Star Patrol (1981)

Designer Blurb:

"Star Patrol" is essentially an updated and expanded version of the 1977 Gamescience release "Space Patrol".

Character traits are generated with 3D6. Traits are Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Charisma, Luck and Mentality. The game had other standard RPG features like psionics and savings throws. Instead of fighter, magic user, cleric character classes, Star Patrol has character professions like soldier, engineer, scientist, astronaut, trader, rogue, and spy/diplomat. Characters can be one of 32 alien races. You can also generate your own weird alien race by rolling against random tables, generating a "general type" (mammal, avian, or even a plant or crystalline derivative), a "general shape" (2, 4, 8, or more legs), size, and even your race's home planet's gravity (low, earth-like, or heavy).

More than other games in the "Space Patrol" family, "Star Patrol" makes an effort to develop its own setting ("The League of Star Systems") free of the "Star Trek" roots so obvious in previous editions.

The game was expanded by one supplement, the "Star Patrol Mission Master Pack".

(from Robert Saint John's Groknard website)

"Star Patrol" was released as a boxset in 1981 and again in 1982. The most notable expansion to the rules was the addition of ship-to-ship combat. These rules are really a basic version of those in "Star Fleet Battle Manual", another game originally published by Gamescience in 1977, designed by Lou Zocchi and (again) Michael Scott.

Box included a bag of Gamescience precision dice, 67 page rulebook with tables and maps, a big foldout deckplan of a Pioneer-class starship, a hexmap, color standup cardboard characters and vehicle counters. Some of the components were too big to fit comfortably into the box.