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The FASA Corporation
Star Trek Licensee; 1982 through 1989 (lost)

Design Aug 1982 to Nov 1982 and Printed late 1982
1st ED Released Approximately Jan 1983 through Summer 1984
2nd ED Rules, Summer 1984
(nothing new was released after 1989)

FASA went on to produce many more great games, then the
FASA Corporation closed its doors January 25, 2001.
"After 20 happy-and difficult-years in business"

 

In the 80's, FASA had the license to produce an Official and Authorized role-playing game set in the Star Trek universe. Today, the game is still in use by Star Trek fans, others are improving or supplying the game, rounding out its inaccuracies while showing off the best parts of the game. At its peak, it was the number two game, though quite far behind the giant number one Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. Before going out of print, FASA's Star Trek TRPG attained great success and spawned an impressive number of supplements. It did eventually come to an end...

The information presented here is based on observations from many people from the early 1990's and on into 2006. This includes FASA ST Fans, FASA Employees, Paramount Employees, and General Knowledge with some speculation. I unfortunately left out some names when I initially wrote this. So, I combined all this information into the following:

The FASA Star Trek TRPG ('83) is a licensed product from Paramount. In 1982 design started after the Star Trek II movie was released('82). Its not the first licensed Trek RPG game, but it is the Official Star Trek TRPG. There where design teams and writers that tried at least four times to produce a rulebook, however they would be rejected by Paramount. FASA enlisted Fantasimulations Associates; Guy W. McLimore, Jr., Greg Poehlein, and David F. Tepool to write the rulebook (with additional development work from design work by Jordan Weisman and L. Ross Babcock, III). "Paramount" approved this last design. So the 1st Edition rules where printed and then released in 1983. The core rulebook is primarily based on the TOS and TAS series with rule supplements released thereafter. Part of Tepool's work was the Starship Combat section, specifically pages 102-115 of the original rule book. The RPG style Starship Combat had limited information on a half-dozen ships, with 1/2" square ship counters on a 1/2" hex sheet to track space combat. Plus there were separate panels for the helmsman, navigator, engineer, science officer, communications officer offering players the chance to sit at "consoles" for the various bridge stations and perform their duties. The Captain determined the strategy, the Engineer was responsible for power management and allocating power to various systems such as weapons and shields, the Navigator for setting course and managing deflector shield activation, and the Helmsman for firing weapons, the Communications Officer for damage control and so on. A style of a starship combat system that remains fairly unique among game systems today. The GM had one letter-sized sheet per ship. The ability to break out the panels was specifically for the crew... and was not needed for NPC ships.

The game system is percentile based (D100), meaning that for every action or test desired, players had to roll two ten-sided dice to generate a random number from 1 to 100. Success or failure was determined either by rolling against an attribute, or a player's own skill, or both, adjusted by other circumstances. The system can employ an Action Point based square-grid combat/movement system for tactical actions. This is based on a game called Snapshot('79,'83) for miniature gaming by GDW. Snapshot is an adaptation of the personal combat rules given in Traveller, especially for close combat ranges. There is also a FASA game called Grav-Ball('82) that used a similar system and also uses 15mm metal miniatures, each 15mm square is 1.5 meters. AP based movements are considered "complex" and there is allot of dice rolling. Other players find this system good for an occasional play, but too complex for all the time use. Hence there have been a number of modifications to the rules of both games that you can easily find a middle ground for what you prefer.

The game system itself has a innovative (especially for 1983) character creation system whereby you follow your character through pre-Academy, Starfleet academy, command school and several tours of duty aboard starships and space stations chosen from various tables. There is no full outright system for character classes, levels, or Experience Points. Characters begin with seven basic abilities - Strength, Endurance, Dexterity, Intellect, Luck, Charisma and Psionic Potential. These attributes are adjusted depending on the character's race. Players determined their character's background education and opening age by rolling dice, accumulating skill points based on their choice of assignment (helm operations, communications, medical etc.) or tours of duty in the military (usually the United Federation of Planets Star Fleet, but also for the space navy of the Klingon Empire). Players also had the option to assume the roles of the hero characters of Star Trek, including Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock, Lieutenant Uhura and Yeoman Janice Rand instead of creating their own character.

