MicroTrek - Where No Man Has Gone Before 2.0

[Slortar]

I threatened to do it, and here it is:

The new version of my TOS Star Trek game, Where No Man Has Gone Before, switched over to Microlite20.  

Anyway, this update went pretty quick--it was mostly a matter of copying over the stuff that I had fun with and ripping out all the pointless crunch, which I'm finding is a strength of Microlite.  It really gives a great framework to build on.  You don't need to worry about crazy rule interactions because everything's right there in front of you.

Hell, with M20, the NPC section nearly wrote itself--NPC's are so darn easy to stat up in this system, it's ridiculous.

And I've been wanting to expand/tweak the various random monster/alien/episode generator stuff for quite a while and this gave me a good excuse to do it.

Next step is going to be the Ship Combat--I'm planning on doing two versions.  One's a straightforward port of the current ship combat system with some tweaks...because I like it too much to get rid of it.  :lol:

Then the inevitable bug-swatting and balancing...

[Dr. Bull]

This is great!  I really enjoyed reading this.  I bet that Greywulf will put this up on the front page (unless copyright laws become an issue).

You have really captured the essence of the original Star Trek and also managed to create a game that will provide players with hilarity and adventure.

I would suggest an integration of Darth Cestual's spaceship rules into your system.  Darth's work in this area might provide some excellent starting points for designing (of course) an Enterprise, Klingon Bird-of-Prey, etc.

To tell the truth, however, I'm not sure if you need spaceships rules in this game.  The TV series didn't seem to follow many rules...  Perhaps it's better if the Dungeon/Game Master just makes up the space travel rules and kept everything on a player character level rather than a spaceship (macro) level?

If it boiled down to a Next Generation situation where Starfleet was battling the Borg, however, I think that a ship-to-ship combat system would come in handy...

Once again, great work!  You made me laugh and also consider the infinite possibilities of this genre!

- Dr. Bull

[Slortar]

Thanks!   :lol:

Good lord, I'm verbose when I'm talking about Trek.  

[Slortar]

Huh.  Just occurred to me to bump this--I've added in a (fairly) light ship combat system and done some tweaking/typo fixing/balancing.  So, now there's exploding consoles, shaking cameras, boarding parties and whatnot.

That leaves the "advanced" version of the ship combat rules, which will probably just be almost exactly identical to the light, but with options you can drop in as needed to make things crunchier--more accurate damage tracking that scales better between ship power levels, space terrain (asteroid fields, nebula, etc), ramming, fun with tractor beams and the like.  Basically, what you'd need to add in to make ship combat feel more like the movies/later TV series instead of just TOS.

...which makes me tempted to start working on my movie-era expansion, which adds in a bunch of stuff from Klingon Academy (Best.  Instruction Manual.  EVER) and the movies...hmmm...

[slashnull]

I saw the new Star Trek film at the weekend and went on a search for a system if I ever wanted to run a ST game. How brilliant that there's a Microlite system! Loving reading the PDF, the plot generator is fantastic on its own!

[Slortar]

I'm glad you liked it!

Of course, now that I've seen the new Trek, I'm tempted to watch it a few more times so I can tweak my system to match more.  I need to be restrained or something.  

[Empty]

Seems to me like you're doing a great job on this, Slortar.

However, for some reason I feel compelled to make a simplified version that contains more or less just the bare bones of it; Would you mind if I did it?

[Slortar]

Knock yourself out.

[jasales]

Where is this Where No Man Has Gone Before 2.0? I can find no links.

[Slortar]

Weird how it ate the link.  Here's the current one:

www.abillionmonkeys.com/trek

[dominowriting]

Hey, we should meet up for a Microlite 20 game - I'm in the 'Zoo too!

[Slortar]

Kalamazoo, represent!  We should come up with a secret handshake and lord it over the boring non-Kalamazoo losers on this board.