STAR TREK ADVENTURES Public Playtest Launches

The public playtest for Modiphius' Star Trek Adventures tabletop RPG has launched worldwide with over 5,000 players in a storyline penned by writers including Dayton Ward (NYT bestselling author) and Scott Pearson. The living campaign will run until mid-2017, when the core rulebook is released, taking place in the unexplored Shackleton Expanse near Starbase 364. Different playtest experiences are available depending on which group playtesters signed up for, with different groups focusing on combat, diplomacy, and so on.

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LONDON, ENGLAND (December 1, 2016): Modiphius Entertainment, publisher of the Achtung! Cthulhu, Mutant Chronicles, Conan, Infinity and John Carter of Mars roleplaying games, announces the missions for the Star Trek Adventures™ living campaign playtest, to develop the first official Star Trek RPG in more than a decade, are now live with more than 5,000 players and counting. To join the campaign, visit www.modiphius.com/star-trek.

Thousands of players around the world will adventure through the Star Trek universe like never before in an epic storyline written by New York Times Bestselling Star Trek author Dayton Ward and Scott Pearson (Star Trek novellas: The More Things Change, Among the Clouds, Terra Tonight), developed by Nathan Dowdell (Black Crusade, Mutant Chronicles 3rd Edition, Corvus Belli's Infinity: The Roleplaying Game and Robert E Howard's Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed Of) and lead writerDavid F Chapman (Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space Roleplaying Game, Conspiracy X 2.0, Buffy the Vampire Slayer RPG). Joining them are an interstellar line-up including writers from all previous editions of the Star Trek roleplaying game, as well as big names from across the tabletop gaming industry including:

Shawn Merwin (Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition: War of Everlasting Darkness, Halls of Undermountain, Dungeon Delve), Jim Johnson (Lord of the Rings RPG, Mage: The Awakening, Shadowrun Augmentation), Jacob Ross (Legend of the Five Rings, Mongoose Traveller, Kaigaku), Patrick Goodman (Shadowrun: Fifth Edition, Shadowrun: Street Legends, Shadowrun: Storm Front), Ross Isaacs (Line Developer Star Trek RPG (Decipher) and Star Trek: The Next Generation Roleplaying Game (Last Unicorn Games), Ian Lemke(Changeling: The Dreaming, White Wolf Publishing, Earth Down), John Snead(Mindjammer: Traveller, Eclipse Phase, Star Trek Next Generation RPG Last Unicorn Games.), Dan Taylor (IDW Publishing's Star Trek comics), Bill Maxwell (Fading Suns, Star Trek Roleplaying Game, Mage: The Awakening), Tim Beach (Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (Red Steel, Maztica Campaign Set, Hail the Heroes, Dungeons of Mastery, City of Delights) and Andrew Peregrine (Doctor Who, 7th Sea, Victoriana).

As well as Aaron Pollyea (Battletech), Oz Mills (Fantasy AGE Bestiary, Dragon Age: Faces of Thedas), Ade Smith (Mutants and Masterminds: Atlas of Earth Prime - Northern Europe, Rogue Gallery. Fainting Goat Games: Extreme Earth), Chris Huff (Mutants & Masterminds Freedom's Most Wanted, DC Adventures RPG Heroes & Villains Volume 1, DC Adventures RPG Heroes & Villains Volume 2), John Kennedy (Ninja Crusade 2E, Infinity Tabletop Roleplaying Game, Myth Board Game), Kevin Mickelson (Mask of Death, A Learning Time, A Frightful Time, A Miraculous Time), Ryan Schoon (Fragged Empire, Edara: The Steampunk Renaissance, Baby Bestiary) and Chris Huff (DC Adventures, Mutants & Masterminds, Pathfinder).

The playtest gives fans of the legendary television series and films the opportunity to contribute to the development of the game; to sit in the captain's chair, seek out new life and new civilizations, give all they've got to a warp core breach, or explore their own adventures in the Star Trek universe.

The living campaign begins with playtest missions and will continue with the release of the core rulebook in the summer of 2017. The living campaign takes place in the Shackleton Expanse, an area of space vastly unexplored by both the Federation and the Klingons. Starbase 364, Narendra Station, named after the battle of Narendra III where the U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701-C was destroyed, serves as the keep on the borderlands for excursions out into the frontier of space.


As the crews of the U.S.S. Venture, U.S.S. Bellerophon, U.S.S. Thunderchild, explore strange anomalies and discover new life while uncovering an ancient civilization and mysterious technologies, those aboard the U.S.S. Lexington will shape historical events for those very ships.

Assignments are still open for Captains and Officers to take their place aboard the bridge and make Star Trek gaming history. Further, local game shops organizing an in-store playtest group will receive starbase status with pre-order promotions for the game's retail release. Fans attending Dragonmeet in London on Saturday will have the final chance to receive a free Captain Kirk or Captain Picard figure when they sign up for the Star Trek Adventures playtest.

To register yourself or your group online, visit www.modiphius.com/star-trek.

To register as a retailer, visit http://www.modiphius.com/retail-support.html

Under license by CBS Consumer Products, Star Trek Adventures is slated for a Summer 2017 release and the playtest crews will be listed in the Star Trek Adventures book manifest.

 

[oneshot]

Looks like we will go back to d20 Future&Co, none of the players but one was invested, and there were too many non-intuitive rules for me.

Leaving Threat out in the open,for example, mixes player knowledge with char knowledge, and that is not wanted.

I guess it's how you perceive Threat, but I think Threat actually does represent in-character knowledge, specifically the in-character knowledge of the overall level of danger the current situation has. For example, when you buy extra dice with Threat, it represents the characters taking risks and acting recklessly. (See the top of page 14 of the 1.36 Alpha.) So, for example, let's say the PCs are infiltrating a Borg cube and are trying to download some information out of a Borg computer terminal. Buying extra dice with Momentum would represent the PCs' previous preparation for the mission or their fantastic success in infiltrating the cube (which would make detecting them harder). But buying extra dice with threat would indicate an attempt to complete the job quickly without trying to bypass the various detection measures or otherwise hide their presence from the Borg. As a result, the PCs are more likely to be detected and attacked, even if they succeed in downloading the information. This is a known risk to the PCs that they take, so they are aware the overall danger of the situation is increasing based upon their actions. So in that sense, Threat represents in-character knowledge in the same way that, say, the stress track represents a character's knowledge of how fresh and up for a fight the character is. Sure, it's a numerical representation of an abstraction, but that's most RPG statistics of any sort.

That said, you could always just keep the Threat pile behind your screen or otherwise out-of-sight to the players. Although I'm going to guess that if you don't like players to have any OOC knowledge, you're not a big fan of metacurrency in general.

Edited to add: Just to be clear, I was just highlighting that I view threat very differently than your group apparently does. I'm not trying to be a system defender and am totally cool if you don't like it. Honestly, a lot of people won't like it. While it's got an overall medium crunch, the system does have a healthy dose of narrativist game design, which will turn off people looking for a more simulationist game. In the other direction, there is a lot more heft to the rules than you'd get from a typical Fate-style game, so the rules lite crowd probably won't bite either. It hits a nice sweet spot for my gaming group, however, and we all like it a lot.

 

[Jester David]

I have my alternative to minis all ready!

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