So I currently don't have any requests and don't have anything just laying about that I haven't already at least skimmed through, so here is my first review where I'm not going in blind (I skimmed through the book a couple of years ago). I don't remember enough of the mechanics to remember how I feel about it, this is just one of the rpg's in my collection that I have but we'll see if I decide to keep it after this review. As is standard for me by now this is a review of the system itself (as well as its presentation within the book) so that you can better decide if it is something you want to dive into and not a detailed technical analysis of every word.
Star Trek Adventures is an officially licensed RPG published by Modiphius which is the same company that published Mork Borg and the Alien RPG which I've favorably reviewed before. It uses Modiphius' 2d20 system (which the other games I mentioned do not) and from what I remember has a narrative focus which makes sense given the source material.
The book layout itself is very thematic, it reminds me of the computer consoles in the show/movies.
The table of contents is pretty standard.
- Chapter 1: Introduction
- Chapter 2: The United Federation of Planets
- Chapter 3: Your Continuing Mission
- Chapter 4: Operations
- Chapter 5: Reporting for Duty
- Chapter 6: The Final Frontier
- Chapter 7: Conflict
- Chapter 8: Technology and Equipment
- Chapter 9: Home in the Stars
- Chapter 10: Gamemastering
- Chapter 11: Aliens and Adversaries
- Chapter 12: The Rescue at Xerxes
IntroductionThe introduction opens with the Next Generation opener quote by Picard which starts with "Space. The Final Frontier." TNG was the show I grew up with so this resonates with me, and also lets me know that at least with this book you're in Starfleet. There is a Klingon Empire book out now and more "who do you work for" books might come out in the future.
The default setting is the 24th century (specifically the year 2371) but you can play in any Star Trek era you want. Want to have your crew hang out with Kirk and fight Klingon's with smooth foreheads? That's supported. Want to defend the wormhole that was found in Bajoran space? That's supported too. The book even lets you know that it will point out when mentioned subjects are not available in certain eras to make it easier for you to play how you want.
For those (like me) who don't have the Star Trek timeline memorized a brief overview of what is happening in 2371 is mentioned. Sisko is already at DS9 and has been assigned the Defiant to look for the Dominion in the Gamma Quadrant, Voyager is about to be sent to the Badlands to find Maquis (and hopefully you know how that works out for them), etc.
We then get into the standard sections on roleplaying and what you need to play and why you should play Star Trek Adventures instead of something else. As a 2d20 system you want at least 2d20, and also some d6s. You can buy special dice but they aren't required.
We also get a basic overview of how the game works from a mechanics perspective (along with a play example). If you attempt a task (such as determining if someone has been infected with something) the player and the GM come up with a pairing of an Attribute and a Discipline (for example, Reason and Medicine). Your scores in both of those are added together and that becomes your target number. You then roll 2d20 and look to see how many of them roll equal to or under the target number.
Chapter 2: The United Federation of PlanetsThis whole chapter is basically a history lesson presented as if it was actually given to your characters is a briefing. There's an overview of each quadrant and the major players in it in "modern day" (with sidebars that are reports from different sources in-universe), as well as a list of general threats to the Federation that aren't quadrant specific (such as the Terran Empire from the mirror universe or the Borg).
The next part of this chapter is about the early history of the Federation, but it is presented in a unique fashion. Instead of a timeline or an overview of what happened, it is presented as log files and excerpts written during said history to give an overview of major events that happened and some of the players involved. I think this is neat.
After that we get an overview of the 23rd century (which is the century before "modern day"). If you want to play in the era of The Original Series, this is the chapter for you.
Then there's a section for recent Federation history which is laid out the same as the early history of Starfleet section.
Chapter 3: Your Continuing MissionWe start out with an overview of Starfleet. Starfleet's mission, ranks, organization, etc. Want to think about the Prime Directive? There are pages on it as it can (and should) guide decisions that are made by everyone on the crew. Want to know what Starfleet Academy is like? Read on.
We then get into assignments after graduation from the academy and how that works, the types of missions that crew can get assigned to (either temporarily or permanently), and away teams and their purposes and compositions (which isn't just to dramatically kill security officers).
Chapter 4: OperationsSeventy-three pages in and we're finally getting some crunch (not that I'm complaining, Star Trek is a very flavor-heavy setting). Here we get an overview (again) of PCs, NPCs, the GM, and Dice (which do include a special type of d6 but there's a chart for using regular d6s in their place).
Like Lancer which I just recently reviewed, Star Trek Adventures uses Scenes (of which encounters are a type) as a framework for the game. Scenes in Star Trek Adventures aren't as completely player driven as those in Lancer, the GM can not just react to player actions but also use a Threat system to make things happen.
Everything within a scene, whether it is a character or a location or even a situation, has traits. Traits are show descriptions to relay significant facts. A situation can have the Darkness trait. A Klingon character has the Klingon trait. A location can have the Abandoned Cardassian Station trait. Traits are there so that the GM can help determine what is or isn't possible and how difficult things are when attempting something affected by a trait. Some traits are Advantages and thus helpful, others are Complications and inherently problematic.
