Star Trek: Difference between revisions

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That and that in ''Star Trek Online'', [[Awesome|they look like the fucking Predator.]]
That and that in ''Star Trek Online'', [[Awesome|they look like the fucking Predator.]]
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'''The Q'''
'''The Q'''
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A race of beings which are so advanced they are basically gods that look onto the Federation judgmentally from time to time with a more playful one of their ranks, who's not above fucking with individual humans from time time. They are mostly a TNG thing and mostly works by grace of John de Lancie's acting chops.
A race of beings which are so advanced they are basically gods that look onto the Federation judgmentally from time to time with a more playful one of their ranks, who's not above fucking with individual humans from time time. They are mostly a TNG thing and mostly works by grace of John de Lancie's acting chops.


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On a side note all [[Chakats]] need to be launched into Fluid Space <u>right now</u>.
On a side note all [[Chakats]] need to be launched into Fluid Space <u>right now</u>.



Revision as of 08:17, 1 October 2018

This page is in need of cleanup. Srsly. It's a fucking mess.

>

If you aren't already hearing the theme song you might not belong here.

Star Trek is a multimedia science-fiction series and one of the cornerstones of nerdy media properties, and one of the few to crossover into mainstream popularity (alongside Star Wars, Doctor Who and a few others). It's also one of the longest-running science fiction franchises, with over 50 years of geek history spanning several generations. Needless to say, it's had a huge influence on all things sci-fi, and, by extension, /tg/.

Originally, Star Trek was noblebright beyond noblebright and, in many ways, was the polar opposite of Warhammer 40K's grimdark. The more recent reboot films, however, have taken a much, much more grimdark tone, which is delightfully skubtastic.

Games

There's been plenty of tabletop games and vidya gaems featuring Star Trek without being merchandising bullshit (see: themed Monopoly sets), including one of the earliest action multiplayer wargame: Netrek.

  • Star Trek: Adventure Gaming in the Final Frontier (1978) The very first Trek tabletop RPG. Written by, I shit you not, Michael Scott. Groggy (grokky?) as all hell, and due for an OSR.
  • Star Fleet Battles (SFB) (1979-) The crunchiest starship combat game you're ever going to find outside of a computer. Based on the original series and not any of the later series, for licensing reasons. Takes some liberties with the setting, which (combined with the aforementioned licensing) is why "Star Trek" isn't actually in the title.
  • Star Trek: The Role Playing Game (1982-1989) Made by FASA, essentially Traveller-lite, or a happier, shinier Rogue Trader. Hasn't aged terribly well, what with having been made when the only canonical Star Trek materials to work with were the original and animated series, the first four films, and a couple of now non-canon novels. If you try to dust it off, expect tons of conflict with the rest of the show. Died as they were trying to update it for TNG, because Paramount's corporate suits (surprise, surprise) had no idea what an RPG actually entailed and were worried about violence, and getting their cut, and... oh you know the drill by now. Welcome to the 80's.
  • Star Trek: Starship Tactical Combat Simulator (1983) FASA designed this, so it feels like Battletech but not as good.
  • Prime Directive (1993-2008) The most successful tabletop RPG line (but that's not saying much), it's actually still in print. Produced by Amarillo Design Bureau, so again no direct name-dropping of "Star Trek." Lasted as long as it did by constantly evolving, in Borg-like fashion, to adapt to the current zeitgeist. Has had 4 editions, with the second using GURPS, the third using d20, and the fourth d20 Modern.
  • Star Trek CCG (1994-2007, 2011-2014, 2013-2015, 2018-) There's been a few of these, most notably the games released by Decipher, but never globally popular. They also suffered from game balance problems from fans wanting their fave character, but needing extra rules for their quirks. There's also the problem of putting numbers to character stats, such as one game that asserted that Picard having about twice the integrity of a Klingon pig. Later versions are "deck-building" games to try to cash in on the popularity of Dominion and Thunderstone. And now virtual CCGs are the order of the day.
  • Star Trek: The Next Generation Role Playing Game (1998-1999) The next attempt, made by Last Unicorn Games. Won an award for best new game, which makes it a complete shame that no one has ever played it.
  • Star Trek Red Alert (2000) A Diskwars game themed to Star Trek.
  • Star Trek Roleplaying Game (2002-2005) When Decipher had the CCG license, they decided, "What the hell, let's make an RPG, too." It, like so many of its predecessors, died unnoticed and unmourned.
  • Star Trek Online (2010-) An MMO. Decent gameplay mechanics, especially starship combat. Storyline leaves something to be desired, especially when the ostensibly peaceful Federation trades shots at least once with every other faction in the galaxy.
  • Call To Arms: Star Trek (2011) Mongoose's license for Babylon 5 expired, so they collaborated with Amarillo Design Bureau (the Star Fleet Battles guys), re-themed the game to Star Trek along with improving the system to make it more nifty. Less micro-management than SFB, and ships get some cinematic feats.
  • Star Trek: Expeditions (2011) Ignore the tie-ins to the movie, Reiner Knizia designed this. Explore the gameboard, flip over missions, try to have the proper crew to get victory points.
  • Star Trek: Fleet Captains (2011) Tile flipping, exploring, and spaceships fighting over resources
  • Star Trek: Attack Wing (2013-) WizKids license the flightpath system from Fantasy Flight Games and adds Star Trek to the mix, Skub ensues. The game has been consistently plagued with balance issues, to the point that the rules errata is more than ten times longer than the actual rules. The actual current rules for things like the Borg special movement and fighter squadrons are completely different than the rules as written.
  • Star Trek Adventures (2017-) The latest attempt at an RPG, by Modiphius, coming out soon to tentative praise. It also comes with a whole range of miniatures of the various crews from the show.

