What I see is an interrelated system.

Say we do GURPS PRIME PLANETS

This would include say 24 sample planets, a planet generator, a system generator.

This would also include a couple of vehicles (most vehicles waiting for GPvehicles), a sample outpost and town (most waiting for GPcolonies), a few NPCs, and so forth.

Once we have done GURPS PRIME PLANETS any of the others could include another sample planet or two and could even include an alternate chart for the planet or system generator.

By Robert Gilson (Bobcat) on Friday, January 28, 2005 - 08:56 pm: Edit

I like the idea for the specialized books. I personally think they will sell better than a general zine like the old MPA.

By Hugh Bishop (Wildman) on Thursday, February 03, 2005 - 02:56 pm: Edit

A magazine could support SFU conversions to other RPG formats as well. D20 and Hero system come to mind.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Thursday, February 03, 2005 - 03:27 pm: Edit

You run into a problem with having Gurps, D20, Heroes, and D6 in a single product, that being they all insist on getting royalties. Well, D20 doesn't, but if you pay royalties to Gurps, Heroes, AND D6 you end up losing money.

By Hugh Bishop (Wildman) on Thursday, February 03, 2005 - 11:32 pm: Edit

I learn things about the industry every day on this board. That must be why all the industry magazines are focused on one system and why the ones that supported multiple systems have died out.

By F. Douglas Wall (Knarf) on Friday, February 04, 2005 - 01:43 am: Edit

There's also the fact that most of them are "house organs," published by the people who make the games themselves. This means that they don't have to worry about getting the license to print game material and they don't have to worry about losing money, since the point is to sell games, not necessarily magazines.

By George M. Ebersole (George) on Friday, April 08, 2005 - 01:45 pm: Edit

Myself, a PD mag isn't anything I'd buy. Largely because if I wanted a Trek RPG (and various materials for it) I'd just buy the "official" Trek RPG materials.

Don't get me wrong. I've had a good time playing SFB, exploring the SFU and posting fan-fic, but I think SFB, in general, has run its course as far as being able to stretch more gaming mileage out of it. But that's just my personal take.

I bought GURPS PD as a writer's guide for possible future submissions to whatever periodical emerged. But I never had any intent of playing GURPS PD, nor will I ever. As a gaming consumer if I wanted to use SFU material in a Trep RPG, then I'd just import whatever SFU thing catches my fancy into my Trek campaign (translate stats, deck plans, and so forth), and use whatever "official" Trek ruleset is on the market.

I'm not that familiar with GURPS popularity, but if there's already a periodical out there for it, then it might worth while to just ask the GURPS powers that be to add a PD section to it. My guess is this may not be possible, but, then again, I'm just a former customer.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Friday, April 08, 2005 - 01:52 pm: Edit

I am not aware of any such periodical.

SFB says have not dropped in six years, but have held steady or increased. New product releases have not dropped. SFB has plenty of mileage left it in.

As for the "official trek RPG" just where is it? I went to their booth at GTS and in a thousand square feet of Lord of the Rings I found one 8.5x11 poster for Trek. New products? Faugedaboudit.

The bottom line is that for all practical purposes Prime Directive IS the only trek RPG in active production and development with a steady string of new products. And only PD is being made for multiple systems.

By William F. Hostman (Aramis) on Monday, April 11, 2005 - 10:23 pm: Edit

The current Trek Gaming mag is a fanzine, released free, but with some serious production values (for a PDF, that is).

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Tuesday, April 12, 2005 - 12:06 am: Edit

William: Could you provide a link?

By Richard Wells (Rwwells) on Tuesday, April 12, 2005 - 01:08 am: Edit

Loren: The Decipher affliated webzine is reposited at http://starbase-coda.com/books.htm amongst other sites. The related LotR webzine is an even better work though both are drying up.

By William F. Hostman (Aramis) on Tuesday, April 12, 2005 - 09:47 pm: Edit

Richard beat me to it...

