So I found two more FASA catalogs that I didn’t own on Ebay. They were decent prices, so I snagged them and when the last one arrived today, I sat down and scanned it. I had purchased it sometime last month but it was being mailed from Australia. I had posted some of the other scanned catalogs in past blog entries, but recently I had combined all of this information in one central location in my FASA Star Trek RPG section.
This is the issue that came from an Australian ebay seller and it was printed length wise. To my knowledge, it is the same catalog that could be found in the United States. The first couple of pages detailed the Battletech supplements that FASA had released at the time. Following that was two pages of Doctor Who RPG books and one page of Doctor Who miniatures. The last half of the catalog is dedicated to the Star Trek RPG. Some of the interesting entries includes the description, ISBN and Stock Number for the mysterious Star Trek Ground Forces Manual. If anyone has a beta-copy of this book, I’d love to obtain it or get a PDF scan. I’ve always wondered what was in this book. I would try to preserve it here in my FASA historical information that I’ve placed on this website. We also see the details and the cover to the Star Fleet Marines tactical boardgame of ground combat. I wonder if this would have been similar to the Starship tactical combat game that FASA had a lot of success with? Another mysterious cover was Operation: Armageddon. I don’t know if this was a supplement for the Starship tactical simulator or an RPG sourcebook. This was another book that never hit the shelves and was (allegedly) one of the books that someone at Paramount (I suspect Gene’s assistant) had issues with. Struggle for the Throne was another side-game that would have dealt with political intrigue within the Klingon Empire. The last page was an advertisement for the Top Gun boardgame.
What a difference a couple of years makes. This booklet sized catalog primarily focused on two of FASA’s biggest properties at the time. Renegade Legion and the Battletech universe. The last third of the catalog details the Star Trek material that FASA had on hand at the time. While the Next Generation Officer’s Manual was listed, nothing else stood out. We had the standard entries, but no speculation entries of what might have been. This was getting close to the run for the FASA license and not a lot was listed.
I will be adding these two catalogs to the main catalog article very soon. As I come across additional catalogs, I’ll scan them and list them here.
So as you no doubt noticed, I didn’t do a lot of posting in June. I had a few posts about Star Trek e-Book deals and Shadowrun character sheet. But after that it was automated posts about the daily Star Trek quotes twitter account that I run. Yes it bugged me that I didn’t get more blog posts put up. So why did that happen? June of 2022 turned out to be very busy and very sucky towards the end.
I had the opportunity to go to several concerts (photos soon in the photo album). One of them was “Weird Al” Yankovick, which is always a treat. I have a draft of a blog post started for that event which I will finish up and post. I also started a draft post about my first NFTs that I now own (yea I’m just as shocked as you are) which will see the light of day soon.
It seemed like every weekend I was out of town taking care of one thing or another. I missed a lot of Svengoolie. Luckily, Creature Features posts their episodes on YouTube so I could catch up with them later. There were also lots of days that when work got over, I needed to unwind away from the computer. I did get some new game books and I found several new items out in the garage (more on those later). I was also able to catch up on a lot of my comics. I won’t got into detail on them now, but I’ve really been enjoying Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, Obi Wan Kenobi and The Orville. I’ve also had the opportunity to catch up on some movies that I’ve missed.
But the thing that sucked most of all is that my household finally got hit by that bug that’s been going around. Yea… that one. Right at the end of the month. I missed out on two concerts because of it (one was Howard Jones that I really wanted to see). And as you can imagine, it also wiped out a lot of spare time that I had.
Thankfully we are on the mend (thank god for vaccines). I’m really wanting to get back to some gaming and geek articles. I’ve got a big FASA project that I can’t wait to unveil. I’m thinking of several new article types that I want to start posting on a regular basis. They won’t be marathons like the Character Creation Challenge, but they will be a series that will take a while. More on that soon. I’ve also got a fantasy campaign that I need to get on paper. The ideas have really been churning in my head.
I can see from my plugins that I’ve been getting regular hits to the site. Thank you for sticking with me. I hope that the upcoming articles will make it worth your while.