Although the core rule books contained Klingon characters and information, a race supplement was released separately. This covered primarily the TOS Klingons('83), although it did contain the new imperial Klingons and new official information that was known by STII. Other expansion sourcebooks began to appear to enable gamers to play characters outside of the Klingon Navy or Star Fleet setting. These sourcebooks offered FASA's development of the Star Trek timeline and the histories/cultures of the various races. FASA often drew details from Star Trek: The Animated Series or mass-market novels of the period. The Star Fleet Intelligence Manual supplement and Trader Captains and Merchant Princes introduced covert spies, clandestine operations, merchant, traders, pirates, and mercenaries with skills and equipment to the play in the universe. Sometime in here I believe the three 2nd Edition core rulebooks where released, which had STIII movie elements in it. A Romulan Sourcebook('84) was then released that covered the TOS period and onto the time of the star trek movies. The Romulan information was purely made up by FASA writers, Fantasimulations, as there was little canon information about them available at that time. The first movie sourcebook was released after Star Trek III('84), the book carried the same name and it covered the first three movies with corrections to previous published material. FASA indicated in the book what was new and what replaced the old. Then Star Trek IV another movie sourcebook('86) was released which used the same name. This covered elements from that movie and also any corrections to previous material. That was the end of sourcebooks dedicated to movie releases. After that a new second edition Klingons rule supplement('87) was released and it covered the race upto STIII. An Orions rule supplement('87) was also released. You'll find that some of the adventures and other rule supplement books released between and after the two movie sourcebooks contained various updated information and sometimes new rules. Some of the material covers Merchant Trading and other social structures only hinted at in the TOS series. FASA put out a handful of Klingon-only adventures for the truly cunning players to try their hands at. The Triangle sourcebook for another example, advanced the system by providing an entirely charted region of relatively lawless space as a backdrop for adventures, complete with faction details, star map and system details, with economy details for the various worlds.

You have to think, at the time Fantasimulations Associates (Die Hard Trek Fans) and FASA were making the first set of books('82), all they had was the existents of the original television show, the animated series, and the first two films, no STIII Klingon BoP yet. They also used a library of Fandom and Official Star Trek Information they have gathered from the '60-70's and early 80's to use for the RPG, there was also communication back and forth from Paramount and Staff, first hand knowledge and hands on material. This information was gathered when GENE RODDENBERRY and his crew where still around making for the best information available. This was during a transitional period, when the Trek universe was laid open and plans to continue to grow where set in motion. FASA made sure the material followed Star Trek as accurately as possible resulting in books holding some of the most basic details of the Star Trek world, all officially approved material. Its a big insight to what Desi Lu and the TOS production were doing, and Paramount later, developing and changing during those days.

However there were gaps that needed to be filled in with new material from Fantasimulations Associates / FASA authors that Paramount didn't have available, and this was understood between the two companies; such as Klingon fusions and The FASA timeline. The official book (at the time) The Final Reflection by John M. Ford was used and fits perfectly with FASA's The Klingons. Fans found that this FASA/Ford combination of the Klingons at times seems superior to that of the early TNG Klingons. For the Romulans FASA only had just three episodes of the original series (Balance of Terror, The Deadly Years, and The Enterprise Incident, The Deadly Years was just used as stock footage) to make there sourcebook. But keep in mind that what they did was canon at the time(80's), and was widely accepted as so. Fantasimulations Associates philosophies and speculations about the history and technology of the Star Trek Universe maintained good standings with Paramount, they remained true to the view (the majority) of the Star Trek Universe that was presented to us on TV and Film as closely as possible.

After FASA had released several established books, Paramount distinctly ignored established FASA work in the new movies and made designing the game and references awkward. Paramount simply failed to remain consistent with FASA's material and/or failed to live up to FASA's understanding of the agreement, 'that the FASA Trek material would be 'official' Trek material' that would be incorporated in the later Live Productions. FASA was probably bent on Paramount's behavior at this point but continued to provide more material and corrections despite this. FASA could only say to the fans that "anything we published later is the correct source" even if a lot of the earlier work was from Paramount's Records and Staff directly. FASA's hands where tied, little did they know back then how much more Paramount's Star Trek could and would consistently contradict itself over and over in later years.

The RPG style Starship Combat System (SCS) was updated, It was obvious that additional ships and information on space combat was necessary. For one thing, the new USS Enterprise and Klingon D-7s from Star Trek: The Motion Picture were not included in the core rule book and FASA wanted to update the game to the STII Movie level with designers;  Jordan Weisman, John Wheeler, and Forest Brown. So they did.

