Starships & Spacemen
| Starships & Spacemen | ||
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| RPG published by Goblinoid Games (Fantasy Games Unlimited originally) |
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| Authors | Leonard H. Kanterman | |
| First Publication | 1978 (First Edition) 2013 (Second Edition) |
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Starships & Spacemen is a roleplaying game originally developed by Fantasy Games Unlimited in 1978 and is now supported in a second edition by Goblinoid Games since 2013.
The game is designed to emulate Star Trek the Original Series/Animated Series adventures with a few minor tweaks. Due to licensing issues it can't use any trademarked work so it filed off the serial numbers and renamed races, locations, tech and more.
The game is a Retroclone of Basic D&D, even in it's original form, it's second edition being quite definitely so.
Characters are built by rolling 3d6 six times and assigning the rolls to their six attributes, those being Strength, Constitution, Dexterity, Intelligence, Charisma and Psionic Potential, these are then modified by any racial bonus or malus a character may have. There are four saves (Energy Attacks, Poison or Death, Stun Attacks and Radiation) determined by one's class and race. At character creation, one may also roll a d% and check it against their racial chance for psionic potential (some races are automatically psionic though) and then they may choose, if they are psionic, a number of abilities such as Empathy (think Deanna Troi from TNG) all the way up to "Tentacles of the Mind". After this one chooses their class based on the classic Officer shirt colors (Red, Blue and Gold) or be a scrub working in waste management as an Enlisted sailor. Gold (Military) levels up the slowest while Enlisted levels up the fastest; Blue (Science) and Red (Technical) level up about midway between Gold and Enlisted. You then assign what your skill bonuses are to Combat (how well you fight), Contact (how well you interact with new species), Science (how well you can technobabble your problems away with science) and Technical (same as Science but with more Scotty flair).
The Star Master then assigns the party a star ship and runs a campaign ranging from having sexy aliens hit on the party to pitting two party members in a death battle Kirk and Spock style and everything in between.
Third Party Support[edit | edit source]
While the game is technically supported by Goblinoid Games, they have been putting most of their eggs in another basket and have only released the first edition as a PDF and the second edition as PDF or print-on-demand. The only other thing they have is an alternate skill-progression.
Despite this lack of overall support, there are several third party rules, adventures and maps one can find online. The most notable is a full campaign called The Lucanii Drift by Kitsune Press which is set in the unexplored Lucanii Drift, a large and mysterious sector of space around 400 lightyears "above" the galaxy. Expect a lot of adventures based on Star Trek Original Series/Animated Series such as bar brawls, diplomatic liaisons with new species, and otherwise boldly going where no man has gone before.