I don’t recall much about this Shadowrun character. It is possible this could have been our mysterious missile shooter. I do know that the name Hammerstat was found on a list of customers at one of my previous occupations. I thought the name sounded very manly and could be used for a tough character. I know that I drew the character image myself.
The Dungeons and Dragons Rules Cyclopedia and Star Frontiers Alpha Dawn print on demand books.
A package arrived for me the other day. It contained my hardcover print-on-demand copy of Star Frontiers Alpha Dawn from DriveThruRPG. This was the second POD that I had ordered from DriveThruRPG. Before the first Character Creation Challenge, I had ordered a POD of the Dungeons and Dragons Rule Cyclopedia hoping that I could use it in the challenge. It had arrived too late for that event, but it made me realize that I could use the POD options to obtain books that I’ve been wanting to add to my collection. While PDFs are good for reference and quick searching, I still like the feel of a book in my hands. Especially when I’m learning a new system or wanting to recall reading the books for the first time. While I had my own copies of the BECMI Red Box books, I’ve been wanting a copy of the Rules Cyclopedia. Star Frontiers was one of those games that my group of gaming friends wanted to play when it first came out, but for one reason or another, we never got the opportunity to do so. With the credits that I had been building up from DriveThruRPG (thank you) I thought I’d pick up a POD for me to enjoy.
Another thought hit me as I was opening the package, I should write a review of the POD copies that came from DTRPG. So I took some pictures and decided to write down my thoughts. This will be a review of the POD, not a review of the games themselves (which will be handled in a later blog post).
Ordering the books was pretty easy in both cases. Go to the entry on the website and see the options available. Just keep in mind that there is a charge for shipping as well. I don’t recall how long the Dungeons and Dragons book took to arrive (I had ordered at the tail end of the holiday season which is probably the worst time to try to get things by mail), but the Star Frontiers book arrived in ten days after ordering. Both books were printed in Tennessee. A USPS tracking number was provided in both cases.
Both books were packaged very well. The container the D&D book did get a little roughed up in transit, but the book itself was just fine. There was no damage to the container that the SF book arrived in.
Top views of the bindings for both books.
As you can see, the bindings for both books look pretty solid. The covers are not attached directly to the prints themselves which has allowed for repeated book opening. While I haven’t had a chance to go through the Star Frontiers book, I have had several sessions where I’ve sat down to read chapters in the Rule Cyclopedia and I cannot see any additional wear from these readings.
View of the spines.
As you can see from the earlier picture, the covers are pretty sharp. The back image on the Star Frontiers book does slightly bleed onto the spine. The Rules Cyclopedia front and back cover appear to be the same as the original publication. As for Star Frontiers, it appears that “The Original” was added to the top of both covers. Another note on the Star Frontiers, book, they did not change the wording of the description on the back. So the hardbound book talks about how “the box set includes…”. Since they had slightly changed the cover, I’m surprised that they didn’t change the description. But it was an interesting read to see what the original box set stated.
A colored map in the Star Frontiers book.
The Grand Duchy of Karameikos map in the Rules Cyclopedia.
Considering these prints are from a scan of the original books, they came out sharp in the publication. The colors stood out just fine (as seen by the photos above). There were a few pages that contained blue text in the Star Frontiers book (which I believe was the same in the original book). The art printed out OK as well. Again, for a scan, these came out readable and usable. Nothing extra blurry or hard to read.
Now that I own Star Frontiers, I’ll be able to use it in the 2023 Character Creation Challenge. I don’t know if I’ll ever get a chance to play it, but I can at least read and understand one of the classic games that I saw advertised early in my RPG days. I’m also planning to pick up a few more POD books that I’d like to have dead tree versions of without having to pay expensive collector prices for.
