Star Trek Adventures Probability Analysis

This has to be the prettiest output I've ever seen.

Well. I've done it. It took a solid 12 hours of hard work. I had to learn things about probability and excel I never knew before. I have seriously grown as a human being. I present to you a PDF document that can tell you exactly, given the number of dice being rolled, the target number, and the DC your are rolling against, what your chances of success are. In decimal format. Ignoring crits.

With this document, a savvy GM can plot the challenge of the tasks presented to the players and intentionally drain metacurrency resources, or demand threat feed, as they see fit.

Here's The Document

Star Trek Adventures Ship Stat Analysis

Free PDF!

Well, I got down to doing some technical investigation of how starships are designed for STA. I broke them down by category, era, and scale, and found the average for each group's systems and departments.

But why? What use is this?

Homebrew. This information is used as a guideline to create new content that is in-line with that provided by the game. Using this as a basis, I could make a Curry-Type, a Saladin Class, a Chimera Class,
or one of those origami nightmares from the FASA game. For example...

Departments always get 3 points, with the following exceptions:

1. Pre-TNG scale 1 shuttles get 2 points.
2. Scale 2 Shuttles get 4.

Anyways, yeah, give it a look!

A Reply.

Go read this. Then come back.

1. All beings deserve equal liberty. That has not happened and it is a tragedy. We must make the vision of true philosophical equality a reality.
2. You do. I have spread your message.
3. No. I will speak out against it, I shall fight against it, I shall point it out, deride it, and attack it. But I shall never silence a fellow human, now matter what they have to say.
4. A dude thought he could get away with kneeling on a fellow human's neck for almost 9 minutes while people filmed him. He believed that because for a long time, that's the way it was. Not any more. It must change. It is changing. If you don't understand that, you are an idiot.
5. People are only truly accountable to themselves. I do not put any other person above myself for any reason. I do not put myself above any other people for any reason. I expect the same from everyone else.
6. In many ways, much of what is being done is not my place to be involved. My philosophy is too individualist to fully support every part of the movement without being a hypocrite. I do what is appropriate, but no more than that. I am anarchic, not communist, and this movement incorporates many communistic beliefs that I, frankly, oppose.

Star Trek Adventures Roll20 Tokens Pack!

FREE STUFF!!!

The above is a zipo file containing hundreds of tokens fro playing Star Trek Adventures over Roll20. They were created using Token Stamp 2 but I went and did all the work for you. The only thing that's really missing is tokens for the Gamma quadrant Dominion ships, because I couldn't find pictures for any of them, really. Enjoy!

Star Trek Operations Notes

FREE STUFF

Well, the third part of my notes series is done. This one contains significantly more personal commentary than the last two, mainly because I had more room for it. There was a lot of fluff in this book and very little crunch. What game material that was added consisted primarily of content, not rules. Even so, the Red Alert rules for miniature PvP and wargame combat gave me a lot to think about regarding my earlier notes. I may need to do a reread and put out revised versions of those notes documents to reflect my expanded understanding.

Kiss and a Slap: Star Trek Adventures Review

For those new to the blog, which is almost certainly almost everyone who comes to my blog, I rarely do reviews. When I do, I do them in a format called "Kiss and a Slap". That's where I list 10 things I hate about the product, and then 10 things I love about it. The idea is to give an honest review that admits the shortcomings of a product in the format of constructive criticism. Normally, I just review adventures, but today I'm tackling a bigger beast. I'm going to review a whole goddamn game system. Because I CANNOT stay silent about this game! Now, before I get to it, I'm going to head off some of the flack I might get for my criticism of someone's favorite game. I believe the following:

1. Nothing is perfect.
2. Nothing is sacred.
3. All things are deserving of criticism.
4. Anything that can be improved should be improved.
5. your feelings are meaningless.

OK! Let's dig in!

 

