Star Trek Adventures lets you boldly go to the Final Frontier.

Star Trek Adventures is Modiphius’ foray into the Final Frontier. Using their 2d20 system, Star Trek Adventures sets out to recreate the feel of good Star Trek, right at your tabletop.

I SAID GOOD TREK

And if that was their Prime Directive, they succeeded in spades. This game feels like Trek, from its character creation to core mechanics, Star Trek Adventures really gets how to make a game feel like you and your friends are playing as part of a crew.

Here’s a real brief rules overview if you aren’t familiar with the core mechanics of a 2d20 game. Most rolls are 2d20 (+ or – the occasional d20) with the goal belong to roll less than a target number determined by adding a trait and a discipline together. There are six traits and six disciplines, and you’ve basically got the gist of it. Players try and score a number of successes from 0 to 5, with modifiers adjusting the number of successes needed, or adding to the number of d20s you roll.

Things like damage and other specific effects are handled by their “challenge” dice, which are d6s that give you whether a 1, 2, blank, or 1 + effect. You’ll roll them and figure out what success or failure of a given roll means.

But anyway, that’s the core rules mechanic. Far more interesting is the core character mechanic. So they don’t shy away from the fact that starships are big and require a diverse crew of personnel to keep going. You’ll have someone who needs to be the engineer, the captain, the doctor, etc. And not every character is needed for every scene. But they introduce the idea of characters playing a support character in the interim, drawing on the fact that there are plenty of people around.

For now.

This way, the person playing the chief engineer, who has no business tagging along to the diplomatic meeting, isn’t just twiddling their thumbs until something goes wrong on the ship. Plus, this mechanic makes it so much easier to run a B-plot as well, just like a classic episode. You’re never really splitting the party, but you’re able to have the characters all working in tandem on different things. It adds to the immersion of it. Really helps suspend that disbelief.

Plus, support characters are a resource that can get upgraded along with your ship. So, while they’ll never take the spotlight from an actual PC, there’s still a sense of growth and consistency. And you never know where you’ll find your next O’Brien.

From transporter chief to WW2 Flying Ace in two series.

Character creation, too, is incredible in this game. You generate a life path (which is an automatic win in my book) that lets you create a living breathing Starfleet officer, Klingon Warrior, Romulan agent, or what have you. You’ll get a glimpse at important moments in your character’s life, and get to increase your starting attributes and disciplines (skills) or even pick up a talent.

And, let me gush about the flavor of the talents here for a moment. These are great flavor nuggets, things like Mean Right Hook or Doctor’s Orders, which tell you everything y need to know about a character. The only thing missing is some form of “get off my bridge.”

But that’s where the game shines. It knows exactly what it wants to do and it sets that up. As fun as it is, the system can be a little clunky to the uninitiated. It takes some getting used to, and when you’re first figuring it out, assigning tasks the right difficulty will be the bane of your existence. There’s no getting away from it. But, once you have the system down, you’ll be surprised at how flexible it is. And just how much character is present in the game.

And that’s not even touching the starship combat. At any rate, if you’re looking for a good crew-based game, this is one I’d highly recommend.

via Modiphius