Star Trek Adventures' New Edition Has A Starter Set!

If you're new to Modiphius' Star Trek Adventures tabletop roleplaying game, and not yet sure about diving right into the upcoming new 2nd Edition ruleset, a starter set might be just the thing for you!

It's available now for pre-order and includes a 3-part adventure called Infinite Combinations, a rules booklet, pregeneerated characters, reference cards, and tokens.

The boxed set costs £24, and ships in January 2025, though you get the digital version right away. You can get it from the UK or US store.

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TO BOLDLY GO WHERE NO ONE HAS GONE BEFORE!

The Star Trek™ Adventures roleplaying game takes you to the final frontier! You may travel to the edges of known space, to colonies in need, to the borders of neighboring galactic powers, or into the eye of interstellar phenomena. Explore strange new worlds, encounter fantastical alien life-forms, and engage in dramatic adventures in a detailed and immersive Galaxy.

PLAY STRAIGHT OUT OF THE BOX!​

This Starter Set contains everything you need to begin your journey into the final frontier, including an epic campaign of three linked missions designed to challenge a brave crew of 3–7 player characters.

The Star Trek Adventures Second Edition Starter Set includes:

• RULES BOOKLET: A 48-page booklet providing an overview of the 2d20 game system adapted for Star Trek Adventures, for use with the included campaign.
• CAMPAIGN BOOKLET: A 60-page booklet containing the epic, three-part campaign “Infinite Combinations,” which guides you through the rules as you play so you can begin exploring the Galaxy straight out of the box.
• SHIP SHEET and CHARACTER SHEETS: A statistics sheet for the Constitution-class U.S.S. Challenger and seven player character sheets, with rules references on the backs.
• REFERENCE SHEETS: Four double-sided rules reference sheets.
• DICE: Five twenty-sided dice (d20s) in a unique color only available in this Starter Set.
• TOKENS: Six Momentum tokens for each of six different civilizations (i.e., 36 total Momentum tokens), 36 Threat tokens on the reverse side of the Momentum tokens, and 9 Determination tokens.

 

[John R Davis]

I do love a starter set, and will add this to the ridiculous unused collection
Space combat in ST is kinda like WW1 battleships, it's not overly dynamic and as mentioned it's what the crew are doing is the important bit, which the game does well in its previous edition.

 

[Morrus]

I really dislike the trend companies have these past few years of merely putting out a starter set with pregenerated characters.

Sure, it gives you a taste of the game, but really doesn't let you sample it. By that I mean, you really can't sample a game until you have the power to create your own characters and see how the thing works.

It used to be where you have your pregenerated characters, but you also included rules on how to create your own character. It made it so you could truly see if it was a game you wanted or not, rather than just a taste.

But, this is an outdated idea I suppose for many companies (thankfully, Paizo still has the right idea in their past sets, and luckily Target insisted on the Eseentials kit for D&D), but I find I don't try as many starter sets as they probably would like me to, because if I want to try out a system, I want to actually try it out, not just get a single taste for an hour or two using characters I have no real connection to and don't understand how they were created or made in the first place.

At that point it’s closer to “the whole game” than “starter set”. You might as well just buy the core rule book.

 

[Staffan]

I really dislike the trend companies have these past few years of merely putting out a starter set with pregenerated characters.

Sure, it gives you a taste of the game, but really doesn't let you sample it. By that I mean, you really can't sample a game until you have the power to create your own characters and see how the thing works.

It used to be where you have your pregenerated characters, but you also included rules on how to create your own character. It made it so you could truly see if it was a game you wanted or not, rather than just a taste.

That can work in D&D and its immediate family, where there's a fairly brief set of core rules and the rest is various siloed-off character options, which makes it easy to just include a subset of those options (e.g. just four classes and one subclass per class, and maybe only up to level 3 or 5 or so). But most other games don't have classes in that way, plus they have a flatter structure so you don't really have high- or low-level abilities. Star Trek Adventures in particular (at least in 1st edition) has a fairly lenghty lifepath system where you go through the character's past in about seven steps with each step contributing a few things to the end result – the full rules are about 50 pages.

I think Star Wars manages to thread this needle fairly well, though maybe that's because it has a semi-class system. The various Star Wars beginner boxes don't let you create characters, but they do let you advance them. So if you're playing the spy Vendri and you get your first 10 XP as part of the intro adventure, you get a menu of four options to spend them on: 10 XP to increase Computers from 1 to 2, or 5 XP each to either increase Deception from 0 to 1, gain the Stalker talent giving you a boost die on all Stealth and Coordination checks, or gain the Dodge talent which lets you take a strain to upgrade the difficulty of attacking you once (per attack; turning a Difficulty die to a Challenge die). As you continue playing, potentially into the super-awesome web enhancement adventure for Age of Rebellion, you will gain more XP and access to more free-form advancement and a special talent tree. I just wish they had made this part more fully compatible with the full game (all the pregens have bespoke talent trees and skill access, which they get from mixing up the specialization talent trees in the core book).