The Slaps

1. It's so fluffy I'm gonna DIE! Look, I get it, Star Trek is massively overwhelming to people new to the fandom. It's hard to get people onboard with Trek content. The lore is intimidating. And I can understand dedicating a section of the book to conveying the fundamental basics of the setting to new audiences. That's fine. What is definitely NOT fine, is that it is jumbled up and mixed in with the rules text of the game throughout the goddamned book!!! At first, it starts out reading like an admiral addressing you as a captain who is going to be in charge of a new ship. That's OK, a framing device works. But they don't stick to it. It's like they repeatedly forgot they even had a framing device in the first place. They dedicate multiple pages of setting explanation just to follow it with one paragraph of rules with no visual distinction between the two or even a heading to mark the actual rule. To confuse matters more, they have 2 types of sidebars in the book; purple and pink. Pink ones are USUALLY fluff, and purple ones are USUALLY rules... except some rules are in pink sidebars and some purple sidebars contain no crunch whatsoever. The end result is that you have to read everything- EVERY-FUCKING-THING, just to make sure you didn't miss something, and I guarantee you, you will miss something. Now, don't get me wrong, this isn't the worst I've ever seen. That award goes to Polaris. (Not the french one.) But this is a close second place.
2. Disorganization in the extreme. Here's how it reads: Here's some fluff! Here's a rule! By the way, before we finish explaining that rule, here's a note about another rule that sometimes applies to this rule. Here's some fluff! Oh by the way, here's the rest of a rule we started explaining a few pages ago. And here's a list of all those side rules that keep interrupting the main rules explanations! More fluff. Here's the end of that other rule we didn't finish explaining earlier. Oh, by the way, in another 100 pages there's a stray sentence that clarifies something on this page. It is a god damn outrageous mess. It makes the game nearly incomprehensible to new players. Watching Modiphius play their own game, it's clear that even they don't fully understand it, since they forget something different in every episode. (Like, for example, resistance being rolled in challenge dice, not a flat penalty) A perfect example of their disorganization is that multiple playable alien species, some of the MOST ICONIC species, including Klingon and Romulan, are in the back of the goddamn book, rather than in line with the playable species section at the start of the book!
3. Muddled language. Throughout the book, they make it clear that their task resolution system is called a Task. Fine, good, that's easy to understand. (Except that 25% of the time they accidentally call it a check!) Later, in combat, it is revealed that each player can make a minor action and a task on their turn. OK, so that means they can do a thing that requires no roll and a thing that requires a roll, right? NOPE! Not all combat tasks require a roll! That means combat tasks and normal tasks are two separate mechanics that share the same word! So you can take a task that makes you make a task! Fucking brilliant! Genius! And if you only have minor actions and no other type of action, why include the adjective "minor"? That's fucking idiotic! There's a reason I changed the terminology to major and minor actions in my notes. Another example of poor language is regarding terrain effects. Throughout the book, they imply that terrain effects are applicable specifically to zones, and are separate from scene traits. One sentence hidden amongst the copypasta jungle that is the GM section bluntly states that terrain effects are just traits. HOLY FUCKING SHIT WHY DIDN'T YOU JUST SAY SO INSTEAD OF BENDING OVER BACKWARDS TO AVOID YOUR OWN DAMN TERMINOLOGY?! And this slap isn't done yet, either! Yet another example of poor language is the word "Spend". They never define the meaning of this word in mechanical terms or the conditions under which a spend may be invoked, but they use the term throughout the book as if it should be plainly fucking obvious! And you know what? It probably would be for fans of other 2d20 games, who are familiar with the system, but this game is appealing to people who don't game and have never heard of 2d20 in their fucking lives! Acknowledge the reality of your damn audience, you pretentious pricks! Yet more terminology that gets confusing; traits can apply to a character, a situation, the environment, and equipment. That sounds good, right? Here's the wonky thing: Equipment are traits. That means equipment are traits that can have traits. It gets weirder. Groups of NPCs can be traits, who have equipment in the form of traits, which might have traits of it's own. I'm not a fan of babushka doll mechanics.
4. Never, EVER give one player authority over the other players! This game violates a fundamental game design theory principal: If you give a player authority over the other players, they will invariably abuse it. This game practically demands that a player be given the position of captain of the ship. This is a one-way trip to a fucking disaster show. It gives absolutely no warning or alternative options. Even worse, the designers are clearly aware of this fact, because not once in any of their live plays do they show a player captain, the GM always makes them an NPC! Always! If you know it's a fucking bad idea, why do you promote it to people who have no experience that would tell them so?!
5. Copypasta! Copypasta everywhere! One obnoxious thing about this book is that, later on, beginning about halfway through, any time it references a previously explained rule, it copies the text from earlier in full, followed by explanations, expansions, or addenda. This makes it really hard to read because I don't want to waste my time rereading shit I already know, but I also don't want to miss out on the book finally explaining a rule in full. I get the impression this happens to a lot of people, and they wind up skipping the copied sections completely, as the most forgotten rules are the ones that are hidden at the end of a copypasta chunk. This is why you don't redundantly copypasta your own rules. If you have to reference back to a rule, give a page number or a heading title and let the reader go find it if they need a refresher. My god what inefficient writing.
6. The task resolution system fucking sucks. OK, let's get down to brass tacks and talk crunch. The D&D task resolution system is simple: Roll 1d20, add ability modifier, check if proficiency applies, add proficiency mod if necessary, compare result to DC. 5 steps. Quick and easy. Most of those steps are done simultaneously if the player knows what all of their stat mods and proficiencies are off the top of their head. STA's task resolution system is 17 fucking steps long. Don't believe me? Go download my notes, I break it down in there for you. This is obnoxious, and it doesn't actually achieve anything of relevance. The individual dice still have a flat distribution, so play is still arbitrarily swingy, it just doesn't have easily predictable success percentages because it's a dice pool system. It doesn't even do what dice pool systems are supposed to do either, since the cap is 5d20!! The whole idea of a dice pool system is that you roll handfulls of dice to feel obnoxiously powerful! Way to go on completely missing the point of your own resolution system!