The same group that I played the Star Wars RPG with also loved playing the Star Trek Roleplaying Game by FASA. I created a Helmsman for the USS Emprador. I don’t recall what inspired the starship name or what class it was. What I do recall is that our characters got stuck in the mirror universe (this was the early 90’s before there was the Deep Space 9 episodes that re-introduced the mirror universe). It was interesting because all of our characters retained their ranks in the MU except for one individual who had a very high rank in the regular universe. It was interesting seeing how he reacted to the change. Unfortunately this was also the game where the GM had painted himself into the corner and had to end it with the “It was all a simulation” ending. Let’s just say that the GM quickly found out how much we did not like that idea (being chased down the street probably gave him his first hint).
The name of the character came from a friend I had while growing up. We had been out of contact for several years when I rolled up his stats so I never had a chance to tell him about it.
On a side note, I did find another character while emptying out another cardboard box. It was from a game in the early 2000’s. I’ve added the sheets to the book and will probably include it in a future blog post.
So there were a bunch of geeky things planned for today. I thought that some of the events would make for an interesting blog post. This will cover several topics from comics to conventions to role playing games.
Art Con:
So first was something that I saw advertised on Facebook, and nowhere else. Art Con was going to be held on May 6-8 at the Salt Palace. This is the same location where FanX: The Salt Lake Comic Convention is held every year. Admission was free, but you had to sign up for tickets. It sounded like something that my geeky wife and my art inspired kids would be interested in attending. We would already be in the Salt Lake City area to help my college aged kid get her stuff out of the dorm, so we could swing by afterwards to check it out. Here are some photos I was able to sneak in while at the con.
At various conventions one of the attractions are the art shows and artist alley. You can see unique works of art (paintings mostly, but there have been other mediums). It is also an opportunity to meet various artists and see some inspiring ideas.
Art Con was advertised as a convention displaying art from Star Wars, Dungeons and Dragons, Harry Potter, DC & Marvel Comics, Star Trek and more. It sounded like it was going to be quite large. It was… quite disappointing. Instead of being in one of the convention halls, it was in two side rooms. You can see from the photo with the Darth Vader painting that the room was divided in half and you could walk past tables displaying reproductions of art for sale. Yes there were two artists there, but they were working on some actual paintings at the time and I didn’t feel comfortable going up and asking them questions or getting a photo. The photos above were of the largest pieces available at the con and none had been used in any actual publications that I was aware of. I was hoping to see something that had been in an art book or RPG manual. Yes there was a small print of a beholder, and a few other fantasy things, but nothing that I recognized. There was a lot of prints of various superheroes and anime characters on the toilet (that gag got old very fast). We were only in the room for an hour.
My college age art student actually got upset because some of the pencil drawings appeared to be from artists not at the event. Yes they were licensed to sell these IP items, but other than a large sale, there was nothing here. In the hallways outside the rooms, I saw a couple of cosplayers who looked disappointed. They got dressed up an there was nothing for them to express their cosplay. I think if this had been more of an actual convention instead of a yard sale, it would have been OK. As my oldest put it, if we had come down just for this, they would have been very upset. I’m wondering if they take this “event” from city to city as a traveling sales show? If they made it more like an “Artist Alley” where we could see many different styles of art from different artists that we could meet, I could see this being something we would want to attend more. As it was presented today, I doubt we’ll be back.
Free Comic Book Day:
We had skipped going to our local comic book stores for Free Comic Book Day to attend Art Con. Since that was a bust and we still had a ton of time left, the family decided to head to the Valley Fair Mall to see if we could hook up with some cosplay friends who were going to make an appearance at the Nerd Store. While we made it to the store, we had missed our friends. But I was able to pick up a free Doctor Who comic and a free issue of Red Sonja. My kids were able to pick up some comics as well. The store didn’t have any of the Star Trek or Star Wars comics that I was missing, so we checked out a few other stores before hitting the food court for lunch. One of the places was Hammond Toys and Hobbies. I had many memories picking up 1st edition and 2nd edition Dungeons and Dragons books there in the past. Unfortunately I didn’t see any RPG books now. It had been years since I had been in a Hammons.
Random RPG Book Club-May Delivery:
When we arrived home there was a package waiting for me. The May delivery of the Random RPG Book Club. Here is what was in the package.
