A player’s primary character is assumed to be a department head or some similar role, but they can also have supporting characters of lower rank. To solve this issue, Star Trek Adventures offers rules for each player to have multiple characters.
STAR TREK ADVENTURES TRAITS TV
Even though the TV shows often ignored this problem by sending the entire command staff out in a shuttle, doing that in an RPG will seem absurd. This is even more pronounced in stories based on away missions.
The obvious choice is for them to be senior officers, but that has a huge drawback: not every story will feature all the senior officers. One of the the major problems with Star Trek as a roleplaying setting is who the PCs should be. It also missed the sidebar for mixed species. I made six characters in a row for the review oneshot, and I never got bored.Ĭorrection: Originally, this section claimed there were no rules for being raised on alien planet, which is wrong. Even so, character creation is undoubtedly enjoyable. Considering how many half-vulcans and half-klingons the Star Trek shows have, this is an annoying absence. All the game offers is a side bar that’s purely cosmetic. The only critique I have for the character creation is that there aren’t any well developed options for playing characters of mixed species. While this has the potential to create unbalanced characters, it’s a useful option for players who like extra customization. Instead of going through each step, the players can simply take the equivalent amount of points to be spent at will. For example, at the academy, a character could pick up the value “Negotiation can solve any problem.” But when their first posting is on the front lines of the Dominion War, they’ll learn a new value: “Sometimes violence is the only answer.”Ĭharacter creation is highly structured, which might be frustrating for advanced players, so the system offers an alternative. Because characters get a value at each stage of their lives, it’s easy to set up opposing values for maximum drama.
A value could be something like “Everyone should have access to advanced technology.” These values are important roleplaying guides, and they tie into the system’s meta currency. Perhaps more important than points, characters earn a new value at each stage of their lives. If their parents were diplomats, they might get points in Presence. If a character grew up on a dangerous colony world, they might get points in Daring. Players decide what kind of life their characters have led and receive points accordingly. Instead of simply handing players a bunch of points, the system takes them through each stage of their character’s life, from childhood through Starfleet Academy and into their first assignment. One of those bright spots I mentioned is the character creation. What’s that, you’d like more detail? Then make it so. While it has some bright spots, the system will not deliver a good Star Trek experience without a lot of extra work on the GM’s part. Unfortunately, Star Trek Adventures is not that system. It would take a really good system to handle all of these problems. How do you generate compelling conflict in a utopian setting? Perhaps worse, the Federation is meant to be a utopia. Powerful technology can easily break your story.
The aesthetics vary widely depending on the time period and the series, making it hard to imagine they exist in the same universe. The canon is labyrinthine and confusing, with material drawn from hundreds of episodes, many of which contradict each other. Star Trek is a difficult setting to roleplay in.
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