Let's roll some dice, watch some movies, or generally just geek out. New posts at 6:30 pm ET but only if I have something to say. Menu at the top. gsllc@chirp.enworld.org on Mastodon and @gsllc on Twitter.
Okay, I know I promised to get my FASA Star Trek RPG character builder up and running over the weekend, but I ran into a serious snafu, and it needed to be addressed. In any event, it’s up now. You can find it in this GitHub repository: https://github.com/Frylock1968/FASAStarTrekRPG. There’s a long-winded read me file that you really should read before you use it. Because none of you will, here’s a summary:
It’s written using Access 365, which is a limited programming tool.
It’s written using Access 365, which means Apple users are out of luck without some extra steps I don’t understand myself, and even PC users without an MS Office subscription won’t be able to run it. This software requires a preexisting installation of Access on your machine. The good news is that, to my knowledge, Access is included with even the most basic Office subscription.
It’s a beta version, which means I’m relying on your help in uncovering errors.
If something doesn’t work, I’m going to fix it, but if there’s a feature missing, it’s unlikely I’ll add it. I plan to make a web-based version of it, and that will include everything.
More features will be added, but only really simple ones. I’ll save all features for my intended web-based application.
A feature I said I’d like to add to this application is the ability to create Orion PCs. Yeah, that ain’t gonna happen. After reading through it, I learned that such a feature requires four different methods, and arguably five. Ruddies, greens, Green slave women, greys, and half-breeds among the bunch are all handled differently, and those differences are non-negligible. That’ll have to wait for the web application.
One issue I can’t seem to figure out is a data lock issue. When you load a previously saved character and edit it, and it results in Chinese characters saved to some of your fields, don’t save it. Something’s corrupted. Instead, reload the character from your hard drive and start again.
One clean up task on my list is to remove excess options from lists. For example, Klingon culture is Klingon culture. It shouldn’t be divided into separate cultures for Imperials, human-fusions, and romulan-fusions.
There’s no user manual. Instructions appear on the user interface itself in red, italicized text.
I’ve previously discussed my FASA Star Trek RPG character builder. I updated you by stating that I had made quite a bit of progress. Well, I was going to publish it after adding the component for creating Romulan player characters but decided to wait until I added the Klingon component. I can easily say that it should be uploaded to GitHub by the end of this weekend (let’s say, Sunday, 7/13).
I’ve already uploaded my first beta version of my Gamma World 7e character builder to GitHub (here). I’ll create a new repository for the Star Trek stuff and publish the link as soon as I do. I plan to add a component for creating Orion player characters and merge other components from my prior work into this character builder. That prior work has the means to instantly create solar systems, NPCs of all races, animals, and balanced starship battle groups. Eventually, I’ll replace all of these with web-based versions when I begin producing character builders for other games. Those other games will be contemporary ones still in print, so those will be subscription-based if I can work out a deal with the publishers.
FYI, the Gamma World and FASA Star Trek applications will always be free.
The application does not currently support creating Klingon or Romulan PCs for campaigns centered on those empires, and honestly, that’s not a priority. At this point, I have only three things I need to do immediately: Create the capacity to save the character to an external file; create the capacity to advance to the character as it competes adventures, and the customary clean up of bugs and such that are inevitably found during the use of the application. The first two will be relatively quick, and the third one is always an ongoing process.
I have to spend the next couple weeks focusing on a Response to a Motion for Summary Judgment. After that, I’ll finish this up and start my next project. Or so I hope. The next project will involve a modern game system still in print. I know the author of the game and need to discuss it with him before starting the project. If he gives me the thumbs up, that one will be a bear.
By the time I’m finished, I will be known as the “Character Builder Guy.”
Last weekend, my 1st Edition Dungeons & Dragons (“1e“) gaming group discussed expanding our horizons. To some extent, 1e has run its course for us, so after the other Rob takes over as DM and runs us through the Village of Hommlet, we’ll probably be trying out new game systems. (Technically, we haven’t heard from Rob on the matter, so there’s more to discuss.) This discussion was prompted by a discussion I had with another member of the group a couple of weeks prior, and that prompted me to create my Gamma World 7e character builder (which is complete and should be on GitHub soon). This latest conversation with the group discussed different game systems we may run. One of my favorite is the FASA Star Trek Role-Playing Game (“FASA ST“) from the 1980s. When I was no longer allowed to play D&D, I shifted over to FASA ST for as long as I could. Surprisingly, I still have absolutely everything I bought related to that game except for the ship models that my older brother destroyed. (He’s an asshole.) I couldn’t possibly tell you how I managed to retain all of those items, but I have them.
