Game A new Star Trek roleplaying game: STAR TREK ADVENTURES

[Modiphius]

MODIPHIUS ENTERTAINMENT LTD
STAR TREK(TM) ADVENTURES
A NEW ROLEPLAYING GAME

Modiphius Entertainment, publisher of the Achtung! Cthulhu, Mutant Chronicles, Conan, Infinity and John Carter of Mars roleplaying games, is excited to announce today the development of Star Trek Adventures, the first new official Star Trek roleplaying game to be produced in more than a decade. The news comes as Star Trek fans worldwide celebrate Star Trek’s 50th anniversary in 2016.

Fans of the legendary Star Trek television series’ and films will not only boldly go to the final frontier, but they will shape the voyages and missions through the Star Trek Adventures living campaign playtest. Each player will experience the game differently based on the ship they are assigned to and attendees of Gen Con will have the exclusive North American opportunity to choose their ship, as well as claim a free Captain Kirk or Captain Picard miniature, while supplies last, when they register for the playtest. Registration will take place daily at the Modiphius booth #2737 in the Gen Con exhibit hall August 4 – 7, 2016.

Additional sign-ups will launch online from late August at www.modiphius.com/star-trek and fans in Europe will have their chance to claim Kirk or Picard at the Modiphius booth at Essen-Spiel in Germany in October and at Dragonmeet in the UK in December. The living campaign playtest will launch in the fall.

Star Trek Adventures will use the Modiphius 2d20 game system (Mutant Chronicles, Infinity, Conan, John Carter of Mars) designed by Jay Little (Star Wars: Edge of the Empire, X-Wing Miniatures Game). Modiphius is also sculpting an accompanying Star Trek miniature figure line, the first to be produced in 17 years. Resin and metal 32mm-scale hobby figures will feature classic Star Trek characters and crews, boarding parties and away teams. Geomorphic tile maps of burning Federation ships, mysterious colonies and embattled Klingon cruisers will set the scene for dramatic new voyages in the Final Frontier.

Under license by CBS Consumer Products, Star Trek Adventures is slated for a Summer 2017 release and the playtest crews will be listed in the Star Trek Adventures book manifest. Sign up for Starfleet now at www.modiphius.com/star-trek


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[Apparition B5]

Interesting. Good to see there's going to be a new official Star Trek tabletop RPG. From what I've read, the 2d20 RPG system is more of a narrative game than a traditional RPG. Is this accurate?

Also, how well will this support adventures in the Kelvin Timeline?

 

[Modiphius]

The game is focusing on the "Prime Timeline" only, so the new Kelvin timeline will not be supported.

The 2d20 system is a bit of both. The interview with our publishing director Chris Birch covers it pretty well: http://geekandsundry.com/exclusive-...the-first-new-star-trek-rpg-in-over-a-decade/

 

[Apparition B5]

Thanks for the information.

 

[Jim Johnson]

Happy to report I'll be one of the writers on the STA line. I'm so excited to see a new Star Trek pnp RPG after all these years.

 

[Kor]

Fun.

Since I don't know anybody else who is interested in this kind of game, I hope there is also some kind of rule set for playing solo, instead of always needing a gamemaster and five other players.

Kor

 

[Apparition B5]

I believe Modiphius has said that you will be able to play it online with others, if you don't know anyone IRL that would be interested in playing.

 

[publiusr]

These are the things we should have had when we are younger.
We have great 3D printing--but folks aren't just into Trek anymore.


Like how Car Wars should have been invented by Mad Max...

 

[FrankT]

Now this is definitely getting my interest. Their last game, Thunderbirds, that was fantastic, so hopefully we'll get no less.

 

[borgboy]

I wonder if the alien race write ups could possibly use the novels take on Andorians. That's so interesting and well developed I really can't accept Andorians without four genders now.
I'd love to play this and it makes me sad that I live across the country now from my old gaming group.

 

[nx1701g]

Awesome! I've been waiting for a new Trek RPG for years.

Will you have rules set up for online play as well?

 

[Jim Johnson]

I imagine the rules will be the same whether you play face to face in a room together vs playing on Skype or some other online connectivity tool. Plenty of gamers have played D&D and other pen and paper RPGs online for years.

 

[Apparition B5]

Yep. The group I'm in play a tabletop RPG every other week using a combination of Roll20 and TeamSpeak 3. It works well.

 

[Modiphius]

Awesome! I've been waiting for a new Trek RPG for years.

Will you have rules set up for online play as well?

There are various websites which allow you to play tabletop games across the web and we're in talks with a few on streamlining our current and future games for their use. Celestial gave you a good reference to Roll20 there and there are others.

 

[Kislath]

This is good news. Now that I live in a city full of gamers and Trek fans ( Huntsville, Alabama ) I might actually get to PLAY for a change. I have the last major Trek RPG, but it's in mint condition, never played.

 

[JRoss]

This is essentially an auto-buy for me. I've just got my wife and our friend into a semi-regular samurai-themed RPG. Once that campaign finishes we're going to probably do Traveller. Of course, we'll switch over to STA after it gets released...

