I have a question, primarily for players as opposed to GM/narrators, regardless of system. Those who pretty much exclusively GM should feel free to comment, but I'd like to see the results of the poll based primarily on those who act as PCs during Trek sessions. It's a pretty simple question:
Do you prefer to play as an established main character from the Trek series? That is, actually playing in a group composed of Kirk, Spock, and McCoy; or Data, Riker, Crusher and Worf; and so on, regardless of which game system, regardless of which Trek show.
I ask because of the "Main Characters" thread over in CODA, and what seems to be a somewhat common philosophy that roleplaying Trek means roleplaying self-created characters, not the ones we've seen on TV. And I've seen references in more than one system that say something to the extent of "You're not playing the Main Characters, their story has already been told". And I get the impression that they simply don't want to run an adventure with (example) Kira, Bashir and O'Brien as main characters, or a game which features the Enterprise (any version) as the setting.
I could be totally wrong, I've been out of the scene for some time (pre ICON) and am playing catchup on the internets. When my friends and I played ages ago (seriously, ages, like pre-FASA!), we definitely wanted to play Kirk and Scotty & Co. Sure, we had self-created characters too, but we wanted to play that Star Trek. Even wehn FASA came out, we were still playing as The Crew. Of course, this was before TNG...
So what say you? Do you like to play those characters, or you don't see the point, or something else? And for the GMs, what do you prefer in the games you run? Do you prefer to create the setting from scratch and have the Players design characters around that, or do you long to be the Narrator in some lost episode of TOS?