7. Combat is a drag. I hate single turn combat. I think it takes for fucking ever and achieves very little. At the end of the day, all that matters in combat is: Did we win and how much did that win cost us? That's it. And I don't feel like spending an hour or two obsessing over the minutiae of how the players got to that result. Especially in Star Trek. I don't know if you've ever seen the show, but combat was always a last resort. Almost no episodes had the characters pulling phasers, and when they did it was usually just an exchange or two and then the fight was over. The characters were, above all, peace focused, genuinely concerned with achieving positive social relationships! They aren't soldiers, they're paramilitary explorers, scientists and politicians! Sure, they defend the Federation from interstellar threats when necessary, but their main tools in combating said threats are their minds and their words, with weapons only being drawn in response to violence. This isn't fucking D&D, guys, there's no loot to be collected from the corpses, no XP to be earned from slaying foul beasts, and no treasure chest behind the guardian! The game kind of acknowledges this, as a character's reputation can be easily dragged down by resorting to violence needlessly.
8. Internally inconsistent rules. OK, this is primarily a complaint from my simulationist and minimalist tendencies. Not all people will agree with me on this, but I think it is a huge mistake to have NPCs and PCs follow different rules. Plain and simple, it's a goddamn mistake. First off, it results in rules bloat- a problem this game already suffers from severely- as you need to explain one set of rules for player characters, and then a whole different set of rules for NPCs. Secondly, it means NPCs can do things players cannot, or vice versa, even if that NPC is technically identical to the PC. Eventually, someone at the table will make tactical decisions regarding an NPC based on the assumption that they are just as capable as the PCs, and that strategy will be wrong. Nothing is more blatant than the rules regarding NPC starships. When NPCs target PC ships, they always hit a system on a breach, even if they weren't aiming at a specific system. If the players target a ship without aiming at a system and score a breach, that ship goes through a completely different track of damage effects. Another example is that PC starships get turns equal to the number of PCs on the bridge. NPC starships get a number of turns equal to the scale of their ship. That means a scale 3 ship with 6 PCs aboard will always annihilate an identical twin NPC of their own ship! Or how minor NPCs can't take the Avoid an Injury spend, while major NPCs can do it limitlessly! (Notable NPCs can use the spend once, but there's no clarification if they can use the Recover action to regain that use) Most of this is an easy fix. Either run NPCs equally to PCs, or apply NPC rules to the PCs. (For example, allow NPCs to use the nonspecific targeting breach track for PC ships, and limit PC ship turns to ship scale so the captain has to decide which crew should act and when.) But that shouldn't be necessary!
9. Warp factor schmorp schmactor. The game does not give a damn about travel times or distances. The game is designed with the assumption that play opens with a ship arriving in a system, doing stuff in that system, and then ends with the ship warping out of that system. Nevermind episodes that happened while on the move at warp, or in multiple systems! Maybe I'm just being a simulationist again, but I kinda want to see more than just the missions! I kinda want to give my players a taste of what starfleet life would feel like, off the clock! What kinds of times we're looking at, how people keep themselves occupied aboard a giant negative pressure submarine! That kind of stuff! This game doesn't care. The closest it gets to caring is that it states a sector is 20 lightyears across, gives a listing of how fast each warp factor is, and gives you a sector map of the alpha and beta quadrants. The only thing that's missing is the MAXIMUM WARP OF EACH SPACEFRAME. Which leaves the GM in the homebrewing lurch. So much for supporting different styles of play. It also states that warping out of a system costs power equal to the warp factor chosen, which puts unusual limits on certain spaceframes that should be faster, and enables certain ships to go faster than they should be able to. Stated along with that rule is that you can pursue a ship at warp by spending 1 more power than they did, but it gives no explanation of what happens when you catch up to them!
10. False promise regarding alternate playstyles. The book repeatedly makes a point of saying it supports alternate playstyles, such as lower decks, or different eras of play. The problem? There's little to no content support for that! For example, let's say I wanted to play an ENT era game. There's no NX-01 spaceframe! Or spaceframes for any other vessels from that era! Let's say I wanted to play a lower decks game, what would the characters do other than just get bossed around by the bridge crew NPCs? Even with the expansion books, this idea that "any kind of Star Trek game can be played with these rules" is patently false, unless the GM puts up some serious work to make relevant content for such play. Frankly, I think the developers have an absurdly narrow vision of the potential for the setting.
11. Challenge Dice are retarded. Somehow I ALWAYS wind up with an 11th complaint! The game calls d6s "challenge dice". No, they are never used to determine how challenging something is, or to resolve a challenge. Rather, they are invariably used to determine the effectiveness of a player's actions. Weird ass name aside, (should really be chaos dice or something) the way they roll is also idiotic. See, instead of rolling for their face value, each face has a value stored on a table somewhere in the CRB. 1=1, 2=2, 3=0, 4=0, 5=1+effect, 6=1+effect. The effects are neat, but it is not necessary to completely rewrite the way the dice roll just to justify that. The real reason they reduce the die roll values, is because player character HP er... Stress... can be between 8 and 17 points. With such low survivability values, the damage output had to be reduced, but they seriously could have come up with a better system. (For example, you could just say that the result gets divided in half, rounded down, and 6s generate an effect. Super simple. 1=0, 2=1, 3=1, 4=2, 5=2, 6=3+E.)

