31 Character Challenge Part 9: Star Trek Adventures (Modiphius)

 

As I said in my previous post on FASA's Star Trek: The Roleplaying Game, I have been a Star Trek fan since I could toddle.  I've also been a die-hard FASA Trek player since just after I discovered roleplaying.  Much like my experience with Star Wars roleplaying, I have kept going back to my roots.  With Star Wars, the D20 versions just never felt right, and my players didn't grok the system from the FFG version of the game.  With Star Trek, I acknowledge that the Last Unicorn Games and Decipher offerings each had good things going for them, and Prime Directive by ADB had this wonderful "Star Trek, but by Tom Clancy" feel. But in the end, I kept going back to FASA Trek just like I kept going back to West End's Star Wars.

Then came Star Trek Adventures by Modiphius. Like a good Star Trek tale, STA was a voyage of discovery (pun possibly intended) for me.  I had found an RPG whose system captured the feel of the universe incredibly well, but was unlike most of the game systems I'd ever encountered.  In fact, the mechanics of the game made me take a long, hard look at what I thought game mechanics should be.  So many simulationist assumptions are just wrong when applied to STA- no species gets more than a +1 bonus to an Attribute just for being their species.  The effectiveness of an approach to a problem is based so much more heavily on what is dramatic than what specifically a character can do.

Here's an example.  You have two Galaxy-class starships.  They are identical out of the yard.  Same ship, same systems, same design.  Their abilities can vary widely based on their crew- a ship with a higher Security crew rating will do more damage with their weapons in combat, and a ship with a higher Science crew rating will be more adept and unraveling the secrets of the universe.

Absolutes don't count, here.  We don't need to know how much stronger Vulcans are than Humans, only that they are.  We don't need to know the performance differences between a TOS Tricorder and a TNG Tricorder.  They just fulfill the role of Tricorder.  Same thing with phasers- they do the same thing, mechanically, regardless of model.  A phaser is, for story purposes a phaser.

And so STA takes this even further.  In FASA Trek if I wanted to repair the Warp Drive, the Transporter, and the Sensors, I would need ratings in Warp Drive Technology, Transporter Systems Technology, and Astronautics.  In STA, I just need my rating in the Engineering discipline.  Same thing in the Sciences, the Science discipline takes the place of a dozen or more skills from FASA Trek.  In fact, there are only six "skills" in STA, known as Disciplines.  Two for each uniform color.  Command and Con, Science and Medical, Engineering and Security. And that's it.  You can pick up a "focus" that increased your chances of success in a specific kind of application for the broad Disciplines, but they aren't necessary to make the attempt.  

From the loose skill rules to the atmospheric ship rules, to the Momentum rules which allow all characters to be effective no matter what their specialty, no matter the situation. So... let's beam on down.  We're going to use the most excellent character creation software located HERE.

Character Creation System

STA has some interesting options for character creation.  There is a way to create a character on the fly, beginning play and putting the character together as the game progresses. There's also a mechanic by which background characters on the ship become important to the episode, and then can be recurring characters and even becoming main characters - sort of the Chief O'Brien effect.  But we're going to go with standard character creation, core book only.

Hey... We created Lieutenant M'rron for FASA Trek, why don't we create a descendant of his operating in the Next Generation time period, also a Helmsman- oops, sorry, Flight Control Officer.  Landing Parties are now Away Teams, the Captain never beams down, and phasers look like dustbusters.  So 'ere we go.

Crap. I lied. Caitian isn't available in the core book.  So I'm going to break my own mental rule and add in the book in which we find Caitians, the Alpha Quadrant Sourcebook.  OK, so, Caitians get a bonus to Daring, Fitness, and Insight, and they can choose the species Talentss Prehensile Tail and Disarming Nature.  Since we get to pick a Talent right now, let's grab Disarming Nature.  This Talent will reduce the difficulty of tests to get someone to trust the character.