So why should I care?

Because between them, these six TV series and their assorted spinoff movies, books, etc. can provide inspiration for any sci-fi game you could care to run. If you want light-hearted action, look at the sort of things that happened in TOS or DS9 to get the crew into some dangerous situation. If you want a charismatic villain, look at Gul Dukat or the Borg Queen. If you want moral issues and debates, look at the shit that happened to Voyager and remove all the transparent deck-stacking and cheesy moralizing (or you could read any decent SF book/watch a Twilight Zone episode written in the previous 50 years, if you don't need your source material to be served at a 2nd grade level). Like Tolkien is to fantasy it's a prime gateway drug to science fiction and especially science fiction which is more than "action movie IN SPACE!"

Not to mention in any sci-fi RPG with remotely free-form rules you're likely to encounter Star Trek fanboys, so you might as well know what they're talking about. The unholy spawn of a Trekkie and a Furry is known as a Chakat, and you should fear it.

At its best Star Trek is thoughtful, optimistic futurism with a positive human element and brings you to strange new worlds in the grand tradition of speculative fiction which is accessible to even the layman. At its worst Star Trek is arrogant, smug, hypocritical, preachy, dull, sloppy and prone to the strawman fallacy.

Setting

Here's the Cliff's Notes on Star Trek. A couple of general warnings; firstly, Star Trek likes to really take its "racial themes" bits just a little too far. Second, despite this, it's rare for an entire race to be completely irredeemable the way many fictional aliens are: there are heroic and sympathetic characters from nearly every race listed below, able to put more-positive spins on their racial themes. Thirdly, aside from very occasional appearances by aliens who are so bizarre that humankind can barely comprehend them, all of the aliens look like dudes with rubber masks on (because they are). In real life, this was because there was no budget for anything else, but in-universe it's been explained by some kind of Precursor race who seeded all of the planets with their broadly humanoid DNA, and every race evolved slightly differently from there. There isn't much fluff on what these precursors were like, and some of it was contradictory, and Gene Roddenberry didn't like the idea (although he still had to work with the rubber forehead stuff). The good news for fa/tg/uys who like homebrew is that this makes it fairly easy to write d20 system rules for all of the races -after all, most D&D races are just humans with rubber masks on...

A Composite Creation

This is a general note that one should consider: Star Trek was created in pretty much the opposite way as The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien worked out a bunch of linguistic stuff and general history of Arda in his spare time, then decided to use that as the basis for some stories that he eventually gave to some publishers which in the end sold quite well. Roddenberry by contrast pitched a very broad general idea (it's the future, things are good, we got guys some on a ship exploring space) to the networks who eventually took it up on it and had him work with a variety of writers and actors who added to this rough skeleton of an idea in a process that would continue on to this day. This is not to knock either approach, but both have their advantages and disadvantages. In regards to Star Trek, a franchise which relies mostly on an episode of the week format that's been going on for more than half a century this means that the canon is a fucking mess. There were numerous people at the helm and many of them had often very different ideas about what should be done that were just thrown out to see what stuck, many of which were contradictory and some of which we'd frankly rather forget. In general fans and fluff writers have been spending a whole lot of time trying to straighten out things and much of the lore is basically a rough consensus of what people like and what fits in with it. Latter series got more systematic about this, but there are still points of contention and a lot of flat out contradictions due to it's scattershot nature.

Factions

The Federation

The Klingon Empire

The Romulan Star Empire

The Ferengi Alliance

The Borg

The Cardassian Union

The Bajoran Republic

The Dominion

Species 8472