The Kisses

1. It FEELS like Trek! Oh my god do they get the feeling right! The whole book is in LCARS style, and the art has a unified aesthetic! The content matches the attitude of Star Trek, and everything about it just feels right! Moreso than any other RPG incarnation of Star Trek, they nail the mood like it's nobody's business! If you love Trek, this book will enchant you so hard the system's failings will seem mild by comparison.
2. Highest quality production I've ever seen. A woven spine separate from the hardback spine, full bleed white-on-black pages, a unified aesthetic, this book is a god damn masterpiece. It is beautiful, it is durable, it is easily one of the highest quality gaming products I've ever bought! Truly magnificent.
3. Chargen and ship creation are fun! It's an absolute blast to make up characters in this game system! The lifepath system actually produces characters who are relevant to play, unlike other Sci-Fi games that produce mostly hodgepodge nobodies. (I'm looking at you, Traveller) The addition of mission profiles significantly expands the statistical variety of ships available to the players! (And, I'm not sure, but I think you're supposed to apply them to NPC spaceframes as well maybe?) Despite the complexity of the rest of the game to understand and play, getting started is super easy and enjoyable. Gold star for that.
4. Modiphius is actually really cool. You know how WotC is only nice when they're engaging in a marketing ploy? Yeah. Modiphius is actually just nice. Bought the Core Rule Book? Contact them with proof of purchase, and they'll send you the PDF for free! Bought the PDF? They'll set you up with a discount on the CRB! They offer an extensive free-to-play and publicly accessible living campaign! Their website offers a variety of free products, including an introduction PDF that can get people playing ASAP with far less fluff! Their staff are personally active, not only on their official communities, but also on the major fan communities as well, and the company divests itself of responsibility for their actions, so they can unofficially say whatever they want and not worry about losing their jobs just because it wasn't vetted first. (Within reason. I'm sure if one of them started posting swastikas all over the place, he'd be short on employment rather swiftly.) The staff who make the game are also the people who play the game, and part of their marketing is to show their in-house games to the public via their youtube channel, which gives a great insight into what they intend this thing to play like! Just, in every way shape and form, Modiphius is simply cool.
5. Supporting characters are a genius mechanic. In Star Trek, there are often many more characters than there are in the average gaming group. Often, characters must be split up in different simultaneous situations. STA handles this by giving each ship a crew support score, which is a resource players can spend to create slightly less advanced characters to fill in the gaps, or to participate in scenes where they would otherwise be unavailable. For example, let's say an away team gets sent down to investigate some spooky ruins. The Chief of Security's player says that given the risk of a Romulan attack, he should remain aboard, and so he spends 1 crew support to create a supporting character, a security officer under his department, whom he sends down on the away mission. Now, whenever the scene switches back and forth between the ship and the away team, that player still gets to be involved, if even at a slightly reduced competency in one instance. Another example is to use crew support to fill roles the players don't want to do. For example, if nobody is interested in medicine, they could make the Chief Medical Officer a supporting character. Then, whenever someone needs healing they just spend a crew support and transport that character on to the scene! I also have an idea for the command role issue. I've been thinking about making the CO an NPC, and then making the XO a supporting character. Because supporting characters are shared by all players, the XO stands as an option for anyone who wants to take a turn in the big chair for a scene or two, without forcing everyone to serve just one player all the time, and still having a superior officer available that the GM can use to keep things in check.
6. Metacurrencies are fun. The game features 3 metacurrencies. Determination, Momentum, and Threat. Players gain determination whenever the GM takes a value from their character sheet and makes it into a complication, or when they refuse the complication and question that value, forcing it to be changed at the end of the adventure. They can spend determination to do a small range of very powerful effects only by invoking and roleplaying out how their values motivate them to greatness in the current situation. Determination is an excellent system for encouraging and rewarding real roleplay, and also for developing characters over time. Momentum, (poorly named) is a currency generated whenever the player rolls more successes than the required difficulty on a task. They can spend these points on an insanely long list of fancy effects that can alter the game. Most momentum spends can only be done as part of a task, but some can just be done willy-nilly. The players share a group momentum pool, which means everyone gets a say in who spends it and when, keeping off-turn players engaged, as nobody wants to see their hard-earned momentum wasted frivolously. Finally, pretty much anything the players can spend momentum on can be paid for by giving the GM threat points, in addition to the 2 per PC the GM gets at the start of every adventure. The GM can spend these threat points to dramatically alter the situation. This game strongly opposes the illusionist method of DMing where the GM can call blue bolts of lightning from the sky on a whim. Instead, the GM's ultimate power ends the moment play begins. From that point forward, the only way they can alter the scenario is by spending threat or through the actions of their own NPCs. The goal of the GM is to spend all that threat by the end of the adventure, but ideally in a manner that challenges the players rather than annihilating them.
7. Traits are brilliant. The game is really easy to prep for, because a scene is just a description of a situation and environment, followed by a list of words or short phrases that describe the traits that affect gameplay in the scene. For example, if the players are surviving on a desert world, the scene might just have the trait, "Overwhelming heat" as a complication. A player could make a task to find shelter and, on a success, spend momentum to remove that complication, indicating that he found suitable cover for the party. But if he rolled a 20 as well in the process, the GM might add a new complication, stating that as it grows dark, the planet begins to become "unbearably cold". Gameplay proceeds like that, with players and GM modifying the traits of the scene and characters in the scene to resolve the central problem that scene represents. My only nitpick here is that the GMing section gives 0 support to a first time GM how to prep a game at all. Sad, but not unexpected.
8. Zone based combat is brilliant. I switched to zone combat a long time ago when I started abandoning gridded combat. Zones are a super easy way to manage an environment without having to draw anything, which makes it perfect for voice-only theater of the mind roleplay, sucha s the kinds of games I've been playing online during this pandemic. I also love how zones are just subdivisions of the environment, and the terrain effects in those zones are just environment traits attached to those zones! Very easy to remember what is where, and why, and how it all connects and interacts. I would have preferred a little more guidance on the maximum and minimum sizes for zones in personal combat, given that they have an actual mechanical impact on throw range and non-electronic communication range, but I think they wanted to inspire GMs to experiment through play.
9. It's an excellent product line. The expansion books actually expand the game, both mechanically and thematically, for both players and GMs. That means every book you buy in this line contains something genuinely useful for everyone at your table. (Yes, even content from the adventure books could be cannibalized by a creative homebrewer to make cool new stuff.)
10. Uh... huh... well this has never happened to me before, but I really cannot think of a 10th item. I know that makes it look like this game sucks, or like I hate it, but... I'm actually a huge fan! The positives I've listed are infinitely more important than the complaints- most of my complaints aren't even about the game anyways, but rather the editing of the book. So uh... yeah. Go buy it.

Star Trek Adventures Command Notes

FREE STUFF!

Hey there! Remember my compressed rules notes for the Star Trek Adventures CRB? Well now I've done it for the Command sourcebook as well! Enjoy!

The Value of Genuine Success

I'm going to say a whole bunch of extremely unpopular opinions here. Get ready to have your modern gaming sensibilities threatened.

The RPG Renaissance is Bullshit.

