Does anyone have experience with tabletop Trek games? Like Decipher, FASA, etc. Are they fun to play, and can you capture the feel of Trek with them? Would love to hear about experiences.
Do you mean RPGs? I would associate 'Tabletop' more with board games. I've never played a Star Trek RPG (although I'd love to) but I have a few Trek board games. 'Star Trek: Expeditions' is good for one play but kind of lame after that. 'Star Trek: Fleet Captains' is a lot of fun and very replayable. 'Star Trek: Attack Wing' is a tabletop spaceship fighting game and is a lot of fun.
Yeah the board games seemed like they could be fun, but very complex. I've heard they were well represented by computer games like Starfleet Command. I didn't think there was ever a computer RPG that really captured the feel of Star trek, though. And these free form sims on the internet usually don't stay active, or aren't very 'realistic'. So I've been considering using a simple tabletop RPG system like FATE to do a good old game of exploration and seeking out new lifeforms. Not sure if I could find anyone in person to play, but I think there are internet systems out there. Even if its just skype or a chat room. I just didn't know if there were good systems out there and if anyone had any interest in that kind of thing.
Star Trek Catan is fun. A good variation on the original game. The character cards are a great addition to the game formula. I've very much enjoyed playing Battlestar Galactica: The Board Game and would love for Trek to get its own game in that vain. Given the character element of that game, it would be quite interesting to have it span the 5 series, you could have the crew categories: Command, Sciences, Operations, Auxiliary and Enemy Leaders. It won't happen, but it would be amazing.
If you get into playing or designing scenarios, Attack Wings can be a lot of fun. As an almost straight adaptation of the Star Wars X-Wing Miniatures game, it can seem like things are a little disconnected. However, you can do a lot by planning objectives or playing different factions against one another. The earlier models weren't great in terms of quality, but newer ships are looking very good. You should avoid the two Star Trek deckbuilding games. Cryptozoic basic rethemes the same game over and over, and it doesn't always work.
Yeah the deckbuilding games aren't great and they have horrible rule books. Fleet Captains is awesome, can't get enough of that game. Wish I was able to play it more.
We played Fleet Captains a couple of times, I really liked it, took a bit of getting into it for SWMBO though. Then baby came along. In the last 28 months we've managed to play a grand total of 2 games of ticket to ride nordic, and 3 games of dominion
Federation Commander is one of the easiest, fastest, and funnest games of its type. The only problems are that it doesn't have the license post-TAS, so no TNG era ships, Dominion, etc. The number of modules is also a problem, but it isn't necessary to get them at all. You could play with the five main nations or against various sci fi monsters/alien ships forever and never have the same game twice. Each nation's main ship types use very different tactics from one another. There are sub-types as well, so you can pretty easily outfit a Klingon ship to use torpedoes and cloak like in TNG, if you want to. Classic Faceoff: ^ the D7 is toast if the Federation player has any idea what he is doing Fleet battle with miniatures: http://i1369.photobucket.com/albums...anderStarFleetBattlesStarTrek_zps957b7c99.jpg ^ a more common range before the maneuvering starts I would like to play Federation and Empire, which is the strategic version of the game. It truly is epic in scope: It is basically a twenty year war between the Federation, Klingons, Romulans, minor allies, and later unknown powers. There are lots of variables and literally hundreds of ships across the Alpha Octant. (it's Octant in this universe, not Quadrant)
Fleet Captains is neat, but it seldom gets played around here. Star Trek needs a short, light game rather than a complex, multi-objective, multi-hour game that is heavy and expensive, like FC or Expeditions. Unfortunately, Cryptozoic likely holds the rights to all card games. However, WizKids might be able to produce a Star Trek game in the Dice Masters style, perhaps focusing on ship to ship combat.
I taught a kid to play Federation Commander in ten minutes and completed the game in fifteen. It really is easy. It has a lot of movement. It isn't probably best if you're looking for more of a ship management type game. Starfleet Battles is the one that melts everybody's face with its rules and book-keeping.