Anyway, since Saturday, I was inspired to start another character builder, this time for FASA ST (2nd edition). I already created and published a Gamemaster’s application to manage various aspects of a FASA ST campaign, but I never got around to putting a character builder into it. Because I didn’t want to relearn my old code, I left that GM’s application be and started a new one. I imported a lot of the underlying data, then started building. In just four days, I’ve made an incredible amount of progress considering three of those days were workdays. 🙂
Like with the Gamma World character builder, I offer you some screenshots. For those of you with at least a vague recollection of the game system, I offer commentary to explain what’s going on. Most of you might want to ignore that commentary.
In the first screen, you choose your heritages (called “race” in the game). The red arrow points out a house rule I created. Each race has a specific set of bonuses and penalties to certain abilities. For characters of mixed heritage, those bonuses and penalties are averaged. My house rule is that, much like me, a typical American mutt of European ancestry, I allow characters to have as many as four distinct lines. My primary lineages are Scottish, Irish, German, and Italian, with a little Dutch sprinkled into the first three. Your character can be Vulcan, Romulan, Klingon, and Human. Star Trek canon seems to contemplate a mixing of the races, so my game does as well.
This next screen shows what you learned growing up. There are limited options, but they’re all useful for different types of characters. Another red arrow means something to point out. As you’re going through the character-building process, the same skills can be chosen multiple times to jack up a chosen specialty, but to make sure you can audit your work (and my software), I keep all the skill rolls separate. That creates a problem. In no event can a score exceed 99, but you might accidentally do so. In the end, I’ll force a cap of 99 on the final scores, but then you’re throwing away points you could have used elsewhere. Moreover, if you ever go backwards in the process, it erases everything that comes after it. It must because later steps are often dependent on the decisions you make in earlier steps. If your Computer Operation score gets too high, you may lose a lot of your work when you go back to fix it. The button at the top allows you to see your character’s current status (as far as points allocation) without taking the time to add up individual rolls. You’ll see a screen shot of this a little later in this post.
Nothing to discuss here. This is just the basic curriculum that all PCs learn at Star Fleet Academy.
This is also basic information you learn at Star Fleet Academy, but it couldn’t fit on the prior screen, so I gave it its own. Pay no attention to the fact that all the skills seem to be the same. I was running some testing.
Now you get to Branch School, which is where you start to really specialize. Navigators go to navigation school, medical professionals go to medical school, etc. Above, you see the helm Branch School, which is the simplest of all of them. There are no electives. You simply get what you see above.
If, however, you choose any other school, you get a pop-up window that allows you make your elective choices. For communications, you get to spend 30 points in various languages any way you want, whether 30 points in one language or 3 points in ten languages. The rest of your skills are non-elective, so when you push the Accept button, it loads not only the choices you made here, but also the choices that are set by your choice of Branch School.
As promised, here’s what happens when you hit the Current Status button at the top right. You get an alphabetized and consolidated list of your skills so far. This image was taken for a different set of data than the others, so these numbers don’t correspond to what you saw in the images above. But this is, for example, all of your Carousing scores added together and listed just once. At this point, there’s no danger of wasting points by assigning scores above 99, but for the data in the prior images, I had a Carousing score of 115 just getting to this point. That’s why this exists.
That’s it for now. I’ve got only one more pop-up screen to create (Medical), and then it’s on to the characters’ past duty assignments on starships (or wherever they were assigned before the campaign begins).
Side Note: I’m Getting Better
The 1e character builder took years to create. I’m not relying on a technicality to say “years.” It’s more than just two. I think it’s been at least five years because I started it before I bought my current home in 2022. If you go through my posts, you might find and exact number, but I’m too lazy to figure it out. Even now, the damn thing has very little of a user interface, and I’m only part way through the Monster Manual II data entry. I haven’t even started Oriental Adventures or Deities and Demigods, and the latter would require some new data structure to implement. More importantly, because it was developed over years without any formal requirements analysis, it’s not put together very well. (Requirements analysis is important. Think about building a mutlistory building and halfway through the process being told it needed a basement.) Some of this can be explained by the fact that I included a campaign management tool, with the massive monster data entry that required. Moreover, I can blame this to some extent on the fact that it’s difficult to produce software for a game system that’s so convoluted.
