Since after quite a bit of research and still having no luck finding a solid Star Trek ttrpg I thought maybe it’d be fun to try and hack Baldes into a Star Trek setting. I’m running into a few problems.
Thinking about Playbooks, I’m not sure whether to make the playbooks based off of different species or different crew positions. Crew positions certainly makes the most sense, however different species’ abilities play a huge role throughout the series… actually, I could add that into the xp section, adding a marker like “gain xp if during the session you played into one of your race’s traits” which I think would be rather cool. Great, solved my own problem. Somewhat. Might come back to that.
Having coin doesn’t make any sense if it’s a federation Star Ship for the crew playbook, so I was thinking something along the lines of “commendations” or “respect”. This makes sense to me, as the ship and crew advance, they requisition upgrades not with money, but with respect from Starfleet. As for other crew types, a Cardassian ship would probably trade in blackmail, a Klingon ship in Honor, and a Romulan ship with Intel or secrets. A Ferengini ship would obviously be Latinum but not sure if anyone would want a Ferengi roleplay.
I think entanglements would be a ton of fun in this setting, because these would be the episodes of the series where, for example, the away team returns from the mission only to find the entire crew asleep due to a macrovirus, and have to wrestle their way to sickbay to find a cure.
Another thing I’m worried about is attributes. The entire “Prowess” section is unnecessary in a Star Trek world, with most problems are solved with careful teamwork, diplomacy, and the occasional phaser or fist. But on the whole, actual combat is seen as a last resort. I want this hack to make the focus of play working with the other members of the crew to find solutions to problems in a diplomatic or otherwise nonviolent way. I have no idea what I’d replace any of the attributes with yet, but I know I’ll have a skill for being able to generate techno-babble on the fly. Perhaps a section for skills relating to running the ship, a section of skills relating to interpersonal contact, and a section of skills for scientific knowledge? It’s all workshop right now.
I’m not a game designer, I don’t know how to work programs like indesign or illustrator, actually turning any of this into an actually usable playset is bit beyond my capability alone. Which is why I would love to see if anyone else would be interested in collaborating on this project to me. I’d ideally like to get enough people together to be able to playtest whatever it is we are able to get running, or at the very least sit down a couple times a week to throw around ideas and work on developing useable materials. People with ttrpg hacking experience or game design experience would be much appreciated