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Old 05-12-2022, 04:34 AM   #1
zombietots
 
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Default What's happening with Prime Directive

Are any new books coming out for Prime Directive? I have the main book and it refers to several other books coming soon, but all I can find is Core, Federation, Klingon, and Romulan. These are good books and would love to see more for the Star Fleet Universe.
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Old 05-12-2022, 05:18 AM   #2
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Default Re: What's happening with Prime Directive

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Originally Posted by zombietots View Post
Are any new books coming out for Prime Directive? I have the main book and it refers to several other books coming soon, but all I can find is Core, Federation, Klingon, and Romulan. These are good books and would love to see more for the Star Fleet Universe.
Based on a comment made a long time ago there are come contractional limitations of what can come over from the Star Fleet Universe.
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Old 05-12-2022, 08:54 AM   #3
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Default Re: What's happening with Prime Directive

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Based on a comment made a long time ago there are come contractional limitations of what can come over from the Star Fleet Universe.
ADB's contact is very restricted and confidential. What can be determined is they are restricted to pre STMP material, TOS, TAS and 70s fanon. Mostly the Franz Joseph stuff. Only Steve Cole knows is the true limits to his license. Given how many Star Trek licenses have come and gone and what CBS/Paramount does to works they see as crossing the line he is not going to cross that line. CBS/Paramount would crush ADB like a bug. He has struck gold, the only unlimited duration Star Trek license in the business and he is not going to risk it. He has managed to keep it going for 45 years and that has to be respected.

Also ADB is a very small company with a very limited budget. Given that Prime Directive is not their big seller progress on it is very slow.
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Old 05-13-2022, 02:13 PM   #4
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Default Re: What's happening with Prime Directive

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Originally Posted by zombietots View Post
Are any new books coming out for Prime Directive? I have the main book and it refers to several other books coming soon, but all I can find is Core, Federation, Klingon, and Romulan. These are good books and would love to see more for the Star Fleet Universe.
AFAIK, subsequent books in the series were either canceled or never written.

List of the current line-up is here:

http://www.starfleetgames.com/pdindex.shtml

Since just about everything in the SFB Prime Directive series was published 10+ years ago, it's fair to say the line isn't going to be expanded anytime soon.

If you want a GURPS Star Trek or "Trek Like" setting, there are far superior fan-made versions which better capture the spirit of TOS and subsequent shows. I particularly like:

http://captainjoy.chunkyboy.com/GURP...n_Console.html
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Old 05-13-2022, 02:47 PM   #5
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Default Re: What's happening with Prime Directive

Ah Paramount, litigiousness, counterproductive treatment of fans...

As a GURPS and SFB player since the late 1980's there is so much to say...

wish I could afford the court fees to say it all.
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Old 05-14-2022, 03:36 AM   #6
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Default Re: What's happening with Prime Directive

If I recall correctly, they have provided material for the Federation, the Klingons, and the Romulans — all SFB versions, of course; so no forehead ridges for the Klingons. The next books that I'd like to see from them would be similar sourcebooks for the Orions, Gorns, and Tholians, in that order. I suspect that that would also be the ranking in terms of greatest legal risk to least; though a strong case could be made that the SFB takes on each of these are sufficiently different from what the official Star Trek versions have become that ADB should be able to publish their versions as is without risk of tripping over legal obstacles.

For instance, the Gorn Confederation is on positive terms with the Federation, and are antagonistic toward the Romulans; that right there sets them at odds with the modern Star Trek version, which apparently is into eating sentients now and are firmly in the “reprehensible space monsters” camp; the Orion Syndicate includes the green-skinned men and women seen in TOS and Below Decks, but it's more of a criminal organization than a species: most Orion “Clans” (I forget the actual term) operate far from Federation space and don't have any green-skinned men or women around: the faction that operates in and around Gorn space tends to be compared oof Gorn pirates; the lone operating in Romulans space tends to be compared of renegade Romulans; and so on. And the Tholians are an isolationist faction of refugees from another galaxy; I don't know what the official line on the Tholians in modern Star Trek is; but I'm pretty sure they aren't extra-galactic refugees.

Once those empires are addressed, I'd turn like to see the Kzintis, the Lyrans, and the Hydrans. The Kzintis area separate can of worms, legally speaking: ADB doesn't have to worry about Paramount so much as it needs to worry about Larry Niven. I think that ADB has had to rename them in at least one of their products (a space combat console game, if I recall correctly); so they might have to do that for Prime Directive as well — though they've already appeared in Prime Directive as the Kzinti Hegemony, so maybe not. But after the Kzintis, you're firmly in the realm of ADB-original material. At that point, the only remaining question is whether there's enough demand for what they have to offer.

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. They have elaborated in several cases, and in ways that further distance them from the subsequent shows. But they haven't contradicted, for the most part. In particular, the Federation that we see in SFB is very much like the Federation as it appeared in TOS and TAS, as are the other empires that appear in both SFB and TOS/TAS.
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Old 05-14-2022, 07:32 AM   #7
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Default Re: What's happening with Prime Directive

I just started running a "GURPS Star Trek" campaign.
This is the Second time I have done that - the first one was over 10 years ago from January 2010 to September of 2013.

The big difference between 'now' and 'then' is that the GCA now had Advantages, Disadvantage, and Skill names from 'Prime Directive' so I now have proper Star Trek terminology on character sheets. In the 'old days' I had to edit about 50% of it to approximate the Star Trek universe.

Don't worry about "new books". It is YOUR campaign - make it up. Adapt things from official Star Trek reference books and adapt them to GURPS.

The Klingons in my Trek universe have both ridged and smooth foreheads - the year of the setting is 2261. That is almost halfway between "Discovery" and "TOS".

- Ed C.
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Old 05-14-2022, 08:41 AM   #8
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Default Re: What's happening with Prime Directive

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t. But SFB is remarkably consistent with TOS; .
This does not match my own experience of the original Gurps/SFB material. It was strongly consistant with nothing but SFB and frequently inonsistant with TOS..

This was extremely obvious in the area of even basic equipement. 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?

Crews didn't beam down in brightly colored velour either. They had armored uniforms.

All this and many more examples might be what some people think TOS "should" have been but it's not what it _was_.
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Old 05-14-2022, 07:43 PM   #9
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Default Re: What's happening with Prime Directive

The guy who GMed my group's Trek game started with Prime Directive and modified a few bits with help from yours truly (getting hit with a phaser is actually Game Over, Man, etc), but it didn't really take much and we had a blast playing it for years.
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Old 05-14-2022, 09:54 PM   #10
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Default Re: What's happening with Prime Directive

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The guy who GMed my group's Trek game started with Prime Directive and modified a few bits with help from yours truly (getting hit with a phaser is actually Game Over, Man, etc), but it didn't really take much and we had a blast playing it for years.
Other than the TL being a little high (a loooong explanation as to why TL (6+3)^ to (7+2)^ is more sane is on the GURPSwiki) and you basically having to redo phasers (if you want to match the TOS era) it works reasonably well.
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