Since 2012 with the appearance of D&D Next, which progressed to 5th edition around the same time Critical Role found its audience, the RPG hobby has experienced a massive growth. Thousands upon thousands of new players of all ages are discovering D&D for the first time right now. In general, this is a good thing, I think. It means the RPG industry is getting a much needed influx of cash to perpetuate professional game design in a previously oversaturated and underfunded market. It also means gamers now have more options of where to play and who to play with than they ever did in the past. That's the good in the RPG renaissance. Full stop. There's some bad.

Oh god, what has my generation done?!

I'm a millennial. I was born in 1988. I remember a time when nobody I knew and no schools in town had computers. I remember when cell phones were weird things you only saw in movies about New York business people. I remember riding bikes, swimming in a lake, building tree forts, and actual chalk boards in class.

In a span of 30 years, we went from that to THIS. And this just keeps getting wilder. Every house has MULTIPLE computers of varying forms, all of which are interconnected by a variety of methods. We manage our lives with pocket computers with full touch screen interface. 3D graphics have reached a point of near-photo-realism. We now live in a time where a new born child will learn to type before they learn to ride a bike or swim.

That insane change of culture and technology had a pretty big impact on my generation. Mostly we just feel confused and overwhelmed, but also excited, but also worried about where the future might take us. This song adequately expresses my feeling of being left behind and lost in the tidal wave of technological progress.

...But people keep criticizing my generation, saying that technology has given us inappropriate expectations of life. That we seek instant gratification, that we believe we deserve good things by virtue of being alive. That kind of stuff. I used to scoff at those articles. I'm not like that. My friends aren't like that.

D&D has taught me that me and my friends are statistical outliers. We are the weirdos of my generation. Me and most of the other financially poor kids with conservative parents. For the majority of millennials, all of that criticism is 100% true. I have learned this through interacting with new players my age and younger and comparing their beliefs and attitudes to my own and those of older generations of gamers. The difference is striking, but it appears most clearly in how people expect a D&D game to be run today. To understand that, you need to understand Matt Mercer a little bit.

*swoon*

Now, I like Mercer. A lot. He is the best DM for that show, and he really makes it what it is. Hell, he's probably the most talented DM I've ever watched. He has had a profound impact on popularizing D&D, more so than any other celebrity DM at the moment. He is an incredible DM who has shown talent at running very large games efficiently, and even running satisfying solo-player games for newbies within 30 minutes. Every DM has something to learn from Mercer.

But more importantly, he is a professional voice actor. A performer. The games he runs are not really games, so much as they are shows. Thousands of people tuned in every week to watch him and his players (also professional actors) improvise an exciting narrative within the framework of a fairly heavily customized 5th edition D&D system. And these people take that experience away and want to become a part of something like that. So they go and play D&D for real. And while Mercer has been very vocal about the fact that most people's games won't (and shouldn't) look like his show, that message isn't getting out anywhere near on the same level as the influence of the show, and it fails to address the core problem of the expectations Critical Role has set for thousands of people.

The core problem? People are coming to the table expecting roleplay. When you present them with a game, they feel neglected and cheated. They want to tell stories, not overcome legitimate challenges. They want to experience an emergent narrative, not plan the logistics of a 10 day sea trip to the next city. They have mistaken the roleplay, the performance element of D&D as its core and primary purpose, its main function.

But that's not D&D. In fact, that's not even RPGs in general. There's a whole separate hobby community for that.

The kings of roleplay at work.

It's just called roleplay. There's whole forums and chat services dedicated to it.

There's also collaborative fiction communities as well.

But very few people know about that. And the folks on Critical Role are playing D&D, sort-of. And D&D is part of the cultural consciousness. So people gravitate to what they know, even if they don't really understand it.

If all you want to do is tell fun stories and improv act with your friends, I have to ask: why do you need a game system? Or character sheets? Or dice? What does that add aside from the chance of anticlimactic results and narrative breaking limitations?

Now, I love roleplay! I've spent countless hours participating in wiki, chat, and forum RPs, and even did a little live RP play when I got older. I still sometimes go back and dabble in it from time to time. And I've gotta say: that hobby needs a renaissance! They are really struggling to remain active and relevant, much the same as how RPGs were 10 years ago. And RP is still core to the RPG experience, it is in the name after all, but it's not the only or primary purpose of play. I've also gotta say, I think the RP hobby has a lot more of what the new D&D players are really looking for than D&D proper can deliver on.

Surprise! It's all crass entertainment! Hooray!

But, culture changes in stupid ways, and this is how the hobbies are evolving. Standard RP is dying out while RPGs abandon the G in their name.

Typical.

Kind of like how what was once country music would now be called folk, what was rock would now be called country, what was metal would now be called rock, and metal has become some ridiculous caricature of itself.

The ignorance of the masses defines the nature of the culture we live in.

Personally though, I believe this hobby is inherently about playing a Game with a capital G. I am a GM. I am not here to suck your dick or blow smoke up your ass, I'm here to present you with meaningful challenges that you can overcome using your own ingenuity, teamwork, and dedication. I am here to give you the experience of a well-earned meaningful success, an experience that you can learn from, grow from, and take with you into the rest of your life.

And hopefully, I'll learn something from you in the process as well.

Come with me, and you'll be, in a world of arbitrary dungeons!

STA Player Reference Sheet

MORE FREE STUFF

The above is a link to a player reference sheet. It uses the language from my notes, so unless you're familiar with that, it may seem a little confusing. It lists alll actions, all spends, the task resolution process, a guide to attributes and disciplines, and a reference fro challenge dice.

Also, in case you're interested, here's a blank version of it! Go ahead and make your own nice-looking things.

Star Trek Adventures Talent Cards

MORE FREE STUFF!!!