Grognards are going to get angry with that statement, but it’s absolutely true. Every 1e rule is an exception to every other one. There’s no consistency at all. I’ve written extensively on how some of what’s in 1e should never have been abandoned by modern game designers. But be realistic. Taken as a whole, it’s exactly what you’d expect from a first-of-its-kind effort undertaken by a cobbler/insurance salesman. There was plenty of room for improvement. That doesn’t in any way condemn the efforts of the old gods of RPGs. We as a community owe them everything.
I was able to finish the Gamma World character builder in under three weeks. and it looks like I won’t even need that much time to finish this one (at least for the Federation PCs; Klingons and Romulans will take longer). I say all of this to make the point that I’m getting better as I relearn the skill of software development. In fact, I have an extra week of vacation time I’m taking in August, and I’ll be using that time to take a course towards C# certification. (C# is a programming language.) I may be able to launch these character builders via the web, opening them up to Mac users as well, though if that’s in my future, it’s a little ways off. There’s at least one more game for which I’d like to produce a character builder, and if the designer gives me his permission, a desktop application would be my next priority.
How Can I Get a Hold of This?
Gamma World should hit GitHub as soon as I figure that out. The FASA ST character builder will follow suit.
Maybe I’ll be known as the “Character Builder Guy.”
So, here’s a shitty memory. I had a rough childhood. I won’t go into detail except as relevant to this post, which is relatively tame, but still kind of sucks in a way that gaming nerds will relate.
As a victim of the Satanic Panic, I was forbidden from playing D&D in 1982. Two years later, as a high school sophomore, my cousin introduced me to Barbarian books store in Wheaton, MD (now Barbarian Comics). This is where he bought his comic books. That didn’t interest me at all, but the store also sold RPG material. I knew not to buy D&D materials, but as a high school student, I rebelled a bit and bought FASA Star Trek material. Needless to say, I kept it secret for as long as I could, because that’s still “the same thing” as far as my family was concerned.
I bought the 1st edition box set, the 2nd edition box set, numerous adventures, and a bunch accessories. The accessories included starship models that could be used with that game. Each cost $4.00 (plus tax), so if I bought fifteen of them, that was probably about two weeks pay. Considering I was forced to pay for private high school and college, that’s a fortune, but I can assure you I bought far more than 15 of them. I continued to buy material all the way until the first couple years of college. When my family eventually found my hidden materials, they were largely destroyed. I managed to hide most of my written material, but the starship models were a total loss, and a few accessories disappeared. For a high school/college student in the mid- to late-80s, these were expensive. They were all destroyed by my older brother, who enjoyed enforcing my mother’s prohibition against, well, virtually anything that made me happy, gaming or otherwise.
A couple of years ago, I replenished my entire catalogue of 1st Edition D&D (“1e“) material. There’s nothing I ever owned, or even ever wanted, that I don’t now own. I spent somewhere between $300 and $400, but that bought me more material than I could ever hope to run in the 21 years I statistically have left on this planet. I’m fortunate enough that I afford that. However, take a look at this bullshit. If you didn’t click through (or you’re reading this years after the eBay listing was removed), this is one of those $4.00 models that is selling for $40.00 plus $4.20 shipping. Here’s a screenshot for posterity.
This is an obscure, seldom used starship.
Imagine buying merely fifteen of these now. I’m not a math major, but that should be $633.00 just for materials that aren’t strictly necessary for the game. Buying them at these prices can’t be justified unless you’re truly wealthy.
I’m now running a 1e game for the first time in 40 years, so I’m in no position to complain. However, I’d really love to play FASA Star Trek again. Unfortunately, I know of only two local people that are interested in a in-person game, and one of them isn’t what I’d call “reliable.” (Note: I hate online gaming.) In short, there’s no chance of an in-person game, and certainly none in which I’m a player. That’s a tough pill to swallow, but I can live with that. I’m fortunate to be playing 1e. Moreover, I’m working on starting a 4th Edition D&D game, which also appeals to me. I have plenty going on, and will probably have more than I can handle soon enough.