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I’ve had truly epic space battles in FASA Star Trek RPG.

 

[John R Davis]

I think the ST was a fine intro to the game, as are most starter sets. Id rather spend 22 quid on a starter set, try it, and perhaps not like it, and resell at a good price, then be stuck with a 50 quid HD i've struggled to get into, with a trickier resale because of the books mass.
The only complaint with this ST one is that it might not contain enough bling compared to some starter sets, but ive been told by a Modiphius person its all they can afford to put in.

 

[EternalDungeonMaster]

I’ve had truly epic space battles in FASA Star Trek RPG.

100% this. FASA did it right 30 years ago. It was the best Star Trek RPG that I've been exposed to. Admittedly, I haven't bothered getting into the Modiphius stuff so I have no idea what I'm missing there. But FASA Trek handled everything from planet-side ground adventures to roleplaying to amazing space battles quite well.

 

[mykesfree]

Having played this game when the core rule book was released in September, this version of the Star Trek RPG models every aspect of Star Trek for every era.

The rule system is innovative and you can run any type of story with Star Trek. Epic Space battles, Yes. Horror/Investigation, Yes. Humor like in Lower Decks, Yes. Small character moments, Yes.

I recommend trying out this game if you are curious and don't want to purchase the $60+ core rule book.

 

[GreyLord]

At that point it’s closer to “the whole game” than “starter set”. You might as well just buy the core rule book.

Perhaps, but those companies which have had sets which have had character creation have done better overall with their RPG sales than those that have not.

Granted, it may just be that they are bigger players, or their appeal in general is better, but a prime example of Paizo and their Beginner Boxes have their gamebooks selling relatively well. After their PF1e Beginner Box came out they even started to top the charts over WotC's 4e D&D at the time (of course, there are multitudes of other factors to consider in this, such as 4e not even printing new books at the time..etc).

I'd say that printing a set that has character creation and the first few levels with a subset of rules so people can try it out to see if they prefer that type of system, at a minimum, does not hurt sales. I, of course, would say it actually helps sales more than anything else, but of course there are many variables to account for that could influence such things.

Anecdotal for me, I don't buy starter sets unless I'm already intensely interested in a system already. I'm already biased at that point. If it has character creation rules, that's a much more likely experience for me to try. That's the entire reason I finally started with PF1e and finally got into it. I wasn't really interested in PF (I already had 3.X and was playing 4e, no real interest in trying PF), but with their beginner box I was willing to give it a shot as it had everything to truly try the system out, even if it was just for the first few levels and a few classes. Ended up really enjoying it. If it had been a starter set with pregens and not much else for the game except an adventure like most of those that come out instead, I probably would not have really gotten into PF1e.

 

[Morrus]

Perhaps, but those companies which have had sets which have had character creation have done better overall with their RPG sales than those that have not.

Granted, it may just be that they are bigger players, or their appeal in general is better, but a prime example of Paizo and their Beginner Boxes have their gamebooks selling relatively well. After their PF1e Beginner Box came out they even started to top the charts over WotC's 4e D&D at the time (of course, there are multitudes of other factors to consider in this, such as 4e not even printing new books at the time..etc).

I'd say that printing a set that has character creation and the first few levels with a subset of rules so people can try it out to see if they prefer that type of system, at a minimum, does not hurt sales. I, of course, would say it actually helps sales more than anything else, but of course there are many variables to account for that could influence such things.

Anecdotal for me, I don't buy starter sets unless I'm already intensely interested in a system already. I'm already biased at that point. If it has character creation rules, that's a much more likely experience for me to try. That's the entire reason I finally started with PF1e and finally got into it. I wasn't really interested in PF (I already had 3.X and was playing 4e, no real interest in trying PF), but with their beginner box I was willing to give it a shot as it had everything to truly try the system out, even if it was just for the first few levels and a few classes. Ended up really enjoying it. If it had been a starter set with pregens and not much else for the game except an adventure like most of those that come out instead, I probably would not have really gotten into PF1e.

Paizo's beginner box costs twice as much as WotC's. Sure you can put tons of extra stuff in the starter set, and charge accordingly, but as I said--at some point you might as well just buy the core rulebook.

 

[Scribe Ineti]

I think the ST was a fine intro to the game, as are most starter sets. Id rather spend 22 quid on a starter set, try it, and perhaps not like it, and resell at a good price, then be stuck with a 50 quid HD i've struggled to get into, with a trickier resale because of the books mass.
The only complaint with this ST one is that it might not contain enough bling compared to some starter sets, but ive been told by a Modiphius person its all they can afford to put in.

Don't know for sure where you heard that from. I wanted to include a poster map along with the dice, tokens, booklets, and reference cards we included, but had to cut it because we wanted to keep the starter set price low (and we got a poster map in the toolkit anyway).