If you are attempting to do something, you are performing a Task. Tasks are things you roll for and thus require that something bad happens in the event that you fail the task. Players should be told what that bad thing could be before they roll as all Starfleet officers are people who know what the hell they're doing and don't just fiddle around to see what happens.
Now that we know how to get things done, let's learn about who can do the things. This is a classless system. Characters have six Attributes: Control, Daring, Finesse, Insight, Presence, and Reason. Characters also have six Disciplines: Command, Conn, Engineering, Security, Science, and Medicine. Attributes go from 7-12 and Disciplines go from 1-5 so your target number could be anywhere from 8-17 depending on the combination required. We couldn't get further away from D&D if we tried although there's nothing wrong with that. In addition, characters can have Focuses which are basically specialties and these don't have a rating of their own but can help adjust the target number.
Something that is interesting is that there are multiple methods of "buying" more dice to roll for a task but not enough information is given here for me to talk about that so I'll get back to it in a later chapter. There are also rules for teaming up on tasks to assist a player as well as opposed tasks which both work about as I would expect.
Okay, remember how we want to roll below target numbers on a d20? That means that a 20 is bad, and a natural 20 is a Complication which is a negative trait that comes into play with the Task has been resolved. For example, if you're counseling someone and roll a 20 then congratulations you just made their issues significantly worse. Some things can add to the "Complication Range" which means that lower numbers also trigger complications. There also rules for automatically succeeding with a complication is the GM gives the option. Complications can be traded in for Threat which I will describe in a bit.
Remember how I mentioned talking about buying extra dice would have to be discussed in a later chapter? I was wrong, this book is better laid out than I thought.
The first method is Momentum. For every success generated above and beyond the number of successes required to accomplish the task, you generate Momentum. Momentum can be spent to improve the outcome of a successful task (such as doing more damage with an attack or doing more work than would be normal for the amount of time spent) and this can be spent after the GM describes the outcome (so you don't waste momentum if you're happy with how things turned out). In addition, Momentum can be saved and go into a pool where anyone in the party can spend momentum from the pool and one of the options there is to buy additional dice.
Instead of spending Momentum (perhaps you don't have any) you can instead generate Threat to buy additional dice. Threat is like Momentum for the GM, it's a pool of points that the GM can spend to make problems for the players (or buy dice for NPCs).
Lastly there's Determination, every player starts with one point each session which can be used for a list of things including gaining an extra d20 which automatically succeeds with a 1 (and a 1 generates two successes as it is a critical success).
Now that that's out of the way, there are also some rules for challenges (a situation requiring multiple tasks to overcome) and extended tasks which are both
Chapter 5: Reporting for DutyHere we get into how to roleplay Star Trek Adventures (as opposed to how to roll or how to roleplay in general). The three main eras of play are mentioned: Enterprise (aka Star Trek Enterprise), Original Series (aka Star Trek: The Original Series + movies) and Next Generation (aka Star Trek The Next Generation + movies, Deep Space Nine, and Voyager).
In addition to the differentiation between PCs and NPCs, there are also Main Characters and Supporting Characters. Both are controlled by the players (and thus are not NPCs), but Support Characters are created as-and-when needed so that either there is someone to man a station or provide assistance during a difficult situation or so that a player can still take part in a scene if their main character is somewhere else.
All characters have one or more Trait (of which their species of one) which are descriptions of important parts of the character to hep define who they are and what they can do (and function the same as traits for locations and situations as described earlier). These traits are neutral (neither inherently positive nor negative) and thus can be good or bad depending on the situation.
Characters will also have values which are statements about their attitudes or beliefs or convictions. They're not just basic opinions, they are core principles that the character believes in. For example, Kirk has the value "Married to the Enterprise".
Since we're talking about characters, this is the part where we also delve deeper into the six attributes and what they stand for and examples in which they might be used. The same goes for the six disciplines (and all main characters get at least a one in these due to basic training received in Starfleet academy).
Characters will also get six focuses which are not tied to a specific discipline and is about what specializations and specific talents does your character have such as Survival or Espionage or Astronavigation. Lastly characters will get Talents which give different bonuses depending on the talent and have pre-requisites.
Now that we've gotten a general overview of character creation, let's dig into character creation! There are two methods of character creation, Lifepath (which is the default) and Creation in Play. We'll go through those in order.
Lifepath is about what you'd expect, you're documenting the lifepath of your character.
Step One, put a 7 in each Attribute and a 1 in each Discipline. Second, select your species (which gives you the species trait, +1 to three listed Attributes, and one Talent from the species talent list or the general talent list). There is a table for which species are available for each era of play, and also rules for mixed-heritage characters as well as for creating species that there aren't rules for.
Step Two, determine what kind of environment you grew up in. This grants +1 to one of three attributes and +1 to one of three disciplines as well as a Value reflecting the environment and culture you were raised in.
Step Three, determine your upbringing which increases one attribute by 1 and another by 2 as well as grants another discipline increase along with a focus, and grants a talent.
Step Four, go to Starfleet Academy and determine which track you were on (Command, Operations, or Sciences). This instills a value, grants three attribute points, grants discipline increases to three disciplines, grants three focuses, and also a talent. Hooray for school!
