Discuss Last Unicorn Games and Decipher RPG lore, species, etc?

[CaptChris42]

Starting my next thread, an open discussion of the lore, species, worlds, backstory and ships, of Last Unicorn Games and Decipher RPG content.

I've not delved too deep into particular books yet, beyond the Way of D'era and Fires of Armageddon, but there remains quite a few articles and content kept on Memory Beta, and on stexpanded.wikia. If anyone wants to share or discuss more - then freely, be my guest.

 

[Extrocomp]

LUG and Decipher had a much more restrictive licence than Modiphius. They weren't allowed to mention anything from The Animated Series or previous Star Trek literature. When describing the alternate timeline from Yesteryear, they changed Thelin to "Thaalen" and changed the circumstances of Spock's death so that he was killed by the Kaylar on Rigel VII.

Several species had different names. Caitians were called Regulans and Efrosians were called Atreonids, with the Federation president being named Eteon tar-Chereos. Prior to Star Trek: Enterprise, the LUG books had an entirely different version of the Axanar species but I don't remember the details. Rigel VII was considered the Orion homeworld for some reason.

I found the repeated insistence that Spock was the first Vulcan in Starfleet kind of annoying. Maybe they were required to treat the Star Trek Encyclopedia as hard canon.

Alpha Centauri was not a human colony in LUG/Decipher continuity. It was inhabited by a human-like species that diverged from humanity 400,000 years ago.

 

[Avro Arrow]

Hi @CaptChris42 ,

I hope you don't mind, but since this seems to be more about the lore of some RPGs, rather than about Trek Literature, I'm going to move it to the Trek Gaming forum.

 

[Extrocomp]

Hi @CaptChris42 ,

I hope you don't mind, but since this seems to be more about the lore of some RPGs, rather than about Trek Literature, I'm going to move it to the Trek Gaming forum.

I disagree. It looks to me that the OP intended this thread to be about the lore contained in the books, not the gameplay. I used to collect RPG books for the lore even though I never had any interest in playing an actual game.

 

[Dukhat]

The only thing I remember about LUG was that their ship designs were absolutely awful. It was like the artist was trying to draw ships using some kind of abstract art filter.

 

[Avro Arrow]

I disagree. It looks to me that the OP intended this thread to be about the lore contained in the books, not the gameplay. I used to collect RPG books for the lore even though I never had any interest in playing an actual game.

But the "lore contained in the books" is still tied into the game, and are not stories, right? I'm still not sure that's a great fit with the TrekLit forum. And I also figured there would be more people familiar with the game, and therefore able to contribute to the thread, in a forum dedicated to gaming.

Let's see if the OP has any concerns first, before we decide if this needs to be revisited or not.

 

[CaptChris42]

But the "lore contained in the books" is still tied into the game, and are not stories, right? I'm still not sure that's a great fit with the TrekLit forum. And I also figured there would be more people familiar with the game, and therefore able to contribute to the thread, in a forum dedicated to gaming.

Let's see if the OP has any concerns first, before we decide if this needs to be revisited or not.

It's up to you, I suppose. Lore is my primary concern here, but I don't exclude discussion of other associated topics.
Mostly this was meant to be about backstory, fleshing out of species, worlds, ships, periods, cultures, and so on.

Although I suspect there's less detailed story scenarios than in some other guides and publishers...?

 

[Markonian]

Decipher and LUG were before my time but I became familiar with some of the content through Memory Beta. I'd love to get my hands on the All Our Yesterdays sourcebook.

Bolian culture and history wasn't fleshed out on the shows, despite the frequent appearance of Bolians on the 24th century shows. The RPGs postulated that the Bolians achieved warp travel in the 23rd century and were divided into three nations.

SNW portrays a Bolian in Starfleet by the 2250s. Lit interpreted the blue cyborg alien from the USS Shenzhou as a Bolian subspecies, too. So Bolian warp travel has to be achieved well before the TOS era.

 

[CaptChris42]

Anyway, there's a fair number of hidden gems in there. The Way of Kohlinahr, Way of D'Era, Fire and Ash, and Dominion War RPG guides being some particular stand outs.

The Price of Freedom was also an interesting one, and full of ship data. Still many of the designs, were... err... less than stellar (pun intended) or best fitting aesthetically into their implied era.

For those who know the Fleetyards fansite at Ex Astris Scientia however, there are some interesting coincidences. Several of the designs in each seem broadly similar to each other, and some even share names: particularly the Hanseatic-class transport (a 23rd century design in RPG material, but 24th century, in Fleetyards)

I sort of like mixing and matching details from each to help out build out fleets and eras. For example, with the Kremlin, Theseus and Star Trek Online's Perseus-class, all being possible close relatives of each other. And having the Splendour-class destroyer be an outgrowth of the Ukora-class frigate, also seems very neat.

Others like the Apollo and Niagara-class in the guides, as depicted are, just ugly really. The Rigel-class, less so. And I also much prefer swapping out the Deneva-class pictured design with the Andes-class repair ship (described, but not pictured) as a more fitting, 2360s ish and onward, design.