Let's roll some dice, watch some movies, or generally just geek out. New posts at 6:30 pm ET but only if I have something to say. Menu at the top. gsllc@chirp.enworld.org on Mastodon and @gsllc on Twitter.
So, here’s a shitty memory. I had a rough childhood. I won’t go into detail except as relevant to this post, which is relatively tame, but still kind of sucks in a way that gaming nerds will relate.
As a victim of the Satanic Panic, I was forbidden from playing D&D in 1982. Two years later, as a high school sophomore, my cousin introduced me to Barbarian books store in Wheaton, MD (now Barbarian Comics). This is where he bought his comic books. That didn’t interest me at all, but the store also sold RPG material. I knew not to buy D&D materials, but as a high school student, I rebelled a bit and bought FASA Star Trek material. Needless to say, I kept it secret for as long as I could, because that’s still “the same thing” as far as my family was concerned.
I bought the 1st edition box set, the 2nd edition box set, numerous adventures, and a bunch accessories. The accessories included starship models that could be used with that game. Each cost $4.00 (plus tax), so if I bought fifteen of them, that was probably about two weeks pay. Considering I was forced to pay for private high school and college, that’s a fortune, but I can assure you I bought far more than 15 of them. I continued to buy material all the way until the first couple years of college. When my family eventually found my hidden materials, they were largely destroyed. I managed to hide most of my written material, but the starship models were a total loss, and a few accessories disappeared. For a high school/college student in the mid- to late-80s, these were expensive. They were all destroyed by my older brother, who enjoyed enforcing my mother’s prohibition against, well, virtually anything that made me happy, gaming or otherwise.
A couple of years ago, I replenished my entire catalogue of 1st Edition D&D (“1e“) material. There’s nothing I ever owned, or even ever wanted, that I don’t now own. I spent somewhere between $300 and $400, but that bought me more material than I could ever hope to run in the 21 years I statistically have left on this planet. I’m fortunate enough that I afford that. However, take a look at this bullshit. If you didn’t click through (or you’re reading this years after the eBay listing was removed), this is one of those $4.00 models that is selling for $40.00 plus $4.20 shipping. Here’s a screenshot for posterity.
This is an obscure, seldom used starship.
Imagine buying merely fifteen of these now. I’m not a math major, but that should be $633.00 just for materials that aren’t strictly necessary for the game. Buying them at these prices can’t be justified unless you’re truly wealthy.
I’m now running a 1e game for the first time in 40 years, so I’m in no position to complain. However, I’d really love to play FASA Star Trek again. Unfortunately, I know of only two local people that are interested in a in-person game, and one of them isn’t what I’d call “reliable.” (Note: I hate online gaming.) In short, there’s no chance of an in-person game, and certainly none in which I’m a player. That’s a tough pill to swallow, but I can live with that. I’m fortunate to be playing 1e. Moreover, I’m working on starting a 4th Edition D&D game, which also appeals to me. I have plenty going on, and will probably have more than I can handle soon enough.
But as an American, I’m spoiled and want more.
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A few weeks ago, I hosted another 1st Edition Dungeons & Dragons (“1e”) game at my home. The group spent over an hour at the start of the session just reminiscing about the good old days when most of us first met. This was during the era of 4th Edition. Inevitably, the subject of synDCon came up. synDCon was the gaming convention financed primarily by Vic and me. The two of us did almost all the work of running the convention once it began. It was large enough that we had everything represented (see below), yet still maintained the coziness of conventions like Winter Fantasy.
synDCon Was Awesome
I need to put my modesty aside for a bit and say that we pulled off something magical (pun absolutely intended). In our first year, we took advantage of a holiday and put on a four-day convention. We provided tons of organized play: Living Forgotten Realms (4e), Pathfinder Society, and Heroes of Rokugan (Legend of the Five Rings). We also had individual games from less popular RPGs being run here and there, tons of card games (including, of course, Magic the Gathering), tons of board games, and we were the official DC-area convention for Munchkin. We had special events, a LARP, dungeon delves I wrote based on classic 1e adventures, and live music on Saturday night for one of the cons. Our slots were staggered so that slots didn’t start every four hours but rather every two hours. If you wanted to sleep in a bit, you could. You’d just start playing at 11 am instead of 9 am, but there were enough 2-hour slots of other things to do that you could still get three slots of gaming in.
It wasn’t run in a convention center, nor in the basement of a mediocre hotel, but rather in a really nice “hotel and executive meeting center” right across the street from a Metro (subway) stop in Rockville, Maryland. As the county seat for Montgomery County, there were tons of restaurants, et al. in the area, including a gaming store down the street. Of course, we had a gaming store as our in-convention vendor both years, and we generated about 200 attendees both years. Our attendees represented everywhere in the United States east of the Mississippi (e.g., Florida, Georgia, and Ohio), but we gave an award to a guy named Matt for having come the farthest for the con (Alaska).
