Star Trek Adventures: Now that the full rules are out, what do you think?

[Michael Silverbane]

I will heartily agree with you that players who are min-maxers or who prefer a play style more along the lines of "kick in the door, kill the monsters, take their stuff" will not like this game much. Ditto with the advancement system. As I noted upthread, a player who plays only to see the numbers on the sheet go up and up and up until his or her character is incredibly powerful will hate this game, but it's not written with that style of play in mind.

It seems foolish to purposely build a roleplaying game that will not appeal to gamers.

 

[lyle.spade]

It seems foolish to purposely build a roleplaying game that will not appeal to gamers.

It doesn't appeal to all gamers. There's nothing foolish about that. Pathfinder doesn't appeal to me; that doesn't make Paizo foolish.

 

[oneshot]

It seems foolish to purposely build a roleplaying game that will not appeal to gamers.

I disagree with that statement on a couple of fronts. First, there is no such thing as a game that will appeal to all players, not even D&D. That's why there are so many different systems on the market today. Heck, the second-ever RPG, Tunnels and Trolls, came about because Ken St. Andre saw D&D and thought it was a great idea but hated the implementation and so went about doing his own thing. So designing a game that everyone loves is essentially an impossible task.

Second, and more importantly, the game is trying to emulate the Star Trek TV shows. The show, and thus the game, are not about dungeon crawling. So if a dungeon crawl or hex crawl is the kind of game you want to play, no Star Trek game is ever going to give you that experience without completely moving away from the source material. Had Modiphius designed a game that appealed to Min-Maxers, there are a lot of people (including yours truly) that would say the game doesn't really feel like Star Trek.

I'm not sure why you would expect a company would pay for an expensive license for a major brand to make an official RPG but not write the game to specifically reproduce the experience of the show. That, to me, would be the apparently foolish business decision.

 

[Michael Silverbane]

It doesn't appeal to all gamers. There's nothing foolish about that. Pathfinder doesn't appeal to me; that doesn't make Paizo foolish.

I disagree with that statement on a couple of fronts. First, there is no such thing as a game that will appeal to all players, not even D&D. That's why there are so many different systems on the market today. Heck, the second-ever RPG, Tunnels and Trolls, came about because Ken St. Andre saw D&D and thought it was a great idea but hated the implementation and so went about doing his own thing. So designing a game that everyone loves is essentially an impossible task.

Second, and more importantly, the game is trying to emulate the Star Trek TV shows. The show, and thus the game, are not about dungeon crawling. So if a dungeon crawl or hex crawl is the kind of game you want to play, no Star Trek game is ever going to give you that experience without completely moving away from the source material. Had Modiphius designed a game that appealed to Min-Maxers, there are a lot of people (including yours truly) that would say the game doesn't really feel like Star Trek.

I'm not sure why you would expect a company would pay for an expensive license for a major brand to make an official RPG but not write the game to specifically reproduce the experience of the show. That, to me, would be the apparently foolish business decision.

Is there some sort of mysterious, invisible "all" somewhere in my post above?

 

[oneshot]

Is there some sort of mysterious, invisible "all" somewhere in my post above?

So then your implication is....if you don't like min-maxing or kicking-down-the-door style you're not a "gamer"? (Or heck, even exclusively like. Because I play games like that and enjoy them AND I also enjoy playing Star Trek.)

If your argument is that you are not a true gamer unless you play like all RPGs are just like munchkin, then I also disagree with that statement, but for completely different reasons.

 

[Michael Silverbane]

So then your implication is....if you don't like min-maxing or kicking-down-the-door style you're not a "gamer"? (Or heck, even exclusively like. Because I play games like that and enjoy them AND I also enjoy playing Star Trek.)

If your argument is that you are not a true gamer unless you play like all RPGs are just like munchkin, then I also disagree with that statement, but for completely different reasons.

That is your inference, not my implication.

 

[oneshot]

That is your inference, not my implication.

Then, in the interests of clarity, would you mind explaining what you meant? If you weren't implying "all gamers" and you weren't using the term "gamers" to specifically refer only to people who like to min-max or dungeon crawl, I have no idea what your original post is arguing.

 

[Michael Silverbane]

Then, in the interests of clarity, would you mind explaining what you meant? If you weren't implying "all gamers" and you weren't using the term "gamers" to specifically refer only to people who like to min-max or dungeon crawl, I have no idea what your original post is arguing.

My original post was not an argument, but a statement of opinion.

 

[oneshot]

My original post was not an argument, but a statement of opinion.

