Star Trek: The Next Generation rpg (1998)

Date Reviewed: 6-3-03

Critical Kobold Rating:  (3 out of 5 Dice)

 

To Boldly Go Where?!

     This is a solid adaptation of the beloved Star Trek universe into an rpg format. The core rulebook is a hefty bubba: a hardcover, color photo-filled, color illustration-sporting, slick-paged tome of 303 pages (not including the extensive index). Within its heavy covers I found an impressively thorough game in which players may (naturally) assume roles as Star Fleet lackeys trekking about the universe in search of new worlds and new civilizations.

     Lemme say up front that the book is filled with background material galore. The first 53 pages of the book are devoted to the history of Earth and Star Fleet, brimming with campaign notes, timelines, and role-playing guidelines. Story-like narratives at the beginning every chapter introduce that chapter’s contents from the viewpoint of a Trek character. The major alien races are described, with explanations of the workings of the United Federation of Planets. There’s a lengthy description of Star Fleet’s structure, general rules and regulations, and the various branches of service and starship positions available to PCs in the game. The technology levels of the Star Trek universe are also described so GMs know what their players can and can’t do with some leftover circuits from a phaser and their food processor. (“Security! Set phasers to 'puree!'”)

     All of this is presented in a clear, colorful fashion so that gamers new to the entire role-playing world are introduced to the rpg experience one step at a time, and Trek junkies can absorb the pages of background info with glee.

     Having said that, let’s get right to the goodies: the system itself, and all the contents of the core rule book.

AND SPEAKING OF GENERATION…

     Character generation is a straightforward process, but you may choose your simplicity level. For those who like really simple, you can just choose one of the pre-fab character “archetypes” presented in the book, such as “Vulcan Science Officer”, do some minor tweaking (see below), and be off at warp speed. For those who’d like to design a more personalized trekker, there are a few more steps to fleshing out your PC from scratch, but still nothing overly complicated.

     Time consuming to a ridiculous extent, but not complicated.

     Players choose a Template, which is the race of their PC. In case you’re bored with being a humdrum homo sapien (heh heh… he said “homo”), six alien races from the Next Generation are presented for you to play: Vulcans, Andorians, Betazoids, Centaurans, Bolians, and Tellarites. (Personally, I find the majority of the Star Trek races to be silly-looking critters, but then again, I like Jawas.)

     Each race has five Attributes: Fitness, Coordination, Intellect, Presence, and Psi. Within each of these Attributes there are two sub-attributes called Edges, areas in which a PC may, depending on race or profession, have slightly higher or lower scores. For example, someone with Coordination 2 may have the Coordination Edge of “Dexterity 3” if they’re especially dexterous with their hands. However, a Bolian PC with a Fitness Attribute of 3 will have a Fitness Edge of only “Strength 2” because Bolians are not physically powerful.

     After the Template, the player picks an Overlay, which is your PC’s class or profession. These are standard spacey jobs: Engineer, Command Officer, Operations Officer, Science, Medical, Counselor, and of course, Security. (“What? I gotta wear a red shirt? Are you crazy?!”)

     On a side note, there’s nothing to stop players from being non-Starfleet types, such as merchants, freighter crews, mercenaries, criminals, strippers, or whatever. But the game designers highly stress that PCs are expected to take advantage of the benefits of having a career in Starfleet to make things easier on themselves and stay within the concept of the game. There are other sci-fi role playing games better designed for characters not wishing to directly emulate the adventures and Jean Luc and buddies.

    As if that weren’t enough stuff, each PC then has Advantages and Disadvantages granted to them from their Templates and Overlays. (Readers of this kobold’s works will know how much I love game mechanics for dubiously playable benefits or drawbacks for PCs. About as much as I enjoy a bikini wax from a drunken ogre.)

     Anyway, Advantages are such things as Quick Draw, Athletic Ability, Bold, Shrewd, or Sexy. Disadvantages are things like Argumentative, Dark Secret, Phobia, Physically Impaired, or Greedy. Disadvantages give you extra Development Points (see below). Mostly, these Ads/ Disads are self-explanatory, so let’s move on. (Yeah, believe it or not, we got more stuff to get to.)

    Next, players get to figure out a Background history for their PC. Early Life, Academy Life, and Tour of Duty histories will provide your PC with… EVEN MORE GODDAMN SKILLS, ADVANTAGES, AND DISADVANTAGES!

     Even when this stage is done, you’re not out of the woods yet. All new characters get “Development Points” with which they may purchase more Skills, alter Attributes, or garner more Ads/Disads. Holy crap, does this ever end?!

      Yes, but only after a few more touches. PCs also get Courage Points, to use during the game to increase their Skill values at dramatically appropriate times, mimicking the heroic actions taken during the TV episodes’ climactic moments. Spent Courage Points may be regained after the session, if the GM permits.

    Renown is your PC’s reputation, and his Rank is… um, his rank. All PCs start as an "Ensign" rank with a Renown of “1”, unless they’ve chosen the Promotion Advantage.

     Finally, prying the pencil from your cramped fingers, your PC is ready to go!

   Well, hell-ooo! I'm likin' the new Starfleet dress code!

                       Set phasers on sex-ay!

Reach juuust a little higher on the tachyon disseminator schematics, there, ensign...

OK, whoa, what the...?                   

                Um... is that a dude?           

        Aw, come on, now!!

              We've boldly gone a little too damn far!    

MECHANICS

Making it so.

