Ill-Starred

Going back to a previous weird thought due to an unrelated game (Hunter) joked that my next Star Trek character will be a witch.

“Analysis?”

“Nothing on sensors, Captain.”

“Sycorax?”

(sound of bones rattling) “They’re here, alright.”

(And this was before seeing the Strange New Worlds episode trailer for the magic planet follow-up.)

Edit: posting this on BlueSky got a character sheet made.

Star Trek at 60

Star Trek was first broadcast in the US sixty years ago tonight!

(Not counting the Canadian premiere being two days earlier, as I noted ten years ago,)

There has been a lot of Star Trek in the last decade, in a wide variety of styles.

This is one of the great story engines. Speaking as someone who’s never quite used it for games.

Right now the flagship show is Strange New Worlds, a prequel to the original series, which I feel has gotten mired in the “strange” part of the title. I imagine a full 26-episode season where we get these premieres and finales and two normal-ish episodes for every one we actually see.

And after that there’s nothing in production.

This would be a good day to announce something. But the current rights holders may not be the people to do it.

We could do with some optimism right now.

What future do you want?

RPGaDAY 2026 28. Devotion

#RPGaDAY 2026

28. Devotion

28. Devotion: Game you have played the most!

GMed - Due to a long history with it and several year-long runs recently probably Vampire: The Masquerade, though Buffy The Vampire Slayer is the longest I’ve run a series, almost six years.

Played - Star Wars is probably up there, mostly the D6 classic but also tried others (and wanted to go back to the D6 classic). Also a lot of the various Star Trek games almost all with one keen GM, up to Star Trek Adventures currently. Longest single games, there’s the four-year Werewolf: The Apocalypse run with that Star Trek GM and about as long with a Silver Age style Marvel SAGA game.

Autocratik - “If you’ve done every day of #RPGaDAY since it began, this is your 400th entry to the challenge. I feel tired just thinking about that!”

Runeslinger

RPGaDAY 2026 20. Promise

#RPGaDAY 2026

20. Promise

20. Have the characters kept or broken more promises?

Overall, I go for characters who keep their word, with the power to make plans and promises and act on them. I don’t play helpless or struggling very often, and when I do they rarely have much of a chance to promise anything.

As a GM do I especially punish treacherous PCs? Hmm...

Currently in the captain’s chair in Star Trek Adventures, and I keep offering to negotiate with Romulans invading our side of the Neutral Zone. Hopefully they’ll listen one of these times since the game is set just before Nemesis.

Autocratik

Runeslinger

RPGaDAY 2026 18. Directness

#RPGaDAY 2026

18. Directness

18. A fast introduction of a new PC or player?

If I know players are likely to come and go I’ll try to have onboarding options and avoid cliffhangers. Emphasis on try.

Some games and settings are better for this than others, mechanically and narratively.

Overlooking the old “why do we trust this total stranger walking up to us in the middle of a secret mission?” and the magic power of the PC Glow...

D&D style fantasy calls it “West Marches” when every session begins and ends with the PCs in their base and venturing out from it. That cuts off things like multi-session dungeons and heavier ongoing plots unless you use the old un-narrative kludge of teleporting PCs in, but it’s a good idea for an open table.

Star Trek (a setting where characters can just teleport in and out mid adventure) would do this if it were realistic about its Luxury Space Communism and faster-than-light travel. Ha ha. Star Trek Adventures makes you pay player resources to get specialist NPC crew to go on camera, which is the model-the-show way of dealing with this. Star Fleet Battles RPG Prime Directive goes the other way and has a completely different command structure for its variant universe.

Mission: Impossible on TV started with selecting agents with relevant skillsets. I’ve seen someone suggest pregens in dossiers before.

(Note that the films acquire a consistent team as they go along, leading to narrative issues like needing something for both the computer geniuses to do.)

Last academic year I had a large amount of player turnover in Vampire: The Masquerade and that isn’t ideal for it or how I run it. Even then, if I’d known I could have tailored the chronicle setup to PCs being part of a group that could explain PCs coming and going and make sessions less serialised. Not ideal for personal horror or slow unravelling of mysteries but I could give it a go. Hmm.