But as an American, I’m spoiled and want more.
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A few weeks ago, I hosted another 1st Edition Dungeons & Dragons (“1e”) game at my home. The group spent over an hour at the start of the session just reminiscing about the good old days when most of us first met. This was during the era of 4th Edition. Inevitably, the subject of synDCon came up. synDCon was the gaming convention financed primarily by Vic and me. The two of us did almost all the work of running the convention once it began. It was large enough that we had everything represented (see below), yet still maintained the coziness of conventions like Winter Fantasy.
synDCon Was Awesome
I need to put my modesty aside for a bit and say that we pulled off something magical (pun absolutely intended). In our first year, we took advantage of a holiday and put on a four-day convention. We provided tons of organized play: Living Forgotten Realms (4e), Pathfinder Society, and Heroes of Rokugan (Legend of the Five Rings). We also had individual games from less popular RPGs being run here and there, tons of card games (including, of course, Magic the Gathering), tons of board games, and we were the official DC-area convention for Munchkin. We had special events, a LARP, dungeon delves I wrote based on classic 1e adventures, and live music on Saturday night for one of the cons. Our slots were staggered so that slots didn’t start every four hours but rather every two hours. If you wanted to sleep in a bit, you could. You’d just start playing at 11 am instead of 9 am, but there were enough 2-hour slots of other things to do that you could still get three slots of gaming in.
It wasn’t run in a convention center, nor in the basement of a mediocre hotel, but rather in a really nice “hotel and executive meeting center” right across the street from a Metro (subway) stop in Rockville, Maryland. As the county seat for Montgomery County, there were tons of restaurants, et al. in the area, including a gaming store down the street. Of course, we had a gaming store as our in-convention vendor both years, and we generated about 200 attendees both years. Our attendees represented everywhere in the United States east of the Mississippi (e.g., Florida, Georgia, and Ohio), but we gave an award to a guy named Matt for having come the farthest for the con (Alaska).
We had tremendous support from volunteers that helped organize the detail while Vic and I focused on the big picture, and we’re forever indebted to those friends, but I’ll be damned if my feet weren’t atrociously sore by the end of both cons.
Seriously, it was stupendous, and everyone that attended and commented on it said so.
A Slight Diversion Before My Point
I’ve been thinking of doing something other than a Vegas blackjack trip for my fall vacation – I say this every year, so we’ll see if I follow through – and was considering an RPG gaming convention instead. Because I wanted to play 1e, I was initially thinking about GaryCon, but a friend pushed me towards GameholeCon. It was an easy sell because the timing would be better. GaryCon would interfere with Winter Fantasy, but GameholeCon would slide right into the Vegas slot (again, pun absolutely intended). The trouble is that Winter Fantasy and synDCon have spoiled me. I have no intention of going to a convention and paying between $100 and $200 per night for my hotel room if I’m staying at least 2 miles from the convention. That’s ridiculous. It’s like GenCon on a smaller scale. The city is obviously not big enough to handle the convention. So, I decided to look into other options.
There Aren’t Any
Sadly, I went through all my options I could find online, and nothing quite matches the magic of Winter Fantasy or synDCon as far as I can tell. The lists were not complete – Winter Fantasy wasn’t even mentioned (?!) – so maybe there are some other cons out there, but I can’t find them. The cons are at least one of the following: in an inconvenient or excessively crowded location, lack inexpensive parking, or focused on only a few things (usually the shiny new things of the day). Some are also not “cozy,” which I define as between 200 and 350 people. It’s large enough that there can be plenty to do, and you can meet new people, but small enough that you’ll always be able to find your friends and hang out with them. Winter Fantasy doesn’t even satisfy all of these characteristics perfectly – I tried to run 1e but only one ticket for only one slot of three was sold – but it’s as close to perfect as I think practical for a cozy con. It’s also in Ft. Wayne, Indiana. I’m fine going out there, and I will every year they’ll have me, but I find it odd that an area with as big a gaming community as DC doesn’t have something like this.
