Archive through April 15, 2020
Star Fleet Universe Discussion Board: Prime Directive RPG: General Discussions:
Archive through April 15, 2020
I can visualize the initial controversy about the general populace of the Federation agreeing to abide by the PD. Probably a lot who claimed it was astro-correctness or some such thing.
I can see this being one of those; "How does it work in your game?" questions.
In the Horta episode, you had a large mining company that followed the rules, with Mudd's Women, the miners were more independent, willing to to extort Mudds freedom from the U.S.S. Enterprise. Then there are people like Mudd, and Cyrano Jones, who skate the line on respectability.
IIRC, Adm, there's one scene in "Mudd's Women" where Spock is listing appropriate punishments for a variety of crimes Mudd has committed. Two that come significantly to mind are "Death by hanging," and "Death by phaser." In short, he appeared to be one of those... Things... That lived his life in as open of a defiance of law as he possibly could; a "Three Striker" is ever there was one. Irredeemable, and worthy of spending the rest of his life surrounded by some five hundred android copies of his ex-wife. 
OTOH, with regards to PD, it seems quite perfect for a campaign to center around tracking someone like Mudd. While it would require a better GM than I could ever be to keep it well paced and interesting and providing adequate clues (and players who are much keener on picking up said clues than I will ever be able to), the threat level is low enough for a small number of player characters on board their own security skiff, IF craft of that type are capable of interstellar travel...
(... And someone comes up with deckplans for one? )
And yet, Mudd keeps getting loose. In all three of his episodes, (The third one was in The Animated Series, Mudd's Passion) He faces little in the way of long term penalties, regardless of his getting captured three times by the Enterprise crew, let alone any other captures.
It is my understanding that the seeker is based on the Suleiman 100 ton scout/courier from GURPS Traveller i.e. the little wedge shaped ship that has been in Traveller since its first edition. Deck plans are widely available. The Courier is also based on Traveller, if I'm not mistaken.
Jeff, see Captains Log 53 for the space truck.
Garth L. Getgen
Jeff: You may want to check out White Wolf's character Samuel Haight to see why recurring annoyance NPCs are not a good idea for most RPG campaigns.
Indeed. If not done well, such a character can damage a campaign, destroying players motivation.
If the annoying NPC shows up too often, the players may pursue the NPC exclusively to "settle matters...."
Instead of a "Sherlock Holmes vs. Dr. Moriaty" confrontation, it could escalate to a parody of grand theft auto with substantial NPC casualties of innocent citizens.
No one wins.
Believe you, me, Sgt G, I've been pestering the local store(s) about Captain's Log for some time now. The only store owner who's given me any sort of answer says that the local distributor isn't carrying it.
Much as I prefer supporting local small businesses, I've gotten fed up enough that I'll likely be ordering it directly pretty soon.
A criminal getting loose all too easily...
Your post, Adm, makes me REALLY want to rant on how some lawmakers seem to encourage blatant disobedience of laws they don't like; a rant that WILL have me fed to alligators...
ADM: It is my understanding that the seeker is based on the Suleiman 100 ton scout/courier from GURPS Traveller"
Originally, yes, that was the ship. However, I believe SVC decided to invent a new ship that fills the same role but with a different enough design such that it eliminates any confusion about which ship is from which game.
Garth L. Getgen
Sgt G: Ah, missed that change. Thank you.
I pre-ordered my CL53 in July - still waiting for it to arrive in the UK......
Stephen, did you order from ADB? If so, I'd suggest you e-mail Leanna. I didn't think ADB took pre-orders.
Garth L. Getgen
We don't take pre-orders, so he didn't order from us. All CL53 orders we had were sent within 24 hours. I think Leanna sells some stuff to a dealer in UK but I don't know that side of the business.
Sgt G,
Not from ADB, from Leisure Games in the UK, who are usually pretty good (and I believe Mr Cole visited them during his very brief European Tour a few years ago). I'm guessing there must be an issue with the distributor.
I'm at a business meeting in Arizona in a few weeks; if I don't get anything from Leisure Games, I'll put an order direct with ADB (who have been very good in the past at sending things to hotels for me when I am in the USA).
Leanna says we shipped CL53 direct to Leisure Games about six weeks ago. That would have included any preorders. I could guess what happened but speculation would not be fair.
I suggest you ask LG what happened to your preorder.
Thank you - I will nag them immediately!
Some day, I'd love to see some additional races added to the Feds/ Klingons.
Maybe as a CL 3 page article.
Other empires seem to not allow the locals to participate.
So a Fed race of intelligent purple communally intelligent spider monkeys.
A Klingon race of green furry Snake people with 3 arms.
Whatever.
From your post, Mike, it looks like you've got a couple already? Between us (and whomever else might read/post on this thread), I do as well.
One race I have (strictly in my OWN fictional universe as of this time, but whom I'd be happy to share with the SFU) are a race of mobile vessels for plant seeds. They are a transluscent, amorphous people with two significant castes; a short lived, unintelligent caste, and a longer lived caste who are the people encountered by outsiders.
These folks have a long established religion based on servitude, and it prevades EVERY aspect of their lives. As a function of this religion, every one of them has ingrained in them the need to seek out their unintelligent brethren and tranfer some of their own cytoplasm into them; it's when that's done that they go from being nothing more than a blob of seed transport to acquiring sentience (and have their lifespans expanded from a couple days, maybe a week at most, to the four to six decades of a sentient).
As can be expected for a race of intelligent plant seeds, their view on death is different from that of their animal friends; upon the "Death" of their seed transport form, they're buried and a new tree will (usually) sprout from the "Corpse." Within their (all encompassing) faith, this is the ultimate sign of rejuvenation.
Integrating them in to standard crews is likely to be difficult; they communicate with eachother by means of tactile messaging (tiny pseudopods touch and send communication signals/chemicals) for most purposes, but do have a limited "Language" (of sorts) by means of color changes and photophores within their body; most of which are in the low ultraviolet range.
As you might guess, their perceptions are also different from galactic normals.
Still, they can undoubtedly carry a communication computer inside of their bodies, so it can be possible to integrate them into standard crews.
The books are now in print!
Does anyone have a complete list of published Prime Directive scenarios (for any/all rulesets)? If not, I can start compiling one, and you can help me fill out the holes.
Second request...
Does anyone have a complete list of published Prime Directive scenarios (for any/all rulesets)? If not, I can start compiling one, and you can help me fill out the holes.
If it just doesn't exist, that's fine, I just would love to hear from you all, one way or the other. Thanks!
Philip, sorry. I got distracted with all that is going on. No, we don't have that list.
Hmmmmm, think there was one GURPs (Hydran profile and Fed FF [Burke] deck plan) and three PDs (Grad Exercise, Uprise, and Prime 1 (very surprise all this came up without digging deep in the basement) ...
Well, I made a start, with some assistance from Mark Costello:
| No. | Year | Stock # | Scenario Title | Author | Collection |
| 1 | 1993 | 5801 | Web of Darkness | Costello, Mark | Prime Directive |
| 2 | 1993 | 5801 | The Kam’srit Riddle | Olsen, Timothy D. & Costello | Prime Directive |
| 3 | 1993 | 5611 | Rescue on Roon | Plana, Gary | Captain’s Module T: Tournament Book |
| 4 | 1994 | 5802 | Graduation Exercise | Olsen & Costello | |
| 5 | 1994 | 5806 | Uprising! | Costello | |
| 6 | 1995 | 5803 | Code Name: Innuendo (Solitaire) | Olsen & Costello | Prime Adventures 1 |
| 7 | 1995 | 5803 | The Wandering Child | Plana | Prime Adventures 1 |