We had tremendous support from volunteers that helped organize the detail while Vic and I focused on the big picture, and we’re forever indebted to those friends, but I’ll be damned if my feet weren’t atrociously sore by the end of both cons.
Seriously, it was stupendous, and everyone that attended and commented on it said so.
A Slight Diversion Before My Point
I’ve been thinking of doing something other than a Vegas blackjack trip for my fall vacation – I say this every year, so we’ll see if I follow through – and was considering an RPG gaming convention instead. Because I wanted to play 1e, I was initially thinking about GaryCon, but a friend pushed me towards GameholeCon. It was an easy sell because the timing would be better. GaryCon would interfere with Winter Fantasy, but GameholeCon would slide right into the Vegas slot (again, pun absolutely intended). The trouble is that Winter Fantasy and synDCon have spoiled me. I have no intention of going to a convention and paying between $100 and $200 per night for my hotel room if I’m staying at least 2 miles from the convention. That’s ridiculous. It’s like GenCon on a smaller scale. The city is obviously not big enough to handle the convention. So, I decided to look into other options.
There Aren’t Any
Sadly, I went through all my options I could find online, and nothing quite matches the magic of Winter Fantasy or synDCon as far as I can tell. The lists were not complete – Winter Fantasy wasn’t even mentioned (?!) – so maybe there are some other cons out there, but I can’t find them. The cons are at least one of the following: in an inconvenient or excessively crowded location, lack inexpensive parking, or focused on only a few things (usually the shiny new things of the day). Some are also not “cozy,” which I define as between 200 and 350 people. It’s large enough that there can be plenty to do, and you can meet new people, but small enough that you’ll always be able to find your friends and hang out with them. Winter Fantasy doesn’t even satisfy all of these characteristics perfectly – I tried to run 1e but only one ticket for only one slot of three was sold – but it’s as close to perfect as I think practical for a cozy con. It’s also in Ft. Wayne, Indiana. I’m fine going out there, and I will every year they’ll have me, but I find it odd that an area with as big a gaming community as DC doesn’t have something like this.
And this is my point. DC needs a convention like synDCon or Winter Fantasy. Such a con isn’t going to hit the radar scope of the big players (i.e., Wizards of the Coast and Paizo), but it’ll appeal to plenty of players. The DC area is filled with them. Our Gamers’ Syndicate gaming club had over 200 people that identified as members, and we ran game days every single weekend in as many as five gaming stores at a time. While organizing synDCon, I learned of several other groups just as large that had never even heard of us. They were organizing at other stores. This area has an abundance of gamers, and I suspect there are even more here over 10 years later.
Will There Be a synDCon III?
That’s the magic question. I’m happy to organize it, but as we discussed at the game session, my demands are high. First off, I want to do it right or not do it at all. I’m not willing to put together a con in “the basement of the Best Western.” No offense to the chain in general, but that happens to be a hotel we visited that would be the site of a con not worth having. It was downright gross but not unlike venues of cons I’ve attended in the early 2000s. No thanks. Second, having learned from my experiences with the first two, the only way I’d do it is if I had a number of additional owners willing to slap down cashier’s checks for at least $2,000 each (or more depending on how many people commit) and having signed an operating agreement that prevents them from every cashing out that initial investment. That is, I need a sizeable stable of people willing to commit whole-heartedly so that I know I’ll have both the funds and the work ethic necessary to make this doable. Trust me when I say that it’s not enough that someone throw money at me. I need to know that they’re committed to doing the work necessary to pull off a great con. Because it’s been over 10 years, I don’t know what the minimum acceptable number of owners would be, especially without knowing exactly how much each would be willing to contribute up front, but I do know $2,000 is enough to motivate most gamers to stay the course and do what they could not to throw that money away. Any of them willing to drop $2,000 are likely to take it seriously.
Another thing I remember is that no one wanted to be the guy, the “convention coordinator” or CEO who had to make the calls when weird situations arose. While I’m happy to be that guy, I’m not willing to be the one that puts out the feelers (beyond this post, I guess) and see if there’s interest. If I thought my odds were better than 50% of finding such interest, I would, but I don’t think there are enough people willing to make this kind of commitment, so why bother trying? I did my part for king and country, and wound up with a small, overworked group. If this is meant to be, then someone else will have to get the ball rolling. So, while I’m not the one destined to put this together, I strongly suspect there’s a market for it, and my recent thoughts and conversations on the matter sure leave me wishing someone would.
If that’s you, drop me an email when you think you’ve got something real.
Henry, Sr. shouldn’t have slapped Indy. He should have used a baseball bat.
As you know (if you’ve ever read my blog), I’m running 1st Edition Dungeons & Dragons for the first time in 40 years, and I’m in talks with Luddite Vic about organizing a 4th Edition game. Moreover, in the back of my mind, I’m contemplating a FASA Star Trek RPG game. That one may never happen because I’d absolutely have to run that online to find any players, but it’s certainly something I’d like to do in theory.
