Cobalt Blue: The Blue Room Star Trek Page

This thing you call language, though - most remarkable.
You depend on it for so very much.

— Kollos, Is There In Truth No Beauty?

The first game I ever owned was a Star Trek game. Not an RPG, of course. It was some kind of family boardgame. I have vague memories of a starfield background, a few planets, and lines between them. I don't think I ever learned to play. It was a Christmas gift from a cousin, who knew that I liked watching Star Trek in reruns on Channel 20. Of course, what I really liked watching was the transporter effect. People tuning into yellow static struck me as really cool. I recall finding the rest of it confusing. This is all when I was about four.

But we get older, and things change. These days, I've got a 12-inch Andorian sitting on my bookshelf. I own a tribble. The kind that makes noise when you squeeze it. I've got both the Star Trek Encyclopedia and the Star Trek Chronology. Good god, I'm practically a Trekkie (nono, not a Trekker - Trekkers are Trekkies who are embarassed to be Trekkies, and as long as I'm gonna be a Trekkie I might as well not waffle).

And from the spring of 1999 to 2000, I spent much of my professional time exploring the United Federation of Planets and the worlds beyond, writing for the Star Trek RPG (and its TNG and DS9 cousins), published by Last Unicorn Games. LUG and its line of games are now out of print, and more than half of what I wrote may never appear, but I'm still very proud of my involvement with "LUGtrek," and this page is dedicated to a very fine family of games.

LUGTrek Projects
You can find my work in the following LUGtrek rulebooks and supplements, some of which are still available at game stores if the shelves look dusty enough. They're all officially out of print, though, so raise a glass of Romulan Ale and toast a fine game gone from the world. Here's to LUGTrek!

Star Trek: The Roleplaying Game — One of the most beautiful RPG books to ever grace the shelves of your local shop, this puppy looks like it dropped through a time-gate from either 1968 or 2268; I can't decide which. Powered by the Icon System, this was the authorized roleplaying game for Star Trek: The Original Series, and it's the game I did most of my work for. I wrote the chapter on adventure design, exploring the themes and axioms and whatnot that can make your game feel nice and TOSsy. The game was assembled and developed by Kenneth Hite, and includes the work of luminaries such as Steve Long and Robin Laws, in addition to your humble host, here. Grab some dice, rip your shirt off, wrestle some Gorn, and teach alien women about this Earth-thing called "kissing." Hoo-ah.
The Star Trek RPG Narrator's Toolkit — Each of the Star Trek family of games has a Narrator's Toolkit (NTK), and the TOS-NTK is the work of yours truly. It's a fun exploration of the many facets of the art and craft of the Narrator (that's what we call the GM in Star Trek), and just about any "Narrator" - Trek or otherwise - would probably get a kick out of it. It also includes an adventure I designed especially for beginners called "Stopping at the Beast," which includes Klingons, a mad aging scientist, his beautiful daughter that hasn't seen a fresh Earthman in years, betrayals, fights on rocky terrain, dry ice, and ancient alien crystal things. All the good stuff.
Among the Clans: The Andorians — I'm the primary author of the TOS sourcebook for one of Star Trek's often-forgotten alien species, the violent and soft-spoken Andorians. With Steve Long providing the game-rules and character creation material (and Adam Dickstein providing the sample characters), I got to play in a pretty big sandbox, because Trek "canon" at the time told us next to nothing about our blue pals from Andor. Filling in those blanks was a blast, and I think it's one of my best RPG supplements ever. Click here to see a map of the Andor Sector showing the location of Starbase 7 (accidentally dropped from the foldout poster map in the book). Click here to see the traditonal Andorian dueling weapon, the chaka. I got a lot of nice fanmail about this book and I've had the fun of seeing people making use of it, even online for MUSHes and the like. It's one of my favorite of my own books. The rumor that there's a "Ghalev" novel page tucked away somewhere on this website is entirely unfounded. The rumor that Among the Clans influenced later Star Trek television has more substance to it, but only a little.
All Our Yesterdays — The Guardian of Forever. Sling-shotting around the sun. Time travel is a big part of the Star Trek tradition, and this is the book for it. I collected dates from both canon and LUG sources to (along with Kenneth Hite) assemble the spiffy LUGtrek timeline that runs throughout the book, and I wrote some adventure-seeds for it that I'm happy with, too. Good fun!

LUG was a steady gig for me, and I really enjoyed working with these guys. I mean, I got to play in the same world as James Kirk, pet my tribble and (after long delays due to LUG's poor financial health) get paid for much of it! Not bad. Things got a little dodgy at the end when the company collapsed, but even in its demise, LUG dealt with me pretty fairly. I still keep ties with Steve Long, and I'd pester Ross Isaacs more often if I only had a good excuse to!

Untaken Treks

I wrote material for several LUGTrek titles that failed to see print before the WotC buyout and the loss of the Trek license buried the game. I've placed almost all this material on the Untaken Treks page! Browse, read, and game-with.

Toys for Star Trek Gamers
Most of my original Star Trek gaming material was written for LUG and is now owned by WotC, so I don't have any articles or adventures here apart from the Untaken Treks material. But I do have some toys and games and tidbits that Star Trek gamers will enjoy:

The "Graalek" Andorian TrueType Font is the Andorian alphabet I designed as a graphic element for Among the Clans. It includes brief documentation explaining its use.
The "Last Uniform" TrueType Font (v2.0) is inspired by the body type used in the Star Trek: TNG game supplements. Narrators can use it to make spiffy player handouts with the appropriate LUG "feel" to them (for more fun fonts, click here).
The Authentic "Mirror Universe" Star Trek Goatee is a high-quality game-aid supporting the Star Trek family of roleplaying games. Fun for the whole gaming group - and one size fits all!
A Blank "Icosahedral" Planet Map is a quick-and-dirty game-aid for space-adventure GMs. I quickly hand-drew this blank map form when doing some work on Among the Clans, and it occurred to me that others might find a printer-ready version of this classic standby to be useful.
Blank "Sector Grid" Graphics are the masters I used to built the Andor Sector map found above. There are two versions available: the cleaner, simple graphic, and the slightly snazzier one with the nebula overlay. Feel free to use them for any (non-commercial) purpose you want.
The Star Trek Word Fill-In: It's a puzzle, short and sweet and simple, and any Trek fan can solve it if they think about it for a minute. I also include a healthy dose of Star Trek clues in my crosswords; give them a try!

Also, don't miss the Secret Library for many general roleplaying articles that may be of interest to Trek gamers (like the Big List of RPG Plots), and there's a Science-Fiction set of Sparks available from the Fontworks, too, along with the Trek-inspired "Martian Hull Markings" freeware font, and (best of all) my Points in Space series of systemless RPG supplements, which just happen to work really well for Trek . . . (imagine that)! To learn more about LUGTrek, the best source on the web is Memory Icon.