Fleet Commander is definitely a really great game, and you have to love how cheap hex and counter games are. ADB's Star Fleet Universe is also a really fun wargame based off of Star Trek. Anyway, back to pen and paper RPG's, you have a couple of options as OP mentioned. The best option in my opinion is definitely the Decipher version. It was published in 2002 so it covers every series except for ENT. The PDF version of the Player and Narrator Guides are very easy to find on the internet and Decipher decided in 2007 to drop the project and not release anything new for the system, but it still works incredibly well with the original 7 books/guide/supplementals. There is also the far older FASA system as well. Lastly the universal RPG systems of GURPs released GURPs: Federation and GURPs: Prime Directive. Out of all the choices I would suggest Decipher's the most.
I successfully ran the FASA game for over ten years and believe that it is a perfect fit for a TOS/TAS game. I did try it with TNG, but the fit was not quite right (somehow)! Ebay has many very good published scenarios for the game, but at the end of the day, as with all RPG's it is the GM writing and running the game that "makes"it work for the players and engenders the right sort of atmosphere IMHO. And, unlike many suggestions here it is not just a starship combat game (although that is included), it is also an RPG, that can be used for shipboard and planetside action too.
I'm a dork for this stuff. I've played most of them, they're all decent after a fashion, but all have their quirks. Besides what's been mentioned here, there's also: Far Trek. Site. PDF. Where No Man Has Gone Before. Site. PDF. Lasers & Feelings. Site. PDF. And Fate Accelerated does a mean game of Star Trek. Site. Downloads.
I just became aware of Lasers and Feelings the other day. Neat little concept. I wonder if it is really only good for one-offs rather than sustained campaigns. As I put in a new thread the other day, Mayfair is going to put out a cooperative game, callled Five Year Mission. There are few details, but they should follow soon as they are demonstrating the game at Origins this weekend. Though not a Star Trek IP, Strongholds Space Cadets games (Space Cadets, Space Cadets: Dice Duels, and Space Cadets: Away Missions) have a lot of Trek flavor. Dice Duels, for some unknown reasons, uses small replicas of the Defiant.
I've tried all of the Trek RPG systems, couldn't get the right feel from any of them, and found that characters couldn't actually do some of the things they should be able to from screen canon in any of them. I think a big part of that is that an RPG has to have *some* game balance, whereas Trek has always had super-powerful equipment and relied on the characters not really thinking about all the ways they could use it. I've found that the best way to do a Trek RPG session (or campaign) is to use something that is rules-lite like Feng Shui or Fudge and get the game system out of the way of the GM's storytelling and the players' choices. It also helps, I think, to set the game in nuTrek, because one thing nuTrek did for RPG balance was to actually put a demonstrated SKILL back into the use of transporters. (Before, they were nightmarishly powerful for RPG purposes if your players have ANY imagination. )
There's another ship-combat miniatures game called A Call To Arms: Star Fleet (ACTA:SF). It's a collaboration between Amarillo Design Bureau, the creators of Star Fleet Battles and Federation Commander, and Mongoose Publishing, the creators of ACTA and ACTA:B5. Mongoose wrote the first version that, while fast and fun to play, turned out to be horrible unbalance and did not keep within ADB's desired "feel" of their Star Fleet Universe. The game has been re-written from the ground-up by ADB's staff. I haven't played it, but knowing who did the actual design / playtest / writing (hint: it was not the guys at ADB in Texas), I have high-confidence that it is a far better game now. Mongoose also publishes a version of Traveller, (why do they insist on spelling that with two Ls??), and ADB will be porting their Prime Directive universe into that game engine. They have already ported it to GURPS and D20 and D20M. Disclaimer: I do not work for nor speak for ADB, but I am not only a long-time customer of theirs, I consider Steve Cole and Steve Petrick to be good friends.
Rules light is a good way to go. That's why I prefer Fate Accelerated. It's quick and easy and the stats are focused more on the characters' personality than endless lists of skills and it's more of a story-leaning game than a traditional game. Because the original designers and Mongoose are located in the UK and that's the right way to spell it there, and of course name recognition and branding at this point.