The point is that all of that material has been sitting on my shelf for years (if not decades) collecting dust, but it’s still as good as it ever was. The potential is always there, and you never know how your circumstances will change. Hell, I even have 3rd Edition Dungeons & Dragonsmaterial on my shelves, and I can’t stand that edition. I’ve played it a couple of times in the past ten years just so I could hang out with some friends, and I’ve written not one, not two, but three posts on unfinished business I have with the edition, so even that has potential value (assuming the DM gets rid of confirmation of critical hits). Two editions of the Gamma World RPG, Star Wars Saga Edition RPG, Dragon Age RPG, Margaret Weiss’s Marvel Superheroes RPG, several board games (Demons!), and some games still in shrink wrap all litter my “man cave,” but I wouldn’t consider my collection huge. If yours is huge, that in my opinion you’re doing things better than I am. You never know what you might need to pull out for company. Hell, I’m even ready to host a night of blackjack or poker.
Where’s a roided-out Barry Bonds when you need him?
Dungeons & Dragons is a trademark of Wizards of the Coast, LLC, who neither contributed to, nor endorsed, the contents of this post. (Okay, jackasses?)
Sundays now are lazy days for me. I either post something silly or other people’s work. Usually both. Today, I share a tweet that reminded me of something else. (Image of the tweet appears at the end in case it’s ever deleted. ) To my knowledge, this tweet had nothing to do with RPGs. It was just a ridiculous design made for the sake of ridiculousness.
I’m waaaaay ahead on my blog writing, so this post, written on 2/18/2022, relates to a tweet from 2/11/2022, and is being published (assuming I don’t move my schedule around) on 3/3/2022.
Luck. If it's good enough for the #FASA#StarTrek#RPG, it's good enough for all of them.
— Rob Bodine, #Attorney by Day, #Nerd by Day & Night (@GSLLC) February 11, 2022
The FASA Star Trek RPG (“STRPG“) is one of my two favorite RPG systems, so of course I had that one on the brain. STRPG was a d100, skill-based system, where players collected skill points based on their Star Fleet Academy (or other) training, and placed them into various skills. Their ability scores were also based on d100, so ability and skill checks were treated the same way.
The ability scores in STRPG had a one-to-one relationship with those of D&D, but STRPG added two extra skills: PSI (psionics) and LUC (luck). As you know, D&D has had different ways of dealing with psionics, none of which involved a separate ability score. In 1st Edition, a minimum Intelligence of X gave you a 1% chance of having psionic talents, opening up a new system of mechanics. I never played 2nd Edition, but from 3rd Edition forward, psionics became a class feature. If you took a psionic class, you had psionics. Otherwise, you didn’t (though some magic did psychic damage). Ergo, I didn’t respond with PSI. D&D couldn’t really use it.
LUC is a different story. There’s room for it in D&D. In a reasonably balanced system, LUC was a way of giving the PCs an advantage over the NPCs. There are other ways to do that (e.g., 3rd Edition action points, inherent mechanics), but a LUC score wasn’t a bad choice. If all roleplaying and dice rolls failed the PC, they could request one more shot at success with a LUC roll. If they rolled less than their LUC score, they succeeded despite those failures. Of course, it was up to the gamemaster to define what that success was, which could be partial rather than total. Considering how focused modern gamers are on player agency, I suspect that a LUC ability score should appeal to many of them.
BTW, if you’ve never read my blog before this post, I’ve probably left you in suspense.
For the record, my other favorite RPG system is 4th Edition D&D.
If I fail my LUC check, my love of 4th Edition could start a nuclear war.
Dungeons & Dragons is a trademark of Wizards of the Coast, LLC, who neither contributed to, nor endorsed, the contents of this post. (Okay, jackasses?)
In case the tweet is ever deleted, here’s a screenshot of it.
I told my coworkers that I was using one of the bedrooms in my new home into a den. They started calling it a mancave. Well, if this is a mancave, it’s the nerdiest one ever. I also can’t see it as a “cave” considering it’s on the second floor. It seems more like a man loft.
That doesn’t make any sense, does it?
Last week, I bought a 6′ tall bookshelf that finally allowed me to unpack most of my gaming material. This weekend, I picked up a new desk, which again allows me to unpack office supplies and other things. The room is finally coming together, and I’m fairly well organized.
This den, mancave, or whatever you want to call it is oddly important to me. I’ve lived a rather simple lifestyle up to now. I’m used to a small place, and while this home isn’t what anyone would call large, it’s exceptionally large for me. In fact, it’s too large. It’s great that I have room for everything that I have and much of what I don’t have yet, but I spend 90% of my waking hours in this room. For lack of a better word, it feels cozy, and I’m jamming it with everything I want around me in my free time at home.
Do I have enough screens?
I have a lot of Jeff Dee originals to hang, but so far the only art on the walls is this guy over the desk.
Judging every one of my Google searches.
My cousin gave me a magazine rack. I asked, “What am I? 108 years old?” But I had just the use for it.
Though I may never read them again, I like having them.
Seriously. This is a mancave?
Almost one shelf per edition of D&D.
