds that are evident in Battletech.  The ability to jack the basic running speed of a 'Mech up to the crazy levels of a Locust or Hussar just don't exist in Mekton without adding something better than plain old legs.  This, I think, Battletech does better.

  On the other hand, Mekton has something in place  to fix a problem I've long had with Battletech.  The fix also reveals perhaps why Battletech doesn't deal with it.  I'll elaborate.  Sitting in front of me is a pair of 25-inch flatscreen monitors.  Ten years ago, these monitors would have been about five times more expensive, and a bit bulkier.  Twenty years ago, they'd be CRTs that would have so much depth to them they wouldn't fit on my desk.  Plus, the screen size would have been something only design drafters or professionals in the electronic art industry would have even had access to or been able to afford.  As technology marches on, established technologies tend to get smaller, cheaper, and more readily available.  This happens only sporadically in Battletech.

  For example, only in the last ten years have the PTB in charge of Battletech added "primitive" versions of familiar equipment to the lists.  The effect before this change was made was that a Large Laser produced in 2700 was the same weight, cost and effeciency as a Large Laser produced in 3025.  Sure, the ER Large Laser improved on the normal weapon (ish), but the bog standard LL was no lighter, smaller, or cheaper than the 300 year old version.  The Clans got a marginal improvement, and then proceeded to use the new versions in an almost nonexistent manner in most of the published material.  Standard engines got no smaller or cheaper.  XL engines were introduced, but again those seem to be completely different products with ridiculously higher costs.  This is appropriate for a new technology, but the mature technologies seem to never improve. 

  Mekton has a fix for this.  There is a section in Zeta Plus that allows for "Research Points" that can take a component or device and improve on it.  For 20 RP, one can take an established piece of technology and make it up to 10% smaller, lighter, cheaper, or more efficient.  For 100 RP, an Innovation is created.  This can improve a characteristic of an invention up to 33%, or combine an Improvement with an Innovation.  For example, a 10% increase in damage for a weapon would be a 20RP Improvement.  Add this to a 60RP Innovation reducing the size of the weapon by 33% and another 60RP for combining the Improvement and Innovation and the net result is a weapon that's 1/3 smaller and 10% harder hitting for the same cost and mass as the original.  Further research could reduce the cost further, or boost range, or... anything.  It just takes time and research.  100RP constitutes an Invention, and that's something entirely new. 

  The reason this would be a bit cumbersome becomes quickly apparent.  One would have to keep track of Improvements, Innovations and Inventions on literally every single item, since they don't apply to classes of item, but particular items.  For example, if this system were applied to Battletech one could take a particular weapon, let's say a Medium Laser, and apply an Innovation to add a 10% range boost (+1 Hex, basically), and then two Innovations to increase the damage by 33% (+2 points) and combine this with the range bonus.  One would then have a Medium Laser that did 7 points of damage at up to 10 hexes range.  This would effectively add a new weapon to the weapons list.  One would assume this weapon is only available to the faction who invented it, and only on 'Mechs created or refit since its inception.  Complexity would jump upward very, very quickly.  On the bright side, there would finally be a reason to select a Martell Medium Laser over an Aberdovey or ChisComp Medium Laser, as they could all potentially have different stats.

  This is where the argument of flavor over playability comes into the discussion.  Is it more valuable to your game to have every weapon be unique for flavor's sake, or for every Medium Laser to be identical to cut down on referencing stats during battles?  Speed, or depth?  What is more essential to the feel you want out of your campaign?

  All that said, reading this over has given me some ideas I want to use.  My MechWarrior campaign in the Royal Dragoon Guards has revamped some of the tech assumptions in 3038 to give some advanced techs to the Inner Sphere factions to add flavor to their forces.  Kurita got some advanced PPC tech.  Davion got some advanced autocannon tech.  Liao got some ECM tech.  Things like that.  Using Mekton, I am beginning to cobble together ideas for breaking down the tech in Mekton Zeta Plus into categories and trees similar to the Inventions table in Space: 1889.  This would allow a baseline tech level, then GMs could assign knowledge of certain advanced techs to factions and allow PCs to control the research efforts of their own factions to attempt to improve on what has come before.  In a campaign where the GM is creating or controlling warring factions in the pattern of the Successor Houses in Battletech, this could allow each House to have its own particular technological feel and have that feel trickle down into the design of their combat units.

