RE: Trek conversions

At 02:16 PM 1/27/97 -0500, you wrote:
>Ahh excuse me.   FASA HAD produced a Star Trek RPG with a space combat
>module.  (I heard it was pretty good..)

I still have it. I remember it wasn't bad as an easy, introductory type
game. One version of it allowed each player to play a different bridge
crew
member. I actually finished a couple of games of it, which is more than
I
could say about SFB.

>Anyway, what I heard, was that they
>got Paramount very mad.  Mad enough for them to yank FASA's Star Trek
licence.
>FASA had produced a produce called: The Triangle.  It covered the
sector of
>space left over between the federation, klingon, and romulan empires
that
>formed a triangle.  The official history says the the boarders of these
>nations come to a point.  There is no space left over!  That module was
>written and published without Paramount's permission.

That's not true. My contact (head librarian of the Merrill Collection of
Fantasy and Speculative Fiction) tells me that it was the OPPOSITE
situation: FASA dropped the Star Trek license. Every module released
under
the license had to be approved by Paramount. There were a number of
modules
released after The Triangle, so that wasn't the problem. In fact, some
ST:TNG stuff was released in the first season of the show. The problem
was
that Paramount made up for past mistakes in Star Trek licensing and over
priced the license for the RPG. They submitted it to FASA and FASA
dropped
it as too expensive. ST wasn't that big an RPG for them, anyway. It did
alright but considering what they were paying Paramount, Shadowrun and
Battletech were far better for them. Also, there were some problems with
Paramount wanting everything squeaky-clean in their universe. It took
forever to get a module approved, sometimes requiring small or frivilous
re-writes. They dropped the license as not being worth the cost and
pain.
Paramount tried shopping it around, but they soon found that game
companies
aren't made of money. Either the company couldn't afford the fee, or the
company was doing just fine with its own set of games.

>I heard another company got the licence to do the Star Trek RPG and
combat
>module....I think the same one that did the recent Indana Jones
game/Star
>Wars RPGs.

I haven't heard that. However, I don't think you've got this right,
either.
TSR did the Indiana Jones roleplaying game (it's been out of print for
years, so I wouldn't call it recent) while West End Games does Star Wars
(which is still going strong, but it too was first released in the 80s). 

There IS a second Star Trek RPG. It's called _Prime Directive_ and it's
put
out by Task Force Games. Actually, its an RPG based on the SFB universe.
I've got it. It looks okay, but I doubt if I'll ever run it. 

There isn't much in either game for FT fans (see, I tied it back to
FT!).

Allan Goodall:	agoodall@sympatico.ca 
"You'll want to hear about my new obsession.
 I'm riding high upon a deep depression. 
 I'm only happy when it rains."    - Garbage