This is a great year for fans of Star Trek and Tabletop RPGs as Modiphius Entertainment’s highly successful Star Trek Adventures will be releasing its second edition later this year.
Initially released in 2017, Star Trek Adventures is a game that uses Modiphius’ acclaimed 2D20 system to allow players to create their own space-faring stories in the Star Trek universe. Since its release, it has also come out with lots of extra modules. This includes new campaigns, settings and a solo journaling game in the form of Star Trek Adventures: Captain’s Log.
I caught up with Jim Johnson, Modiphius’ Project Manager for Star Trek Adventures, to find out just what fans can expect from this second edition.
Star Trek Adventures – Second Edition‘s Core Rulebook is now available to pre-order for £50. Modiphius are planning on having the core products released at Gen Con, August 1st – 4th, with a general launch around the same time.
While you’re waiting, you can also download a Quickstart Guide PDF for the second edition. This includes a new “Celestial Algorithm” adventure, for you to play for free.
Space: the final frontier. What adventures await you and your crew out here? (Artwork by Eren Arik).
A Little About Jim
As Project Manager, Jim oversees and edits absolutely everything that ends up in Star Trek Adventures. Speaking to him, it was clear why he is the perfect person for the job.
As a lifelong Star Trek fan, he has an encyclopedic knowledge and love of the franchise. Over time, he has written many Star Trek short stories which he pitched for writing contests and got several of them purchased and published. Getting these professional credits allowed him to join the Science Fiction Writers of America Association, putting him on the map as a gifted Star Trek writer.
He initially worked with Modiphius on a freelance basis, but got so involved in Star Trek Adventures that he ended up recruited full time to manage and oversee the game.
Jim spoke a lot about how grateful he was to the Star Trek community for engaging with him. This was something he clearly wanted to pay forward to fans of Star Trek Adventures. As a result, you can regularly see him on outlets like discord interacting with fans, or even dropping in on Star Trek Adventures streams.
Fans are the ultimate play testers, right? There’s thousands and thousands of fans as opposed to a very small population of play testers. I’ve seen Twitches and YouTube channels and videos and audios and there’s so much stuff out there and I’ll try to listen into as much of it as I can just to see like what are people doing with the game.
What Made the First Edition a Success
We spoke about the First Edition and what made it such a hit with players. For Jim and his colleagues, it was very important that this be more than simply a sci-fi game set in the Star Trek universe, but a game that feels like actually in a genuine Star Trek story.
In Star Trek Adventures, you can encounter established alien species and also new species of your own creation. (Artwork by Paolo Puggioni).
I think it’s really important for a Star Trek game, and really any game based on an IP, but especially Star Trek, you need to you need to to get all those tropes and expectations from the franchise into the game. Then, by stringing these scenes together, all of a sudden you’ve done a couple of acts, and then you come to a conclusion, and it feels like a Star Trek episode.
You will quickly notice getting to grips with the game, that narrative design is key to gameplay. The guides provide you with narrative tools to set up adventures as if you were screenwriters creating an original episode of Star Trek. Even character creation guides you through devising a backstory to making them feel well rounded and belonging in this universe.
The knowledge and love of the Star Trek lore also shines through. The first edition produced numerous campaign guides, source rulebooks and other supplements that build upon the ever growing world of Star Trek media. The level of detail included in these materials is staggering from starship schematics to settings and unique items.
Our paramount review team loves it when we drop in Easter eggs to comic books or to novels or to video games or whatever. Because they know the fans love that kind of stuff.
The Second Edition Updates as Star Trek Itself Updates
A lot has happened in the world of Star Trek since the first edition released in 2017. We have seen new series emerge such as Discovery, Picard, Prodigy, Lower Decks and Strange New Worlds. With their business relationship with Paramount, Modiphius has developed new content for Star Trek Adventures, as new series are developed.
A big part of the motivation for the second edition was to have content for all Star Trek fans in one place. Whether they’ve just discovered the franchise or have been following since the 60s, Jim wanted them all to feel included. In the first edition, fans of The Next Generation will notice the style matches the computer consoles you see on the Enterprise-D. While that was a lovely touch for fans of that era of Star Trek, the second edition is designed with a more varied art style to appeal to a wider variety of fans. Jim spoke with great pride about being in a position to create Star Trek content to appeal to all fans.
We’re actively developing an RPG and they’re actively creating new content for the for the franchise. We’ve got, for the first time, in our licensing we have access to everything Star Trek, right, all that all the current series. All the current movies are all part of our license now. So we have the opportunity to make Star Trek for literally everything.
How will you and your crew handle a tense standoff with an alien vessel? (Artwork by Jens Lindfors).
Updating the Core Mechanics
On top of that, Jim spoke of the lessons he and the team had learnt about various aspects of the games mechanics, player choices and presentation.
Responding to player feedback, the challenge dice mechanics has been removed. To accommodate this the rest of the system has been adjusted to allow for calculating damage during combat and how extended tasks are resolved.
He also spoke about other ways he and the team have made the gameplay more nuanced and tighter. They also refined Starship combat to be more intuitive, fast-paced and punchy.
We’ve updated starships to streamline starship combat….We’ve streamlined that quite a bit so there’s not quite as much bookkeeping… there’s a little punch here and a little faster than then the first version. We provide a bunch of space frames in the book. So like if you want to play a certain type of ship, we provide some options in the book.
Every crew needs a good ship. What will yours be like? (Art by Justin Usher).
He was also very proud of improved the mechanics for playing as different species. He spoke of how the first edition defaulted to playing as Starfleet crews and Federation species as that is generally the focus of Star Trek media.
In the first edition they developed additional modules that allow you to play as Non-Federation characters. However, with the second edition, you’ll be able to play as the Federation and as selection of Non-Federation societies without any additional books. These Non-Federation societies include Klingons, Romulans, Orions, Ferengi and Cardassians.
Also, previously with character creation, choosing different species would mean you would need to choose certain stats. Jim felt this somewhat restricted player choice in character design so worked on improving this feature in the second edition as well.
Every species now has a species ability that is just baked into the character and baked into the species so it doesn’t cost you anything to get as part of that kind of species. Going into second edition, I felt it was important to provide a broader perspective and opportunity for more diversity in the selection of species.
To reassure fans of the first edition that these changes are fully compatible with all the content released so far. Also, he reminded us that if we preferred the rules of the first edition, we can always keep using them with the new content coming out.
What Else Can We Expect From Star Trek Adventures?
The Standard Edition of Star Trek Adventures – Second Edition‘s Core Rulebook is now available to pre-order for £50. You can also pre-order Limited Editions available for £80. These have The Original Series and Strange New World Era covers available in the three Starfleet division colors: Command Gold, Sciences Blue and Operations Red.
Jim also talked about the team developing a new screen for game masters and toolkits to support their adventures.
Unfortunately, he wasn’t able to reveal more than that at this stage. However, he did say that we can expect lots more additions to the second edition from its release.
I will leave you for a few words from Jim on his hopes for the future of Star Trek Adventures:
Hopefully fans will see that this is everything we did was out of love for Star Trek, and we’re trying to do everything we can to make sure that any gaming group can take the game to their game table, whether it’s virtual or physical, and just have an awesome time playing Star Trek in getting into Star Trek shenanigans or having really deep philosophical conversations or great role playing moments.
Even more adventures await you and your crew in Star Trek Adventures – Second Edition.
