What's happening with Prime Directive

[Inky]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

The "stun" setting of the type I Hand Phaser was resisted on a roll of HT-1. You ever see anyone "resist" begin stunned with a phaser?

The phasers the Enterprise crew had weren't Type I, they were Type II. This is mentioned in "The Devil in the Dark", where the miners' Type I phasers couldn't get through the creature's armour but the crew's Type II phasers, which were higher powered, could. This may be the only time the idea of "types" of phaser is actually mentioned in TOS, though I'm not sure.

So it's possible that the Type Is (which were possibly meant for civilian use) really were so feeble that an HT-1 roll would make sense, although that really is pretty weak - that means that they'd stun an average human in one shot less than two-thirds of the time.

For the Type IIs that the Enterprise crew themselves had, you could either skip the resistance roll altogether, or, if you wanted to have a resistance roll so that space monsters with high HT would have a chance of resisting, it would have to be at least HT-4 or HT-5 (9/10 or 19/20 chance of success versus HT 10). I'm not sure there's any instance at all in TOS of a normal human not going down on the first hit from a Starfleet phaser other than Gary Mitchell, who was very much not a normal human at the time and may have been using force shields anyway.

Of course if SFB does say that the ones Starfleet use are Type I then that's wrong, too.

[maximara]

Originally Posted by Inky

The phasers the Enterprise crew had weren't Type I, they were Type II. This is mentioned in "The Devil in the Dark", where the miners' Type I phasers couldn't get through the creature's armour but the crew's Type II phasers, which were higher powered, could. This may be the only time the idea of "types" of phaser is actually mentioned in TOS, though I'm not sure.

So it's possible that the Type Is (which were possibly meant for civilian use) really were so feeble that an HT-1 roll would make sense, although that really is pretty weak - that means that they'd stun an average human in one shot less than two-thirds of the time.

For the Type IIs that the Enterprise crew themselves had, you could either skip the resistance roll altogether, or, if you wanted to have a resistance roll so that space monsters with high HT would have a chance of resisting, it would have to be at least HT-4 or HT-5 (9/10 or 19/20 chance of success versus HT 10). I'm not sure there's any instance at all in TOS of a normal human not going down on the first hit from a Starfleet phaser other than Gary Mitchell, who was very much not a normal human at the time and may have been using force shields anyway.

Of course if SFB does say that the ones Starfleet use are Type I then that's wrong, too.

Actually the TOS crew used both Type I and Type II phasers.

A phaser table using information from the then canonical ''Star Fleet Technical Manual'' is on the GURPS wiki

Type II phasers per the Star Fleet Technical Manual were actually boosters for Type I which was inserted into the top of the Type II phaser.

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by dataweaver

As for the crack about “far superior products that better capture the spirit of TOS and subsequent shows”, I'll give you the “subsequent shows” point. But SFB is remarkably consistent with TOS; far moreso than subsequent shows are.

I will certainly give ADB credit for creating a very consistent universe based on the source material they're allowed to work with.

If you want GURPS Star Fleet Battles, the books definitely give you that and do it very well.

The letdown for folks who want GURPS Star Trek is that the SFB universe is very different from what the ST franchise has become. That means that casual ST fans have to do a certain amount of unlearning in order to get into the game. Serious ST fans are always going to be biting their tongues.

That's why I suggested that fan-made versions of GURPS Star Trek are superior if you want a "Trek-like" game for players who aren't familiar with the SFB universe. If you're specifically looking for "TOS Space Navy Covert Ops and Space Combat" then I'd say that GURPS Prime Directive is the better choice.

[dataweaver]

It also works if you want something that's faithful to TOS, as opposed to what Star Trek has become since then. Note in particular that GURPS Prime Directive is every bit as capable of handling the “five year mission to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before” bit as any Star Trek RPG is — though admittedly, part of that is because it is GURPS, and thus can use GURPS Space for the “strange new worlds, new life, and new civilizations”.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by dataweaver

It also works if you want something that's faithful to TOS, as opposed to what Star Trek has become since then.

I was only 6 but I very definitely did see "The Man Trap" when it premiered and I watched very steadily after that. Thus I have very clear memories of what "Star Trek" was before even the first motion picture and I do not agree with your statement.

Prime Directive may be very faithful to SFB but it wanders pretty far from TOS in many factual ways.