Selection delivered in May 2022.
As you can see there was another hardbound book that came in. At first I thought it was duplicate of what I had in my collection. But I had the Dungeons and Dragons v3.5 Monster Manual, but this book is the 3.0 version of the Monster Manual. So this does fill a hole in my collection. Perhaps I could write up a comparison between the two books in a future blog entry.
The second book is The Strange In Translation: The Strange Character Options. It is a sourcebook for a roleplaying game called The Strange from Monte Cook Games. I had never heard of this RPG before so I have no idea how the system works. From my initial view through the book, it looks like it is of pretty high quality and art. If I can find out more about this game, perhaps I’ll write up a review.
I did look up both books on ebay and they were well above the $8.00 a piece mark. So the club continues to deliver what it promised.
An unexpected tip of the hat:
Apparently my blog has been inspiring. Thank you.
So yes it has been a geeky day with ups and downs. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got pizza waiting and an episode of Svengoolie and Creature Features to watch.
Oh, before I go. I’ve been working on some of the fan pages on this site. I’ve got more details for the FASA Star Trek RPG, the LUG Star Trek RPG and I’m working on fleshing out more of the website.
In the late 80’s and early 90’s I had the opportunity to play several sessions of the Star Wars RPG by WEG at a “clubhouse” next to Comics Utah in Sugarhouse (a suburb of Salt Lake). I believe this was the character that I was playing in the campaign when we all discovered how we could use the Con skill to BS our way through certain scenarios. This also may have been the campaign where our rebel ship faked being a merchant vessel called “The Fresh Fruit Express”.
I’m not certain where I came up with the name Sargoth Silverman. I’m sure that Sargoth sounded Star Warsish and Silverman just rolled off the tongue. The “De Commisar” nickname was inspired by the After the Fire song “der Kommisar“. I’m sure if I were to ask the younger me, he would say that he wanted to play a stealthy character this time around.
I’ve got several more WEG Star Wars RPG characters to post as well. I’ll get to them at a later time.
So last month I posted about the Star Trek: Discovery season one character pack published by Modiphus. I figured that they would be releasing a season two, but I didn’t know how soon. As it turns out, it was earlier than I expected. Just a few days ago Modiphius released the Star Trek: Discovery season two character pack. I had to pick it up the moment I realized it was available on DriveThruRPG. Note, it is only available in PDF version.
The season two book also comes in at 22 pages (the largest of all the character guides) and continues the special report by Kovich to Admiral Vance detailing the events of the second season. While the “report” covers some characters we’ve seen detailed in the season one guide, it also provides information on new characters we saw in season two.
Our first new character is Captain Pike. I did notice that the science rating matches what we saw in the episodes of Discovery. Next comes Commander Saru, a character that was detailed in the season one book. This character has different stats since this is the post-Vahar’ai Saru. Lt. Commander Paul Stamets, like Commander Saru, has some changes from the season one write up as he is now Human augmented with Tardigrade DNA. The stats for Michael Burnham had also changed between her Mutineer write up to her Science Officer information. We also have new stats for Ash Tyler, Sylvia Tilly and Philippa Georgiou. Next comes Lieutenant Spock, and yes he’s different than the Commander Spock found in the Star Trek: The Original Series character packs. But this would be expected as there are several years in the life of the character. We also get the first stats for Commander Jet Reno. The supporting characters are also new with Commander Una Chin-Riley (aka Number One), Lt. Commander Airiam, the Barzan Lt. Commander Nhan and the Saurian Lt. (j.g.) Linus.
A write up is provided for the Kelpian species, but it is the same as the first season book. The write up for the USS Discovery is listed as the 2257 configuration, but the information appears to the same as the 2256 configuration. These are the only two items that are the same, everything else is different. Originally when I saw the listing of characters, I was worried that it would be the same with some new artwork. But that is not the case. This will be new information for gamemasters and players so this would be a product worth purchasing.
