Last week, we looked at Decipher Inc’s groundbreaking attempt to take the traditional mechanics of a RPG, and put them into a card game. This week we’re going to look at what happens when the same company decides to make an actual RPG. From 2002-2004, Decipher released six books under the Star Trek license. I call them Decipher Trek, but many call them Coda Trek after the system that Decipher created to run the game, the Coda System. Whatever you called it, it’s a fascinating chapter in the history of licensed Star Trek gaming and it definitely deserves a look!
But first, a rather lengthy history! In the 80s Star Trek RPGs were simple in that there was only one company handling the development, FASA. FASA held a license until 1989, when they flew too close to the sun, and started stepping in areas of development that Paramount didn’t like. It was at that point that Paramount pulled the license, and Star Trek RPGs went on hiatus. It was nearly a decade before Star Trek found another home in the pencil and paper RPG sector via Last Unicorn Games, or LUG as most people refer to them. That license lasted about a year before interference from Paramount once again left the world without a Star Trek based game of imagination. The point to this brief historical recounting is heading somewhere, I promise.
LUG bought the license for Trek around 1997, and released their first book, a core book for The Next Generation in 1998. Subsequently, LUG released 14 more books, and a limited line of miniatures in around eighteen months. That’s ludicrous! Once, again, it speaks to the commercial viability of Trek back in this era. Anyway, right around the end of ‘97, Wizards of the Coast, who make Dungeons and Dragons now, had recently acquired TSR, the company that originally made D&D. It was at this point that they started developing what would become the third edition of the world’s most recognizable RPG. *Understand that what follows is mostly theory that happens to fit the facts. I think that this period of gaming history saw WotC greedy for RPG properties. Between 1997, and 2000, they acquired D&D, West End Games, which netted them the license for a Star Wars RPG, and LUG, which probably should have netted them a license to develop a Star Trek RPG. However, Paramount plays by their own rules so when LUG got absorbed into WotC, Paramount simply shopped the license around, and settled on Decipher to develop the next iteration of Star Trek RPG. It made sense since Decipher was already making the Star Trek CCG.
Rumor has it that staff from LUG who had been brought on to Wizards had already been tweaking the rules system for the LUG game so that WotC could release a new version of the game. However, once Decipher got the license, many of those employees jumped ship, and went over to Decipher to develop. What all of this culminates into is a system that’s a disturbing hybrid of the LUG system, and WotC’s D&D third edition. That’s a really long way to explain that, but the more you know, right? The team at Decipher spent probably over a year developing Coda Trek, and for the most part, it pays off. However, as we’ll see, there are some glaring deficiencies.
The LUG system was a great system in its own right. It used character templates, and overlays to generate characters that, for the most part, were multi-faceted, and well-rounded. The character creation aspect was easy enough, and didn’t take terribly long. We’ll discuss all of this at length next week, but suffice it to say for now that LUG made a really good system that focused on great storytelling. By contrast, the Coda system was, well, not quite as good. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a really fun system to play, and once you get the hang of it, it’s not too bad, but here’s the thing: LUG had a great system. Having to tweak that great system in order to avoid IP litigation resulted in a system that was heavy on mechanics, and also pretty clunky. It’s about the only system that I play that I need a character generation guide in order to play.
Wow, we’re not off to a good start on a system that I claim to enjoy tremendously, are we? Starting at the basics, the Coda system that this game uses runs off of a 2d6 mechanic. So any skill or combat checks that need to be made use 2d6 plus any skill modifiers in order to do so. It’s a pretty straightforward mechanic, and I really can’t complain. Alright, in the positives category, there are only six books, well, eight if we count the PDF books, and a Narrator’s Screen that were published in the two years that decipher was making their game.
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| Pictured here for your convenience! |
A lot gets accomplished in these eight books. Some are more effective than others, but it does make our look at the game somewhat succinct. There’s a Player’s Guide, because obviously there is. There’s a Narrator’s guide. These are the essential core books for the game. Pretty much anything one could need to know in order to play are in these books. There’s a creature guide, an alien guide, a starship guide, and for some reason, a Starfleet Operations Manual. In PDF form, we also have a world guide, and a mirror universe handbook.
Starting from the beginning, the Player’s Handbook is a pretty useful resource. However, I don’t feel like the information is laid out as well as it could be. I find myself constantly flipping back and forth between pages trying to find information that I need. However, what the book lacks in organization, it more than makes up for in its index. The indexes of these books are fantastic! They will help you find everything, and you’re going to need it because as I said before, the layout of the books leaves a lot to be desired. There’s also an issue of the character sheets:
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| And this is just one page! |
There’s a lot there, but I’ve found that there are skills mentioned in the books that aren’t present on the sheet. This can be a little frustrating as there aren’t a ton of empty spaces to write skills into. The broad strokes information does attempt to walk you through character creation in a pretty logical way. It doesn’t mesh with how I build characters so that might be why I don’t like it as much, but at least an attempt was made. By necessity, there are a lot of tables, especially where weapons are involved. When you have a universe that used variable strength particle weapons, it almost becomes necessary to table out damage amounts at various settings. The tables are easy to read, and I can’t complain.
