CHARACTER CREATION CHALLENGE 2023: Star Trek Adventures (1 of 6)
THE GAME: Star Trek Adventures (2017)
Star Trek Adventures Core Rulebook
I grew up during a very fortuitous time as a gamer and a Star Trek fan. Until I was in Middle School, there was only Star Trek. One of the first toys I remember being completely enamored of was my South Bend U.S.S. Enterprise toy. It was the “new” Enterprise from Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979) and had a light, and sounds, and it could be disassembled and reassembled into different ship configurations.
I loved my Star Wars figures like any other kid, but for some reason Star Trek has always been a core part of my personality. I had a Spock uniform t-shirt as a toddler. One of my first Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books was Phaser Fight, (Which Way Book #24) and one of my first RPG products after the D&D Basic set and the Traveller books my mom’s coworkers gave me was the FASA Star Trek RPG. Oh, damn. This was where the two main elements of what made me who I am - roleplaying games, and Star Trek - came together. The old FASA Star Trek game had a lifepath style character creation system, like Traveller, but you even got a sense of how their Academy experience went, and what grades they got in the form of their Officer Efficiency Reviews, and what kind of assignments they had before the current posting they are playing. There was star system generation, and I rolled up so many strange, new worlds. Star Trek roleplaying was awesome.
Now, to be fair, the system was pretty crunchy, rules-wise. It used a system of Action Points and associated point costs for movement, aiming, firing a phaser, crouching, standing, etc. Very, very tactical. Skills were very narrow - Small Equipment Systems Operation to use your tricorder, but Small Equipment Systems Technology to fix one. The skills list was three columns of 23 entries each and some of those were by necessity blanks since many skills had specialties and subskills. Your character had an Endurance attribute, which dictated MaxOpEnd, which was sort of hit points, but it could be reduced by lethal damage, and then there was CurrOpEnd, which was MaxOpEnd minus fatigue damage. Don’t forget your InactSave to have a chance to save versus adverse events when your character is unconscious.
It was a great game, but it was very much a 2nd Generation RPG, reflecting 80s game design.
Enter the most recent Star Trek tabletop game, Star Trek Adventures by Modiphius. It has a lifepath system, but one that is greatly streamlined from the FASA game. Skills are boiled down into to areas per uniform color - wanna fix something? You’re using Engineering skill. No need to have ratings in Life Support Systems Technology, Communications System Technology, Starship Weaponry Technology, Shuttlecraft Systems Technology, and so forth. STA boiled it all down. Made it a bit faster. And introduced the metacurrency of “Momentum” which allows characters to generate the resource so other characters can use it to support and enhance their own activities.
So, here we go with our final pregen party of the January 2023 Character Creation Challenge, six crewmembers and their ship from Star Trek Adventures.
Character Creation Sequence
Step One: Choose Species
Step Two: Choose Environment
Step Three: Choose Upbringing
Step Four: Attend the Academy
Step Five: Career Thus Far
Step Six: Career Events
Step Seven: Finishing Touches
Step One: Choose Species
Our Trek series is going to take place in 2360, four years before the events of “Encounter at Farpoint” and the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation. We engage (see what I did there?) the random species table and come up with… human. To be fair, the table is weighted so that 30% of all characters do end up human, since Star Trek has always been fairly humano-centric. Now, we all know a lot of that is makeup and FX budgets, but there is is. Each of the other possible races have a 10% chance, two results on a d20.
As a Human, we get to bump up three Attributes by one point each. This is going to be our ship’s Commanding Officer, so we’re going to raise Daring, for a bit of Riker-esque, Insight, for that ability to read the person on the other end of the viewscreen, and Presence, for that ability to command the room. Attributes, in Star Trek Adventures, make one huge part of the standard 2d20 roll. The target number for most rolls is Attribute+Discipline, so Attributes are a major thing. Unlike most RPGs, where the Attribute used is locked in, like Strength for melee combat, Dexterity for ranged combat, Intelligence for scientific skills, in Star Trek Adventures, a player can sort of negotiate which Attribute they can use. So, where Kirk might use Daring to bluff an alien into thinking his ship is made of Corbomite to prevent an attack, Picard might be able to use Presence to intimidate the Ferengi into thinking he’s just crazy enough (about Lwaxana) to DO IT! It makes for a great roleplay opportunity, but it can be abused if a player tries to “spam” their best Attribute at every opportunity.
We get the Trait “Human” which serves as a sort of keyword so that this character is affected by anything that is meant to affect humans.
Now we get to choose a Talent for the character. Talents fill the design space of Feats in a D&D-like game. For this character, we choose Dauntless, which allows a bonus d20 on tasks in which they are being intimidated or threatened.