  Of course, this suggests a bit of a metagame for the players that has shades of Master of Orion.  A clever GM could add a lot of concepts from those PC games into the tabletop campaign.  Espionage- can the PC faction steal new tech from other factions?  Can other factions teal from the PCs?  Economics - Is it enough to have the most technologically advanced mecha when your neighbor can throw five times as many of their less advanced mecha against you?  Technological - should our scientists attempt to unlock the secrets of more damaging energy weapons, or spend their time inventing better armor?

  This whole concept bears a lot more thought.

Games I'd Like To Play in 2016 - Old School Edition

  As a geek who's hit 40, I'm not a complete and total young'un in my hobby.  This summer will mark my 30th year as a player of roleplaying games and wargames (not counting Stratego/Risk, etc which I picked up at a younger age.)  I am proud to count among my friends and Royal Dragoon Guards conspirators Dennis Sustare, who, at 76, was there for the beginning of the hobby and rubbed elbows with fellow giants.  Dennis wrote Bunnies & Burrows and published it in 1976, just two years after Dungeons & Dragons.  Having Dennis around has made me realize that my roots don't go nearly as far back in the hobby as it feels sometimes when our younger players, all born late enough to plausibly be my own kids, reveal how new they are to the scene.  As anyone who reads my blog probably knows, I got my start the Summer of 1986 playing Mentzer Basic/Expert.  In latter years I've come to have a huge appreciation for the Moldvay/Cook/Marsh B/X edition that predated me, and I'm beginning to really grok the original D&D rules and the Holmes Basic Set that clarified them.


  Being a history grad student had the side effect of giving me a keen interest in the history of the hobby.  I devoured Playing at the World, Of Dice and Men, Designers and Dragons, and most recently the E. Gary Gygax biography Empire of Imagination.  I began to fancy myself a bit of an RPG historian.  I started collecting older games that arrived before I began gaming.  Some of them, like the original Top Secret, were earlier editions of games I had played like Top Secret S/I.  Others were games I had heard of that were nearly legendary, like Metamorphosis Alpha.  This penchant for wanting to know as much as I could about the history of our hobby was spurred on by my attendance at two conventions last year.

  At Chupacabracon in Austin I met some game designers that I had immense respect for - Shane Hensley, Ken Hite, Ross Watson and others.  I was particularly happy to meet Sean Patrick Fannon and tell him I had quoted his Fantasy Roleplaying Gamer's Bible in my thesis draft.  There was a spirited discussion about Champions, a game that had passed me by as none of my immediate gamer circle played it, and we talked about Aaron Allston and his work, and how much we missed him.  Aaron was also cited in my thesis, and I am honored to have had him sit at my game table and regale me with tales of creating the first of the Gazetteer series for D&D.  I spent so much time listening to authors and artists (sometimes both in one person, like Jeff Dee!) that I didn't play a single game at Chupacabracon.  I spent all my time in panels, soaking it all in.

  Later in the year I attended perhaps the most amazing convention experience of my life.  North Texas RPG Con.  Now, I gushed about this con in a previous post- and I meant every word of it.  Being among the authors of the games I grew up with was incredible.  Mentzer, Grubb, Cook, and so many more.  Artists.  Larry Elmore, Jeff Dee (again!), Janelle Jaquays...  I got to meet and game with Merle Rasmussen, my first experience playing the original Top Secret- and it was definitely not a disappointment.

  In my quest to play and absorb the experience and feel of the games that helped form the hobby, I am making a list of games I want to find the time to play in 2016.  I'm thinking I may create pregens and have folks over for a single one-shot evening to experience these older games.  A lot of them are TSR products, but not all.  These are all games which I've either not played before, or only played once or twice a while back.  Games I think will be interesting to play for their historical significance to the hobby.  Here they are in order of publication date.