I have tons of other books not related to gaming, but the second bookshelf hasn’t even been put together. On the side of this bookshelf, I hung some memorabilia.
Okay, maybe it’s a mancave after all, but just barely.
The one thing that won’t fit are my musical instruments. I’m keeping them downstairs. That’s probably for the best. It’s a townhome, and the neighbors probably wouldn’t appreciate any noise being upstairs near their bedrooms.
Make no mistake about it: My keyboard playing is properly defined as “noise.”
Dungeons & Dragons is a trademark of Wizards of the Coast, LLC, who neither contributed to, nor endorsed, the contents of this post. (Okay, jackasses?)
On Friday (July 23, 2021), I mentioned that I was relearningAD&D 1st Edition (“1e“) with the intention of running it. As I read through the Player’s Handbook (“PHB“), certain mechanics or text will strike me as odd or surprising, but in either case worthy of discussion. In fact, the most surprising thing I’m experiencing is that I’m finding a lot more great ideas in 1e that we’ve since abandoned. I find myself asking, “Why?” As a result, I’ll be writing several posts over the next few weeks. I’m sure everything I’m thinking has been discussed before — sometimes be me — so perhaps my questions have been answered, and my concerns resolved, years ago. My experience with RPGs is relatively limited in scope, having played a small number of games, so I’m sure a lot of what I’m going to say has been incorporated into games I’ve never even heard of. (Some have certainly been addressed by future editions of D&D themselves.) Nevertheless, bringing this directed conversation to the public is new to me, so here it goes.
I don’t think this post will go over well with the professional game designers. Or the amateur ones. I’m being completely unreasonable, but professionals should always listen to their most demanding clients, right? Well, that’s me. I just want to play, and the quickest way to do that is to play a rules-light system. However, once I’ve got the hang of it, I want a rules-heavy system thorough enough not to leave itself open to conflicting interpretations.
I want my cake and to eat it too.
Why So Tense?
One of the tensions in game design is whether an RPG should be rules heavy or rules light. 1e is certainly rules heavy, at least when it comes to a combat system that micromanages so much. There’s a huge disadvantage to that: Learning such rules is a barrier to entry for new players. I get that point of view, especially when you have a system like 1e that requires you to jump from page to page, or even book to book, to get the complete rule (made easier by the hard work of David Prata mentioned in yesterday’s post on Initiative). Some game designers have tried to improve on this by simplifying processes, further abstracting how the system deals with the topic at hand. Well, I think it’s time for some reification.
Whiny Players
Here’s a grossly paraphrased conversation I’ve had since returning to D&D in 2005. In my experience, this is by no means an unusual conversation to have in this or other contexts.
Me (3-5 times while describing the scene): Are you sure you don’t want to do anything else? Table: Nope. Me (placing the minis on the table): Okay, you’re surprised. Table: How? We had a lookout. Me: I asked you several times if you had anything else to tell me, and you never mentioned it. Table: But we always have a lookout. We’re adventurers. We know to do that. Me: Well, they’re ambush predators. They know how to sneak. Table: Show me in the rules where we must be surprised in this instance. Me: The rules can’t possibly provide every example possible, so no such rule exists. Table: Then we can’t be surprised. Me: The very fact that surprise rules exist cuts against your argument. Table: You’re a terrible DM. You don’t know the rules.
Truthfully, I am a terrible DM, but this isn’t an example of that.
1e Combat
The 1e combat system is rules heavy. Yes, it’s spread out over different pages of the Players Handbook and the Dungeon Master’s Guide, but that’s a failure of execution, not concept. I’m discussing concept in this post, so let’s stay focused on that.
The system does two things that I absolutely love but haven’t appeared in D&D in some time. First, surprise is handled by a simple die roll in almost all combats. There are a few things that negate a poor roll, but in general, roll a 1 or 2 on a d6, and you’re surprised. Second, the distance between the parties at the precise moment of engagement is handled through a separate die roll. The rule takes into consideration practical matters such as line of sight, whether the encounter takes place in a 20’ x 20’ room or outdoors on a flat plane of low grass, etc., but no one can say that they were surprised because the DM didn’t properly set the scene or otherwise withheld important information, and they also can’t argue as to whether they were in striking distance at the moment they were surprised. The baseline is that these dice rolls govern, so the burden shifts to the players to point to something they expressly said they were doing, or circumstances of the scene, that justify ignoring or modifying those dice rolls.
So, should all RPGs be designed like this? Maybe not. A ruleset covering all the bases is going to be long and complicated, which can slow down the game even if you know the rules. Even worse, beginners will face a barrier to entry. They’ll take one look at David’s work and say, “Twenty pages? Nope. That’s too much to read just to get to sit down at the gaming table.” Is there some way to avoid that?
