u/Individual-Mess8441

I've been working on stuff for my campaign and after hours of playing around I stumbled on thelcars.com which has a great HTML set up for LCARS. That got me thinking about presenting this to my players.

THE ISSUE! I don't want to see the web bar - it breaks immersion into the world. I want to hand my players a PADD and just have them go at it.

ENTER - Fully Kiosk Browser on Android. This has been a crazy upgrade - by loading the HTML files onto my tablet I was able (with a little tinkering) to load it into the browser. This means I can program a website around my campaign and host it all locally.

Of course for brownie points - I might load the whole thing onto a local web server - so that my players can browse on their own devices... hard to say if that would be worth the effort.

**SEE SMALL UPDATE IN COMMENTS**

I am a never GM and never player of RPG's. I have an extensive background in improv and love data mining for stuff - so I think RPGs are right up my alley. Right now - I am working on an adventure for a few friends using the r/startrekadventures campaign system. I want to be able to add the ability to spend "funds" within the game - while more often than not you are play as the federation - there are options in the game to play as different polities. Maybe there are Ferengi merchants or Orion Pirates. We see lot of trading happening in the post scarcity world of star trek.

So my questions are

1. What items of value are there in the future, especially personal items. So far I have stuff like paintings, holonovels, books and other works of art. What do you think those might cost in strips of gold pressed latinum.

2. In Lower Decks - we see games like Bat'leths & BiHnuchs. We know of Kal-Toh and Dom-jat. What other games am I overlooking - how would you implement them in an RPG.

3. We see a LOT of card games in Star Trek - what game do you thiiiiiink might be the best to play as part of an ongoing RPG?

4. What contraband is available to the citizens of the Star Trek universe? How does this effect day to day life in the universe?

I'm sure I could ask sooooo many more - but mostly I just want to be the best GM I can be for r/startrekadventures and would love to run a game for some of you crazy people someday. If you played in my game - what non-starfleet polity might you consider and why?

I picked up ST: Picard on Dvd this week and am once again going over the series with a fine tooth comb (Mostly looking for details to use in my r/startrekadventures campaigns :P) but now I am once again thinking... Could this have been a long movie? Yes - it's 10 episodes of television. But 90% of my being says it could have been a 2h 59m movie without loosing the core of the product. I'm not saying that ST needed another movie - and I'm not saying that we wouldn't loose something in the process of cutting it down... but could this have been a movie? Maybe an Endgame style 2 part movie???

This week I watched 13 of the 14 Star Trek movies (I don't have section 31 on DVD or Bluray) and I still think the Undiscovered Country is still my favorite - and I still think the Wrath of Khan is the best. I'm trying to figure out if "The Final Frontier" is the worst or if it goes to one of the Kelvin movies.

Also - Karl Urban played did an amazing impression of Bones. Scotty was a close second. Which sucks because everyone else was just acting their version of the character - had JJ Abrams asked them to go one way or the other it might have been less jarring.

I'll start by saying I am a new GM but have played around with Table Top Simulator for other reasons and have been prepping a STA2e campaign in Foundry VTT. So generally I am asking "What tips do you have for a new GM working with a VTT? What is the best one? What setting are must haves for STA2e?"

but here is my take so far about a few things - I've been preparing in Foundry VTT to run a few missions of STA2e and have noticed:

1. If you want to get the most out of using the VTT to play - you might want to consider staying below version 11. This is because the great UI mod does not support the latest version of Foundry and the latest update for the 2e game system does not support earlier versions (I believe prior to 13...).

2. While STA2e seems very TOTM from what I am reading - creating maps aren't always helpful. That being said - the ability to prep journals, items and maintain character sheets for NPC's as well as PC's seem real useful. Do you guys make maps for your adventures and ships?

3. Creating scripts to do mundane tasks can be a huge time save. I am not a coder (I have some experience with CSS and HTML but would have to look up most of the code again) and ended up "vibe" coding via bing search while trying to solve some of my problems. I'm not a fan of Gen AI for art so I have mixed feelings about this. I figure in the future, you wouldn't write a Holonovel program from scratch - so having the "computer" write a script to bulk import my items is using AI as a tool rather than as art.

4. Foundry VTT seems like a great replacement for world anvil - do you guys prep in world anvil at all? How do you feel about subscription fees? I believe in milestone releases - so a fully featured product that's worth spending $XX on instead of $X.XX per month forever. This has caused me to avoid World Anvil - even if they do have a lifetime option.

I'm sure I could come up with a few more thoughts about Foundry - but I would love to hear your feelings and how you've been using a VTT to help with your games.

Has anyone else considered adding GPL to their ongoing campaigns? I've been doing my research into items and expenses in Star Trek and have been having fun with the idea of some things having a wealth cost. It's not totally outside the rules as wealth is included in the Klingon Core. I could see it coming into use in a Pirate campaign too.

Feelings?