• Dungeons & Dragons (1974) - Specifically, I want to play using Chainmail and the map from Avalon Hill's Outdoor Survival game, as was specified in the original rulebooks.  I want to take D&D for a spin as it was originally meant to be played.
• Bunnies & Burrows (1976) - I'll admit it.  Playing animals was never really a draw for me, but so many folks speak fondly of Dennis' design and game, I feel I really need to give it a shot.
• Metamorphosis Alpha (1976) -  I have a beautiful reprint of this game thanks to a Kickstarter from last year.  This was the first Sci-Fi RPG, when most of my Sci-Fi in those early years was Traveller, FASA Trek and WEG Star Wars.  I've got some modules that came with the Kickstarter, so I'm ready to take this for a spin.
• Gamma World (1978) - Played the later versions a lot in high school, but never had the opportunity to play the original.  I have a feeling if Thundarr and Mad Max could be mashed up, you might get Gamma World.
• Villains & Vigilantes (1979) - One of the earliest supers games, designed by Austin's own Jeff Dee.  As with Met Alpha above, I generally got my heroes on using TSR's Marvel, so never got to give V&V a try.
• Space Opera (1980) - Looks like fun, but also has that late 70s, early 80s crunch going for it.  I have a boxed set and a few sourcebooks.
• The Fantasy Trip (1980ish) - Proto GURPS.  I loved the Melee/Wizard games as standalone gladiatorial combat-style games.  Have never used them as an RPG, though.  I have a friend who was raised on TFT by her gamer parents, so I'll have to give this one a try.
• Top Secret (1980) - Played twice, want to give this a spin again.  Played quite a bit of S/I, but any player of the original edition will tell you the two are so different as to be almost totally unrelated.
• Champions (1981) - If I carried one thing away from Chupacabracon, it was that the majority of those game designers that I respected and were glued to played a LOT of Champions back in the 80s.  Specifically, the Big Blue Book era.  I have procured this book, and the GM screen from the era, and a number of the sourcebooks.  With the Kickstarter for Aaron Allston's Strike Force update/reprint, I look forward to giving this classic a try.
• Swordbearer (1982) - This is another of Dennis Sustare's designs, but everywhere I see it mentioned it's described as innovative and novel.  This gets my interest in a big way.  Not only do I want to play one of my friend's designs, I want to see what innovative and novel were in 1982.

An Ode to GURPS Sourcebooks...

  GURPS.  Steve Jackson's Generic Universal Role Playing System.  Love it or hate it, its influence and legacy are certainly part of our hobby.  The roots of GURPs can be found in the Metagaming micro-games Melee and Wizard, and the supplement that turned them into the RPG The Fantasy Trip.  These were penned by Steve Jackson, and bear a striking resemblance to GURPS even now.  According to Jackson, GURPS was a placeholder name until they came up with something better, but it stuck.  The GURPS system came into my life in 1989, just three years into my RPG hobby.
  In those three gaming-heavy years I had delved into everything I could get my hands on - D&D, Traveller, Robotech, Battletech, Cyberpunk, Mekton, Marvel, Star Frontiers, Chill, Paranoia, and on and on.  We devoured every game that one of our group purchased, and although we played a LOT of BECMI D&D, AD&D and FASA Trek, we always had time to try something new.  With the exception of the 1987 MechWarrior RPG from FASA, every game we'd played included randomized character generation.  We just assumed that was part of playing an RPG.  We still refer to "rolling up" characters even when we're using point-buy systems, of which GURPS was my first.  The cover art here is the version of GURPS I was first introduced to by my friend Quoc Tran.  We were over at another friend's place, Chris Waters, watching Evil Dead 2 on a pirated VHS, and Quoc brought out this book - GURPS.  I had no idea what the hell a GURP was, but the dude in the orange armor immediately caught my attention.  Quoc, by the way, was an amazing artist himself.  I'll never forget the exquisite Castlevania-inspired art he did in our 8th grade art class, nor will I forget our mutual love of Bloom County.  But I digress.
  The dude in the orange armor spoke to me.  I wanted to know where that guy came from.  What kind of weapon was that?  That heavy duty cable made it look like it needed plenty of power to function.  Was there a HUD inside that helmet?  I opened the book and found something I'd never seen before- a game engine designed to do anything.  Literally ANYTHING.  Fantasy, sci-fi, modern, unholy mixtures thereof.  I hadn't yet gotten my first Shadowrun book, so magic and tech together was something we thought could be a very cool and unique thing.  Little did we know. 
  The idea that PCs were built upon points that could be used to balance magic, tech, skills, etc. was mind-blowing.  Advantages and disadvantages likewise.  You mean I can GET points for bad things I used to just roleplay, like annoying personal habits or age or clumsiness?  Wicked!  Now, MechWarrior had something like this, but nothing like the amazing breadth of the GURPS listings.  The idea of default skills was new, too.  DAMN this was cool.  Plus, a combat round represented 1 second of real time... and aiming was a thing... and armor both reduced damage and had a chance of deflecting damage...  SO MUCH CRUNCH.  And I loved every minute of it.

