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.

​

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.

 

[Scribe Ineti]

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.

Given character creation is a very large portion of the core book, it made sense to us to keep it in the core book. Starter set is for getting the taste of the game. YMMV naturally.

If someone wants to experiment with creating characters for the system, they could hop over to the free character app and create entire crews, ships, and other stuff for days.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

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.

WotC D&D starter sets are a loss leader. But I doubt smaller companies could afford that strategy.

The other strategy seems to be to fill the box with peripheral stuff like dice, tokens, maps etc that you wouldn’t get in the core rulebook.

 

[Konrad13]

Loved the 1e starter set, this one looks phenomenal as well, and the color of the dice is GREAT!

 

[Morrus]

WotC D&D starter sets are a loss leader. But I doubt smaller companies could afford that strategy.

I'm not sure that's true. The D&D starter sets cost the same as the starter sets we make, and have less in them. And they can produce stuff way cheaper than we can due to the scales at which they print them. While they're likely not making the same margins as on the core books, I doubt they're losing anything.

The Paizo starter set costs a lot more, but it contains a lot more.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I'm not sure that's true. The D&D starter sets cost the same as the starter sets we make, and have less in them. And they can produce stuff way cheaper than we can due to the scales at which they print them. While they're likely not making the same margins as on the core books, I doubt they're losing anything.

The Paizo starter set costs a lot more, but it contains a lot more.

Interesting, but by the time the retailer has marked down the boxed sets, they are typically selling for around £10 in UK retailers. It’s hard to imagine there can be much profit in that, when most board games are five times as much.

If you are selling mostly direct so a retailer isn’t taking a cut it might make the difference.

 

[Morrus]

Interesting, but by the time the retailer has marked down the boxed sets, they are typically selling for around £10 in UK retailers. It’s hard to imagine there can be much profit in that, when most board games are five times as much.

If you are selling mostly direct so a retailer isn’t taking a cut it might make the difference.

We sell via retail too. We know how it works.

 

[Staffan]

Come to think of space battles... I think different scales ask very different things of a game system.

When I think of Star Trek space fights, most of them are either big ship vs big ship, or big ship vs a small number of smaller ships. For an RPG, this is good because it keeps the focus on the PCs, with the Captain commanding and/or using smart tactics, the tactical officer pewpewing, possibly the helm maneuvering (though quite often the ships are too big to do that in a meaningful way), engineers pushing power and doing damage control, and so on.

Sometimes the PCs' big ship would have a small number of allies. These are, I think, best handled by splitting up. The Concord is dealing with that Warbird, while the Potemkin is dealing with this one. And of course, in the best cases, battle (or the threat of battle) is just the backdrop for talking:

Large-scale battles are probably best left mostly off-screen, or by having the battle serve as a backdrop for the PCs' ship taking on a specific mission. This is really no different from other games – I wouldn't model the Battle of Pelennor Fields using D&D's or even The One Ring's combat system either.

 

[mykesfree]

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.

You should 100% give this version of the RPG a try. I think it captures every aspect of Star Trek. I will go out on a limb and even say it captures it better than either FASA, LUG, and Dichipher games did.

 

[EternalDungeonMaster]

You should 100% give this version of the RPG a try. I think it captures every aspect of Star Trek. I will go out on a limb and even say it captures it better than either FASA, LUG, and Dichipher games did.

Okay that statement absolutely has my attention. What is the starship combat like? I remember FASA Trek ship battles as really feeling like capital ships of the line were going at it. There were even paper station panels with cardboard chits to mark the status of the panel. So the player playing the engineer, for example, could make changes to power allotment on the panel each turn, etc.

 

[Morrus]

Okay that statement absolutely has my attention. What is the starship combat like? I remember FASA Trek ship battles as really feeling like capital ships of the line were going at it. There were even paper station panels with cardboard chits to mark the status of the panel. So the player playing the engineer, for example, could make changes to power allotment on the panel each turn, etc.

It's very, very different to the FASA starship combat game.