Star Trek Role-playing Game (FASA) - Controversy

Controversy

FASA developed its game in the mid-1980s, when the only new on-screen Star Trek material was the second through fourth movies, and fans received new material in other forms eagerly. Paramount Pictures, the company with the right to grant licenses to produce Star Trek-related materials to other companies, gave its stamp of approval to many printed works, and there were no claims that these materials were or were not canon. They borrowed freely from each other - the game includes background from the 1980 book Star Trek Spaceflight Chronology, while the 1987 book Mr. Scott's Guide to the Enterprise includes elements from the FASA background - and fans believed that if Paramount's name was on something, it must be valid Star Trek. Many players therefore were dismayed when Star Trek: The Next Generation began to air in 1987 with what they saw as "changes" to a pre-established universe.

Paramount revoked FASA's license to publish the official role-playing game in 1989. The decision was sudden, and according to FASA staff, motivated by two factors.

First, Star Trek: The Next Generation was growing increasingly popular and Paramount wished to exert greater control over its property and derivative works. FASA had, by 1989, published two works set in the TNG era, The Next Generation Officer's Manual in 1988 and The Next Generation First Year Sourcebook in 1989. These works contained many extrapolations based on material in the new series and were already beginning to conflict with what was depicted on screen.

Second, Paramount was concerned by the amount of violence depicted in FASA's game. They mistakenly thought that most players took on the roles of characters from the TV series, not their own new characters, and believed that violence-based solutions to problems should not be offered even as a sub-optimal way to solve problems in the game. At this time, FASA was scheduled to publish two products which conflicted with this view: a supplement detailing the "Star Fleet Marines" and other ground combat forces in the Star Trek universe, and a strategic-level board game, Operation: Armaggedon, which would include in its scenarios one where the Federation pre-emptively attacked the Klingon and Romulan empires. When Paramount learned of these prospective products their belief that FASA's notion of what Star Trek should be differed too greatly from their own became more established.

Many players blamed the studio for its abrupt dissolution of FASA's licence as well as Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry for retconning of what had been seen as established Star Trek lore. They sent letters of protest to the studio, and to contemporary science-fiction magazines such as Starlog and GDW's Challenge magazine, in vain.

Given the avalanche of canon material which has come since the mid-1980s - the television series Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: Voyager and Enterprise, several subsequent theatrical films and a library of novelisations - FASA's interpretation of Star Trek has largely been forgotten except by a handful of die-hard fans.

The rise of the Internet, in particular, has given voice again to fans of the FASA version of the Klingons and Klingonaase, enthusiasm for the komerex zha and Klingon nomenclature (epetai, sutai) — a Klingon worldview and Klingon honorifics respectively, both created by John M. Ford — and references to "human-fusion" and "Imperial" Klingons.