Beginning v. Advanced Systems
A possible solution to the problem of the barrier to entry is to go backwards. 1e published the Basic Set (followed by some others) that served this purpose, and it was reasonably compatible with the Advanced Dungeons & DragonsPHB and DMG (what I’ve been calling 1e). I never played this, but I seem to remember them having noticeable mechanical differences from 1e, which turned me off to it. This was probably arrogant because, believe it or not, when I first started playing “Blue Box” AD&D, we didn’t use ability scores at all. I don’t remember how that played out and can’t even guess how it worked, but I remember a conversation with a kid named Louis, who explained ability scores to me in 6th grade, which was two years after I started playing. The point is that you could abstract what you wanted, and once comfortable, drill down to a more complicated but well-defined system, but that was haphazard. Game designers should instead provide the roadmap by designing a combat system, then removing complexities from it in such a way that it maintains the balance between the two sides. What’s left is the “basic” system suitable for new players, existing players that prefer a rules-light system, or any player looking for an occasional quick and easy combat. Modern RPGs create alternate rules (e.g., methods for ability score generation), but that’s not the same thing.
A favorite RPG of mine, the FASA Star Trek RPG, did this quite well for starship combat. There was a basic subsystem and an advanced subsystem. The core mechanic was the same, with the base system dividing values by 3 (rounding down), but the advanced subsystem was more than just larger scalar values. It also introduced a more complicated means for bridge officers to affect combat. Not only did this eliminate a barrier to entry into the game, but I suspect that in order for this to work, the design methodology necessarily facilitated either subsystem being played as a board game. That opened the game to a lot of Star Trek fans who somehow thought RPGs were too nerdy. (I’m not kidding.) The rules were divided across five, short handbooks, all contained within the game’s box set.
There Are Still Concerns
Execution aside, publishing multiple subsystems, or even just one excessively complicated one, is not without its concerns. Players don’t want to purchase a nonnegligible amount of product just to move from one level of abstraction to the next. To allay this concern, the core rulebooks should disclose alternate subsystems even if an introductory box set exists. This leads to at least three other issues. The first issue is that game play could be slowed to a crawl if the rules get too complicated, even if you know exactly how they work. This could result in your advanced system almost never being used, making them a wasted effort. Ergo, there will still have to be trade-offs on that advanced system in order for it to have practical value. The second issue is that the core rulebooks could get too long if there are too many alternate subsystems across the entire game system. For both issues, game designers must pick their battles when deciding which rules to abstract/simplify. Perhaps that’s what’s raising my concerns here. Maybe they’ve picked their battles, and I just don’t like the ones they’ve picked, or maybe I don’t even perceive the battles they’ve won and therefore don’t appreciate them. I just know what gives me the most headaches as a DM and looking at all the PHBs and DMGs I’ve used, most have a little room to spare. Also, this is why I’m suggesting only two subsystems and only for combat, where one subsystem is just a compatible extension of the other.
For the record, the third issue, which for now I’ll call the Head of the Table writing method for now, will be discussed in a later post.
It’s All About Me
Let me know when I can stop apologizing.
Believe it or not, I know it’s a lot to ask of game designers to incorporate a second, simplified ruleset for combat, especially considering that my opinion may be a minority one. However, I suspect it would cut down on tension at the table, and designing in-game conflict resolution systems is the primary function of the game designer. Campaign settings are nice, but many people write their own. Not many write their own combat systems, and most can’t do that well. If any system is appropriate for division into a beginner and advanced system, it’s combat. So why not have your cake and eat it too? You could appeal to both the rules-light and rules-heavy crowds, broadening your customer base.
In general, I prefer a thorough system. Considering the conversation above, you can see why. Lightening the rules has led to a notion of DM empowerment in order to make the game playable, but it creates far more “us v. DM” tension than I enjoy at my table regardless of whether I’m behind the DM screen. The conversation above couldn’t occur often if we were playing 1e. I could point to the dice on the table, and that’d largely be the end of it. The biggest problem I’ve faced as a DM is the fact that many players don’t like to lose. By “lose,” I mean fail to solve a puzzle, miss a major piece of treasure, take a single hit point of damage, or get surprised. Just try to kill the average player’s character, and you’ll see how angry they can get. But the dice don’t lie. Thorough rules lead to predictable, and thus fair, results. Though it failed in clarity, 1e had the right idea. The FASA Star Trek RPG got it right. None of that would ever stop a DM from customizing those rules to suit their needs, especially if elements of the advanced subsystem were presented as attachable modules to the basic subsystem. I suspect multiple attachable modules would be harder to implement while maintaining balance, but 1e armor class adjustments, weapon speeds, and weapon lengths were effectively detachable rules that many people ignored, and the game was still playable. I’m looking for a well-defined subsystem that provides a clearer roadmap.
*sigh*
Hey, you chose game design as a career. You have no choice but to try to make me happy.
This is an important movie to me. As always, I’m going to be vague about why. There was a time when, for better or worse (worse, really, but necessary), I asserted my “independence.” This movie was part of that in a strange way. I will say that this is the first movie I saw in the theaters because I got on a bus, rode up to the (now closed) Aspen Hill movie theater, and bought a ticket with my own money. Twice. So, this movie is really important to me for reasons that don’t apply to any of you. Nevertheless, based on everything I’ve heard, I couldn’t believe how good its numbers are. Though I’m not sure how “scientific” Rotten Tomatoes is, I’m certain our personal experiences are even less so, so I shouldn’t be too surprised. Here are my viewing notes.