 

[Mirror Mirror]

As a long time tabletop gamer, this is something I am very interested in.

 

[USS Triumphant]

I wish I didn't have to say this, but I really wish this new RPG was going to be based on the Kelvin Timeline rather than Prime Trek. I *love* Prime Trek, and would rather play in it, BUT, I've both played and run Trek games in the Decipher system and the Last Unicorn system and in a homebrew using some of the FASA materials and in another homebrew using a completely fudged system, and the Prime Trek universe just is not balanced well for gaming. Too many super-techs that were only limited in the shows by the fact that the characters never seemed to think to use them to their actual maximum potentials. A couple of quick examples:

1. Transporters can beam objects through shields - but they come out mangled. We never see a character do this on purpose to something that he/she doesn't care if they come out mangled... like the enemy's computer core. But my players would.

2. The ability to accelerate ships and other objects to near light speed or above... but we have *never* seen anyone use this as a weapon against a planet? Romulans will kamikaze, we know, and they were at war with Earth. A single D'Deridex class masses 4,320,000 metric tonnes. Imagine the kinetic force of that striking Paris at the better part of even just Warp 1. (I'll wait while you do the apocalyptic math.)

In the Kelvin Timeline, there's more of a feeling that there is actual skill involved in doing things - When we see Chekov using the transporters for instance, there's a real sense that he's doing something with some difficulty, not just sliding a bar or two across a panel.

I don't know if it could be enough to make a positive difference on gameplay, but I'd sure like to find out. Oh well. Maybe there will be an add-on for the Kelvin Timeline. Or maybe I'll get around to homebrewing one sometime.

 

[Pauln6]

I wish I didn't have to say this, but I really wish this new RPG was going to be based on the Kelvin Timeline rather than Prime Trek. I *love* Prime Trek, and would rather play in it, BUT, I've both played and run Trek games in the Decipher system and the Lost Unicorn system and in a homebrew using some of the FASA materials and in another homebrew using a completely fudged system, and the Prime Trek universe just is not balanced well for gaming. Too many super-techs that were only limited in the shows by the fact that the characters never seemed to think to use them to their actual maximum potentials. A couple of quick examples:

1. Transporters can beam objects through shields - but they come out mangled. We never see a character do this on purpose to something that he/she doesn't care if they come out mangled... like the enemy's computer core. But my players would.

2. The ability to accelerate ships and other objects to near light speed or above... but we have *never* seen anyone use this as a weapon against a planet? Romulans will kamikaze, we know, and they were at war with Earth. A single D'Deridex class masses 4,320,000 metric tonnes. Imagine the kinetic force of that striking Paris at the better part of even just Warp 1. (I'll wait while you do the apocalyptic math.)

In the Kelvin Timeline, there's more of a feeling that there is actual skill involved in doing things - When we see Chekov using the transporters for instance, there's a real sense that he's doing something with some difficulty, not just sliding a bar or two across a panel.

I don't know if it could be enough to make a positive difference on gameplay, but I'd sure like to find out. Oh well. Maybe there will be an add-on for the Kelvin Timeline. Or maybe I'll get around to homebrewing one sometime.

I think the Kelvin timeline ignored obvious tech fixes to situations and invented new ones, like Federation transwarp beaming or magic blood, that would make things worse.

I agree that Canon Trek has significant issues that the average roleplayer will exploit. My issue was always that my players were just too bloodthirsty and phasers have too many charges.

It would certainly be fun to have some unofficial 'fixes' to allow people to mod their own alternate timeline. I'd certainly have no beaming without a transporter pad, communicator, or transporter tag for starters. Have some consequences for using warp unwisely, like in a planetary system or with some other strong gravitational source nearby. No slingshot time travel as standard. Stricter energy consumption. And so on.

 

[USS Triumphant]

I think the Kelvin timeline ignored obvious tech fixes to situations and invented new ones, like Federation transwarp beaming or magic blood, that would make things worse.

I agree, and that's why I said I don't know if it would be better, I'd just like to try. But that said...

Transwarp beaming is being kept under wraps, so players probably shouldn't know about it, and it would be easy to give it a bunch of limitations without contradicting screen canon. Yes, Spock and nuScotty managed to get Kirk and Scotty onto a ship moving at warp, but they are the equivalent of epic-level characters - especially Spock Prime - and we don't know what other modifiers they had going for them, either. "Khan" managed to get to the Klingon homeworld, but for all we know that was a *very* loose targeting - he might have even had a parachute or jetpack or something else he had to use to come to the surface from being beamed to a more or less random point in the air.

And I see the "magic blood" as a bonus for an RPG, to be honest: provided a character's body can be recovered more-or-less intact and brought to a sickbay within a certain amount of time (say, 10 rounds), then after a recovery period (probably long enough to keep them out of the current fight), they'll be back up and running. That actually sounds a lot like the mechanism in a lot of already existing games.