Modiphius sent out an email announcing this product which is how I found out about the release. The other products they announced in the same email also sounded very interesting. This August, Modiphius will be releasing the Star Trek Discovery (2256-2258) Campaign guide. This will include several new races and spaceframes. The book I’m really looking forward to is titled, Utopia Planitia. This is a sourcebook for Starfleet and will be released sometime later in 2022.
So like most people, I’m on Facebook. And like most people, I roll my eyes at the “where did that come from” advertising that Facebook throws at me. I guess data mining our information brings in enough money that they can throw any old advertisement at us. So imagine my surprise earlier this year when I saw an advertisement for something I might actually be interested in, a Random RPG Book Club. I looked at the comments and it appeared that this club had been going on for several years. Plus there were no “Wow this sucks” comments so I did some deeper digging.
A Massachusetts bookseller named Chris Korczak has a website at https://www.RpgRpgRpg.com. Besides having several roleplaying books available for regular sale, Chris runs a Random RPG Book Club. For $16.00 (which will include the shipping cost) he will send you two books from a large collection of random books he has in his store. On both the website and in the advertisement there were pictures of stacks of hardbound RPG books. There is an option for a once-a-month or once-a-week subscription. I’ve been wanting to build up my RPG book collection and this sounded like an interesting, and not too expensive, way to add to it. So I signed up for the monthly subscription. Here are my thoughts after the first three months.
Shipping:
In all three months, the books were bubble wrapped and placed in a sturdy cardboard container. When the books were shipped, a USPS tracking number was sent to me and I was able to track the progress. The first month (February), took a little bit longer than usual. But I believe this was the postal system still recovering from the holidays. The other two months it only took 7-9 days for the books to arrive.
Communication:
As mentioned above, an email with a tracking number is sent out when the books have shipped. Just before this happens a receipt was also emailed out for the next month’s order. I did email Chris once after the March order arrived (there wasn’t an issue, it was a question in general) and he responded pretty quickly. With the last shipment that arrived in April, there was a note from Chris hoping that the selection of books will inspire an RPG encounter.
Selection:
I will be commenting on the selection of books and leaving the content of the books for later reviews.
Selection delivered in February 2022.
I was very satisfied with my first month in the Random RPG Book Club. The package contained a hardbound book and a softbound module. Both books were for the D20 based Dungeons and Dragons version 3.5. The first was a hardbound book from Fantasy Flight Games, Legend & Lairs Mythic Races. I enjoyed looking through this book and could see a use for both fantasy and science fiction games. The second book was from Dark Portal Games (yea I had to Google the name of that company myself) which was pretty detailed. It was titled White Robes, Black Hearts: Enigma of the Arcanexus. I checked both books on Ebay and both books would have cost me well more than $8.00 a piece.
Selection delivered in March 2022.
As mentioned above, the March selection arrived quicker than February’s. When it arrived, I noticed that the box was much lighter than the previous month. Inside was two softbound books that when stacked on top of each other matched up to the White Robes, Black Hearts module that came last month. The first was Wilderness & Wasteland Scarred Lands by Sword & Story Studios (aka White Wolf Publishing). This is a sourcebook with various encounters for some various broken lands for the 3.5 D20 system. It could prove useful in reading and campaigns. The second was a little bit more confusing. The Pathfinder Player Companion: Dungeoneer’s Handbook, which wasn’t much of a handbook. It seemed like a magazine because it talked about the next issue that was ‘coming next month’. I might be able to get a few tidbits out of this… er… magazine? I doubt I would have picked up this “handbook” if I would have had the chance. I did check both items on ebay and they were more than $8.00 each.
Selection delivered in April 2022.