By George M. Ebersole (George) on Monday, April 18, 2005 - 04:31 pm: Edit

SVC; I think SJ Games does that Pyramid thing for their GURPS and other game systems. Maybe it might be worth it to create an online SFB mag for both SFB and GURPS PD. Or maybe just create a GURPS PD subscriber page(s) with all kinds of neat stuff for PD.

Just some ideas. I obviously don't know the viability of any of this, but the folks at Traveller and SJ Games seem to be having some good success with their online gaming mags.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Monday, April 18, 2005 - 05:07 pm: Edit

George: Pyamid is two things. one is a web BBS which we already have (and ours is free). The other is a promo Email newsletter that tells you about what's on the pay-per-view web site. We probably should do one but until Leanna hires some people there isn't the manpower for it. [Leanna: get the hint, dear?]

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Monday, April 18, 2005 - 05:20 pm: Edit

SVC: If you did do such a thing it would be a big hit if you wrote a very short one page fiction piece about something in history. The source for such a thing might be excerpts from upcomming fiction, musings on the sort of infighting that goes on in the military or in politics, a joke piece based on a RW experience of yours or a technical explaination of some unit or weapon. I've seen how these things sometimes just fall onto your lap.

Us SFBer's would be chomping at the bit to read it each time (monthly?). I don't know if you can tell how many people read the Company Weblog but I'll bet it pretty much everyone here.

Beyond that it would contain the regular new release news and maybe some excerpts of the Co. Weblog or the ADB News.

Eventually, all these shorts could be reprinted in a single publication for sale.

By Joshua J Brumley (Sweeper) on Sunday, August 07, 2005 - 11:52 am: Edit

SVC, Pay per View isn't quite the right term. While you do pay an annual subsrcription, it's closer to a weekly magazine in e format with the ability to access all of their back issues as well as access playtest materials from SJG and other companies. Personaly, I wouldn't see a problem with getting with them to publish PD material like articles and the like through Pyramid or even JTAS. If you could work it correctly, you could even publish semi generic scenarios that could be use for all the systems. For example, the group is a Fed Prime Team and are called to investigate possible outside influence on a world that is protected by the Prime Directive. The Influence turns out to be Pirates, Klingons, Romluans,(whatever). And the team has to stop them while keeping cover. Now all the books have stats on the 'Typical' versions of these npcs, you could put some special phrases in there, like the leader is 'somewhat smarter' than the rest of the insurgents. That would let the GM know to up the intelligence stat for the leader. The locals could be described in a similar manner so that same GM could whip up stats for local npcs. In this way you could save some time by not having to generate stats for all licensed games and maybe save some page count for other things. Granted, it's not a perfect system, but I've seen it used to good effect over the years. Just a thought.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Sunday, August 07, 2005 - 06:20 pm: Edit

JJB: My use of the PPV term was metaphorical not literal. I know what it is (read it now and then). I don't know that I would see a problem sending a little stuff to Pyramid now and then either (although it does not do what a putative RPG magazine might do). You might email your idea to Ken Burnside since he's in charge of (1) RPGs, (2) dealing with SJG, and (3) promoting the company and its game systems.

By George M. Ebersole (George) on Monday, August 22, 2005 - 04:23 pm: Edit

If I wanted to submit PD fiction, do I send it to you, Petrick or Ken?

By Jack Snyder (Jack) on Monday, August 22, 2005 - 08:33 pm: Edit

First post, but thought I'd chime in on the topic so I hope I'm not saying anything that has already been said.

Decipher's Trek is all but dead. The fan webzine mentioned above looks very nice and afaik is assembled with basic software - I do play Decipher's LOTR game and the fan webzine for that is very well done.

Personally, I don't like Next Generation or anything after it. Star trek for me is Original Series and Animated Series. Everything else (movies included) is self-proclaimed _based on_ Star Trek.

I bought LUG's Classic Trek game hoping it would be pure Classic Trek. It wasn't, even though that was the "hook" for that line.
Prime Directive (bought the entire run here folks, just this week) is more true to Trek than anything I've seen so far. No doubt the lack of access to new "official" material is the factor here. That IMO is actually a good thing.

The one thing that FASA did exceptionally right was to realize that people want adventures. Mini, Maxi or even seeds.

