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Vince Londini
Canada
London
Ontario
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Overview
The FASA Star Trek Role-Playing Game presents a 1980s variant of the Star Trek universe (almost entirely pre-ST:TNG). The canned adventures were often of good quality while the expansions offered plenty of meaty setting and story details though failing to move the ruleset forward. There are a couple of exceptions, discussed below.
Schism with Paramount
In its day, the ST:RPG was a major source of licensed new Trek information. Fans understandably assumed FASA's content to be canon given the relationship with Paramount (that this was actually a difficult marriage was not obvious to most fans even when FASA began missing product ship-date targets). Star Trek fans of the period found in FASA’s work the ship visualizations, deck plans, statistics (power, crew, capabilities), histories, racial details, and timelines needed to more fully imagine life in the Star Trek universe.
With The Next Generation and the TV/movies that followed, the media giant essentially ignored and invalidated most of FASA's work. This seemed a shame to FASA Trek fans and resulted in an enduring schism between FASA Trek fans and the rest of Star Trek fandom.
Gameplay
ST:RPG gameplay is relatively simple. Players make D100 (percentile) checks against an attribute/skill character model and can employ an Action Point and square-grid combat/movement system for tactical actions. Character creation resembles Traveller wherein the player makes die-roll choices to bring the character through pre-Academy, Academy, and post-Academy experiences by choosing from various tables. The system does not employ character classes, levels, or XP.
Expansions
By the mid-80s expansion sourcebooks began to appear to enable gamers to play characters outside of the Star Fleet setting. These sourcebooks offered FASA's development of the Star Trek timeline and the histories/cultures of the various races. FASA often drew details from Star Trek: The Animated Series or mass-market novels of the period. FASA’s The Klingons was the pinnacle of this research/amalgamation, presenting John M. Ford's vision of the Federation’s adversaries as depicted in his novel, The Final Reflection.
However, most of the expansions spent too many pages on timelines and NPC dossiers. In this reviewer's mind, the expansions didn't focus enough on expanding the imaginative activities and play space with new models and rules to keep the system fresh.
Only three FASA expansions (and one spinoff, discussed below) really moved the ruleset forward, largely by naming skills that savvy players might have otherwise arrived at dice targets for by averaging or modifying core attributes or other skills. The Star Fleet Intelligence Manual (SFIM) and Trader Captains and Merchant Princes (TCMP) introduced clandestine, merchantile, and grittier skills and equipment to the play universe.
For those attracted to the seedier, "more adventure, less military (aka Star Fleet)” type game facilitated by the SFIM and TCMP, The Triangle sourcebook was a must. The Triangle advanced the system by providing an entirely charted region of relatively lawless space as a backdrop for adventures, complete with faction details, starmap and system details, and economy details for the various worlds.
Spinoffs
The FASA Star Trek: Tactical Combat Simulator (ST:TCS) is probably the best-known module/spinoff from the system. ST:TCS provided a good tabletop wargame for Star Trek ship combat that holds up well against other starship combat games. The system also empowered multiple players to make significant choices to determine the fate of the player-character’s ship within the wargame model.
Bottom Line
FASA's ST:RPG is a decent sandbox for imagination. In its day, the game series offered a useful expansion of a popular fictional setting, though with mixed execution in individual products.
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Brian Franzman
United States
Tacoma
Washington
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I just parted with my entire FASA collection a few months ago, a bittersweet ending to be sure. This is a game I really wanted to like, and moreso, a game that I really wanted to run. But in the last twenty years, I've had literally no takers, so I feel like my decision was made for me by the settings' limited popularity (at least, among my friends).
FASA stopped supporting this game in the late '80's, so it has almost no ties to the TV series and films that came out since the first year of The Next Generation. That said, it covers very well the original series and the first four films, as well as some parts of the animated series.
Oh, I have a few gripes about the game and expansions. Mediocre print quality. Laughably bad artwork. Extremely slender modules, and often half of them are taken up with timelines and NPC rosters (often most of the NPCs would be pointless, since in a campaign you'd be using your PC crew and shipmates). But the game does have its charm.
I like the amount of detail that was given to some of the often-neglected races of the Star Trek universe. For example, the Orions are a lot more prominent, and turn up in most of the printed adventures. Many adventures also give decent floorplans of specific (small) starships, which can be gleaned for GM use in other scenarios.
Some of the expansions Vince mentioned are truly great for allowing players to be something other than standard Star Fleet officers. Merchants, traders, pirates, or mercenaries are one group of possibilities from Trader Captains and Merchant Princes; and covert spies working for Star Fleet Intelligence make for another good option. But the most intriguing angle must be the all-Klingon campaign. FASA put out a handful of Klingon-only adventures for the truly cunning players to try their hands at.
Overall, a good, solid system and plenty of source material to choose from. And with the new film released this summer, there should be more interest in this game and setting than I've seen in the last two decades!
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Rolling bad dice in wargames since 1977
United States
Austin
Texas
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Great review!
I used to have a great deal of the original FASA material. Almost all the RPG supplements and just about everything for the Starship Combat Simulator. Considering the times, I thought they did a fantastic job with it.
Personally, I found it difficult to run a campaign. Folks that played the Klingons tended to just zorch everything in sight and run amok—a novelty that wore quickly. Federation players had a tough time role-playing in the straight-laced Federation universe—and that was no fun, either. I big part of this boiled down to the weapons and equipment at their disposal: phasers, disruptors, the Transporter, and the Ship's Computer.
The Ship's Computer can tell skilled players almost anything they want to know. The Transporter can take them anywhere they want to go (on a planet). And the phasers and disruptors can subdue anything that stands in their way. They are powerful levers.