Next, we choose the environment we grew up in.  I'm going to roll randomly.  Aha! Another Species' World (Human).  So... this could be that our character grew up amongst humans due to their family's tradition of serving in Starfleet.  We get to bump up one Attribute.  Oh!  I didn't specify what all the Attributes are.  They're Control, Daring, Fitness, Insight, Presence, and Reason.  They all begin at 7, and are added to as we go.  I'm going to put the bump into Control, raising it to 8.

Now, Disciplines.  Command, Conn, Engineering, Medicine, Science, and Security.  I'll take a point in Conn, an early interest in flying.

Now we have to choose a value.  Values are statements of things the character believes, and can be anything the player and GM agree is appropriate.  We'll go with "The Whole Federation is my home!" A very cosmopolitan ideal for someone raised among "aliens."

Next stop: Upbringing.  I roll randomly and get - Science and Technology.  Hey, maybe my parents were science officers.  You get to accept or rebel against your upbringing, and of course this character, like great grandpa M'rron, rebels.  We get two points in Insight and one in Daring.  Another Discipline point, we'll put it in Science since at least something rubbed off. Another Talent, we'll take Prehensile Tail.  That'll get us in some trouble.  Now we pick a Focus- this is something specific in one of the Disciplines in which we specialize.  We'll take Small Craft Pilot, as we used to steal the science station's shuttle for joyrides.

Time to go to the Academy. We get to select our track, and choose Command.  Now we can bump up three Attribute points.  Let's take Daring to 10, Control to 9, and Presence to 8.  Majoring in Conn takes Conn to 4, and we'll take Command and Engineering as our minors. Now, three Focuses.  Impulse Maneuvers, Impulse Drive Engineering, and Parisses Squares- gotta have a sport.

Now we pick another Talent - Push the Limits.  This lets us reduce the difficulty of Conn Tasks when the environment risks damage to the ship.  Watch out, Briar Patch!  We pick up another Value - "It takes a team."  The Academy has impressed upon our character the need for teamwork on the ball court or on the bridge.

Now for our career - I'll roll randomly and see what comes up. Ah! Veteran Officer, so this is our young cadet after a few years in the field.  We have to have a Value that reflects all that field experience.  How about "Look before you pounce!"  We also get the Veteran Talent, which means we may regain points of Determination when they're spent.  Handy!

Career events- we get two.  Rolling randomly.  Oooh... Called Out a Superior.  At some point in our career, we had to speak truth to power, as it were.  We get +1 Reason, +1 Conn, and a new Focus that has to do with the event.  Hmmm... since it apparently had to do with Conn, maybe the Skipper gave some highly dangerous maneuvering orders, and our Flight Control Officer had to intervene to prevent disaster.  I'm going with Starfleet Regulations.

Holy crap.  We just rolled the SAME event twice.  I guess we have a habit of mouthing off to superiors.  Chip off the old block, some would say.  Another point in Reason, but Conn has topped out at 5.  Another focus...  We'll go with Naval History, since we'd need to know under what precedent a junior can countermand a superior and not get booted the heck out of Starfleet. 

Finishing Touches time.  Our Attributes came out perfect, no points to add or subtract at this point.  We have one free Discipline point, shaved off Conn since the max it can be is 5.  We'll add it to Command, given our run-ins with superiors. We get to add two more Discipline points at the end of the process, so we'll bump Security up one, and Engineering up one.  And a new value.  Hmmm.  How about "Not a superior officer, merely a higher ranking one."  Final Attribute points go into Control and Presence.

Name... There's a handy list of Caitian names here, I roll for gender and it comes up female (I always use odd- male, even - female) and choose H'Lata.  I pick Flight Control Officer as Assignment, and then am given the choice of Lieutenant Commander or Commander for rank.  I'm going with Lieutenant Commander, since we have a bit of an authority problem and probably have a mixture of the gratitude of the Admiralty for restraining the actions of a senior officer - TWICE - but also the ire of those senior officers who may have moved up to the Admiralty by now.  Also - a full Commander at the helm- erm - Conn, just seems excessive.

