Writing Side Game for FASA Star Trek

Ever want to add a little extra to your RPG experience? Ever wish your Star Trek character could be an author?

Here's rules for a side game to do just that.

Writing Side Game Rules

During character creation a player should choose a writing related Artistic Expression Skill. It should at least be "writing" but more specific skills can be chosen like "poetry", "short story writing" or "Andorian laments." (We've had one character with "Epic Klingon Poetry.") Usually, the less specific skill is chosen so the character can switch forms like fiction to non-fiction and so on.

The rating in that skill must then be raised to 40 or higher for the character to be able to write at a professional level.

If the character emerges from character creation with a writing skill 40 or higher he could have written books in the past. The player adds together the years of active service and then divides by two. That number will be how many attempts at writing a book the character has.

Usually, after an adventure or mission the GM allows the character to write one book. You can work with this and see how it fits into the time passing in your campaign.

Writing Rolls

The player rolls against his writing skill rating to see if he was successful. If the roll fails the manuscript is not published. If the roll is successful the work is published.

A player can use other skills for a chance of gaining modifiers to the roll. GM's should let the player select no more than three skills that relate to the subject of the book and have a rating of 40 or higher. Successful rolls against those skills each give a modifier of -10. So a player could have a total of -30 to his writing roll. (LUC can be used as one of the three skills.)

If the writing roll is successful, roll on the following chart:

1-10 - Best Seller
11-30 - Good Seller
31-60 - Modest Seller
61-00 - Poor Seller

Each Best seller increases the odds of having another Best Seller by 10%.

If you're playing with money a monetary award can be attached to each level. If not the character just enjoys the prestige of being an author. (Clever GM's have worked this into missions adding even more to the playing experience.)

This is just a loose system that I'm still playing with feel free to adapt it to your needs and likes.