And recently the April package arrived with it’s random selection of books. When I first opened it up I was surprised to see a vampire book and a book of character sheets. Then upon closer inspection, it wasn’t character sheets, it was a single character sheet in an 18 page pamphlet. I’ve already ranted about a roleplaying game that had a six page character sheet, but this seemed to take things too far. Even in 2003 you could download free character sheets (or if you have a good Dungeon Master like I did) have the character sheet on a programed Excel worksheet. This product confused me. The Character Record Folio for Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 was releasled by Green Ronin Publishing. When I checked ebay, it ranged between $5.00 and $19.00 dollars in availability and so far has been the most disappointing item from the Random RPG Book Club. The second softcover book was Vampire Hunter$ by Nightshift Games and instead of being a Dungeons and Dragons third-party supplement, it was a core rulebook. The concept sounded interesting and almost made up for the character sheet being included in the package. I’m certain that I’ll be able to use this for the 2023 Character Creation Challenge to learn the system. Ebay did have this book for more than $8.00.
Conclusion:
The primary reason for participating in a random book club where you don’t know what is coming is the anticipation of what may be in the box. I’ve purchased the Star Trek themed mystery boxes before at conventions. The boxes that have 35-40 dollars worth of merchandise inside for $20. Sure, most of the items were things that I had or didn’t need, but there was usually an item or two that was really kewl. I even ended up with an autograph out of one. But my friends and I would open them up as a group and trade items between each other. The Random RPG Book Club is a similar concept. What will be in the May box? I’ll be sticking with the subscription for another month or two to find out. The photos in the advertisement gave me the impression that there would be a couple more hardbound books arriving. But as long as I don’t get any more character sheets then I should be satisfied.
I’ll keep this blog informed as well as reviewing some of the books that I’ve obtained.
Over the past week, Modiphius has released two new PDF products for their Star Trek Adventures RPG line. I picked up both of them on DriveThruRPG and decided to give them a review. As you may recall, I was very impressed with the IDW Star Trek Year Five Tie In that Modiphius released last October. And it is still my hope that there will be further official releases based off of the IDW Star Trek comics. Here is a BIG HINT of what I’d love to see next from Modiphius and IDW.
This book is written from the viewpoint of a Starfleet report in the 32nd century. In an effort to learn everything they can about the USS Discovery after it’s arrival, a report was made. At 22 pages this is the largest Player Characters supplement released by Modiphius. It contains artwork from the Star Trek Timelines game with a good layout that fits the 32nd century Starfleet. There is also a very good look at the dedication plaque for Discovery. As a Treknologist, this warmed my heart.
All of the main characters are presented from Captain Gabriel Lorca to Cadet Sylvia Tilly (one of my favorite characters). A few major NPCs, such as Emperor Philippa Georgiou and L’Rell, and several supporting characters are also detailed within the book. For those who wish to play characters from the Kelpien race, the stats are available in this publication. The starship stats for the Crossfield-Class USS Discovery is also officially set for use in Star Trek Adventures with this release. A new starship talent for the Spore Drive has been detailed for game masters. At $4.99, the Discovery Season One Crew Pack is a bargain for anyone wishing to set a series in the Discovery era.
One final thought about these Player Character guides, I love these. With past games based on popular franchises, you attract a lot of new players who are fans of the series first. I’ve seen examples where someone wants to describe their character as “tougher than Worf” or “almost as smart as Spock when it comes to computers.” With these different player character guides, it helps the GM assist the new players with reaching their desired character goals.
This week, Modiphius released the Mission Briefs 005 Starbase Adventures book. On DriveThruRPG this publication is listed as a “pay what you want” with a suggested price of $0.00. So you can pick up the PDF (and those of the earlier Mission Brief releases) for free. For those of you not familiar with the Mission Brief format, it is a series of adventure seeds that GMs can drop into their campaign. For this book, the subject is Starfleet Officers serving on a Starbase or other similar facility. The details for each brief is contained on a single page and geared towards a specific officer (i.e. Medical Officer, Engineering Officer, etc.). It is written by Tony Pi who has several good articles on the STA fan website: Continuing Mission. This Mission Briefs is primarily set in the TNG era, but with a little work most of them could be adjusted to other eras. There are ten briefs in total with the book coming in at sixteen pages. While you are picking up the Discovery Crew Pack, slip the Mission Briefs into your cart as well.
Hopefully soon we will see Player Character guides for Star Trek: Lower Decks, Star Trek: Picard and other series that are available on Paramount+.