My most setting-of-the-week one-and-done game is Doctor Who, which also has fast character creation... but following the series model really expects the PCs to be the one point of consistency.

If I want to go full “jump in any session” open table, I might go with a light superhero game like ICONS with a big team. Fast character creation, largely self-contained adventures. I’m sure threads would reappear at some point, but I can juggle and improvise so we don’t end up with too many “this should be a Penguin adventure but Batman’s player isn’t here” situations.

A large kitchen sink also helps if I want to come up with a largely standalone adventure every week.

Hey, Buffy is a light superhero game too! Albeit one that also expects a consistent Scooby Gang.

Autocratik

Runeslinger

RPGaDAY 2026 3. Poise

>#RPGaDAY 2026

3. Poise

3. How does one character present themselves?

Of my current PCs this leans towards:

Paris, the Toreador events promoter in Vampire: The Masquerade - City Of Angels. High Charisma and Presence, different outfits for different occasions, active code switching. And the literal poise power of Cat’s Grace which gives her perfect balance, mostly used for running in high heels.

Olivia Holt
Not my original visual reference but Paris went more girlish than expected

And so naturally I talk about all my current PCs - and my first ever - to show variety.

Michael Sorensen, Tremere occult investigator, wears black. He wore black tie to Elysium, saying he’d go full white tie for a special occasion like a formal dance or being sentenced to Final Death.

Matthieu Lasalle, French Revolution Brujah, was scruffily handsome but his main note of poise was his tendency to start an attack on an enemy of the people by kicking a door open, making a proclamation about justice, and either firing his flintlock or otherwise drawing attacks to him.

Elsewhere, Cara Lawson in Mage: The Ascension is mostly practical but will dress up nice if she thinks it won’t stop her fighting. She has to rely on her high Dexterity for running in high heels.

She is currently in the 1880s and hoping that having to dress like a lady doesn’t get her or anyone else killed.

A screenshot from Assassin's Creed Syndicate with the alert
"EVIE's movements are RESTRICTED by her dress"

Captain Diana Carter in current Star Trek Adventures is kind of a Pike, diplomatic but direct, friendly until not. Her main tic is a wry smile when threatened.

A certain amount of looking cool when player charactering goes all the way back to my first session, where despite no rules for elves or archers in Fighting Fantasy I used an elven archer miniature. With an eyepatch, no less.

Oreon, leader of a Regiments Of Renown army set
Painted and photographed by The Stuff Of Legends.
I went more olive drab IIRC

As a GM, I often have a social episode here and there. My Vampire: The Masquerade band game Last Dance was all about that side of the setting, with just a few fights and chases.

Some day I’d like to go full Good Society and run a full high society game... with or without vampires.

Autocratik

Runeslinger

Star Trek: Shadow Frontier

Star Trek: Shadow Frontier, a first person? horror??? Star Trek game! starring Ro Laren!!!

(Also announced a base building game,. Outposts Unknown.)

Star Trek: Ariel 1.04a

Star Trek: Ariel

1.04a

We certainly annoyed the miners. But we got them off the planet that started to self-destruct after we looked at something, so hey.

Starfleet Academy 2

So the forces of evil in charge of Paramount have decided sixty years of Star Trek is too many. I mean I get it, I’d cancel something that tells me I’m an evil shit too.

Alex Kurtzman writes to the cast, crew and viewers.

Forbidden Planet

Forbidden Planet premiered on this day in 1956. So as we mark sixty years of Star Trek consider seventy of one of its parents. And celebrate the naming of the comics shop franchise.

Star Trek: Ariel 1.04

Star Trek: Ariel

1.04

Time to annoy some miners.

Babylon 5

Babylon 5 is now free on YouTube, a bold TV experiment with serialisation, CG space, riffing on and an early pitch allegedly being riffed on by Star Trek, and dialogue that I always thought nobody talked like until I read the creator’s book on dcreenwriting.

