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

[HobbitFan]

How does the game play?

 

[lyle.spade]

Well, and surprisingly so after my initial sense that the rules are too fiddly and crunchy. Yes, there are a number of sub-systems and there are great many things you can do with Momentum, and so more experienced players (with the system, that is) will be able to evoke more of Star Trek from the game, but in the two sessions I've run thus far, for players new to the system, it went really well and there were many moments were we felt that the system helped to facilitate the right vibe for a Star Trek story.

Get the PDF if you're curious or hedging on buying the book...it's only about $15.

 

[Jeux Fictifs]

A others seven steps to get your character ...
Write Rural there and in your focuses write team dynamic.
But with that what my character get when is in the game.
If my character get Always be the best , and around the table , that have not effect for my character.
This is because i have a bad master...
A other player write for his character is beautiful ...but what use.

And why ...put many name for simple stuff that all player do in every roleplaying game.
Like the actions in combat , become task for second action.

I not buy ... something i not understand about that game.

 

[Jeux Fictifs]

Why that ?

A others seven steps to get your character ...
Write Rural there and in your focuses write team dynamic.
But with that what my character get when is in the game.
If my character get Always be the best , and around the table , that have not effect for my character.
This is because i have a bad master...
A other player write for his character is beautiful ...but what use.

And why ...put many name for simple stuff that all player do in every roleplaying game.
Like the actions in combat , become task for second action.

I not buy ... something i not understand about that game.

 

[Pauln6]

Still waiting for my hardback to come in! I love the TMP era and would love to see some stats for the TOS crew. Have any fans been brave enough to attempt this yet? The acid test for me is if anyone can make Yeoman Rand cool enough to play ;-P

 

[Caliburn101]

As usual WaterBob is critical, and vocally so about this latest iteration of the 2d20 system. One wonders if we are going to hear the same critical point of view every time one of these comes out with the same core mechanic. I guess we are - despite it being logical to assume that WaterBob doesn't play any of these games. At least if I hated a core mechanic this much I certainly wouldn't...

However, in this case eramis erak has some maths - good maths too, to underline WaterBobs core complaint.

As I said, the maths is good - there is no arguing with the numbers. I checked em...

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.

 

[aramis erak]

I don't have a player base willing to play it now that the playtest is over. They don't like 2d20 in general, but don't hate it, either. Just a sort of disdain for it, and all willingness to use it evaporated when they found out the lack-of-advancement in the advancement system. Which said system was not part of the playtest, so there was no legit way to tweak the characters in play except by rebuild.

Add the snowball issue, and I wasn't swamping difficulties, mind you, but most of the time they'd throw 4-5d20 at any difficulty higher than 1, unless the momentum pool was full.

Not a one felt like using the determination points for narrative declarations; math-wise, it's usually better (except when about to die) to use it for the the 1d20 prerolled at 1, generating 2S.

Mind you, given the player base I had, 3 of the 4 were die-hard D&D min-maxer types. Put that kind of system in front of them and they will find the math flaws. I had a half dozen sessions where the snowball was notable. in only half of those were they able to break-out.

As I pointed out in some other thread (on another board, I think), giving a personal momentum to a PC when you activate a complication is a better option... likewise, charge them 1 for activating a GM complication. It works better psych wise, math-wise, and induces reversion to the mean.

 

[Caliburn101]

I don't have a player base willing to play it now that the playtest is over. They don't like 2d20 in general, but don't hate it, either. Just a sort of disdain for it, and all willingness to use it evaporated when they found out the lack-of-advancement in the advancement system. Which said system was not part of the playtest, so there was no legit way to tweak the characters in play except by rebuild.

Add the snowball issue, and I wasn't swamping difficulties, mind you, but most of the time they'd throw 4-5d20 at any difficulty higher than 1, unless the momentum pool was full.

Not a one felt like using the determination points for narrative declarations; math-wise, it's usually better (except when about to die) to use it for the the 1d20 prerolled at 1, generating 2S.

Mind you, given the player base I had, 3 of the 4 were die-hard D&D min-maxer types. Put that kind of system in front of them and they will find the math flaws. I had a half dozen sessions where the snowball was notable. in only half of those were they able to break-out.

As I pointed out in some other thread (on another board, I think), giving a personal momentum to a PC when you activate a complication is a better option... likewise, charge them 1 for activating a GM complication. It works better psych wise, math-wise, and induces reversion to the mean.

Interesting - there is certainly no lack of advancement in Conan, so that must be a Star Trek iteration thing (as I said, I haven't tried it).

Understanding how useful story declarations are comes with time - my players didn't see the usefulness of them either, but then the penny dropped and they use them on and off now to great effect.