I’m not going to lie, I very rarely even open the Narrator’s Guide. I’ve had some instances where specific situations have required me to look up a particular rule, but for the most part, I’ve found most of the information I’ve needed as Narrator in the Player’s Guide. I’m not knocking this. Wizards uses a fairly similar setup these days. I just feel like things become extraneous here because some of the information that you use out of the Narrator’s Guide is rehashed in so many other books. But, if all you had when the game first came out was the Player’s Guide, and the Narrator’s Guide, then you’d have all of the info you could ever need. I do really like that this book talks about how Star Trek should feel as you’re running it in different eras. Each show got a short write up about what type of action drove that show, and how to incorporate that feel into your games to that, in theory, you could run several different campaigns in several different eras and have them feel much different from one another. I also have to give kudos to Decipher for trying to slip Star Trek: Enterprise into the material with such short notice. Enterprise had barely been on the air for one season before these books came out so even though the info is sparse, I was glad to see they made an attempt to cover that era. Also, there’s a lot of really helpful information on how to structure campaigns in order to keep things fresh. And of course, combat rules. So I suppose that there actually is a lot in this book that’s both exclusive and extremely helpful.
Alright, after this, I promise we’re into the home stretch. I can gloss over the other books and sum everything up because the rest are just straightforward things, but let’s talk about the book that I thought was the least useful book that Decipher released, the Starfleet Operations Manual. I’m not going to lie, I only really cracked this tome open just this morning in order to do ‘research’, but HOLY CRAP YOU GUYS! All I can say is this:
Just all of that! This is a prime situation where the name is totally misleading. I thought that this was a book to teach noobs all about Starfleet in universe. It turns out that all of the complaints that I had about holes in the system with the Player’s Guide, and the Narrator’s Guide are totally examined and improved in this magnificent bit of mana from Almighty! It was a legitimate epiphany moment for me! It seriously had me all like:
I just can’t say enough! Feel like your choices in character advancement were limited in the Player’s Guide? Starfleet Operations Manual. Pining for more races to explore and play that were left out of the Player’s Guide? Starfleet Operations Manual! Still fuzzy about how certain skills work in context of both the game overall, and playing a Starfleet officer in particular? Starfleet Operations Manual, SUCKER! I’m not exaggerating when I say that pretty much everything that I felt was missing from the other two volumes is covered in this one. It’s almost like Decipher was in a mad dash to get a product out, and knowing that the product was flawed, decided to follow that product up with this fix so that players and GMs alike could have a better handle on their game. It’s a really short book by comparison, clocking in at a meager 90 pages, but everything is covered in it, at least as far as playing a Starfleet character is concerned. There are revised, and new improvement paths, explanations of the various fleets that comprise Starfleet overall, and what each does, as well as where. There are new pieces of equipment, and better explanations of how old ones work. There are starship templates that show how all of the cool ships work within the game mechanics. I’m going to officially retract my previous allusion that some of the books were weak, this might be the most comprehensive book in the series. After this, everything else in this series is just going to seem mundane! Oh well, let’s press briefly on anyway…
The last three volumes are fairly self explanatory. The Aliens book expands the offering of playable races by giving summaries of new and old races, as well as mechanical information for playing one of these races. The Starships book gives expanded information on various starships within the Star Trek universe, how they work within the game, and also how to make your own should you have the need. The Creatures guide gives the Narrator a bunch of freaky deakies to throw at their group while said group is planetside. The Worlds PDF is also pretty utilitarian. It provides data on various known worlds within the Star Trek realm, and tells the Narrator all of the various ways that an unsuspecting player could die while exploring these worlds. It also provides information on how to build custom worlds so that a Narrator can easily shake things up during the course of a campaign. The Through A Glass Darkly mirror universe guide is probably the one that I find the most interesting and tantalizing. The Mirror Universe in Star Trek is an interesting look at what happens when all of those noble ideals that Roddenberry held so dear get rejected, and man allows his carnal passions to govern his actions. This book gives players and Narrators all of the tools they need to play in this savage and unforgiving facet of Star Trek lore. It’s pretty sweet.
With all eight of these releases, Decipher actually managed to make a fairly complete game. I can only imagine that had they had a chance to develop the property further, there might have been some adventure modules, some more setting fluff, and maybe even some Enterprise specific material to really get games into that era. But as it stands, this system is pretty complete as it is. And as with the card game, this game has managed to maintain its core following well after it’s demise. One can visit this site right now and get all sorts of goodies to further enrich your game play. The site offers new species that weren’t covered in the official publications, adventure modules, and starship builds for those who desire a change.
As far as systems go, I really can’t complain too much about this one. The character creation is probably the most prohibitive part of this system, and once you get past that, and the missing skills on the character sheet, it’s a pretty easy system. It offers a lot of possibilities, and a lot of fun for players. I know I’ve had plenty of dramatic and rewarding adventures playing in this system and I can’t recommend it enough! Stick around because next week, we’re going to look the predecessor to this RPG system, the Last Unicorn Games system! We’ll see what made the two similar and what made the two different!
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