GURPS - Star Trek Style

Lately, I've been running an on-again, off-again GURPS Star Trek campaign as both a way to collaborate on some development ideas and just have some fun in the Trek-verse.

It's a Star Trek game set in 2269 (just after the events of The Original Series and The Animated Series). 

While the Prime Directive GURPS sourcebooks are good, they are set in the universe of Starfleet Battles (SFB), which has an entirely different timeline from the television, movie and book series. The Starfleet Command games of the late 90's and early 2000's were built around the rules from SFB.

The background for this series is rooted in the canon of Star Trek from aforementioned media, and Strange New Worlds is the most recent inspiration. However, I've filled in the gaps a bit with my own concepts.

The series is called Star Trek Pelion, with that ship the last of the Constitution-class ships built in 2261. The players are characters that serve as the primary Away Team under the Second Officer of the ship. The first episode, as seen here in the splash page, is named Epsilon Eclipse.

Our tools for the game are GURPS Character Sheet (GCS), FoundryVTT (hosted on Oracle) and Discord. 

Over the years, I've adapted the GCS work of Captain Joy and others but I have restructured and simplified the templates quite a bit for the game to line up with established Star Trek canon.

Building a Character

I was fortunate enough to work with some players who were both new to GURPS and Star Trek. It forced to me to think beyond the standard methods of just providing a character template and talking through Session Zero for the character builds. 

They were also patient with the trial-and-error development that we went through, especially when creating GCS character builds for use in FoundryVTT.

The end result is a Players Guide that works with the GGS Template for creating a GURPS Star Trek character quickly. 

Part of the restructuring was renaming or creating the necessary skills to fit, conceptually. By the 23rd century, certain foundational technical concepts have evolved. 

• Computer Operation has become Systems Operation (Data Systems). 
• Engineer (Nuclear) has become Engineer (Matter/Antimatter Reactor) which serves as the primary skill for working on the warp core.

Talents have been modified to account for ability and training, so they reflect Career training focus (primarily for Science, Engineering and Medical). 

Required Starfleet Advantages and Disadvantages are zero-points, and Required Core Skills get a +1 boost, such as the Starfleet Academy Core skills or career required skills (Engineering, Medical, Science and Security). 

I've linked the most recent iteration of the Star Trek Pelion Players Guide for anyone curious enough to review it. This explains the process of using the GCS template. It will be changing again in the near future as I expand the GCS Template with Klingon and Romulan specific explanations.

Enjoy and let me know what you think.