Well, I as the GM am supposed to find ways to make the game challenging and fun without allowing the players to use those levers to unbalance the game, so the fault is mine there. Like others, this is a game I loved to have, but it was tough to play!
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Vince Londini
Canada
London
Ontario
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Bokrug wrote: Extremely slender modules, and often half of them are taken up with timelines and NPC rosters (often most of the NPCs would be pointless, since in a campaign you'd be using your PC crew and shipmates). But the game does have its charm.
Definitely...in revisiting a pile of these modules last year, I was struck by how shallow most of them were. I just leafed through Challenge #43 (GDW's magazine). The FASA Trek content consists of a few pages of story leads...this kind of story-line seeding (15 problems the local starbase commander needs resolved, or 10 threats to a given world's status under the Prime Directive, or whatever) would have been great in the modules and expansions.
Bokrug wrote: But the most intriguing angle must be the all-Klingon campaign. FASA put out a handful of Klingon-only adventures for the truly cunning players to try their hands at.
Indeed!
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Vince Londini
Canada
London
Ontario
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BradyLS wrote: ...big part of this boiled down to the weapons and equipment at their disposal: phasers, disruptors, the Transporter, and the Ship's Computer.
The Ship's Computer can tell skilled players almost anything they want to know. The Transporter can take them anywhere they want to go (on a planet). And the phasers and disruptors can subdue anything that stands in their way. They are powerful levers.
Well, I as the GM am supposed to find ways to make the game challenging and fun without allowing the players to use those levers to unbalance the game, so the fault is mine there. Like others, this is a game I loved to have, but it was tough to play!
We as players and GMs also quickly tired of the fantastical nature of the setting. As average Joes just looking for interactive entertainment, we weren't prepared to re-write the source material by exploring the implications of these technologies (THAT would be some heavy science fiction).
So we took what unfolded as a series of steps to add "realism":
We dumped Star Fleet like a rock. Playing free-trader characters who had to pay the bills and keep themselves alive without the vast resources of Star Fleet seemed to help.
Those phasers are a bummer. On the wrong setting (and bad-guys only shoot on "stun" so many times) - one shot and you're dead. So, we imagined phasers/disruptors as military grade equipment and created our own rules for projectile and laser-based energy weapons that were more likely (in our opinion) to appear on less-developed worlds and in the hands of free-traders. Eventually, we probably would have borrowed Tech Levels from GURPS Space...
How about more astronomical detail? We generated star systems and worlds using GURPS Space (2nd edition, then, I think) to get systems and planets with maps and additional detail. Obviously, we proceeded to map a setting and craft stories around it.
At this point, we may as well have been playing GURPs or Traveller or any other ruleset or setting - but...
* We liked how the Trek of that era presented a marriage of content updates from both the media giant (ooh, those ships/equipment/places look cool in the latest movie) and the game developer (here's some details on that ship/equipment/place that make it seem more "real").
* We also liked the FASA Trek mechanics based on the D100 (percentile) roll. We weren't prepared to plunge into GURPS character creation. We used a loose house-rule system for the tactical combat that kept everything moving.
We had fun with it in its season.
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Emmanuel Aquin
Canada
Mont-Saint-Hilaire
Quebec
And D-Day Dice, too!
I'm an "A"vatar.
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To me, FASA's Star Trek was always more real than the shows/movies. And I was a big fan of those!
There is something in FASA's approach to cultural diversities, diplomacy, military and the Federation in general that just felt right. I never cared much for the game system (very bland mechanics), but the background they presented in books was worth millions.
I ran several Starfleet campaigns, back in the day. Using all the gray areas from the sourcebooks, and including many cool aspects like Starfleet Intelligence and the military, I had more fun in this universe than I ever found on the screen.
Sure, the art sucked and the adventure modules weren't the best, but come on, who wouldn't want to see a Chandley frigate on the big screen?
So I'm holding onto my collection, even though I haven't played in more than 15 years. When I'm old and useless, I might even start a new campaign.
E
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Tony Cocks
United Kingdom
London
Unspecified
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I was a big fan of the system despite the obvious flaws, the real diamonds as mentioned were the source books which gave a more believable ST universe than the rather insipid Paramount offerings. I sold my collection a few years back although I did repurchase the Combat Simulator and the Ship Guides.
The only way the RPG worked was if you were with a bunch of like-minded players, being a Trek fan and an RPG fan wasn’t enough, they had to see the Trek universe through exactly the same FASA filtered glasses you did and accept this as pukka 100% Trek, any deviation and games would descend in to chaos. Not very Star Fleet. 
Gone but not forgotten.
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Louis Kolkman
Netherlands
Nijmegen
Gelderland
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Seeing the universe like the people in the series was, and is, a prerequisite for an enjoyable game, yes. If the only thing you thought about was the size of your guns, then you would have no place in the games that I was part of (both as player and as GM).
We did develop our own version of the ST universe. One that was heavily influenced by one of our GM's take on the Andorians and the Klingons.
Played a Klingon campaign with me as the captain, that lasted for at least ten years, and was centered on John M. Ford's novel\game expansion. And although there were killings in the game, even within the party, superior cunning was more important than pure firepower or strength.
It still is one of the settings that I find the easiest to GM, even though I am not a trekkie, just because the whole settings basic premises are so much in line with mine...  Minimal pre-game preparations, just invent an intrigue\crises, bring in the ship, and go from there....
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John P
Canada
Scarborough
Ontario
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Long live FASA TREK!!
My best gaming years (1984-90) were GMing a FASA Star Trek merchant campaign. I RPGed years before and years after, sometimes with better systems, but nothing beat those years.
John
www.fasatrekker.blogspot.com
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Posted Fri Jul 24, 2009 6:55 pm
