Grab-Bag - Recent Arrivals

I've had an interesting mix of old stuff (below) and new stuff (mostly Pathfinder and D&D 5E) arriving lately. They've been stacking up though so I'm going to have to pause and spend some time reading them. This round looks like I've subscribed to the Barking Alien Collection for some reason.

First up: More Star Trek!

Now I have written about LUG Trek before and the short version is that I wanted to like it but the mechanics just didn't do it for me then, being a die-hard fan of FASA Trek. The last few years though I have become a lot more interested in simpler mechanics and I've come back around on this game. In light of that I am rebuilding my collection of these books.

• I owned the Original Trek by the end of the week it came out back about 15 years ago and it suffered even more in comparison to FASA because it was covering the same ground. I sold it too somewhere along the way, but now I have it again and I am reading it with a different attitude than I had then. So far so good, but I think I could run a better game with it using a lot of the material from the FASA system - setting, species, ships, etc. It's on the one-of-these-days list.
• I never owned the DS9 game but as the third incarnation of the rules I figured I ought to get it, plus it adds some new material for a Next Generation era campaign. I've only flipped through it at the moment but I'll be hitting it eventually. I can;t see running a specific DS9 campaign, but as an extension of a TNG campaign using a new ship and crew I think it should be useful.
• The Players Guide is another one I have not read previously but I like what I see in side it. More of everything is good, right? It's another resource for the GM when a player wants to play something unusual.

Mekton!I actually owned a pretty solid set of Mekton II and Mekton Zeta books about 10-15 years ago but just never could get anyone interested in playing and so I eventually got rid of them (it happens occasionally). With the Apprentices I might have some interest in a giant robot game so why not grab a copy? I had Roadstriker and Empire as well so those may find their way back onto the shelf sometime soon too. I have a rough idea for a campaign here but it needs some refining before I would try to do anything. I'd probably run something short or a one-shot to see if there's any interest first.  

Ars Magica - Never owned it, read it, played it, or saw it being played, but I've been hearing good things about it from people whose opinions I respect for years. I decided I should pick up a copy and see it for myself. There seem to be about a half-dozen editions and a pretty good pile of supplements for each one. I have no idea what the optimal set of those would look like so I picked a fairly inexpensive copy of the core book for 4th edition as my entry point. 

In a way, all of these are more about filling in the bookshelf with things that interest me than any immediate plans for a campaign, but that's part of the fun. Sometimes it takes time for things to percolate and develop into something that says "run me!" at the right time. It's good to have options. One of these days someone may offer to run one of them online and now I am prepared!