  The one thing better than GURPS was GURPS sourcebooks.  Now, just a few days ago my son Zane pulled a copy of GURPS Vikings off a shelf at Half Price Books and checked it out.  He recognized the word "Vikings" from his school mascot.  I saw the trade dress of the GURPS I started out with, the 3rd Edition with its BIG BLOCK SERIF TITLES.  I opened the book to find a very comfortable layout and page design.  Here was the GURPS sourcebooks that I fell in love with.  The book addressed both real Vikings and their cinematic counterparts in great detail.  It offered advice on how to use that information in game sessions, and examples thereof.  It offered examples of Viking buildings, arms, and customs.  Law.  It finished up with perhaps the best part of any of the GURPS sourcebooks - a very, very useful bibliography.

  Remember, folks, this was the Time Before The Internet.  In fact, every book from this vintage included a blurb about how to access the SJ Games BBS with your modem, at blinding speeds up to 2400 Baud.  Which I did a couple of times.  At 2400 Baud.  But again, I digress.  The point here is that back in my day (creak) we didn't have Google, nor did we have Internet access in the modern sense.  Some college folks could use the early 'Net, but it wasn't nearly what we have now.  If you wanted to learn more about a topic, it was off to the library with you, and the kind of bibliography that was present in every single GURPS sourcebook was extensive and extremely useful.  Much is made of Appendix N in the AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide - as it should be - but each GURPS sourcebook had an Appendix N-like resource of its own.  Fantastic!

  There were GURPS sourcebooks for everything.  Fantasy, Space, Supers, Cliffhangers, Espionage.  Specific legends like GURPS Robin Hood.  Licensed intellectual properties like GURPS Conan or GURPS The Prisoner.  Even GURPS sourcebooks to run other RPGs in the GURPS system, like GURPS Bunnies & Burrows and GURPS Traveller (much later.)  GURPS Autoduel and GURPS OGRE took SJG board games and made them into roleplaying worlds.

  Now, I'll temper this with a bit of criticism.  GURPS never did work for us much beyond the range of normal humans.  That is, GURPS Supers rapidly became unwieldy.  GURPS Vehicles was math heavy and didn't model things the way we'd like.  GURPS Mecha was...  well, Dave Pulver tried.  GURPS just doesn't do larger scale very elegantly.  Armor divisors and the like make for slightly clunky game design. 

  BUT - the sourcebooks.  GURPS Espionage still sits on my nightstand among my go-to books for fun reading when I can't sleep.  GURPS Cyberpunk was legendary for earning Steve Jackson Games a visit from the US Secret Service.  GURPS Y2K held a lot of great information on what would happen if our technological society just collapsed.  Great stuff.  Tons of information, and a lot of inspiration.

  Then game GURPS 4th Edition, and Munchkin.  I name these both as they both had a huge effect on the GURPS Sourcebook stream more or less drying up.  GURPS 4th Edition went to an all-hardcover format, meaning fewer books that had higher cover prices.  Publication slowed.  It slowed further when Steve Jackson Games found themselves making money hand over fist with their Munchkin line of card games- so much so that GURPS, once their flagship product, became sidelined in favor of more Munchkin.  TONS more Munchkin.  GURPS slowly started to disappear from most Game Store shelves.  Right now, at the two Friendly Local Game Stores I frequent, only one has any GURPS books at all, and it's not one of the corebooks.  If you can't buy a corebook... you can't get a new player into the game.  Yes, there's a lot of GURPS available as PDF products, but at least for the short term there is still a real need for hardcopy books.  And those days seem to be largely at an end.