This movie starts with such high hopes, having us relive the most heartbreaking loss in Star Trek history.
That cadet that wanted a ceremony was a dingbat.
Christopher Lloyd was awesome as Kruge, and as with the Reliant, it was cool to see a new type of Klingon ship.
Are the Klingons still using 8-track tapes?
Why would anyone deal with the Klingons knowing they kill anyone working with them? Oh, wait I know why. Because the script says so.
The existence of Spacedock was also a no-brainer, but it was still cool to see it. The Excelsior was even better. As I said in yesterday’s Wrath of Khan post (and just above), it was neat to see other ship designs that we know must exist. The Excelsior represented the future as far as we knew; same-but-different. Who cares if Scotty liked it? The FASA Star Trek RPG really scratched that itch, but there’s nothing like seeing it on the big screen.
Scotty learning of his new assignment wasn’t the last time Starfleet told personnel their new assignments in casual conversation.
Hey, I know that Klingon!
Was Maltz once a prosecutor for the Klingon Empire?
And here’s another one: The USS Grissom. Another same-but-different design.
David’s hatred for Kirk was intense in the novelization, but in the movie, his brief interaction was polite. None of his thoughts on the matter were explored because there wasn’t any time to do so. The same can be said for David’s romantic relationship with Saavik, which wasn’t even hinted at in this movie. I remember a scene where they were criticized for taking the risky move of holding hands while being transported. Even more, Saavik’s Romulan side came out in the book. She was ferocious when provoked.
Hey, I know that Klingon!
As I mentioned yesterday, the novelization of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan didn’t have the “remember” scene in it.
Admiral Morrow was a dope. How can he not understand “Vulcan mysticism”? He must have witnessed neck pinches and, more importantly, mind melds. Plus, his mustache sucks, though it could be worse.
The highlight of Allan Miller’s career.
“How many fingers do I have up.” “It’s his revenge for all those arguments he lost.” “Up your shaft.”
🙂
I remember an interview with Nichelle Nichols. She was initially disappointed in the size of her role. She thought it was too small but eventually was happy with it considering how important it was. The novelization went into her role much more deeply.
I hoped we’d see James B. Sikking again. The reason we didn’t is because Sulu took over as captain of the Excelsior. In fact, in the novel, he was already assigned to do so. As they were stealing the Enterprise, Sulu reflected on how he was throwing away that opportunity. This also explains why This brings up an anecdote. George Takei lobbied heavily for Sulu to become captain of his own ship. I remember Howard Stern making fun of him for it, saying, “You realize that Sulu becoming captain of another ship means you’re out of a job, right?” Takei stood firm. I guess it worked out. By the time he got the Excelsior, it was this crew’s final movie.
So, they find a young Spock. That raises an issue for me. When Spock’s consciousness goes back into his body, what happens to the personality of the new Spock. However briefly he existed, he’s a separate person. Is the new Spock wiped out, or are the two personalities merged? What are the ethical ramifications either way?
That Klingon dog was ridiculous.
“Range, 5,000 killicams.” Why? Why are they speaking entirely in English but use a Klingon unit of measurement? They’re speaking Klingon, of course, and we’re hearing what we would assuming there was a universal translator present. Wouldn’t the universal translator also translate the range into units we’d understand?
The conversation between Kirk and his son, David, was the most cordial David was regarding Kirk in the novel. Then David dies, and Saavik says, “Admiral, David is dead.” After that, she goes nuts and attacks the Klingons. This is what I was referring to when I said she was ferocious.
I was hoping Kirk would say, “No tricks once on board.” That would have been a good call out to the Original Series episode, Day of the Dove. That reminds me: Kang is currently running around somewhere in the Klingon Empire.
Beaming down to a dying planet was a risky plan.
Klingons are like the Drow in D&D. Their society and psyche could never work in the real world, but we overlook that because they’re cool. That is, if Klingon captains are so eager to die, you won’t have many qualified captains running around. Deep Space Nine pulled back on that a little bit, but perhaps not enough. They are cool though.
You know, Kirk left the remaining Klingons on the planet knowing they’d die.
The refusion scene had me thinking about Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Boy did that drag even though it really wasn’t that long. They wanted to give you the feeling that it took hours, but the verisimilitude was broken because no one left to pee. The same could be said about Spock wandering around in a confused state (except the peeing part). Overall, though, a good ending.
Continuing my revisit of all the Star Trek movies brings me to the gold standard of sci-fi movies, liked by virtually everyone that saw it. This entry is a little shorter than the last, not so much because the movie is shorter, but because I kept getting distracted. I wanted to watch the movie itself.
In an early version of the script, the opening scene took place in the middle of the movie, so it wasn’t a surprise. I’m glad it didn’t stay there.