And this is my point. DC needs a convention like synDCon or Winter Fantasy. Such a con isn’t going to hit the radar scope of the big players (i.e., Wizards of the Coast and Paizo), but it’ll appeal to plenty of players. The DC area is filled with them. Our Gamers’ Syndicate gaming club had over 200 people that identified as members, and we ran game days every single weekend in as many as five gaming stores at a time. While organizing synDCon, I learned of several other groups just as large that had never even heard of us. They were organizing at other stores. This area has an abundance of gamers, and I suspect there are even more here over 10 years later.
Will There Be a synDCon III?
That’s the magic question. I’m happy to organize it, but as we discussed at the game session, my demands are high. First off, I want to do it right or not do it at all. I’m not willing to put together a con in “the basement of the Best Western.” No offense to the chain in general, but that happens to be a hotel we visited that would be the site of a con not worth having. It was downright gross but not unlike venues of cons I’ve attended in the early 2000s. No thanks. Second, having learned from my experiences with the first two, the only way I’d do it is if I had a number of additional owners willing to slap down cashier’s checks for at least $2,000 each (or more depending on how many people commit) and having signed an operating agreement that prevents them from every cashing out that initial investment. That is, I need a sizeable stable of people willing to commit whole-heartedly so that I know I’ll have both the funds and the work ethic necessary to make this doable. Trust me when I say that it’s not enough that someone throw money at me. I need to know that they’re committed to doing the work necessary to pull off a great con. Because it’s been over 10 years, I don’t know what the minimum acceptable number of owners would be, especially without knowing exactly how much each would be willing to contribute up front, but I do know $2,000 is enough to motivate most gamers to stay the course and do what they could not to throw that money away. Any of them willing to drop $2,000 are likely to take it seriously.
Another thing I remember is that no one wanted to be the guy, the “convention coordinator” or CEO who had to make the calls when weird situations arose. While I’m happy to be that guy, I’m not willing to be the one that puts out the feelers (beyond this post, I guess) and see if there’s interest. If I thought my odds were better than 50% of finding such interest, I would, but I don’t think there are enough people willing to make this kind of commitment, so why bother trying? I did my part for king and country, and wound up with a small, overworked group. If this is meant to be, then someone else will have to get the ball rolling. So, while I’m not the one destined to put this together, I strongly suspect there’s a market for it, and my recent thoughts and conversations on the matter sure leave me wishing someone would.
If that’s you, drop me an email when you think you’ve got something real.
Henry, Sr. shouldn’t have slapped Indy. He should have used a baseball bat.
As you know (if you’ve ever read my blog), I’m running 1st Edition Dungeons & Dragons for the first time in 40 years, and I’m in talks with Luddite Vic about organizing a 4th Edition game. Moreover, in the back of my mind, I’m contemplating a FASA Star Trek RPG game. That one may never happen because I’d absolutely have to run that online to find any players, but it’s certainly something I’d like to do in theory.
The point is that all of that material has been sitting on my shelf for years (if not decades) collecting dust, but it’s still as good as it ever was. The potential is always there, and you never know how your circumstances will change. Hell, I even have 3rd Edition Dungeons & Dragonsmaterial on my shelves, and I can’t stand that edition. I’ve played it a couple of times in the past ten years just so I could hang out with some friends, and I’ve written not one, not two, but three posts on unfinished business I have with the edition, so even that has potential value (assuming the DM gets rid of confirmation of critical hits). Two editions of the Gamma World RPG, Star Wars Saga Edition RPG, Dragon Age RPG, Margaret Weiss’s Marvel Superheroes RPG, several board games (Demons!), and some games still in shrink wrap all litter my “man cave,” but I wouldn’t consider my collection huge. If yours is huge, that in my opinion you’re doing things better than I am. You never know what you might need to pull out for company. Hell, I’m even ready to host a night of blackjack or poker.
Where’s a roided-out Barry Bonds when you need him?
Dungeons & Dragons is a trademark of Wizards of the Coast, LLC, who neither contributed to, nor endorsed, the contents of this post. (Okay, jackasses?)
Sundays now are lazy days for me. I either post something silly or other people’s work. Usually both. Today, I share a tweet that reminded me of something else. (Image of the tweet appears at the end in case it’s ever deleted. ) To my knowledge, this tweet had nothing to do with RPGs. It was just a ridiculous design made for the sake of ridiculousness.