  I have GURPS Vikings and GURPS Middle Ages 1 in my messenger bag right now for recreation reading.  Both are incredibly fun books to read.  Both are very nostalgic for me due to their layout, their art, their trade dress.  They take me back to my early days of gaming in much the same way Mentzer D&D or Star Frontiers do, but to a slightly more advanced time when I was discovering point-buy systems, universal game mechanics and realizing there was more to the world than TSR, FASA and Palladium. (Give or take.)  I highly recommend taking a gander at some of the GURPS sourcebooks if you can find them.  They're a lot of fun to read, very well researched, and can serve as a springboard to knowing everything you ever wanted to know about a given genre through their most excellent bibliographies.
 
  Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to reboot to my TELIX.EXE floppy and dial into the SJG BBS.

Back to Battletech: How The Old Dragoon Got His Groove Back

  Life post-graduation has been pretty busy.  The holidays took a lot of time, then we took our Geek Cruise to Belize, Isla Roatan, and Cozumel.  That was an amazing trip, and thanks to my amazing wife I was there with my friends and no adult responsibilities- against my Dad instincts Zane and Kaylee stayed home with Mary, and I went adventuring with the other geeky reprobates.  We played some great games on that cruise, including Machi Koro and Shadowrun.  Twas a blast.

  Upon returning to civilization, I was more or less energized.  I am still fighting down some of the anxiety issues that developed in June of last year.  I keep asking myself why my psyche couldn't make it just four more months, and then the pressure would have been off, but I digress.  Gaming has been my passion and my escape for years- and yet I felt disturbingly dispassionate about it.  In some cases I sought to escape from it.  My Wednesday night D&D campaign, masterfully run by my friend and shipmate Bobby, had all the hallmarks of a game I should be jazzed about.  It takes place in Mystara, my favorite campaign world.  I play a swashbuckling bard patterned after Zorro or Bruce Campbell's Daring Dragoon.  Why, then, did I get to the point that I kept looking for excuses not to attend?

  Stress is a thing.  Burnout is a thing.  Also, as my doctor reminded me, the brain and the body need time to adapt to changing environments.  The stress of Thesis time hung on with me right up through the cruise.  Although I had not been enrolled in class for two months, I still felt like I was enrolled in class, and that stress was keeping me from enjoying my hobbies, my family, and kept my anxiety front and center in my mind.

  Enter Battletech.

  Or should I say, re-enter Battletech.  Those of you who've read my blog for a while know that A) I don't post as much as I should and B) I cut my teeth on the Mentzer Basic and Expert D&D boxed sets.  Those were my first experience with roleplaying.  That same year, in 1986, I was introduced to a glorious boxed set called Battletech.  We played at lunch at school.  We played before school.  We played on weekends.  If we weren't playing D&D or FASA Trek that first year of my RPG career, we were playing Battletech or Robotech (the first game I bought with my own money.)  I had discovered the Robotech cartoon during the 1985-6 year we spent in Temple Terrace, FL and I was immediately floored.  The re-use of Macross/Robotech art in the Battletech game drew me in- but the game universe kept me there.  The idea of Great Houses fighting over an empty throne, 'Mechs that were relics as well as war machines, of technology and desperation married in a nearly apocalyptic future world- this game had me.  I rapidly discovered Technical Readout: 3025 and the level of detail astounded me.  Individual manufacturers of Medium Lasers and Jump Jets, famous MechWarriors, tidbits of history woven into the articles about each of the 55 'Mechs, 3 LAMs, 3 DropShips and 15 Aerospace Fighters, give or take some equally inspiring tanks like the Von Luckner, Galleon, Rommel and Patton.

  I had such a passion for Battletech that despite every other game I have ever played, Battletech has been a recurring theme for what is, this year, three decades.  I love many games, but it always comes back to Battletech.  So it has been these last few weeks.  My club, The Royal Dragoon Guards, was founded on Battletech.  It was preceded by the 342nd MSG of the Starfleet Marine Corps- a club which played a lot of Battletech.  That was preceded by the Caladan Highland Dragoons, formed in 1995, to play- you guessed it- Battletech.  So when the opportunity came to give my RDG campaign a hard reboot and do Battletech the way I love Battletech, I grabbed it with both hands.  I dug up the custom character creation rules Bobby and I had worked on.  I pulled out MechWarrior - the original, first edition - along with the original sourcebooks.  I pledged that I would build my campaign around Battletech the way I played it.  Nobles, antique 'Mechs, Dune with Giant Robots.

