dweebery

[brushwolf]

So um.

Since references to "Banned from Argo" flew fast and heavy this weekend and yet nobody ever actually played the song, I went and looked up both lyrics and song. This brings me to the realization that original Trek wasn't good. It was okay. Original Trek had a few inevitable dismal moments and a lot more moments of sheer genius, but for the most part it was an okay show when there was nothing even vaguely like it out there. A little like the way Episodes IV and V stick in memory as completely ridiculously amazing because they were in fact, merely very good and there wasn't anything similar out there.

This brings me to the dweeby exercise of thinking about Star Trek the Old Skool as someone's RPG.

I've already thought about Star Trek II - III as the GM's attempt to run a more coherent story arc after the episodic nature of the group's original campaign. The guy playing Spock has really gotten sick of him and wants to try playing Saavik, but when a run of incredibly crappy dice rolls results in a TPK early in the game, the GM switches from his original plot (Klingons steal a powerful secret terraforming technology) to that having been a test... and Spock's back in the game, with the unwilling player finally managing to kill him off in the climactic battle. Eventually the GM does get to run his story with the Klingons.

I then realized what each of the players were and it's a little embarassing.

Chekov is obviously the die-hard roleplayer. It doesn't matter how badly the character gets beat up or mind controlled as long as it makes a better story and the player gets to rock the accent.

Uhura is the social player. The chance to actually RP is a lot more enticing than anything rules-crunchy.

Sulu is there to blow off steam. Sulu's player can sit through a pretty solid amount of inactivity as long as there's a fight at the end of it.

Spock is, honestly, the group's min-maxxed powergamer. The player's managed to figure out how to balance the point cost just so to get McCoy's skill level, Scotty's ability scores, Kirk's officer rank and hand to hand skills, and as a non-human, and really all he has to do to pay for it all is to buy the character tragic background and psych disadvantage flaws.

Comments

[brushwolf]

The reboot has Uhura as much more of a rules crunch character, but have you ever noticed how Nichelle Nichols' Uhura never does anything active which doesn't have basically a character/story driven element? Everyone else gets the technical challenges ("rebuild the warp core with a standard toolbox before the Enterprise can't maintain a stable orbit" *rolls*), but Uhura can't even pull a phaser on an innocent ensign (ST III) or translate stuff into Klingon (ST VI) without it becoming a roleplaying exercise! I figure "crunch" really doesn't interest the player, and she's not really around all the time. My guess is the player is somone's boyfriend/girlfriend/carpool and wouldn't be there otherwise.

Kirk/Scott/McCoy are just the core of the game group. Kirk's obviously okay at a whole batch of stuff but he's not all that great at any one thing, so I figure a lot of points went to buying rank or something. Scott and McCoy presumably had the same number of points to work with, and it was clearly enough to build a genius engineer and a genius doctor. This is what makes me think Spock used all the points from disads to make his character super-smart and super-strong and telepathic.

[emberleo]

Maybe - I think he just rolled higher stats to work with and then chose the Space equivalent of Grey Elf, and the GM let him use an Elven Kit class 'cause he shelled out for pizza for the first several months.

Uhura isn't necessarily a DM's Girlfriend character - that's more Nurse Chapel, I think - so much as she's just not that interested in game mechanics. She asked to play a Fate-style game instead, but the guys all overruled her when they voted for an old-style dungeon crawl in space.
She pondered switching gaming groups, but the DM promised to throw puzzles her way that are more about thinking and interacting than rolling dice.

-E-

[brushwolf]

So you figure that the way she's so sporadic is basically that most of what they're doing just doesn't interest her?

[emberleo]

Hmm, good point. Perhaps she's one of the two residents where the game is held and keeps having to get up to take care of kids and such?

-E-