[Gold & Appel Inc]

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

If you're specifically looking for "TOS Space Navy Covert Ops and Space Combat" then I'd say that GURPS Prime Directive is the better choice.

Boy howdy, was that what Denver GURPS was specifically looking for.

Regarding the phaser issue, we more or less made them "If you get hit, you are probably unconscious or dead" powerful, which discouraged casual use and created a wild west / Action! feel when they did get used. Everybody had Luck, knobs dialed to cinematic.

[dataweaver]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

I was only 6 but I very definitely did see "The Man Trap" when it premiered and I watched very steadily after that. Thus I have very clear memories of what "Star Trek" was before even the first motion picture and I do not agree with your statement.

Prime Directive may be very faithful to SFB but it wanders pretty far from TOS in many factual ways.

And it's still more true to TOS than what Star Trek has become since then. Even Strange New Worlds, which is finally getting back to something resembling the proper tone for Star Trek, has numerous inconsistencies with TOS that make the SFU's inconsistencies look petty by comparison. Indeed, the only series that has as much consistency with TOS as SFU has is TAS.

Basically, there are three versions of Star Trek: there's TOS and TAS (“original Trek”); there's the reimagined Trek that started with the Motion Picture and continued through TNG and its spinoffs, ending on TV with Enterprise and on the silver screen with Insurrection (“Renaissance Trek”); and there's “new Trek” that began with Abrams's Star Trek movie and has continued with Discovery and its spinoffs and sequels. Each version claims to be an extension of its predecessor, and in fact includes something resembling its in its own setting; but despite efforts to tie it all together into one codices whole, there are fundamental discontinuities separating them: Renaissance Trek has something resembling TOS in its overall setting; but there are significant differences between TOS and its Renaissance counterpart, despite challenge efforts topatch then together. Ditto with Renaissance Trek vs. New Trek.

Of the various Trek-based RPGs on the market, Prime Directive is the only one that's built around Original Trek.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by dataweaver

And it's still more true to TOS than what Star Trek has become since then. k.

Finally we have something within the zone of allowable opinion. You can defintely think SFB/Prime Directive _closer_ to TOS than anything since but closer to TOS than Discovery isn't saying much.

[dataweaver]

It's also closer than TNG, and even the movie era.

As I said, Star Trek got reinvented with The Motion Picture; everything from there on is effectively a different version of Star Trek.

[maximara]

Originally Posted by dataweaver

It's also closer than TNG, and even the movie era.

As I said, Star Trek got reinvented with The Motion Picture; everything from there on is effectively a different version of Star Trek.

Agreed but even before The Motion Picture Star Trek had continuity issues either with itself or with history up to that time:

*"Space Seed" vs "The Squire of Gothos": Star Trek takes place in late 22nd to early 23rd century...or is it around the 2780s?

*Rome Had No Sun Worshipers: In OTL Rome had several cults that revered sun gods including Helios Apollo (Sol) from the Greeks, Mithras from the Persians, and Elagabalus from the Syrians. Then from the 3rd century on there was Sol Invictus ("Unconquered Sun") which may have been a new sect or a revival of an old one. So two of these gods in English would have been called "Sun".

*6 million died in WWI. In OTL 15 to 19 million died (9 to 11 million military personal with about 6 million civilian casualties) in WWI.

*11 million died in WWII. In OTL the range is 50 to more then 80 million. (50–56 million directly killed by the war with an additional estimated 19 to 28 million deaths from war-related disease and famine.)

*Spock states the Nazis were close to inventing the atomic bomb and would have used the V2 rocket to deliver it in "City on the Edge of Forever" as a summation of what his tricorder has recorded of the alternate timeline McCoy would create. In OTL the Nazis didn't even start seriously look at the atom bomb or V2 until they started loosing the war.

*John Gill, who is supposed to be a major historian, claims Nazi Germany was the most efficient state Earth ever knew In OTL per the 1960 book The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich the Nazi hierarchy was a web of competition, with many high officials bitterly opposed to each other. Consequently, their jurisdictions often overlapped and/or collided. Hence, this conflict actually reduced or even, in some cases, completely negated governmental efficiency.

So the effort to keep the idea Star Trek could be our future was basically DOA and there was no need to go mucking around with the timeline.