Step Five, determine how long you've been on the job. Are you a young officer, an experience officer, or a veteran officer? Each one grants a value and a talent.
Step Six, determine two critical events that happened in your carerer (from a list). Each grants different things but there's always an attribute and discipline increase in there somewhere along with a focus.
Step Seven, put on the finishing touches. Pick one final value, make sure your attributes and disciplines are within the established limits and gain a couple more points wherever you want to help get things where you want them, and put on any final details along with making sure that nothing got accidentally missed.
The other character creation method is Creation in Play. Basically you pick your role on the ship and assign attributes using the numbers on a list, pick your species and your two primary disciplines, pick one vale, and you're ready to go! Basically everything else that is missing gets filled in as play happens (and can happen in the middle of trying to resolve a task). It's interesting but I'd rather not use this method.
The rules for supporting character creation are listed here as well, they don't get anywhere near the level of bonuses that main characters do and don't get talents at all. Recurring supporting characters can slowly get better (including gaining talents) but never get as good as main characters.
For leveling up, the system uses a defined milestone system with three types of milestones. The first two only allow you to swap things around on your character sheet (or the ship's character sheet) but aren't for gaining things for free (very unlike D&D leveling). If that's what you want you have to complete an arc milestone which is all about the culmination of a story that drives growth and development. It is your story arc and thus not something you'll gain very often, but also lets you do things like increase an attribute or a discipline or gain a new talent (for yourself or your ship).
There are also some basic rank and reputation rules which can eventually lead to promotions or disciplinary action.
Chapter 6: The Final FrontierIf you couldn't tell from the title, this is the chapter about the different places you might go and things you might see or do. Information about the different planetary classes, alien encounters, stellar phenomena, and scientific discoveries and developments (for things like improving warp core efficiency) can all be found here.
Chapter 7: ConflictIf you don't know what this chapter is about then you probably shouldn't be reading this review. There are two types of conflict in Star Trek Adventures, social conflict and combat. Either way we still have rounds and turns, with initiative determined by the GM selecting who goes first based on the situation and then turns alternative between the two sides within the conflict.
Social conflict is anything involving deception, diplomacy, bargaining, intimidation, etc (with some things being refused automatically, no matter who you are you can't just get Picard to sell you the enterprise for a few bucks).
Combat is pretty standard, you can attempt one task and some minor actions (say aim and shoot or draw a phaser and shoot) with a stress system in place instead of actual hp and once something reduces your stress to 0 (or bypasses it) you become injured and are incapacitated. If you take two lethal injuries then you have died. Objects have structure instead of stress but otherwise it works the same (with breakage happening instead of injuries). There are things you can do to avoid injuries.
Chapter 8: Technology and EquipmentThis is all weapons and gear and other items with information about the different eras of play and rules for creating unusual equipment. It's all pretty much what I expected.
Chapter 9: A Home in the StarsStarships and Starbases (and colonies) are what this chapter is all about. This includes starship combat because that functions a little differently that people just shooting phasers at each other since there are shields and critical systems and whatnot.
Since the ship (or starbase) where people are stationed is just as important to the different shows as the characters, there is a lot of detail here beyond just stat blocks.
In addition to all of that, the rules for creating the starship character sheet are here as well. They function very similarly to the player character sheet (6 systems instead of 6 attributes, 6 departments instead of 6 disciplines), focus and talent rules, etc). Ships also get Mission Profiles which adjust the stats of your ship. A diplomatic ship has different needs than a tactical operations ship.
Stats for all kinds of example ships from shuttlepods to ships of the line to ships from non-federation civilizations are here as well.
Chapter 10: GamemasteringThis is a narrative game, so this chapter starts with how to tell a story. We then go into discussions on different styles of play. Next up is different possibilities for character creation beyond the basic rule listed above (all to best suit the group at hand).
The rest of this is basically just "how to GM". We get a section on how to adjudicate the rules (and a lot of rules are situational or up to the GM in the first place), a section on running combat, tasks and challenges, etc. There are even sections on what the different roles are that the players might have on the ship and how to help them shine, both for PCs and NPCs. Basically anything that has been mentioned in another chapter gets at least touched on here, which is nice.
Lastly we get what most people would expect, which is how to create encounters and NPCs and missions and locations and everything else that the PCs will be directly interacting with.
Chapter 11: Aliens and AdversariesHere's your monster manual chapter with everything from example NPCs from all of the different civilizations (including named NPCs) to beasts to alien technology that might be used as an encounter.
Chapter 12: The Rescue at Xerxes IVThis is an example mission with 5 scenes to run as an introductory adventure.
Final ThoughtsI think the system is decent and the game is good (and it has gotten a lot of official support including a Klingon Empire book where you're all on a Klingon ship instead of a Federation ship and example stats for the main characters of different shows) but I don't think it is for me. It's too much of a cooperative storytelling game for me to want to run it, and the only reason to play it is to specifically tell a Star Trek story instead of a general spaceship story. Since Star Trek is NOT a series about running around and shooting everything and stealing their stuff I think finding a group for it would not be the easiest of tasks.
Final judgement: Good game but not my style so I won't be keeping it.