  Our classic campaign from nearly ten years ago saw the planet Royal, on the border of the Federated Suns and the Draconis Combine, in the midst of destabilizing internal strife due to the nobles that comprised its Landsraad squabbling constantly.  Duke Maglan von Kalmen decided to form a 'Mech unit dedicated to the world as a whole, and sent out a ducal proclamation requiring every House Minor on Royal to contribute personnel.  From the resulting melting pot of minor nobility the Duke forged, through Dispossessed MechWarrior Sir Richard Mainwaring, The Royal Dragoon Guards.  The year was 2914, in the early stages of the Third Succession War.  The campaign saw the Houses Minor ally with one another, scheme against one another, and most importantly expand the Battletech universe.  We created everything from secret Star League facilities to performing troupes and tobacco plantations.  Little pieces of color that fleshed out the feeling that Royal was a real world in which our characters lived, fought, loved and died.

  I decided we were going back to Royal.  Doing some refreshing of my Battletech memory I saw that Royal fell to the Draconis Combine during the Fourth Succession War, and did not return to the hands of House Davion until the War of 3039.  It was there I began to plan my campaign- the Royal Dragoon Guards would not be the original unit, no, this was a century later.  The name of the original unit would be resurrected to inspire expatriates from Royal to flock to the banner of Duke Paul Stephenson of New Ivaarsen, who seeks to put together his New Ivaarsen Volunteers to take Royal back from the Kuritans.  The idea for the campaign began to take shape - the players would be one company of the New Ivaarsen Volunteers named, for PR purposes, The Royal Dragoon Guards.  The players obliged by creating a group who had ties to Royal- some were expatriate nobles looking to gain back their family holdings.  Others were looking to carve out holdings and finding the situation such that the Duke might just grant them the lands of the treacherous nobles who supported the Kuritan military government.  The more I worked on the campaign and the plans for the plot the more excited I got.

  I realized I had my passion back when I was reading Battletech, Battletech, Battletech and making tons of notes about where this game would go.  I was adjusting the Battletech universe to make it more suitable to the campaign I wanted to run.  I was working with Bobby and Andy, one of our other players, creating new 'Mechs, tanks, and other equipment that existed in our version of the Battletech universe.  For three weeks now, my fingers have been pouring forth all sorts of background and plot for this new campiagn.  Good friends who have been absent from my game table since the last big Battletech campaign have returned just because this game is going back to the Battletech universe, back to Royal.  My enthusiasm has started to slowly bleed into other areas of my gaming interests. I've been revisiting things I started tinkering with years ago and adding bits here and there.  I've been making notes on non-Battletech games I'd like to run this year.  Completing the projects I undertook for North Texas RPG Con later this year.  I got my groove back.

  I don't know if this sudden energy burst will last - I hope it does.  When the last Royal campaign ran, it ran for four years.  My gaming brain is finally back to where it was before I became immersed in Grad School.  I'm in a good place as far as my hobby interests are concerned.  Now, if I can conquer my anxiety, life will be pretty damn good indeed.

  Stay tuned for more (fingers crossed) and check out www.texmechs.org to see what we're up to.

Incentive To Game: The Royal Manticoran Army Marksmanship Program

As an avid reader of military science fiction, I have been a fan of David Weber's Honor Harrington series for many years.  I found out a few years back there was an organized fandom for the Honorverse, and became involved in 2014.  The organization is largely composed of members portraying Navy and Marine personnel, we the novels are focused on those branches of the Manticoran service, Navy much moreso than any other branch.  There was, however, a relatively small group within the TRMN club that portrayed the Royal Manticoran Army and the soldiers that made up the Star Kingdom's last line of home defense.  That was where I ended up upon joining TRMN along with quite a few of my friends.  We now make up Fort Shorncliffe, home of First Battalion, 342nd Armored Infantry Regiment.  Add in our good friend Dennis Sustare and his Home Guard at Sandgate Castle, and we have about 32 folks associated with the RMA who like rolling dice and doing tactical things.

  When we were an active part of STARFLEET, our group was criticized by some other groups for being too military in the way we did things.  Against Gene's ideals, they said.  I won't get into that argument, but sufficient to say moving to a club that is explicitly about military science fiction meant we fit in a lot better.  A lot of us are prior service (a couple currently serving) plus State Guard, current and former cadets, etc.  A certain amount of military flavor creeps in.  One person utters a "hooah" and conversation will be peppered with them for hours.