Personally, I never understood the driving need to invent a ship-class due to 1 or 2 simple differences, so sourcebooks there would not be of interest to me.

I'm assuming since Prime Directive has Caitians that the Animated Series is open for exploration. A Sourcebook on that would be nice.

Now, the main topic...
'Zines. Fan or official are fairly easily produced. You can make them in Microsoft Word actually. There are plenty of free PDF creation programs available so there's no need to even purchase that. Perhaps a conversation with the Decipher Fanzine guys and gals would be of help.

The fanzine people place game ads at the end of the zine, which is probably more advertisement than Decipher grants its own creation.

By Gary Plana (Garyplana) on Monday, August 22, 2005 - 10:13 pm: Edit

Jack, we've actually had negative feedback re adventures. What we're trying to do with the Sourcebooks is to give people enough background data to create their own. I dunno, though. With ADB's print-in-house capability, maybe adventure books will become feasible in the future, but for now we have other things to get into print first. But like I said, I dunno.

We don't have Caitians or any of the Animated races, except the Kzinti, and our Kzinti are somewhat different from Niven Kzinti (and before you ask -- no, we can't do official versions of the Caitians and Edoans and so forth, sorry).

By Jack Snyder (Jack) on Tuesday, August 23, 2005 - 04:33 am: Edit

Well, thanks for the information on that - truly surprised on the adventure feedback. No worries on Animated stuff, just would have been nice to see it expanded a bit.

Another site is doing fine on that:
http://www.startrekanimated.com/tas_main.html
Looks like they are even getting an original writer to jump on board.

Re: Caitians. I just bought the books and have only been able to skim through them so far (less than a week in ownership and oodles of reading yet to do for them). I saw various illos of felines while skimkming and knew they weren't Kzinti, so my apologies. I know FASA used them, so possibly there was confusion there as well. Shame really then if you can't, cause the Animated Series is the Red-headed step-child of Star Trek for some reason.

I noticed that alternate starship combat is re-directed to Gurps Space, but a blurb is given that a book is in development for SFU that will cull the relevant stuff - Star Fleet. Any projected dates for this?

For the record, I played SFB ages ago (rulebook then had a green cover? Well that's what _I_ remember it looked like.)

SFB is perfectly fine as a wargame, but not-so-much for RPG. The RPG has generated some interest for me in your card combat game as a possible temporary solution though.

Print-in-house. Nice. Maybe something like Deadlands Dime-novels? Small, cheap and you get fiction as well.

Thanks again for the reply.

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Tuesday, August 23, 2005 - 10:43 am: Edit

Jack, Steve Cole is currently creating a new Star Ship combat game called Federation Commander. In a way it is SFB lite and should be much more suitable for RPG play. It is going through more playtesting but is set for release soon (this year for sure).

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Tuesday, August 23, 2005 - 10:45 am: Edit

In thinking about a PD magazine I realize that such a thing isn't possible until there is a large enough following. When ADB HAS TO do a magazine then one should be done. Until there is a large demand from a large following it just isn't profitable.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Tuesday, August 23, 2005 - 12:07 pm: Edit

George: All fiction goes to me and only to me.

Magazine: we'll talk later. I'm thinking cross-platform on this one.

Adventures: Bottom line is they don't sell. With print on demand, we can do very short run items and might try one in the future.

Fed Commander should solve the need for RPG space combat on larger ships. For smaller ships, each system can use its original and unique rules.

We can't do a gurps space combat system until SJG publishes the relevant books (space, vehicles, maybe ultratech).

Expanded use of trek stuff: We're licensed to use what we're using. There just isn't much trek stuff we can use that we haven't used. Doesn't mean it has all made it into PD yet.

By Marc Gillham (Mgillham) on Tuesday, August 23, 2005 - 12:17 pm: Edit

Regarding adventures, possibly there is some mileage in the approach Hero Games is taking. They too reached the conclusion that print adventures "don't sell" and have started a range of cheap 'n' cheerful ones. They are produced quickly (therefore cheaply), so no fancy layout or illustrations, and are typically 8-15 pages long costing $3-$5.