I’m waaaaay ahead on my blog writing, so this post, written on 2/18/2022, relates to a tweet from 2/11/2022, and is being published (assuming I don’t move my schedule around) on 3/3/2022.
Luck. If it's good enough for the #FASA#StarTrek#RPG, it's good enough for all of them.
The FASA Star Trek RPG (“STRPG“) is one of my two favorite RPG systems, so of course I had that one on the brain. STRPG was a d100, skill-based system, where players collected skill points based on their Star Fleet Academy (or other) training, and placed them into various skills. Their ability scores were also based on d100, so ability and skill checks were treated the same way.
The ability scores in STRPG had a one-to-one relationship with those of D&D, but STRPG added two extra skills: PSI (psionics) and LUC (luck). As you know, D&D has had different ways of dealing with psionics, none of which involved a separate ability score. In 1st Edition, a minimum Intelligence of X gave you a 1% chance of having psionic talents, opening up a new system of mechanics. I never played 2nd Edition, but from 3rd Edition forward, psionics became a class feature. If you took a psionic class, you had psionics. Otherwise, you didn’t (though some magic did psychic damage). Ergo, I didn’t respond with PSI. D&D couldn’t really use it.
LUC is a different story. There’s room for it in D&D. In a reasonably balanced system, LUC was a way of giving the PCs an advantage over the NPCs. There are other ways to do that (e.g., 3rd Edition action points, inherent mechanics), but a LUC score wasn’t a bad choice. If all roleplaying and dice rolls failed the PC, they could request one more shot at success with a LUC roll. If they rolled less than their LUC score, they succeeded despite those failures. Of course, it was up to the gamemaster to define what that success was, which could be partial rather than total. Considering how focused modern gamers are on player agency, I suspect that a LUC ability score should appeal to many of them.
BTW, if you’ve never read my blog before this post, I’ve probably left you in suspense.
For the record, my other favorite RPG system is 4th Edition D&D.
If I fail my LUC check, my love of 4th Edition could start a nuclear war.
Dungeons & Dragons is a trademark of Wizards of the Coast, LLC, who neither contributed to, nor endorsed, the contents of this post. (Okay, jackasses?)
In case the tweet is ever deleted, here’s a screenshot of it.
I told my coworkers that I was using one of the bedrooms in my new home into a den. They started calling it a mancave. Well, if this is a mancave, it’s the nerdiest one ever. I also can’t see it as a “cave” considering it’s on the second floor. It seems more like a man loft.
That doesn’t make any sense, does it?
Last week, I bought a 6′ tall bookshelf that finally allowed me to unpack most of my gaming material. This weekend, I picked up a new desk, which again allows me to unpack office supplies and other things. The room is finally coming together, and I’m fairly well organized.
This den, mancave, or whatever you want to call it is oddly important to me. I’ve lived a rather simple lifestyle up to now. I’m used to a small place, and while this home isn’t what anyone would call large, it’s exceptionally large for me. In fact, it’s too large. It’s great that I have room for everything that I have and much of what I don’t have yet, but I spend 90% of my waking hours in this room. For lack of a better word, it feels cozy, and I’m jamming it with everything I want around me in my free time at home.
Do I have enough screens?
I have a lot of Jeff Dee originals to hang, but so far the only art on the walls is this guy over the desk.
Judging every one of my Google searches.
My cousin gave me a magazine rack. I asked, “What am I? 108 years old?” But I had just the use for it.
Though I may never read them again, I like having them.
Seriously. This is a mancave?
Almost one shelf per edition of D&D.
I have tons of other books not related to gaming, but the second bookshelf hasn’t even been put together. On the side of this bookshelf, I hung some memorabilia.
Okay, maybe it’s a mancave after all, but just barely.
The one thing that won’t fit are my musical instruments. I’m keeping them downstairs. That’s probably for the best. It’s a townhome, and the neighbors probably wouldn’t appreciate any noise being upstairs near their bedrooms.
Make no mistake about it: My keyboard playing is properly defined as “noise.”
Dungeons & Dragons is a trademark of Wizards of the Coast, LLC, who neither contributed to, nor endorsed, the contents of this post. (Okay, jackasses?)
Play What You Want 