5 out of 5 rating for Star Trek Adventures RPG PDF
I purchased this game from DriveThruRPG on the day it was released there, read the rules over a few days, and then ran a one-off with some friends. Almost all of us had played the 2d20 system, for Conan, a handful of times, and I'd read the Modiphius playtest materials extensively, and so getting up to speed on the rules wasn't hard.
The book provides extensive amounts of background information - 50+ pages of it at the beginning, actually - and this is the sort that will help casual ST fans (those who've seen some of the movies and an episode here or there) get up to speed with the ideas, events, and overall feel of the universe. This background was also fun for me to read, as I picked up on a great many ersatz Easter eggs mentioned in various places that referred, often indirectly, to episodes or parts of movies. A great deal of this background section is written as if the reader is a Starfleet officer receiving a briefing, with the pages broken up with personal log entries, communications intercepts, and other 'primary documents' of Star Trek. The authors clearly did their homework into the canon and did a really fine job of spinning a meta-tale of Star Trek through these pages and the supposed documents in them.
The core mechanic is interesting, consisting of a Target Number determined by adding the Attribute and Discipline (broad skill area) relevant to the Task. If one has a relevant Focus, which is an area of specialized knowledge, that factors in, too. The player then rolls 2d20 and any numbers at or below the TN are successes. The Difficulty of a Task is set from 0-5, with that being the required number of successes to...succeed. The default Difficulty is 1. Thus, if Lt. Jones wants to make a relatively simple repair to a shuttlecraft, he'd likely add his Reason + Engineering, and take into account that he has 'Warp Technology' as a Focus. If his RE is 9 (slightly above average) and his ENG is 3 (pretty good), his TN is 12. He rolls two dice, and anything 12 or less is a success, with the added bonus that because he has a relevant Focus, if he rolls 3 or less (that is, his Engineering Discipline) on either die, each of those count as extra successes. There are ways to buy add'l d20s, which I won't go into, and there is a great system to account for extra success or possibly successful but challenging results. Thus, the system is in this is comparable to FFG's Star Wars, which not only enables for the determination of success, but also degree of, and throws in ways to creatively shape the scene with interesting narrative elements that can be tied to numeric mechanics. The system uses only d20s and d6s, the latter of which are used to determine damage and are used, occasionally, to roll of different tables.
Character generation offers a lifepath, going from race to homeworld, then to upbringing, then Starfleet Academy, followed by career events, or a free-form system. I prefer the lifepath, as it helps to shape the character into something that makes sense. Character generation takes about 10 minutes if you have a reasonably clear idea, with no number crunching beyond adding single-digit numbers. The only part of chargen that I found a little odd was at the end of it, where you determine whether your character is fresh out of the Academy, experienced, or a veteran. There is no mechanical difference between any of them - that is, the Vet doesn't have more skills or isn't quantifiably superior in any way. I found that odd, but I'm going to see how that works out in play before judging it.
I'm not going to go into detail about how combat, social challenges, research challenges, and other mechanical systems work - that'd take too much time and text. I'll sum it up this way: it has a lot of moving parts, but none of them are particularly complex and there is an overall consistency to how things are done and how they are shaped and modified. Players have a great deal of options, without them being overwhelming in number. My players had clear options from which to choose when deciding what to do - as in, a list of specific actions available in combat - and the system was flexible enough to easily put together rolls to figure out their attempts at things that weren't on that list. Again, I had four players, of whom two had played 2d20 once or twice, one had played it that much and run it twice, and one who'd had no experience with it at all, and we had no problems. The social combat system worked well in practice, and there is a research/scientific problem-solving system that marries the basic dice mechanic with the Scientific Method (no kidding) and, although we didn't use it, looks to work well, resulting in a narrative collaboration between GM and players as to what the problem is and how it can be solved.
We did not use any formal starship operations, but these function by the same rules as do interpersonal and planetary actions. They provide an interesting way to account for the interaction between a starship and, for example, its helmsman: the ship has stats that parallel those of a character and those stats are used to assist the PC when he makes rolls. Thus, much like when one character assists another character at some task, the ship is (mechanically) considered to "assist" the PC. Easy - no need to learn a new system at all. Although we did not use these rules I don't see them as any harder than the others - they're just slightly different applications of the same mechanics and score relationships. One part of the starship rules that I do think mentioning is the way that a play group's ship is customized. There are a number of (Federation) ships offered as possibilties for a typical campaign group, and along with those are a few steps in a lifepath-style sequene of choices that ends with a ship that's somewhat unique, specialized to the mission type most appropriate to the campaign, and thus a little different than other ships of the same class. This provides a mechanical expression of the oft-mentioned 'modular' nature of many ships and 'mission-specific customization' that Starfleet does on them. It's also a way for a group to put their own stamp on what will be their home and, in effect, a constant communally-controlled NPC.
One place where the system shines in an novel way - and a way that is particularly well-suited to Star Trek - is in the area of 'Supporting Characters.' For those of us who are primarily TOS fans, we remember the bridge crew solving every problem while Redshirts died in droves. TNG, DS9, and VOY had larger casts, and therefore spread the love around more when it came to who was involved in the action. And in any game there is the challenge of what to do with players when their characters are not present in a given scene. Star Trek Adventures addresses this with a stripped-down system for quickly creating a Supporting Character that any player can pick up to use in place of his/her main PC whenever necessary. Thus, if the scene is taking place on the bridge, but your main character is in Sick Bay, you can quickly put together the Helmsman or Ops Officer and stay in the action. That Supporting Character then becomes part of the backdrop of that ship or station, and can be used by any player in the future, as the situation dictates or makes possible. This would result, over time, in a ship's crew being fleshed out by the playing party, with side characters coming back now and again. It's a neat, elegant system that evokes the feel of the show.
The book also contains reference material on a number of alien races, critters, and ships, along with enough Federation races to set your game in the ENT, TOS, or TNG eras. Some griping has popped up online (and on ENWorld) about the supposedly short list of playable races, and the lack of detailed information on all eras of the universe. Admittedly, the book is TNG-heavy in art and ships, and the default start date for a campaign is 2371. Given, however, the vast amount of canon and apocrypha for Star Trek, there is no one book in which all of it would fit. At just under 400 pages this PDF lays out all the rules and systems needed to play, and provides enough reference material to jump immediately into a TNG, DS9, or VOY-era game, or a TOS or ENT-era story with a little extra time on the part of the GM to come up with some extra ships and creatures, if needed. I think there is more than enough material to use for extrapolatiing other ships, races, and creatures, and the Star Trek fan of a player or GM shouldn't have any trouble getting the job done.
Bottom line: if you're a Star Trek fan and a gamer, I think you'll really like this game. The book is beautiful, well-organized, and provides clear explanations of the rules, with many examples. There is enough reference material to play in any era, and Modiphius promises a robust release schedule over the next year and some - I am sure they will provide a lot more resources for all eras of play. The system flows well and quickly at the table, despite seeming more on the crunchy side during the first read of the rules - that was me with the playtest materials, big time. Once you see it all in action, it's quite easy. I played the old FASA version extensively, and owned almost everything printed for the short-lived LUG edition, although I never had much of a chance to play that one. This version is significantly better than either of those.