Leaving semantics aside for moment, I really am trying to understand what you wrote. You corrected Lyle and me that you didn't mean "all gamers," and you corrected me to say that it was not your implication that "gamer" would refer only to the subset of gamers I described above. So my question is simply this: What were you saying in your original post? Because I can't figure out an interpretation of what you wrote that makes sense except for the two you already rejected as wrong, and I really am trying to understand your statement of opinion.

 

[EonTrinity]

Except of course once you're around a table and dealing with... *drumroll* ...player choice.

Now I am the first to admit that I don't know what the exact way of doing all of this choice based dice modification is in Star Trek - but the criticisms are of the 2d20 system and were all levelled at Conan too, so I'll just leave all of this here.

I have run over 30'ish Conan 2d20 games now (and additional ones during the playtest), and after I think the 3rd or 4th session when comfortable familiarity came with the rules, there was a significant drop in complications and failures despite my challenges being, well, challenging!

Why you ask?

One reason is because characters rapidly specialise in Talents relevant to their most favoured skills with the commonly encountered 're-roll one or more d20's' or slightly less commonly available 'reduce the difficulty of'. Both of these of course reduce the chance of a Complication considerably, not to mention that a Talent-focussed character can also gain extra momentum from some of these too, reducing the likelihood of choosing to roll extra dice for the sake of the desired Momentum outcome. Oh and let's not forget Fortune points that give an automatic extra dice that rolled a '1', which surprisingly enough tends to be used when things get important or critical!

Plus of course a single complication is pretty minor - it's multiple complications that get problematic, and we can all see from the maths these are far less likely to happen.

The result is, that in real play, with a GM who isn't overloading the adventure with high Difficulty (3+), Complications occur surprisingly infrequently. What do I mean by 'overloading'? Well, I'm a multi-system GM of 39 years experience, so I innevitably end up with a good feel for 'appropriate threat level' regardless of system once I've read it and run it enough, and I don't run 2d20 Conan 'differently' in this regard to any other campaigns I have ever run.

Oh, and there is more! When you actually play, you also find that Fortune Points retroactively allow Complications to be ameliorated or even nullified in terms of net negative impact (even multiple Complications) by clever Story Declarations. Players with half a brain don't do this for single Complications (unless their GM is being a real hardass and making these much more negative than the rules say they should be) - they save them for multi-cluster-frack Complications... you know, a bit like Kirk being beamed out of the ship just about to be eaten by the giant world eating space ice cream cornet, because you know, the transporter just went back online in the nick of time (went offline due to multiple Complication rolled by Scotty, went back online due to Kirk Fortune Point spend - or whatever the Star Trek equivalent is...).

FACT: Judicious use of multiple Fortune Points at a critical 'now or die' situation CAN allow story declarations that save a character from certain death.

The facts on the ground are, just like in quantum mechanics, once you involved choices and attach reality-changing mechanics to those choices, spreadsheets of numbers, however accurate, become less determinant of outcomes, sometimes, far less.

Most systems are I will admit, ultimately a story, with random numbers that change the story. This requires a 'classical' form of GM'ing. Meta mechanics make rpg's a story, with random numbers that change the story unless a meta-rule-legal choice changes the numbers, or what the numbers mean. That is a more recent rpg development, and one I was initially wary of too.

I am not now though, but I do recognise where the friction lies. However, like any good case, the critics of 2d20 (which isn't perfect by any means) should stop copying climate change deniers by focussing on THE ONE THING TM, which proves that everything else pointing in the opposite direction 'is a crock'.

It's perfectly fine to not like meta-mechanics, but quite another to wheel out mathematical 'proof' of its 'fundamental critical flaw' whilst ignoring the significant assumptions made in populating your consequently critically flawed spreadsheet.

One must be holistic in approach, and more nuanced in appraisal I feel.

However, if all the above factors can be input into said spreadsheet and come out with some numbers, I'll be sure to look at that (and its underlying assumptions) very carefully indeed...

Happy gaming people - however deterministic (or not) you like your imaginary universes.

This. So this. I might ask that the Modiphius folks really read through this thread, becasue this is the 2D20 Rosetta stone.

Let me start by sayign that I am a big fan of Modiphius. Love their products. Love their art. Love the quality of the product. Love the passion they bring. When they start up a new line, they COMMIT and fire off a 21 salvo of core and supporting products! That said, I did struggle with 2D20. And even Modiphius has admitted that the system reads hard, but plays fast.

That is indeed the case, and evn then, we had challenges until we realized the above points. This is where the *MAGIC* appears and it goes from trying to make it work in the game to something fluid.

Modiphius, if you are listening, you need to incorporate some of the thoughts int he above post in your books. Make it more than obvious. Because there is a great game system here, and one that seems to get lost in the commotion.

ET