Monday, October 23, 2017

Return to Prosperity

I haven't been able to follow through on my plans for October.

I wanted to discuss games with a creepy, scary, or generally Halloween-y feel, but my mood this month hasn't leaned in that direction. Sadly, it has also made working on my Unfinished Business, Ghost Story RPG, a very difficult thing to work on. I'm simply not in that headspace.

Instead, I am in space...the final frontier.


USS Prosperity, NCC-1585, Ventura Class

Captain Ann Fletcher,
First Officer/Science Officer Cmdr. Solok
Chief Engineer Lt. Cmdr. Both, and Communications Officer Lt. Rhys Carr


Three years ago (in October of 2014), I started an on again, off again campaign of Original Series Star Trek using the ICON System from Last Unicorn Games entitled, 'Star Trek: Prosperity'. I ran about a dozen sessions, the final of which was in December of 2015. It was the first part of a two-part (two session) story that featured two additional players, and PCs in conjunction with my four regulars. Unfortunately, schedules changed, things got complicated, and we never got back to it. 

A week ago, I finally ran the second half of the adventure. The two players who were added to the mainstay crew would not be joining us again on a regular basis - if ever (one moved, one has a completely incompatible schedule now), so I decided to pull the trigger on that phaser and complete our tale. 


Custom Character Sheet by yours truly. 
Part 1 of 2


It went over so well, the group and I have decided to continue the exploits of the USS Prosperity into a second season as it were. 

Season Two sees the whole thing converted over to the new Star Trek Adventures 2D20 system. The more I play and run Star Trek Adventures the more I like it, though I definitely feel there are things about it I don't get. Some of the mechanics are a little cumbersome, specifically Extended Tasks, and Reputation.

Additionally, I haven't yet gotten familiar enough with it to remember what all the Talents do, or how they work. This gives me unappealing memories of games like D&D and Pathfinder with their strings of Feats that force you to refer back to the rulebooks to find the rules behind them. I hate having to refer to any books during play as it slows the game down, and I'm not a fan of charts for similar reasons. Hopefully this will change over time. 


Part 2 of 2


Right now, there are more positives than negatives, and the first session with the new system went over well with the group. As familiarity increases, so will flow improve, so I have high hopes for our ongoing efforts.

I promised the group that if for some reason this system doesn't work for us, we can go back to LUG/ICON, and I won't drop the campaign out of frustration (which I sometimes do). I like our campaign, the characters, the setting, our ship, and exploring the galaxy TOS style is exactly what I want to do right now.


Starship Record Sheet.


Any questions, comments, or anything, please feel free to hail us.

One to beam up.

AD
Barking Alien








1 comment:

  1. I am still surprised you're digging into the 2d20 game, but I suppose it's fair to give it a chance.

    How's the ship combat? I've seen/heard/read a lot of personal level activity but not much ship to ship type action.

    ReplyDelete