The new STII Starship Combat Simulator('83/'84) version contained more than one system of play; this very successful starship combat game introduced a tactical board game system while expanding on the role playing Starship Combat System found in the core rulebook. This game provided the necessary rule upgrades, condensed the panels onto a single (front-and-back) sheet, upgraded/corrected ship stats, added new ships seen in ST:TMP and in the recently released ST II: The Wrath of Khan movie. GMs can still track fleet actions with their new 1-page sheets, and players can play within the milieu of the movies, even controlling one or more ships, more so in a tactical board game. Plus, the hex-sheet that serves as a game board is now made of 1" hexes and the ship counters are now hexagonal shaped to fit. FASA titled there game with the word "Simulator" to get passed the licensing section of Paramount, so it didn't seem as a means to contemplate military combat, but trying to remain faithful at the same time.

Subsequently, the combat system was honed as more products were released. A STAR TREK III Starship Combat Game('84) version was released to make the game "up to date with the movie universe." Relevant additions where the USS Excelsior, USS Grissom, SpaceDock, and the Klingon Bird of Prey added. Other than correcting typos on ship stats, there was no change to the game itself. Then a new 2 Edition STIII Starship Game came out, this time the name was adjusted to STAR TREK: STARSHIP COMBAT ROLE-PLAYING GAME('85) because by this time West End Games had the exclusive license for Star Trek board games. West End had been complaining that the simulator was really just a board game with a role-playing afterthought thrown in. FASA yet again was trying to deflect the conflict and risk of loss of permission to print this fairly lucrative supplement. The Starship Combat game was updated one more time too the ST:STCS('86) and when compared to the The First Edition Core RPG Books Starship RPG Game to later versions of FASA's Starship Combat Rules, it appears as an 'abbreviated system'. FASA's Starship Combat Games are still very popular today, probably more so than the role-playing system. These games, despite being called a 'Simulator', allowed play of the "militarized forces" in the Star Trek Universe. (Perhaps the TNG series era, later when broadcasted, adopted this more so than did the TOS series).

FASA on the other hand later without Fantasimulations Associates started focusing on the Military aspects of Star Fleet after they moved the focus of the game to the movies. This called for much speculation and generally this wasn't consistent with what the Star Trek Universe is, or at least seen on screen at that time. The Military part of Star Trek was always something that was thought to be there, but not used often. TOS and Early Movies always did have a small undertone or hints at Star Fleet being some sort of Military presents, but It never was really officially established how that presents existed and always seem to be something the ST writers avoided. Perhaps to concentrate on the other goals they had in mind such as focusing primarily on cold war and diplomatic situations, exploration, human interaction and defensive postures, Peace through knowledge, etc... (Keep in mind that the movies certainly seemed more militant than the TOS television show). An example of how the material changed. Most of the early FASA Starfleet adventures made the assumption that the characters were the crew of the Enterprise or one of her sister ships. Later adventures had the characters on warships that where on long-term patrols.

Ultimately Paramount wasn't satisfied with FASA's change of direction in there later material, FASA was designing new major alien races to produce more options for battle scenarios, Paramount wanted FASA to use existing aliens and stay with the non-violent defensive position of the Star Trek theme. This really put FASA on the spot with the Paramount Licensing staff. Gene Roddenberry after returning from a long break from Star Trek, began work on the new TNG series and reviewed FASA's later products (as well as other published ST material/movies etc) and seen the change in the way FASA where pursuing the license. Gene Roddenberry basically took an overall review of how ST has been doing in his absent and he wanted perhaps to get ST back on its core ideas and momentum. This even applied to Official Paramount Movies, not just FASA. The Staff at Paramount where being shuffled around as well to add to the confusion. This led to some delays and problems for FASAs Star Trek material.

At one point FASA even went as far as selling a TNG book; FAS2012 Star Trek: The Next Generation Officer's Manual('88), that wasn't approved of yet/or properly and Paramount Licensing Division wasn't pleased at all, The book is somewhere between a gaming supplement and a technical manual. It didn't quite succeed at either even with final attempts to coincide with TNG Writer's Bibles of the time. Even existing unpublished FASA blueprint proposal elements such as drawings and text in the book where updated at the end. It was published immediately after the first season. To add insult to it, most of it was contradicted quite rapidly in the live TNG series. I really think that FASA probably included too much of there material, including un used semi-canon ideas in the book and Paramount wasn't ready to except such restrictions yet, even the ones that Paramount had created. It was too early in the production of the new TNG series for anyone to start collaborating data to make this type of book and produce acceptable results. Just too much information to cover a TV Series that didn't yet have a chance to grow on its own. It contradicts a lot of what has been said on TNG or in the Writer's/Director's Guide (Betazoids are NOT from Haven, Star Fleet did NOT think of creating the post of counselor when they discovered telepaths, etc.) Roddenberry was unhappy with the amount and power of weaponry that had been described for the new Enterprise. All this and more resulted in Roddenberry telling FASA to stop publishing the manual until they corrected the inaccuracies. Apparently, instead of making corrections right away, FASA made 2-3 more printings of the TNG Officer's Manual.