So, I was browsing the Modiphius forums for the first time recently, and stumbled across this topic about cards made to represent talents. For those not in the know, talents are just STA's version of feats. The problem is that the official character sheet gives you only enough room to write the names of the talents, not what they do. This is problematic, because STA is finnicky and has arbitrarily convoluted rules. The talents are no less elaborate. As a consequence, pretty much everyone always forgets how their talents work all the time and have to look it up whenever they think they should use it. As such, giving players handy-dandy reference cards is the way to go!

Now, I'm a little more advanced than the folks who made that topic. I put out real money to have the best software for making digital and print products from my own home.

So I made my own.

They're PDF format, so they should be ready to print from any computer to any printer. No fiddling about with settings to get that one perfect print. Additionally, I included every talent, including species, career, etc. I divided the document into character talent cards and ship talent cards, just because you're likely to have to print multiple copies of character cards, but starship ones are less numerous in play.

I am currently planning on making cards for the other books that have talents as well; specifically for the new species available in the quadrant books, the new character talents in the division books, and the new starship talents in the command book. (People seem to be saying that there's more starship stuff in the other division books, but I can't see it?)

• STA Character Talent Cards
• STA Starship Talent Cards
• Blank Card RTF (In case you want to make your own.)
  

About making your own cards with the RTF. When you copy text into the image cells, the table will go wonky. You need to change the paste type to image, and then change the text wrapping to "above text". This allows you to move it around without affecting any formatting.

EDIT: Department Cards

The following link will take you to a post where I present my department book talent cards. The quadrant books are next on the chopping block.

LINK

Star Trek Adventures Rules Notes

FREE STUFF

OK, so, I really love Star Trek Adventures. It's a pretty bangin' game for a franchise tie-in TTRPG. It is far from perfect,but certainly an enjoyable play, so it gets a pass.

And the book is of excellent quality too, with a woven spine separate from the cover spine and impressive production value on every page!

But you know what doesn't get a passing grade?

The writing.

Oh god, the writing. Flaws I have seen:

• Inconsistent language. Is task resolution called a "task" or a "check" people? Get your language straight.
• Muddled language. Tasks are a type of action on your turn, but are also the task resolution system. This means you can take a task that makes you make a task. Buhwhaa?!
• Redundant writing. Every rule in the book is copypasta'd somewhere else in the book at least once. Some rules are triple copied.
• Skatterbrained rules explanation. Every time they try to explain a rule, it gets interrupted by a half-explanation of a related rule, then the text moves on without finishing the explanation of the initial rule until much later on in the book!
• Flavorful but misleading headings. The headings are fun to read if you read this as a book. But if you're trying to find the rule about spending momentum for bonus damage, the table of contents might as well be someone's shopping list!
• Flavor text overload. They have sidebars all over the book. Half of them are pink, meaning they're fluff, the other half are purple, meaning they're actually more rules content. EXCEPT for some of the pink sidebars that contain rules, some of the purple sidebars that contain fluff, and some main text sections that are not rules content either. You basically have to read everything to make sure you didn't miss something.
• Disorganized information. Did you know half of the book's playable species are actually in the DM section at the back of the book?! Without any warning or indication of such earlier on?? How convenient and useful!!! The whole book is like that.

So anyways, they can't write to save their lives. So, here, my gift to you, and the fruit of two months of reading and rereading this thing until its pages are nearly falling out. My notes. The entire rule system, sorted, organized, and stripped of fluff and specific play content. Just the systems you need to know to run the game.

You're welcome.

Star Trek Adventure Zoning

Let's talk about zone based combat for a little bit. Zone combat is a theater-of-the-mind solution to spatial relationships in tabletop combat. The idea's been kicking around for some time, but more recently it has been used in some fairly big-name RPGs. One RPG that uses zone based combat is Star Trek Adventures.

The key thing to remember about zones, is that they have no set standardized dimensions. A zone is shaped more by the environment and its impact on the battlefield than by discrete numerical measures. For example, in an office building, each cubicle, office, and hallway might be distinct zones, even though they all have very different dimensions.

Let's take a look at how STA zoning of a scene affects combat. The image above is a general map of a hallway in a building. We're going to assume the doors to the side rooms are all locked, so we don't have to worry about them.

Example 1

In this example, we make the whole hallway 1 zone. What does this mean?

• Anyone can move to or from melee with the movement minor action. The movement minor action can also be used to completely exit this battlefield.
• Someone can whisper to a person on the other end of the hall and it will be heard just fine.
• All combat is in close range. That means, if someone drops prone to get better cover, attacks against them gain 2 bonus momentum.
• On a melee attack used to shove, a person can be removed from this battlefield.
• Area weapons could harm anyone in the zone on effects and complications rolled.

As you can see, this one seems a little... goofy. Especially with how sound works, and how lying down for better cover doesn't really work. Too few zones in a relatively large-ish area results in things just being a little wonky.

Example 2

In this version, we've split the hall into 2 zones, each representing opposite ends of the hallway. How does this affect combat?

• A person in one zone can use the move minor action to move to or from melee within their zone, or to move to the opposite end of the hall, or to leave the battlefield.
• People must shout to be heard at the other end of the hall.
• Ranged attacks from one end of the hall to the other are medium ranged. This means they nolonger gain bonus momentum when firing on a prone target
• If someone tries to hide behind the corner on the opposite end of the hall, the DC to spot them increases by 1.
• An area weapon fired to the opposite end of the hall poses no threat to anyone in the same zone as the shooter.

This one, to me, seems about perfect. You should have to raise your voice to be heard around the corner of a long-ish hallway. You can still move quickly in this relatively cramped area. Dropping prone is actually useful. But, just to be sure, let's take this one step farther.

