Interview with Kenneth Hite
by James Maliszewski |
| The advent of the new Star Trek: The Next Generation Roleplaying
Game from Last Unicorn Games is clearly
a major event in science fiction gaming. After a decade without an official RPG, Star
Trek has returned to game stores with a vengeance. I asked one of its designers, Ken
Hite, about the game and his role in creating it.
|
| How did you become involved in Last Unicorn's Star Trek
roleplaying game project? |
|
Basically, Ross Isaacs (the line editor) and Christian Moore (the lead
designer) both knew my writing from Nephilim
and other places; I'd been fortunate enough to develop some of Ross' work on Nephilim
and apparently my techniques in both areas impressed Ross enough to ask me on board.
The fact that we'd worked well together in the past helped, no doubt. |
| You're listed in the rulebook as an author as well as a developer.
What did you do in each capacity? |
|
As an author, I wrote all of three chapters and much text that found its
way into others; that shades into my work as developer –– they flew me out to
L.A. to help with system design and with turning the Icon System into a "Star
Trek" system. Basically, developing a game begins with writing a
rules set clearly enough that everyone can see what needs to be changed to make it
good. Writing those changes, and then bringing all the other text into line with the
final product, is developing. That's what I (and Steve Long, whose contribution to
the final book can't be overestimated) did, under Ross' and Christian's direction. |
| Star Trek is a hugely successful and popular franchise. Did
you feel "the weight of history" upon you? That is, was there any pressure to
make sure that you "did right" by Star Trek? |
|
All the time; my first piece of writing for the game book involved giving
Narrators advice on "what makes the game Star Trek." Developing and
writing the rest of the book meant expanding on that vision. Ross was particularly
insistent that the book "feel like Star Trek," and specifically like
"Next Generation Trek." |
| In creating the game, did Paramount
or anyone directly connected with the series provide you with any assistance or direction?
If so, what? |
|
Every word of the book got checked by Paramount; they treat their property
much like you or I would treat anything worth a billion dollars. We had a number of
specific areas (the money issue, for example) where the writing and production staff made
specific requests for us to point the game in a given direction. With all that
oversight, however, they changed very little –– maybe five or ten pages of notes
for well over 300 pages of text and rules. |
| I was a fan of FASA's incarnation
of the Star Trek RPG. I noticed that Guy McLimore and Greg Poehlein are thanked
in the credits. Did you refer to the old game or take any inspiration from it? If so, how? |
|
I've always been a fan of Guy's work, and of the old ST RPG in particular.
We did look at it, and Guy and Greg helped early on suggesting a few rules
directions (part of that first stage of developing I mentioned earlier). We tried to
keep the skill-focus, and the "sense of life history" the old game had; but on
the other hand, we were writing a game that was far more self-consciously an introduction
to the hobby than the old FASA game ever was –– and, of course, we wrote ours 17
years later, after Sandy Petersen and Greg Stafford's Ghostbusters engine
revolutionized game design for everyone. Standing on the shoulders of giants, you're
an idiot if you don't use the boost. |
| Were their any guiding principles of design that you employed when
creating the game? |
|
"It has to be simple enough for new gamers" was the first and
foremost principle. Very soon we also discovered that it had to produce very skilled
characters very early in the design process to feel like Star Trek; nobody gets
into Starfleet without knowing a whole heck of a lot about their job, if you watch the
show. Christian decided it had to use six-sided dice (easier to get, again, for new
and non-gamers), and that we should use a stat/skill engine –– there was no need
to reinvent the wheel here. But, at every step, we always cocked our heads and made
sure it really seemed like Star Trek to us. |
| I've always felt that one of the reasons West End's Star Wars RPG flourished for so
long was that it went beyond the movies and expanded the setting in a variety of ways. Do
you see the Star Trek RPG doing the same thing in the future? That is, will we
get "original" material that's an expansion on what we've seen in the series and
movies? |
|
You absolutely have to; even writing the core book took us into areas that
a TV show never needs to go. Roleplaying games aren't TV shows, fundamentally; you
need a lot more information to build a convincing game universe than a convincing TV
universe, if only because you can never count on your cast sticking to the script.
As the line continues, we'll keep expanding the Star Trek universe
wherever it needs to go to be a fun RPG universe. |
| I've long been a fan of Star Trek's efforts to create
"modern morality plays." That's one of the reasons I like the series so much. Do
you have a favorite element or theme that runs throughout the series? |
|
Half-naked Orion beast women. Seriously, after a decade of
"dark gaming," I do enjoy the fundamental optimism and clarity of the Star
Trek universe, and the best Star Trek stories, for me, always present that
without getting too preachy or sappy. It's a hard line to walk, but Star Trek
does it better than most when it does it well. |
| Finally, is being (among other things) a professional game designer
an enjoyable job? Do you have fun doing it? |
|
It beats spreading blacktop, that's for sure. Obviously, you have to
have fun doing it, because nobody does it for the money. Every job has its ups and
downs, but at the end of the day, you're making something for other people to have fun
with. That's not a bad thing to put on the lifetime achievement list. |
