What To Expect In Star Trek Adventures 2nd Edition

Reynard said:

I am still a little miffed about eliminating challenge dice. i think they add something to the game. That said, i have not played any of the versions of 2d20 that don't use them, so maybe it works fine.

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Dishonored does not have challenge dice, but it's an odd ball/hybrid of a 2d20 game that attempts to mix in some features of narrative TTRPGs like FATE. Anyhow, my players and I were not impressed with it - would gladly take a CD-like system in it, in place of some of the querky play mechanics they included like Truth and the Void point system. That there isn't challenge dice is STA 2e probably means I'm out for migrating to it. Mostly because it's a feature of the rules that my players have enjoyed. I do think it's one of those dice mechanics where playing with the custom dice makes it better. There's just something about the anticipation of rolling a few Starfleet icon/Effect faces, that give it a nice Star Trek vibe. That said, I do appreciate that Modiphius implmented CD in such a way that it's easy to use just a regular set of d6s. Mostly beause the custom dice have forever been in short supply in my country and are expensive.

If my VTT implementation of STA ever removes CD, I'll be doing some custom coding to bring them back in.

Reynard said:

How do they get effect levels (such as damage) with just d20s?

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STA already adds the Security rating as damage dice. So I could imaging that it is 2 + Security rating as Stress.

Depending on how much they are taking from Dune, it is probably an extended test where you either simply defeat a minor NPC if you win or you have to meet a required number of points scored to be successful. As mentioned above, a successful contest for an extended test in Dune is 2+(quality of the asset you are using) and in a fight you have to get as much as your opponent's Battle skill in order to bring them down.

If STA is pulling from this system, you probably need to get a number of points equal to your opponent's Security score.

The main thing I'm looking forward to, if this is the case, is that your skill as a character can't be undermined by crappy Challenge Dice rolls. Yeah, it is exciting when you get a bunch of effects, but when you have somebody who is supposed to be a crack shot or something just roll a bunch of ones and blank faces after a great set of d20 rolls, it is a gust of wind out of the sails for me.

Stone Dog said:

The main thing I'm looking forward to, if this is the case, is that your skill as a character can't be undermined by crappy Challenge Dice rolls. Yeah, it is exciting when you get a bunch of effects, but when you have somebody who is supposed to be a crack shot or something just roll a bunch of ones and blank faces after a great set of d20 rolls, it is a gust of wind out of the sails for me.

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That describes like 75% of the fights Worf is in in TNG.

Reynard said:

That describes like 75% of the fights Worf is in in TNG.

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Yeah, seems pretty on-theme to me.

I'm definitely interested. It sounds like they've listened to folks who don't like single-system bespoke dice (myself included) and combined with streamlining, it's definitely piqued my interest.

Reynard said:

How do they get effect levels (such as damage) with just d20s?

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The free Quickstart they just put out explains how damage works, at least for people-scale stuff, but basically if you get hit you take an injury, giving you a Trait related to the fiction/attack—including, importantly whether it was a stun or deadly attack. Whatever the injury is, it Defeats you, at least temporarily, unless you choose to Avoid Injury by taking Stress equal to the attack's Severity—looks like that's usually 1 to 5. So PCs, if they have enough Stress to take, can basically choose to either get Defeated for that scene, or eat some Stress (unless the attack is deadly, in which case Defeated is probably a bad option).

For NPCs it's a little more complicated:

A Minor NPC, or any supporting character who does not
possess any values, does not suffer injuries. They are
instantly Defeated by any successful attack and cannot
choose to Avoid Injury. The only difference between
Stun and Deadly attacks against a Minor NPC or basic
supporting character is that Stun attacks leave them
unconscious and Deadly attacks kill them instantly (or
disintegrates them, at gamemaster’s discretion).

A Notable NPC, or any supporting character with one
or more values, suffers injuries as normal. Supporting
characters may Avoid Injury as player characters do
(but have only half the amount of initial Stress), while a
Notable NPC may spend Threat to Avoid Injury, but they
can only do so once per scene.

A Major NPC receives Injuries as normal and may Avoid
Injury by spending Threat.

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For Star Trek, at least, I think it's a smart change. It brings things closer to how 2d20 Dishonored works, but...smarter. Dishonored is not so great. Also, any Deadly attack you do adds 1 Threat to the GM's pool.

The free quickstart is up on DriveThruRPG.

I’m not an expert on 1E so I’m not sure what’s new, different, how much has changed, etc. I like a lot of what I’m reading in the Quickstart, but some of the rules strike me and clunky and overwrought.

Or outright nonsensical. An example being PCs always know the difficulty of any roll. That makes sense if, and only if, the PCs are dealing with a known quantity…but if the situation is new or unknown…you know, like say ~80% of all the situations the PCs in a Star Trek game would be in, it makes zero sense.

I like the narrative focus, fictional positioning, narrative permission, etc of traits and giving them ranks.

Momentum and Threat bug me. Especially Threat. So the referee can simply add Threat to a situation if it’s threatening enough, but the point of Threat is to spend it to add threats to a scene. So why have it in the first place? Just show how threatening a scene is by having threatening things exist there. If the point of it is a limited meta-currency to rein in the referee, you defeat that purpose by giving the referee the ability to simply add more. It’s a mechanic for its own sake that’s instantly undermined.

I really like the way stun vs deadly attacks are handled, along with injury and defeated. The split in NPC damage is cool. Some NPCs are just mooks and taken out with one hit. Hell yeah.

The interaction between ranged attacks and cover seems really weird.

I will not miss the challenge dice. I've only ever liked them in Fallout and Achtung Cthulhu which are games that are much more tactical.

A lot of these systems were part of Dreams and Machines.

I like how stress is a flip on how Fate does it: it assumes you are out if an attack hits you. You spend stress for a last minute dodge instead of waiting for the player to decide they are out. Easier to explain as a concept for players.

Stressing out means everything is +1 difficulty and you choose one approach that's just auto-fail until you get fixed up.

Stress also seems to be another resource to power character abilities beyond Momentum and Threat. The Captain character has an ability to tell someone trying to intimidate them to pound sand for two stress.

That feels like how Trek combat works: the stun blast finally hits after a couple of pings off the rock you're behind.

I would argue that Starfleet personnel are exactly the hypercompetent people who would know how difficult any weird thing is. It's also easier for to tell my players that unless I say differently, the difficulty is two.

This is a game less about failure and more about dealing with unexpected complications. Mechanically these come from spending threat and rolling 20s on the dice. Though I will say I have never seen a player give me threat in exchange for momentum. Like they would rather gnaw off an arm than do it.