The Character

The family always told stories about Great Grandfather M'rron, the pilot, the captain, the swashbuckling family legend.  There didn't seem to be much of that growing up on Earth, at least, not for real.  H'Lata and her human friends found their own adventure in the forests, parks, and early holodecks of Earth.  The motley group of Starfleet brats made all sorts of trouble, and no one could believe such a wild young Caitian came from such staid and settled parents.  The botanical research station Amazonia-1 was important, but boring to the children of the researchers, who wanted to see if piranha actually did live in the river, and if warrior women roamed the jungle, and if there really were alien crocodiles.  Once or twice, H'Lata appropriated the station's shuttle to take her friends sight-seeing.  Her courage and ingenuity impressed the research station commander, who sponsored her application to Starfleet Academy.

H'Lata excelled at her chosen field - she was a born pilot.  And the simulators allowed her to conn things a lot bigger than a shuttle!  She volunteered for Kobayashi Maru duty for the thrill of trying to fly her way out of the no-win scenarios while the command cadets repeatedly failed the no-win scenario.  Upon graduation, she got posted to USS Fearless, and could not have been happier- until The Incident.  

 

As a Lieutenant (jg), H'Lata was on duty when the ship's newly promoted captain ordered the vessel too close to a black hole during a scientific investigation of the collapsed star.  The captain began to give panicked, nonsensical helm orders, and H'Lata knew she must act to save the crew.  She executed her own escape sequence, pulling the Fearless out of the gravity well at the last possible moment.  The executive officer arrived on the bridge to find the embarrassed new Captain berating H'Lata for her actions, but the testimony of the other bridge officers corroborated the Captain's loss of control of the situation.  The XO relieved the captain for incompetence, and H'Lata was exonerated, but her problems with this captain were not over.

H'Lata earned her promotion to Lieutenant and a post aboard the USS Galaxy on her maiden voyage.  It was quite an honor to pilot the first of Starfleet's newest exploratory cruisers with the latest technology.  During a saucer separation drill, the ship's second officer was attempting a manual docking maneuver by way of showing off for the new captain and crew.  His approach was too fast, and off-axis to the saucer.  Lieutenant H'Lata, on her own initiative, lurched the saucer away from the stardrive section under full impulse when it became apparent to her that the maneuver was less a docking and more a collision.  Subsequent simulations showed that the saucer's docking sensors had been miscalibrated, and were reporting a perfect approach as stored in a simulation file, hence the lack of collision alarms or readouts on the saucer bridge.  Only H'Lata's instinctual grasp of what was happening alerted her to the danger, and saved catastrophic damage to the saucer section.

The incident earned the Galaxy a few more months of shakedown, the second officer remedial training in docking maneuvers, and H'Lata an early promotion just as soon as the captain could put the paperwork through.

My Thoughts

Look, I'm never going to NOT love FASA Trek.  But I was surprised by how much I love Star Trek Adventures.  After clinging to my first love for so long, it was a strange, new world to find this unconventional system grabbing my attention.  The 2d20 system from Modiphius is a lot of fun- it really rewards teamwork and creative thinking.  It makes sure that clever players can find a way for a science officer to be useful in a firefight, or a security officer to be useful at a diplomatic dinner.  Everyone can contribute to the Momentum of the group, and anyone can use that Momentum to do great things.

I have added this game to my list of games I can use as entertainment just making characters.  In fact, I'm considering creating all 30something crewmembers for a Ranger-class scout as originally presented in the FASA Trek Federation Ship book, and further developed into deckplans and a smaller crew by Owen Oulton.  Wouldn't it be cool to know the names, interests and backgrounds of the whole damn crew?  It's a small ship, but still.

I do have a couple of quibbles about this game- but it has to do with the presentation and not the game itself.  The rulebooks try VERY HARD to look like an LCARS interface (Library Computer Access/Retrieval System) from Star Trek: The Next Generation.  They are also peppered with sidebars, tidbits, and fiction.  This makes it a cast iron Bolian to find anything within the books.  It also means the books are overwhelmingly TNG flavored, with a few pieces of TOS art, and almost zero Movie-era art.  Oh, well.  It's a great game, just kinda hard to read.

If you're a Trek fan- check this game out.  It's worth your hard-earned latinum.