Star Trek Ships

NaBloPoMo Day 2

A long time ago (11+ years ago) in a galaxy far, far away (Denver), I hung out in a number of CompuServer forums (fora?).  My buddy Tardis sucked me into the Star Trek Ships game in the RPGames forum.  Oh, man.  I can’t even tell you about all the great fun I had, and the awesome people I’ve lost touch with from those days!  I can’t tell you about it because I just wander off to the Eclipse or the Hawking or the Odyssey and sit with a silly grin on my face.

My favorite ship was the Eclipse and my favorite character was a fey holodeck programmer by the name of Moira O’Shaughnessy.  She started off as a Lt JG in engineering and wound up, through a fascinating series of disasters and misadventures, as the Captain of the ship.  Some real-life unpleasantness killed off the game, and more than a decade later, I hate to admit to still being a little bitter about that.  Still, in Real Life, I married the guy who played the Chief Security Officer, so all was not lost.

Said Spousal Unit is now heavily obsessed with World of Warcraft, and has tried to entice me to play pretty much constantly since he became addicted.  But I think about the roleplaying we all did back on the Eclipse, and I can’t see how WoW can even come close to that level of awesomeness.  Where’s the character development?  Where’s the storyline?  And what’s up with all the pretty pictures?  Even when I played Dungeons and Dragons (an even longer long time ago (25+ years), in a galaxy slightly closer (Chicago)), there was a story to go along with the quest… at least when I was the DM.  When Jeff was the DM, it was a series of jokes and puns that often had us laughing so hard we could barely breathe.  My favorite Gamemaster in STS was a dude named Dan.  Sometimes I suspected he was trying to kill us all with his storylines, but HOLY CRAP did we do some fantastic roleplaying!

Ah, what memories, what memories.  Sure, I’m living in the past (RPG-wise).  And if I could find my group again, I’d jump at the chance to play Moira.  Until then, I’ll be over here painting or playing Solitaire.