The “FASA Fleet” – First Grouping

There are a lot of spaceframes in Star Trek Adventures, and more coming all the time. Just based on what us fans have seen on the TV screen and movies there are tons of different shapes and sizes of ships. Today, however, we’re launching into a series of spaceframes that come from a stranger and wilder world entirely: roleplaying games.

Many of our readers might be excused for thinking that Star Trek Adventures is a long-in-coming chance to play tabletop campaigns of Star Trek, but there is a long tradition of such games being produced in the past. While we at Continuing Mission are not shy in proclaiming Star Trek Adventures the best Star Trek RPG ever made, we’re not claiming that it’s the only RPG of the franchise. It can be great to look back at those previous games to find gems that can be converted into the 2d20 system, as we did a while back with the Chandley-class spaceframe.

Now Christian Fernandez-Duque, a fan of the site who wrote a previous article of ambitious scope, is looking back at that gaming past to find spaceframes that were beloved (and sometimes ridiculed) by players of Star Trek: The Roleplaying Game produced by FASA to find some 23rd century spaceframes that you might want in your campaign. They’ve tracked down some existing conversions by “Sea Tyger” of spaceframes from FASA’s Federation Ship Recognition Manual on the now-sleepy Utopia Planitia Starship Design section of trek-rpg.net, and Christian has expanded on these with some compelling backstories, “sister ship” variants, and gorgeous diagrams from a variety of sources. We’ll be releasing these over the next few weeks in four separate batches so watch this space!

The Blue Fleet

The common thread in this first batch is the intriguingly (but maybe insensitively) named “Blue Fleet,” a subgroup of Starfleet’s vessels described in the Federation Ship Recognition Manual as being mostly designed and crewed by Andorians. Since their introduction to the series the Andorians’ skill at ship design and bravery in combat has been celebrated (most recently expanded by leaps and bounds in Star Trek Online) and in the Blue Fleet that expertise was put to the test in ships dominated by Andorian officers.

Obviously the Andor-class missile cruiser owed some design inspiration to Andorian shipwrights and the Loknar class is also mentioned in the book as being a large part of the Blue Fleet. Christian has included the Andorian-named Thufir class in that category as well and expanded on the legacy and functionality of the Blue Fleet in its day. The information on these classes will not only add depth to your campaign but offers a fascinating Andorian-heavy campaign option for those groups interested in trying. Today’s group is rounded out by the Wilkerson-class destroyer which resembles the Loknar class’s design in a lot of ways, and the Ticonderoga class which capitalized on some of the nacelle design of the Wilkerson.

Enjoy these spaceframes and let us know in the comments what you like about these ship designs and what you don’t! They’re all playable but not every group is going to gel with a missile cruiser or appreciate the Ticonderoga‘s silhouette (I personally find it blocky and ugly). That’s the great thing about having all these spaceframes, though! Each of these will resonate with some group, player, or GM and so I hope they can find a home in the campaigns of some of our readers.

In the meantime, stay tuned for batch number two!