Everyone I’ve ever heard say the name of the Kobayashi Maru pronounces it ma-RU. I do so myself. It’s actually pronounced MA-ru. Aren’t we all stupid?
If one photon torpedo can take out your helmsman, your ship’s design sucks. Depending on whom you ask, ordinary cars of today make the driver’s seat the safest place in a car.
Saavik seems irritated. So illogical. Of course, in the novelization it’s revealed that she’s half Romulan.
Shatner is such a wonderfully shitty actor.
The Reliant was wonderful. Not only was it a cool design in general, but it was also the first starship design we saw that wasn’t a Constitution or Enterprise class. Sometimes all it takes is a single piece of data to inspire your imagination to run wild and fill in the gaps they don’t have time to provide. The FASA Star Trek RPG helped me in that regard.
The Reliant’s scanners suck. Weather notwithstanding, how did they think that a bunch of humanoids and cargo carriers were just a single “particle of pre-animate matter”? Their computers must also have sucked. How did they not know that there was a colony of genetic supermen living on the planet next door? When Terrell and Chekov saw the cargo carriers, they should have figured it out. *sigh* The things we tolerate for drama. And yes, I know Chekov never met Khan, but that doesn’t mean he wouldn’t know the story. He served on the Enterprise for years after that incident, which was a matter of Starfleet record. That part was not a continuity error.
Now that’s what I call an earwig.
When I was a kid watching this in 1983 (when it hit TV), I was confused by Spock referring to Saavik as “Mr. Saavik.” I thought, “Wait, is that a dude?” I should have figured it out. My favorite episode of any Star Trek series is Balance of Terror, and in it an officer refers to a female subordinate as “mister.” The subordinate happens to be his fiancee. The FASA Star Trek RPG taught me the generic use of that term. Never underestimate the educational value of RPGs.
Piloting a ship out of space dock? I never thought the buildup was worth the payoff. I’m sure I could do it. All Saavik did was say, “Hey, you guys, do your jobs,” and everyone else did all the work. Managers think way too much of themselves.
Khan’s followers know how to talk to him: Appeal to his inflated ego.
I never forgot an interview that Ricardo Montalban did on the character. A specific part always stayed with me: Basing his approach to the character on this overwhelming rage that built up over 15 years or so.
Go to 3:12 to hear what I’m referencing.
A jump scene (bloody arms) immediately after a fake jump scene (door opening to Kirk’s face)? Not scary.
“But he was late. He had to get back to Reliant in time to blow you to bits.”
Was that supposed to be a joke? It wasn’t funny. It didn’t even appear to be an attempt at funny. What an odd line.
The worm thing continued to scream even after it was liquified by Kirk’s phaser. Duh.
As I said, Shatner is such a wonderfully shitty actor.
I was annoyed about a scene in the 2009 Star Trek reboot. In Kirk’s talk about his cheat on the Kobayashi Maru (yeah, I just said that in my head as ma-RU), he mentions that he received a commendation for original thinking. The fact that the universe was rebooted doesn’t explain why Star Fleet would swing 180° and place him on suspension.
“Explain it to them.”
Yeah, okay, since you’re threatening to kill us, we’ll stop going into the nebula. We’ll stay out here so that you can kill us more easily. Not much of a threat, huh?
Kirk also knows how to talk to Khan: Appeal to his inflated ego.
The way Kirk beat Khan was perfect. Exploit the fact that he’s from the 21st century, and thus doesn’t think three-dimensionally. (We’re all assuming there are no aircraft pilots among Khan’s bridge crew.)
After seeing Star Trek III and reading the novelization, I went back to the novelization of this movie. It confirmed my recollection: The “remember” wasn’t in the book. How could a book not have something important that the movie did?
As a kid, I was disappointed that Khan didn’t see Kirk get away. Then I grew up and shed such prideful notions.
Spock’s death was heartbreaking, especially for a kid watching it.
On a final note, I think it’s appropriate to provide this visual.
I’ll miss you, old friend … until I play you again a week from Saturday.
Despite my many hours playing Dungeons & Dragons since 2005 (after a 24-year absence from the game), I’m really not much of an RPG gamer. I love FASA Star Trek RPG, but what do you expect? I loved Enterprise! I’ve played Gamma World 4e, Legend of the Five Rings (3rd edition) three times, Dragon Age RPG (Green Ronin Publishing) a few times (mostly as Game Master), and Star Wars Saga Edition once (again, as Game Master). I enjoyed all of those games but played Call of Cthulhu d100 twice and hated it. If I’ve played any other RPGs with dice, I don’t remember it off the top of my head, so apparently they didn’t make much of an impact. (I’ve also played the diceless RPG, Fiasco, which was great.)
I’d like to broaden my horizons as far as RPGs are concerned, so when my friend, Rishi, offered me the chance to join his new Marvel RPG game, I jumped at the chance. I’ve heard good things about it, so I was intrigued even though I never read comic books. (Come to think of it, I’m not a good geek in general. I don’t play video games, and I find Dr. Who to be retardis.) I wanted to play the mechanics everyone was talking about, so I agreed to play for a couple of sessions before gracefully bowing out.