Example 3

The final example has the hall broken down into 3 zones. One zone for each intersection, and a third one in the middle as a sort of no-man's-land. How have things changed?

• The movement minor action can only take you into no-man's land. To get to the other end of the hall, you'll need to spend momentum for extra steps, or use the sprint action losing your attack for this turn.
• People at one end of the hall cannot hear people at the other end, no matter how loud they scream. This means that if the players want to negotiate a peaceful result, they'll have to walk into no-man's-land and risk getting shot.
• Ranged attacks are now at long range, which surprisingly has no mechanical impact compared to medium range.
• Someone hiding at one end of the hall has +2 DC versus people trying to spot them from the opposite end.
• It is impossible to throw a grenade weapon to the opposite end of the hall.

OK, nope, that's not right. Suddenly, the atmosphere is molasses. Sound is muffled, movement is restricted, people are hard to see even though they aren't very far away. Too many zones in a small area warps reality too much.

Theorycrafting...

So, I did some research and discovered the average human voice can carry out to 180m in clear conditions. That's obviously a shout, since I can't even clearly hear my wife talking to me on the other side of the bedroom. 

So, let's say that, based on voice range, "close range" would be anyone within 90m of the speaker. That means each zone should not have any dimension exceeding 90m in any direction.

Additionally, since the longest range for communication is 180m, it would be a wise bet to say that one should not set up zones such that more than 2 occupy a 180m length in any direction.

This is, of course, assuming you're building a battlefield in an empty field with no meaningful terrain variation.

On another point....

The throw range of grenade quality weapons is medium, or a 1 zone difference from point of origin. It isn't hard, with a bit of practice, to be able to throw a ball sized object about 50m, or even 100m if you really go hard at it.

So, in other words, going by the acoustic measurements above, you should probably be able to throw such a weapon somewhere into medium range, but definitely not beyond it.

So, uh... yeah. A zone should be about 90m across. There you have it.

Star Trek Adventures Resources

The following is a list of links to online resources for Star Trek Adventures games. Before we get into the meat of it, a lot of this is just curated links to specific blog entries by various people on the internet. This means 2 things.

Firstly, it means that there's a lot more content than just what I linked to. All of these bloggers are great, and you should read their actual blogs too.

Secondly, it means this page has a lifespan. Blogs deteriorate and die over time. Eventually nothing on this page will work. Use what you can while you can, nothing lasts forever. Show your appreciation to the people who made these resources; continued attention and praise is what keeps these things alive.

1. The Trove

The Trove is the most enduring online RPG preservation site in existence. How they survive in this age of aggressive copyright territorialism is beyond me. But they do. If you want to learn a game before you spend 60-80$ on the real book, this is where you go. If you already bought the real book and don't want to pay twice just to have a PDF copy, this is where you go. If the company refuses to make a PDF of their game, this is where you go. For STA, The Trove actually has two folders. My guess is that there are too many cooks in the kitchen, but they mean well at least. Here are the links directly to STA material.

Folder 1

Folder 2

2. Modiphius Character Maker

Modiphius is unusually fan-focused compared to game design companies of the past. They have provided an online app that allows you to create characters using content from all currently published content. You can then save your high quality character sheet in PDF format and print it from home. This tool essentially means the players don't need to have their own copy of the book just to play!

3. Star Trek Paper Minis

This tool does not work on mobile, but I promise you, it is worth shackling yourself to the desktop if you plan to run this game. Basically, it's a digital custom paper doll tool. After you design your paper doll, you can use prtscrn to take a picture of your work, then cut the image up in ms paint to make a paper stand fold-up, then copy that image into word to format it for printing. It's a little bit of work, but you'll likely only need to do it a few times, and the results are spectacular.

4. Star Trek System Generator

Another web app. This one works on mobile, but the formatting gets a little buggy on big systems. Basically, it generates all the details of a star system, right down to resources and life forms available on the various planets. It even gives you a detailed visual representation of the star system it generated! Very neat!

5. Blank LCARs Sheets

Ignore the janky work tracker at the top of the page. Beneath that is a real gemstone: a form-fillable LCARS PDF! Ever wanted to hand out a professional looking mission briefing from Star Fleet Command? Now you can! You can also print the blank white version on the back of your players' character sheets to give them a notes section! Comes in ultra-expensive black and printer friendly white variants.

6. Warp Factor Calculator

There's a fair number of these on the internet, but this one is a web app, no page reloading. It allows you to calculate speed from warp factor, or distance travelled by warp over time! In real time! It even let's you select whether you're using the TOS or TNG scale! Now, I know STA kind of expects the GM to have the ship move at the speed of plot, but I like to genuinely give my players autonomy over their movements. After all, what's the point of making an expert helmsman if the GM is really in the driver's seat? So I use this to figure out my players' time through the star system. Oh, for anyone who's wondering, each sector on the STA star chart is 20 lightyears across. It works out that roughly every 3mm is 1 lightyear, if youre using the inside-cover maps. You're welcome.

7. The Wikis

Memory Alpha is the ultimate source for cannon Star Trek information regarding the mainline franchise. You can use it to plan your campaigns and you can let your players use it as their ship's computer!

Memory Beta is the ultimate source for expanded (non-canon) Star Trek information from all of the side products, like TAS, the books, the other RPGs, etc. If you want to add more fluff to your setting, you can use this to supplement Memory Alpha

8. Starship Attack Guide

A handy PDF that clarifies how a starship attack works. If anything, it really just illustrates how elaborate starship combat can really be.

