What's happening with Prime Directive

[Qoltar]

Originally Posted by maximara

Never mind that there are heavy hints (In a Mirror, Darkly's intro) that in the Mirror Mirror universe a Nazi like group won WWII. Though I prefer the Mirror like universe in Star Trek: Of Gods and Men as it is more logical and less backstabby to the point of stupid than the canonical Mirror Universe.

That still has nothing to do with a regular and normal campaign of either "GURPS Prime Directive" or "GURPS: Star Trek".

Arguing or debating about the portrayal of an alternate universe that will likely never be encountered does not give ideas for running an interesting Star Trek RPG campaign.

The idea should never be to do 'copy cat' adventures of what we have seen before on screen - but instead believable adventures for the player characters that are plausible in the universe - if the shows had better budgets or more screen time per episode.

- Ed C

[Gold & Appel Inc]

If wanting to pretend to punch Nazis isn't regular and normal, I guess I don't want to be regular and normal. If it's at all possible for there to be punchable Nazis in our games, there will tend to be punchable Nazis, the same way we accommodate the one guy who will definitely play a catgirl if the setting has anything like catgirls. On the other hand, my PC was the "Political Officer" in our Prime Directive campaign and I very intentionally played him with a Gestapo vibe for the funsies (though he would have no conflict with punching non-Federation fascist types). What can I say, I contain multitudes.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Gold & Appel Inc

If wanting to pretend to punch Nazis isn't regular and normal, I guess I don't want to be regular and normal. If it's at all possible for there to be punchable Nazis in our games, there will tend to be punchable Nazis, the same way we accommodate the one guy who will definitely play a catgirl if the setting has anything like catgirls. On the other hand, my PC was the "Political Officer" in our Prime Directive campaign and I very intentionally played him with a Gestapo vibe for the funsies (though he would have no conflict with punching non-Federation fascist types). What can I say, I contain multitudes.

That's something I would never even think of doing in a campaign set a couple of centuries in the future. It would be like having a campaign set in the present day where player characters were fighting against the Spanish Inquisition or the Mongols.

I have no problem with using Nazis as villains in an appropriate time frame; one of my best sessions of my covert supers campaign some years back involved the PCs preventing Adolf Hitler from salvaging the One Ring of Power from the sunken ruins of Atlantis. But I figure future centuries will have their own groups of natural villains who are organic elements of the technological and social matrix.

[Gold & Appel Inc]

Originally Posted by whswhs

That's something I would never even think of doing in a campaign set a couple of centuries in the future. It would be like having a campaign set in the present day where player characters were fighting against the Spanish Inquisition or the Mongols.

I have no problem with using Nazis as villains in an appropriate time frame; one of my best sessions of my covert supers campaign some years back involved the PCs preventing Adolf Hitler from salvaging the One Ring of Power from the sunken ruins of Atlantis. But I figure future centuries will have their own groups of natural villains who are organic elements of the technological and social matrix.

That's all very reasonable in general, but for me personally kind of goes out the window when my aim is to emulate the feel of the series that literally gave us the Planet of the Hats trope. Maybe these guys found a book about Earth's Third Reich and thought it was a great idea for [Reasons!]

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Gold & Appel Inc

That's all very reasonable in general, but for me personally kind of goes out the window when my aim is to emulate the feel of the series that literally gave us the Planet of the Hats trope. Maybe these guys found a book about Earth's Third Reich and thought it was a great idea for [Reasons!]

That was explicitly the point of both the Nazi episode and the Mafia episode. But I have to say I found both of them dumb, though not as dumb as the Roman Empire episode or the Yankees/Communists episode (which seems to be generally considered the worst OST ever). If I were to run a Star Trek campaign I would be trying to emulate what I considered the more intelligent episodes.

[Qoltar]

Originally Posted by Gold & Appel Inc

.... the Planet of the Hats trope. Maybe these guys found a book about Earth's Third Reich and thought it was a great idea for [Reasons!]

Well, you are wrong on your basic assumptions there. The 'Planet of Hats' trope comes from a Saturday morning live action kids show called I believe "Lidsville". I watched it when I was a little kid in the 1970s.

If you want to 'punch Nazis' as you put it - there are plenty of other game settings you can do that in.

- Ed c.

[RyanW]

Originally Posted by whswhs

I have no problem with using Nazis as villains in an appropriate time frame

Star Trek isn't above some time shenanigans, and it's a well documented fact that when time travel is introduced, the odds that the Nazis win WWII approaches 100%.

• Step on a butterfly in the Paleocene? Churchill is never born and Hitler wins WWII.
• Cross the street in 1854? Alfred Thayer Mahan decides to become a painter and Hitler wins WWII.
• Drink a shot in a bar in 1993? Why don't you just deliver the jet pack personally?

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by maximara

I

Why have the TL that high? T0

Becase I'm not going to waste my time on a custom "TL" that tries to downgrade things as much as possible and/or penalize settings that were created before the (dubious) concept of nanotechnology was developed. Superscience can change tLs and ubiquitous superscience should.

TL12^ is where the disintegrators are. The Transporter imitations too. The salt-shaker like personal regnerators and several other things.

Then if I wanted to use Spaceships to stat vessels I'd need TL11^ or 12^.

Some of your other examples are bad as well. The shore Leave planet produced its' android dobles in times of less thna an hour and not the weeks or months or straight TL10. Probably replicator downloading or hypertime bubbles.

A nuance of ST is that it doesn't fit many standard Gurps trope classifications. For example it is not "Safe Tech" where safe and effective technologies are simply avoided for cultural reasons. Star Trek is "Unsafe Tech" where the AIs and other tech it avoids are not safe or even extremely dangerous.

[Qoltar]

Originally Posted by RyanW

Star Trek isn't above some time shenanigans, and it's a well documented fact that when time travel is introduced, the odds that the Nazis win WWII approaches 100%.

Obvious Solution?

Don't use or deal with "time Travel" in a GURPS Star Trek campaign.

See? Thats easily done.

No grey uniformed jerks to deal with - except maybe the Romulans if your game session is takes place after 2267.

- Ed C.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by RyanW

Star Trek isn't above some time shenanigans, and it's a well documented fact that when time travel is introduced, the odds that the Nazis win WWII approaches 100%.

• Step on a butterfly in the Paleocene? Churchill is never born and Hitler wins WWII.
• Cross the street in 1854? Alfred Thayer Mahan decides to become a painter and Hitler wins WWII.
• Drink a shot in a bar in 1993? Why don't you just deliver the jet pack personally?

My recollection is that Star Trek had three time travel episodes: "Tomorrow Is Yesterday," "The City on the Edge of Forever," and "Assignment: Earth." Only one of them led to a German victory; as far as I can tell, the other two didn't change history (though there was a risk of that happening in "Tomorrow Is Yesterday"), and they certainly didn't affect the outcome of World War II.

And since I would be trying for substantive SF, not pop SF, I would be looking at the effects of time travel in books and stories. Bringing about German victories isn't all that common there; the closest analog I can think of is the novel where a time traveler inadvertently changes history so that the South lost the War between the States.