Step Two: Choose Environment
We roll randomly for Environment in which our character was brought up. This human grew up on Denobula. One Attribute goes up a point, choose between Fitness, Insight, and Reason. We’ll go Insight, since our young character is learning about the Denobulan people. One Discipline gets a point, all are available. We’ll go Conn, because they learned flying small craft while on Denobula.
We now get a Value, which is a statement that sums up one of the core beliefs of the character. We go with “Human jealousy can get in the way.” after years of observing Denobulan relationships.
Step Three: Choose Upbringing
Random upbringing is… Starfleet! Characters are given a chance to accept or rebel against their upbringing. One might assume that since this character is in Starfleet they accepted it, but I’m going to random roll to answer this question as well. OK, our character rolls with it. Control goes up 2, and Fitness by 1. The character can choose another Discipline, and decides to go with Command. To piggyback off this choice, the Talent we choose is Collaborate: Conn, as our character learns leadership, and passes on some of their Conn expertise to other learners. I can imagine that the Denobulan Environment + Starfleet Upbringing means one or both parents were assigned to base duty on Denobula, and our character grew up at the Trek equivalent of an on-base or near-base school system. There was probably a Starfleet program like scouting, or Explorers, and this character became a student leader within that framework.
The character now gets a focus, which is a descriptor that narrows down one of the Disciplines to a specific skill. We’re going to take the focus Small Craft, to reflect the experience the character got with piloting shuttles and atmospheric craft growing up.
Step Four: Attend the Academy
Characters are allowed to be enlisted members of Starfleet, like Chief O’Brien. This character is destined to be the commanding officer, so the easiest explanation for that is that they went to the Academy. The character chooses the Command Track, and bumps up Control, Daring, and Reason. They major in Conn, looking to be at the helm of a starship. They also specialize in Command and Security. They get three Focuses, and we go with Sublight Maneuvers, Small-Team Tactics, and Aikido.
As a Talent, we choose Precise Evasion(Conn) to assist when a ship takes Evasive Action.
We get another value here. We’ll go with a sort of Kirk-like attitude of “Seek Peace, but be ready for the other thing.”
Step Five: Career Thus Far
We roll career and get Young Officer. Very interesting. This character is meant to be the Commanding Officer, but is a young character. Why? This character must have distinguished themselves quickly, and been promoted to command either a smaller vessel, an older vessel, or a vessel that suffered catastrophic personnel loss and ended up with a young officer stepping into command as Picard did on the Stargazer.
For our value we take “Superior Officer? No, sir, merely a higher-ranking one.”
We receive the Untapped Potential Talent, which is assigned to all young officers. This limits Attributes to 11 and Disciplines to 4 while this talent is active, and is limited to a maximum rank of lieutenant (j.g.).
Step Six: Career Events
Random Career Event: Transporter Accident. The character was involved in some kind of freak transporter event. Control and Conn go up one, and we gain a focus. We’ll go with Transporters as it seems appropriate. Let’s say that as an Ensign, there was an Away Team incident where the entire team was beamed accidentally into a natural cavern where they had to fight for their lives against hostile native fauna while trying desperately to find a frequency that would allow the ship’s transporter to retrieve them through the mineral-dense rock.
Second Career Event: Negotiate a Treaty. The character was part of a delegation that helped negotiate a treaty. Control would normally go up one, but we’re limited by the Untapped Potential Trait, which also caps Command at 4. We get another focus, and we’ll take Galactic Politics as a Focus.
Step Seven: Finishing Touches
One possible Attribute point left, we take it in Daring. One Discipline point, Command and Con are already at the young officer maximum of 4, so we bump Security up to 3. This still doesn’t bring us up to the necessary final total, so we bump Engineering to 2, and Security to 4. The character gets one more Value. “This is Starfleet. The unexpected is a daily occurrence.” We need to pick a name, we roll randomly to pick a table on Fantasy Name Generator for “Real World” names as this is a human. Column 1, ethnicity 11, “Ancient Greek Names.” We’ll roll 1d10 twice, for a first name and last name. Demetria Leucothea.
So, because we randomly rolled Young Officer, we’re limited to being a Lieutenant (j.g.) - so let’s change up the concept a bit for Lieutenant Leucothea. She’s the ship’s acting Executive Officer, as the ship has suffered casualties due to an unfortunate encounter with Cardassians. Before this engagement, Lieutenant Leucothea was the Flight Control Officer, but as the most senior Bridge Command Specialist left after the casualties were evaluated, is now the XO. This gives us a very interesting starting point for our campaign. As acting XO, Demetria will get the in-game benefits of the Flight Control Officer role until she settles into the XO role.