  We founded on gaming, and while gaming was something that happened on STARFLEET, and yes, we even started a whole yearly event dedicated to it, it wasn't supported organization-wide in any way.  This is where TRMN really fit how my friends and I do our thing.  Not only was our way of running our organization in keeping with TRMN, but TRMN actually had a program to encourage and reward gaming.  The Marksmanship Program.

  To avoid the legal hassle that would come with actual firearms use, TRMN instituted a marksmanship program in which gaming was the key activity.  Play games that were aerospace or wet naval in nature and were on the approved games list, and you racked up points toward a Pistol marksmanship qualification.  Play ground-based wargames, and the credits went toward a Rifle marksmanship qualification.  This was awesome, we could game and get recognition for it.  It also fostered some friendly rivalry.  And encouraged MORE gaming.  Thing was, we do a lot of roleplaying games, which were explicitly not on the list.  What to do?

  The Army, seeking to differentiate itself from the Navy and Marine Corps parts of the club, decided to create an Army Marksmanship Program.  This program would differ quite a bit from the Navy version in that it would be much more inclusive of other games.  It would count hours gamed instead of sessions played, since one can play 20 games of X-Wing, assuming one-on-one fighter duels, for every game of Axis & Allies played to conclusion.  An interesting mechanic introduced by the Army leadership had hours played multiplied based on how many TRMN members were in the game, up to a maximum multiplier of 4.  Thus, the program would encourage more gaming of more types of game with more people.  Perfect!  Plus, the program supporting casual and traditional games meant some of our members who preferred non-wargames could now find similar reward in play to the hardcore war game folks.  The Army came to us at Fort Shorncliffe to help put the categories together.  Here's what we came up with, and some examples of each.

Grenade: Casual games or party games.  Cards Against Humanity.  Twister.  Scene-it!  Trivial Pursuit.
Disruptor: Family games and traditional games.  Monopoly.  Chutes & Ladders.  Checkers.  Candy land.
Flechette Gun: Tactical board games, CCGs, or Deck Building Games.  Magic.  Firefly the Board Game.  Android Netrunner.
Pistol: Aerospace or Naval Wargames.  Starfleet Battles.  Crimson Skies.  Victory at Sea.
Rifle: Ground-based wargames.  Battletech.  Bolt Action.  Dust Tactics.
Grenade Launcher: Roleplaying Games.  (RPG, get it?)  D&D.  Shadowrun. D6 Star Wars.
Tribarrel: Strategic-level wargames.  Succession Wars.  Federation & Empire.  Conquest of the Empire.
Plasma Carbine: Tactical multiplayer computer games.  Starcraft.  Halo.  Battlefield 1942.
Plasma Rifle: Strategic mulitplayer computer games.  Civilization.  Master of Orion.

  So here's how it works.  Say my wife sits down to play Cards Against Humanity with our club's XO, S3 and a friend who isn't in the TRMN organization.  We play for 3 hours.  Since my wife, the XO, the S3 and myself are all members of TRMN, the multiplier is one less than our number, with a maximum of 4.  In this case, it's 3.  Non-TRMN players don't count.  Recruit the hell out of them so they will.  Multiply the hours played by the participation multiplier and get a total of 9.  Each of us has just gained 9 credits toward our Grenade Marksmanship category.  5 credits earns Marksman, but Sharpshooter requires 100, and the highest qualification award comes at 600 credits.

  And does it work?  Well, YEAH, so far. Since this program went live a month ago, the members of Fort Shorncliffe have been adding extra gaming on top of our twice monthly meetings.  It's been a lot of fun.  I've had the opportunity to dig out some older games and try them on new players - most notably Shadowrun DMZ, or Downtown Militarized Zone, the Shadowrun tactical board game.  I'll be blogging about that game sometime soon. 

  Personally, I find the concept of the gaming incentive program in a fandom organization to be a really good one.  It encourages members to get together and have fun.  It gives the entire organization an activity to take part in cooperatively and competitively.  It encourages branching out to try new types of game.  All in all, this is why I'm happy to be a part of this organization.  We can play D&D and get club credit for doing so... GRIN...