Star Trek: Ariel 1.03

Star Trek: Ariel

1.03

Watching all of Lower Decks in a few months may have made me nicer to the Orion pirates than intended.

Character Creation Challenge 2026 31g: Star Trek 2009 with Star Wars 1987 - Scotty

Character Creation Challenge 2026

PC groups for games I would do with different systems

31g: Star Trek 2009 with Star Wars 1987 - Scotty

And ending with a national treasure.

Actually using one of the templates as is. Though I could fiddle with the numbers, as Scotty is more socially adept than the default here. 

Montgomery Scott

Tongue-Tied Engineer

Character Creation Challenge 2026 30g: Star Trek 2009 with Star Wars 1987 - Uhura

Character Creation Challenge 2026

PC groups for games I would do with different systems

30g: Star Trek 2009 with Star Wars 1987 - Uhura

The Kelvin timeline version of Uhura emphasises her linguistic expertise and confidence in alien contact, so the closest template is Young Senatorial. And like McCoy giving her more of a boost to her core skill than a starting character should have.

Nyota Uhura

Young Senatorial, switching Strength and Technical

Character Creation Challenge 2026 29g: Star Trek 2009 with Star Wars 1987 - McCoy

Character Creation Challenge 2026

PC groups for games I would do with different systems

29g: Star Trek 2009 with Star Wars 1987 - McCoy

As with science there isn’t a medic type in the d6 Star Wars templates, so based on his being the older grumpier member of the team, as long as he has a good Technical score for the Medicine skill.

Dr. Leonard “Bones” McCoy

Retired Republic Captain, switch Mechanical and Technical. And give him slightly more Medicine than he should have

Character Creation Challenge 2026 28g: Star Trek 2009 with Star Wars 1987 - Spock

Character Creation Challenge 2026

PC groups for games I would do with different systems

28g: Star Trek 2009 with Star Wars 1987 - Spock

D6 Star Wars templates don’t include something like science or medical officers, as the game assumes a handful of PCs in a little ship rather than the more organised fleet types. But give Spock a decent Knowledge score and we’re most of the way there. And as the only (half) alien in the core crew he also gets a few psychic powers.

Mr. Spock

Minor Jedi, with a small boost to Knowledge and Strength in exchange for Perception and Technical and a different power. If this system had disadvantages I’d add occasional berserker rage.

Character Creation Challenge 2026 27g: Star Trek 2009 with Star Wars 1987 - Kirk

Character Creation Challenge 2026

PC groups for games I would do with different systems

27g: Star Trek 2009 with Star Wars 1987

 

The 2009 Star Trek is a big fast sci-fi action movie and the director would go on to make Star Wars so, while Star Trek Adventures would do the job just fine...

Star Wars D6 characters distribute 18 dice among 6 statistics, with 3D being average. Then 7 between their skills, maximum +2D at start but I might give someone a +3D for a key specialty. They can split a die into 3 pips as well. We’ll get to Force powers when I make Spock.

27g: Star Trek 2009 with Star Wars 1987 - Kirk

James T. Kirk

Brash Pilot, but switch Perception and Mechanical. Knowledge and Technical. So different enough that Sulu might be a Brash Pilot too.

Star Trek: Ariel 1.02

Star Trek: Ariel

1.02

Starship combat is pretty complicated for a fairly light system overall, as of Star Trek Adventures 1e. Which I suppose makes sense as a big starship fight is an important thing in an episode.

It seems my captain is clear and decisive, but also smiles at threats.

Buck Rogers In The 25th Century

Buck Rogers In The 25th Century starring Gil Gerrard revived the 1930s comic hero for the Star Wars generation, complete with Ralph McQuarrie fighters and funny wee robot and snooty computer friends, as well as Buck reintroducing disco to humanity, and then the Star Trek generation more in the second season as the characters went exploring planets of the week in a big spaceship.

The Thunderfighter by Ralph McQuarrie

An unconnected RPG version came along a decade later, an attempt to do a grounded version which always felt like a strange idea.