9. Milestones Log

Milestones are actually fairly uncommon. If you play biweekly, the party only gets 1 milestone every other month if you play by the game's recommendations! This means your players WILL forget how many milestones they've had. This sheet, if printed to the back of their character sheet, allows them to keep track of their character's development progress!

10. Basic Task Guide Tools

This is a learning resource for new GMs and players who are struggling with the task resolution system. A handy teaching tool, especially of you aren't playing with adults or older teenagers.

11. Figure Matrices

These sheets allow you to make hexagonal tokens that carry all the core stats of a character or ship on their face. Just buy some 10lb paper and print them out to make use of the things in your game! Personally, as a cheapo with no figures, I just use these as map tokens.

For Characters

For Starships

12. Extended Task Flowchart

Apparently a lot of people struggle with the concept of extended tasks when they first start playing. Here is a handy guide to what to do.

13. Task Record Sheets

This is a series of PDFs of printable forms that you can use to keep track of all the convoluted ways information is handled on a starship in STA. I think these are an interesting way to perhaps help the players feel like actual Starfleet officers doing work on a PADD. Maybe decorate a clip board for each player to hold all their forms and character sheet info!

14. Supporting Cast Quick Guide

This is a reference sheet (of exceptional production quality) that you can use to guide yourself and your players through quickly making up a cast of mooks! I mean redshirts! I mean meatshields! I mean backups! Oh you know what I mean.

15. Scene Trait Sheet

Keep forgetting the traits in the scene? Having trouble remembering the traits you planned for a scene? Players having trouble keeping track of it all inside their heads? Never fear, now you can make a character sheet for the scene! Just print out this luxurious form and write the traits out, then set it in the middle of the table for all to see!

16. SFX

Here is a couple of star trek soundboards. Pull up your phone during the game and tap away as things happen in the game! Takes a little practice to remember which sounds you want to use for which systems/events.

The ugly but extensive one.

The pretty but limited one.

17. Ship and Era Specific Starship Sheets

Ever get annoyed with how your TOS era Miranda class ship is using a TNG style character sheet with the outline of a galaxy class ship? Go here. Click around a bit. You'll find a sheet for just about every published Federation ship for each era it is appropriate for. All in PDF format so they print clean and pretty. There's also a form fillable TOS character sheet hidden in there as a fun little Easter egg.

http://enklave-23.de/STA_Sheets/

Now, the style is so similar I'm not sure, but these additional ship specific sheets by Cory Belote may actually be the same author as the stuff on Enklave. Don't quote me on that. In any case, here's links to more of the same kind of stuff.

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

18. STA GM and Player Guides

Just some juicy PDF tips from an experienced GM to help you and your players get started.

For GMs

For Players

19. Starship Blueprints

This website is a massive warehouse of blueprints for pretty much any and every starship to grace the screen, and even a few from the expanded universe too! My link takes you to my favorite collection, which are LCARS cross-section displays for various classic starships. Print one of these out for your table and give it to them to help them visualize life aboard their space-house! Aside from that though, a lot of the bridge plans could be used in Roll 20 for large scale battle maps.

20. Communal Games Finder Map

Running a regular game? Pin it so we all know how big this community gets! Where's my peeps at??

21. LCARS Power Point Template

Want to show off your over the top roleplaying skills? Got a projector or large screen in your game room? Well, now you can present a stylistically sound PowerPoint mission briefing to your players! So extra!

22. Mission Record

Here's a form fillable PDF you can use to track notes from each session/mission your players play through.

23. Interactive Galaxy Map

An LCARS interface galactic map web app! What a treasure!

24. Hit Grids

These can be used to visualize where on the exterior of the ship your vessel has been struck. Using the schematics from a link upper in the list can allow you to then assign damage to systems based on the location of impact! Or you could go the other way around, and place little damage tokens on this to show where on the hull they got damaged based on the system that took damage!

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

25. Medals Tracker

Using medals from the Command Division Source Book? Here's a handy way to track them. (Though I'd personally rather make little paper badges and pin them to the character sheet.)

26. Practical Table Decorations

Printable LCARS displays for the various stations/positions available to the bridge crew. The best part? They're alaina cheat sheet to remind the players about what they can use their station to do! Just print them out and set them in front of the players using a station that covers that position!

One

Two

Three

27. Spaceframe Cards

I don't know who made these or how I got this link, but I'm spreading the love.

28. Official Free Stuff from Modiphius

Might as well link to this stuff just in case a new GM missed it.

The quickstart guide is a good rules only explanation to get a player going in your game. It offers virtually no support for a GM.

Red Alert is miniatures skirmish rules compatible with the game.

They offer free official PDF character sheets.

They made this goofy thing.

And finally they publish a series of freely available adventures for their living campaign that you can totally just hijack for your own game with wanton disregard for their intent. Or, you know, actually participate and influence future iterations in this incredibly generous product line.

Check out the Official Modiphius Forums if you want to get in touch with the developers themselves. They're directly active with the community, rather than interacting through appointed admin intermediaries the way some other game companies do. There's an official wishlist topic that's been ongoing for years that they actually pay attention to!

29. Extended Task Helper

A web application that lets you build an extended task track, and then track the work done! Probably not super duper necessary, but it sure helped me understand how extended tasks are supposed to work! Give it a fiddle! Oh, to get rid of the SUCCESS display, you have to refresh the page.

30. Player Reference Sheets

STA is a complicated game. Someone decided to make a bunch of high quality quick reference sheets to help their players. Honestly, I think I could do a better job, but hey, the man's on the right track. Here you go!

• Standard Reference Sheets
• Breaches Reference Sheets

31. A bunch of LCARS gifs

Perfect for making digital props!