     Performing a task of any sort, such as flying a spacecraft, working a computer, or throwing a tribble at a Klingon, requires a Skill Test. This is a familiar mechanic for recent rpg’s; the GM determines a “Difficulty Number” and the player gets to roll d6’s to beat the Difficulty. A “routine” difficulty is in the 3-5 range, and covers everyday tasks your PC should be able to handle with ease, such as operating their workstation devices or finding their way around a starbase. “Challenging” tasks may be in the 9-11 area, and along the lines of scanning something small at the extreme end of your sensor range, or sneaking past an alert Romulan bodyguard. Any Difficulty above 14 is “Nearly Impossible”, such as repairing a starship engine’s warp drive under combat conditions using a hair net and spackle.

     Players roll a number of d6’s equal to their appropriate Skill level to beat the Difficulty. However, they also must roll a Drama Die, a specific d6 that indicates possible spectacular success of humiliating failure if a “6” or “1” is rolled. A Dramatic Success means something cool happens, such as your tricorder detecting the exact location and weapons of the six hostile aliens planning on ambushing you. A Dramatic Failure might mean the aliens open fire with absolute surprise on their side because your tricorder was accidentally downloading space porn instead of scanning.

     Combat works the same way; roll against your target’s Difficulty to hit, then roll some damage dice.

     This pretty much sums up figuring out whether PCs pull off whatever it is they’re trying during a game, no matter what the situation.

     Spaceship combat is really just like PC melee, with cooler special effects. The book describes piloting and targeting difficulties, fancy maneuvers, the use of shields and cloaking devices, the different starship weapons, everything you’d expect. It also does a great job of explaining many of the terms and concepts tossed around in the Star Trek universe, such as what “impulse speed” is and how fast the warp speeds really are.

    (FYI… Warp Factor Four is 109 billion kilometers an hour, or 102 times the speed of light. “Lay rubber, Sulu!”)

     Really, that about wraps it up. The rest of the book is a lengthy assortment of GM info, including the obligatory “How to Run an RPG” section, but also with a lot of worthwhile background info for creating the gaming world(s). GMs will find out just how frickin’ big the real universe is, in concrete scientific terms, with suggestions as to how to trek around it in your adventures.

     One of my favorite GM tools is the Technobabble Chart, where on the spur of the moment you can randomly roll the names of such gizmos as the ‘molecular conversion dampener’ or the ‘multiphase flux inhibitor’.

     This book is WAY thorough. *Everything* you need to role-play in the Star Trek world is here, and then some. The book is very solid, and beautifully laid out. I’m not interested in running a Trek campaign (for reasons totally unrelated to this product), but I’ve kept this book on my shelf simply for the plethora of great information about the TV show, and for the useful info on space stuff that I use for the sci-fi rpg that I do run. And at $35.00 for a thick hardback edition, it’s a great deal in this day and age of costly games. (I got my copy on eBay, but the book is easily worth the retail tag to someone who’s interested in playing in this genre.) The game carries the feel of the series, with all the mechanics supporting the play style of slick hour-long episodic action and intrigue.

     I'm not a fan of advantage and disadvantage mechanics worked into a character creation system. (I know that some of you out there feel ads/disads can instill a deeper sense of character empathy, and invite more enthusiastic and dramatic role-playing possibilities. You’re twits. I don’t give a crap what you think; I’m a kobold, dammit!)

     Often in games, these traits are optional. This game expects you to have some of each. In fact, PCs can even promote themselves up the chain of command by choosing a few “Promotion” advantages. (I have a concern with players having rank over other players in a game, even in an rpg where the spirit of the game is cooperation.) Mostly, I find these advantages unnecessarily beneficial, and the disadvantages either too easily ignored or simply not terribly useful/ interesting.

     On another note... An unfortunate side effect of being an rpg based off of a wildly popular, world-renowned TV show is that while perfectly fine as a game system, the Trek franchise has an overly- familiar feeling to it. I enjoyed the book, but I had the strange sensation that there's nothing truly new presented here. What with all the shows I've seen over the years,  there were no surprises in the game, only explanations of the things I've seen on screen. Sure, if you're desperately wanting to play in the universe as specifically modeled by Gene Roddenberry, this is your game! But if you're looking for something in a sci-fi game that has a wee bit more mystery, more GM input into the background, and less brand-name rigidity, there are other systems out there that feel more "off the beaten path".

     Holy fat hobgoblins on a stick! Did you get a load of that PC gen process?! Unless you go the quick route by choosing a pre-made archetype, designing a PC is a time-consuming and lavish pastime. The idea is, of course, that you’ll treasure your character always, and therefore want to spend countless hours of game time becoming one with your creation, imbuing it with subtle nuances of character, and developing her personality in myriad ways.

     OK, admirable, but my players do that with a half dozen numbers and a character name scribbled on a Cheet-O’s-stained notepad.

     Sure, the characters are detailed and well-rounded to the extreme, but as I get older and more crotchety I find myself leaning towards the more broadly-defined spectrum of skills and knowledges. Why have a character with 32 skills listed on your paper, when you could prob’ly make do with about 20 skills with more generic applications? (Under “Demolitions”, do we really need specializations in ‘bomb disposal’, ‘booby traps’, and ‘land mines’? Aren’t they all kinda’ the same?) This isn’t a truly nasty point of the game, it’s just a rather excessive amount of paperwork.

     All in all, I enjoy this game. While there's nothing terribly new here, for those looking for a science fiction rpg to get into, this is one of the best I’ve seen in many a year, believe me. Despite my own hang-ups listed above, this is an acceptable  game system, and the Star Trek: The Next Generation Role Playing Game has many useful sourcebooks to expand your Final Frontier.

     Scotty!... Beam me up some dice.

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