Starting last week, I'm now playing in a Star Trek game every-other-week. I'm playing a Tellerite astrophysicist. I'm a little nervous about taking on such a mentally-focused role, given Trek's mutable scientific (and temporal) laws that wobble from episode to episode. On Trek the characters seem to solve everything by reversing polarity or channeling energy through the main deflector, even when that makes no sense.
I think this will be a good learning experience for me, though. Either the GM will come up with clever ways to make the science-related challenges work, or I'll learn by trial and error what doesn't work. Either way, I expect my own GMing of sci-fi games will improve because of it. So, I'm kind of excited. Plus, it's a good group, these folks are a lot of fun.
The system being used is PDQ#, which is nicely flexible. It's less fiddly than Savage Worlds, but more defined than Risus. I think it's probably a c8 on my crunchometer, but I'll know better after I've played it more.
The era of Trek that is our setting is 5-10 years before Next Generation. There's been promise that Tholians the Gorn will show up, both of which have always been personal favorites that I wish the good series (not Enterprise) had done more with.
*Sigh* Why did the weakest Trek series have to be the only one that followed up on the most interesting aliens? I know those episodes exist, but the rest of Enterprise sucked so badly I'm afraid to watch them.
5 comments:
Enterprise actually picks up pretty well for the latter half of s3 and just about all of s4.
I like Enterprise a lot. I really really hated Deep Space Nine. I also am not a big fan of the original. Too many rubber suits. Good stories and characters though. Next Generation was very decent. Well as long as Wesley was not in the episode. Voyager still ranks up there as my favorite series though.
Dear Seven of Nine, please assimilate me.
And of course then NEED a new series!!
Glad to hear Enterprise gets better down the road - the first season just didn't do it for me.
It's hard to say whether Enterprise drove me off more because of the changes to canonical storyline, or because of the gratuitous "lets rub decontamination gel all over the sexy vulcan" scenes.
Not that I'm usually put off by a little T&A, but seeing as how Vulcans are depicted as so logical and unemotional, it just had this squicky child porn / date rape vibe to me. I just kept thinking "does she realize what's going through that guys mind as he rubs her down?"
I realize that Trek's always had a "love 'em and leave 'em" motif, and I'm fine with that. But, seems to me you should only deliver that lovin' on someone emotionally mature enough to understand it.
Rape-implications aside, it was one of several factors that made it hard for me to take the character seriously. T'Pol was basically 7 of 9 with a bad hair cut, a less compelling back story, and pointy ears. YMMV.
I totally get the need for some sex appeal on the show, I just wish they'd focused it on another character. If they'd slathered that all over Hoshi Sato, I'd have been fine with it.
I've played PDQ which was really fast and fun, I heard PDQ# is a bit more complicated and has some swashbuckling mechanics so I take it isn't more action oriented...
I'd be interested in hearing what you have to say on how PDQ# runs...
Voyager is only worth watching for the lesson it teaches all role-players, a captain (leader, dominant alpha persona) who betrays her crew (team, party, alliance) on a weekly basis to uphold her (his/ its) personally and currently out of touch morals is no fun to watch (be involved with, have to share a story with).
But hey, star trek has teleporters and teleporters (even though not a single trek writer was ever smart enough to join the dots) means nobody ever has to die of anything except natural causes ever again. Your Gm/ ref / ST can actually resurrect characters killed on away missions as many times as he needs without it being munchkin or twinkish. :)
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