Retrospective: Trader Captains and Merchant Princes

FASA's Star Trek the Role Playing Game was one of my favorite RPGs in my youth, eclipsing even Traveller in my affections, if you can believe it. One reason for this is that Star Trek was my first fandom. I was initiated into the mysteries of Gene Roddenberry's vision of the future by my paternal aunt, who was a teenager when I was born. She was thus old enough to have been a fan of The Original Series during its initial broadcast and to be close enough to my own age that we shared a lot of interests (she also took me to see Star Wars in 1977 and introduced me to Kolchak: The Night Stalker). 

Before she married, my aunt still lived with my grandparents, which I visited nearly every Saturday. That was also the day when a local independent TV station showed reruns of Star Trek, which we'd watch together. This weekly ritual, started when I was quite young, made me a devoted fan of the series, long before it became heavily merchandised (though there were still a few tie-in products kicking around). My earliest conceptions of science fiction were thus strongly influenced by Star Trek.

Another reason is that FASA's RPG adaptation is a very good one that, in my opinion, did a great job of capturing the vibe of what Star Trek was like in 1982, when what is now a bloated, sclerotic franchise devoid of good ideas (James, tell us how you really feel) was still as wide open and rife with possibilities as the Final Frontier itself. Recall that, at that time, we had only The Original Series itself, its short-lived animated continuation, two movies, and a fairly small number of comics and novelizations. That was in the process of changing, of course, but, upon its publication, Star Trek the Role Playing Game still felt like it belonged to the looser, more freewheeling era of fandom my aunt had introduced to me.

So, when FASA released the Trader Captains and Merchant Princes supplement in 1982, I immediately snapped it up. I've mentioned my love for it previously, but, until now, I've not had the chance to talk about it in any detail. Where Star Trek the Role Playing Game was (obviously) devoted to Starfleet characters and their exploration of the galaxy, this 52-page book focused on civilian characters, specifically "traders, privateers, merchants, con-men, and rouges [sic]," as its back cover boasted. If you're the sort of person who ever watched "The Trouble with Tribbles" and wondered what other shenanigans Cyrano Jones might have gotten up to or imagined what life was like for Harcourt Fenton Mudd as he perpetrated his illicit schemes at the far corners of space. this is the supplement for you.

For myself, all of that was compelling, no doubt, but what really grabbed my interest was simply learning more about life on the fringes of the galaxy's Great Powers. Up to this point, everything we'd seen of Star Trek was about Starfleet and the Federation, leaving me to wonder what else there might be to do out there among the stars. Characters like Jones and Mudd hinted at the existence of people living on the edge, doing what they needed to turn a credit while trying to stay ahead of any authorities that might look too closely at what how they earned their livings. Roddenberry had, after all, originally pitched Star Trek as Wagon Train in space, so it only made sense that there'd be futuristic gamblers, rustlers, and snake oil salesmen out there somewhere. This supplement let you play them.

In addition to new character generation options, like the Merchant Academy, Trader Captains and Merchant Princes also offered both new personal equipment and new starships. The latter were especially interesting to me, because they were all small craft, with a crew complement of no more than a dozen, which made them both the perfect size for a "party" of civilian characters and a nice counterpoint to the huge vessels of Starfleet. The book also included rules for trading, running and maintaining small ships, taxes, tariffs, piracy, and playing the stock market. Topping it off were guidelines for refereeing merchant adventures and campaigns, as well as a sample setting, the Twilight Nebula, an unclaimed area of space at the fringes of the Klingon Empire. 

I'm a big fan of supplements that expand the scope of a RPG, opening up new avenues for fun and exciting play. Trader Captains and Merchant Princes really did that for Star Trek the Role Playing Game, at least for me. I ran a merchant campaign for my friends in parallel with the missions of the USS Excalibur aboard which their Starfleet characters served. I even recall that one of the Starfleet characters spent time undercover as a merchant, operating under an assumed name to learn more about the Romulans' activities in a region of unclaimed space. We had a lot of fun and this supplement gave us the rules and inspiration to make it happen.