Paramount at this point was restricting the material that FASA can publish for ST:TNG, which basically means that FASA can only deal with material that has appeared in either the TV shows or Films. No more speculation on the part of FASA, even if it is just for the gaming universe. All future publications on the TNG era where to be based strictly on filmed events, extensive authoring or speculation on FASA's behalf was limited.

Shortly after this Manual was pulled and recalled, FASA, in response to Paramount's order to pull the Next Generation Officer's Manual off the shelves, produced and put out the newly approved and canon FAS2227 Star Trek: The Next Generation First Year Sourcebook ('89) which represented material directly lifted from the first season. This was much simpler, but also highly improved. It dealt with just the first season, and cut down on assumptions. This release has been worked out with Paramount, and Paramount's Licensing Division has said somewhat enthusiastically that it is going to be quite nice and meets with Gene's approval. It did have the strange insistence on Bridge Officer Specialist instead of Conn and Ops and the stats for the Enterprise-D are questionable. Unfortunately, some of the information is already outdated, such as the Betazoid home world is STILL not Haven, although that was stated in the first season episode "Haven". Apparently some corrections made by Paramount's Licensing Division were themselves contradicted by the series itself − especially certain 'facts' about Data's construction and Dr. Soong's true nature.

Unfortunately through '87-91 FASA was to release several new module / rules supplements as FASA continued to advertise upcoming new Star Trek products into 1991 but they never arrived. Only the two TNG books made it in '88 and '89 - and nothing new since then. Two months prior to the completion of the TNG Galaxy Class Blueprints, FASA's contract was back under negotiation ('89-'91) due to a misunderstanding. FASA was fairly certain of regaining the license. FASA's official response during this time was: "STAR TREK is and continues to be an active license for FASA. We currently have 3 products in development for the line and intend to document the Final Frontier for our gaming audience for as long as we can." FASA at this point (April 1990) did have plans to release the full set of Galaxy-Class deckplans (that where completed), A sourcebook for all information for the first five movies (Star Trek V Book to be released in '91/"possibly completed June 1990"), and second and third TNG season sourcebooks. Its also said that FASA had more miniatures for RAFM to do. Paramount had gotten the Enterprise-D -- which separated! -- and the Ferengi Marauder, and they were working out (March 1991) the Romulan Warbird (scaling issues) when the license got pulled.

Shortly after FASA submitted some more militaristic type of material to Paramount for review and it apparently was rejected. FASA was looking to build more and more and more battle scenarios into the role-playing game...they were looking for _enemies_... they were doing whole supplements strictly to build in another enemy to fight with, and that was _not_ what Gene Roddenberry wanted. FASA at this time may have been fed up with Paramount's restrictions, they fought Gene Roddenberry on this issue at the same time the studio was fighting back against Gene as well--that was when he just drew the line, that he would not have Star Trek sold as a war game any longer. No version of Star Trek should be excessively violent. He didn't want Star Trek to be thought of as a "combat" arena. Gene Roddenberry finally called on Paramount to put a halt on the material. Gene Roddenberry and Paramount intend to authorize no future licensed products that involve the military side of the Star Trek universe. Fans of FASA's game then sent letters off to the studio, and to science-fiction magazines such as Starlog and GDW's Challenge magazine complaining about the end of FASA's ability to continue to make Trek Material. Paramount License Division says: "Even though there are people that claim that when they play the game, they never "war" it, we've all seen examples at conventions, of people who maneuver it into battle scenarios, and on Star Trek, you lose if you fight, you don't win. I mean, when you resort to that, you've lost. You've lost the philosophy, you've lost the point. So, violence is not story on Star Trek, and conflict does not have to resort to violence in order to tell a Star Trek story. Again, anybody on the show can tell you that it's rarely necessary."

Writers of the TNG series in the end only used ideas from the books instead of adopting the thought-official work in its entirely. I can't blame anyone really. But I can't say I agree with this, I can see that ST needed some background on the military properties and FASA would have attracted a new set of players to the game if they had.

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