In Conan, once the rules are understood, the snowball effect really isn't a thing anymore - player choices nip it in the bud, and player choice is a RAW balancing factor as I have stated. In all the games I have run I have seen one triple complication (it was very notable as it was the only one, and I had to come up with something pretty creative to hit the player with for it) and a handful of doubles which are not common due to, often enough, being dropped down to a single due to judicious use of a re-roll. The singles are inconveniences, nothing more, and frequently enough cancelled out by a skill re-roll themselves.

I simply have not encountered the problem you allude to purely with numbers, and it is clear in retrospect that this is primarily due to players managing outcomes with choice based mechanics, which, in a system like this, is what should happen, and what is designed in to be possible.

It is the first meta-mechanics system I have enjoyed playing (I played at two convention games recently) and running. I don't for instance like FATE - for my tastes, that goes too far.

I do think there should be more guidance on setting difficulties for GM's - I have seen people get this wrong, but ultimately, when you start getting that right the game runs very well, even for a group of old crusty simulationists like my lot!

I think some people's disconnect is with the fact that increased chance of failure drives use of Talents and similar mechanics that can manage the actual outcomes, and Doom - which is a similar thing - a tacit choice to increase future risk of challenge whilst reducing current risk of failure. Both are used by GM and players and the GM especially needs to be balanced in their approach to the use of Doom.

In essence, the power to change dice rolls, to introduce threat and to modify the outcomes of randomness and risk has been made extant, and not down to 'fudging' anymore for the GM, and for players, the risk of poor dice outcomes has been moderately increased whilst simultaneously counterbalanced by increased intercessionary powers to change those outcomes.

I do see why people have an issue with it - but it works very well in practice (certainly in Conan), and playing it is the only sure-fire way to experience that I would say.

 

[oneshot]

Add the snowball issue, and I wasn't swamping difficulties, mind you, but most of the time they'd throw 4-5d20 at any difficulty higher than 1, unless the momentum pool was full.

Not a one felt like using the determination points for narrative declarations; math-wise, it's usually better (except when about to die) to use it for the the 1d20 prerolled at 1, generating 2S.

Mind you, given the player base I had, 3 of the 4 were die-hard D&D min-maxer types. Put that kind of system in front of them and they will find the math flaws. I had a half dozen sessions where the snowball was notable. in only half of those were they able to break-out.

I'm not trying to delve back into the "snowball" thing yet again, but throwing 4-5 dice at a difficulty 2 is a huge waste of resources unless that difficulty 2 task was some kind of "must succeed" test that prevented them from otherwise advancing in the adventure. One extra die and/or an assist from another PC or two is more than enough to succeed and move on past that task. It sounds like your players were more concerned about having a full momentum pool instead of just analyzing whether it was worth the expenditure of resources just to try to net a few more banked momentum.

Also, sometimes the smartest play isn't subject to a mathematical analysis. For example, in the first playtest adventure that is now the adventure included in the core book, spending a point of determination to declare that the science station has a functioning transporter creates a tremendous advantage for the players and allows them to do an end-run around several problems that they would otherwise encounter, but it won't add much mathematically to any rolls. Advantages also can just permit actions that would be otherwise impossible, and the value in that could heavily outweigh any advantage of buying two successes on a later roll. I've had lots of examples at my table where clever, out-of-the-box spending of determination (or momentum as part of a check) created an advantage and solved some problem without requiring the players to roll a task to do it. For me, that fact that the game encourages such things is a plus, given the genre conventions it's trying to emulate.

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.

 

[aramis erak]

I'm not trying to delve back into the "snowball" thing yet again, but throwing 4-5 dice at a difficulty 2 is a huge waste of resources unless that difficulty 2 task was some kind of "must succeed" test that prevented them from otherwise advancing in the adventure. One extra die and/or an assist from another PC or two is more than enough to succeed and move on past that task. It sounds like your players were more concerned about having a full momentum pool instead of just analyzing whether it was worth the expenditure of resources just to try to net a few more banked momentum.

Throwing 5d at a diff 2 is, mathematically, a good deal under the playtest; the late change to progressive costs cut them down to 4D... but it also generally kept their momentum pool full.

People who don't at least do a first order analysis of the underlying math are uncommon in my experience FTF, but seemingly everywhere on the net.

My playtest players included a retired USN EM1, a guy with an MBA, A buisness undergrad, and a Nursing student. I have a BA in History, and took a MA program in Ed (washed out in student teaching).

All of them did first order analysis on their own. All of them checked my analysis, as well.

The math is why they don't want to continue. Both the task math, and the advancement math...

In general, while the game didn't get in the way of a good trek adventure, for us, it did little to help create one outside ship-to-ship combat.