I don’t think I’ll be bowing out. Our first session was a lot of fun for me. My approach to RPGs has always been to focus on a character concept, where the character has some interesting, overriding character trait, usually but not always a flaw. I then play that trait to the extreme. With my group, that wasn’t only tolerated but welcomed with open arms. As comic book fans, the other players liked the fact that I played my character’s traits so faithfully, even to the detriment of the team, because these are the characters the players love.
Clearly, I’m the baddest ass of the bunch!
Incidentally, I played a guy by the name of Hank Pym, a.k.a., Yellow Jacket. I’d never heard of him but am sure that means something to a lot of you. It also meant something to my cousin, Tom, who still collects comics. When Rishi gave me a list of characters from which to choose, I passed the ones in favor of the Super Human Registration Act to Tom, who told me to pick Yellow Jacket. It’s worked out so far. An insecure, nerdy guy who 1) supports government registration of people, and 2) gains experience points by blaming his own major failing on a loved one? Yeah, I can do this.
Mechanics
And that (finally) brings me to my first point. The mechanics of the game have their flaws, but overall it’s an fun system, especially for someone like me.
The Bad: The dice rolling is unnecessarily convoluted, requiring you to figure out which types of dice to roll (d4, d6, d8, d10, or d12) and in what number every single time you roll. Once I’m used to it, it’ll probably become second nature, but it creates a barrier for entry. If I were the rule rather than the exception, the group probably would have moved on and never played it again. Instead, I was the odd man out. I was the only one that didn’t have experience with the game and wasn’t a comic book reader. Keeping this game going will be easy despite the unnecessary complexity, but I don’t think that will be the case for all groups.
The Good: Rewarding me for domestic violence? Brilliant! I know that sounds bad, but stay with me. No one’s perfect, not even superheroes. We all have flaws, and a role-playing game that doesn’t hide from that fact, even among the heroes, is exactly what I need to make me happy. (Also, I don’t actually have to beat my wife in the game. It’s not necessarily that specific.) Needless to say, this doesn’t always go over well in other systems. In 4e D&D, I have a stereotypical, senile old man, Luigi, who’s great for comic relief, but when I play him in character during combat or role-play, he usually makes bad decisions. It’s never once actually hurt the group when all was said and done — he was responsible for winning a “social skill challenge” in one adventure despite his eccentricity — but while it’s occurring, it’s tough to convince the other players of that. Some people get very annoyed by his erratic behavior. With Marvel RPG, no one is complaining, and I doubt this is a characteristic of my group itself. The mechanics of the game actually encourage me and them to act the fool at times. And it works.
The Good but with a Caveat: The initiative system is fantastic, but it wouldn’t work in a game like D&D where building a character to go first has so many advantages. Other game systems would have to be tweaked dramatically to allow for the Marvel RPG initiative system. Still, it’s something every game publisher should at least consider.
It’s All About IP
My second point is, as always, that the world lives and dies based on intellectual property law, and this is the more important of the two points. IP law governs everything, and there’s a lesson to be learned here. RPG publishing is a low-profit exercise. It’s tough to do well in it, and whether most publishers will admit it or not, it’s ability to succeed as well as it has depends a great deal on the continued success of Wizards of the Coast. WotC produces Dungeons and Dragons (among others), and does so with the mighty weight of Hasbro behind it. They’re able to do things no other RPG publishers can do, and the entire industry benefits as a result. However, even WotC could hold on to the Star Wars license for only so long. With such a low profit-margin in the first place, having to give up a non-negligible chunk of that in the licensing fee reduces the profit margin even more. Also, unless you’re willing to give up and even bigger chunk of the profits, you have to settle with a non-exclusive license (if it’s even offered), meaning you won’t even be the only game of your kind available. It’s a no-win situation over the long haul.
With that in mind, be disappointed but not angry. I’ve never met or spoke with Margaret Weis, so I have no inside information here, but I’d put good money on the bet that she had a very good reason for letting the license go. This isn’t the fault of Ms. Weis, or of Marvel. It’s just the nature of the industry. The game was selling well, but the numbers just don’t add up in the long run. Everyone needs the core rulebook, but sales of add-ons will always be at least a little less, and often will be much less.
Fortunately, there’s a lot of material out there with even more to come, and many gamers will put together supplemental materials in the form of PDFs freely downloadable from their private sites. This game won’t die anytime soon, and that’s a good thing.
The End
Despite my optimism in the two sentences immediately preceding this one, it feels like there’s been a death in the family (not that bad, though; on the level of a step-cousin). 🙂 I just wanted to offer a eulogy of sorts, if for no other reason than to make myself feel good about it. It’s a good game, we’ll all continue to play it, but like all good things, eventually it must come to an end, and no one is to blame for that. Gaming will go on.
Play What You Want 