Space! The final frontier...
My wife and I are huge Star Trek fans: her since her childhood, watching Voyager with her father; me since watching Strange New Worlds a few years ago. It is thus inevitable that we'd jump on Star Trek: The Roleplaying Game! In this game, you take the roles of the senior crew of a Starfleet vessel, exploring strange new worlds, seeking out new life and new civilisations. There's also options to be Klingons instead, or lower decks crewmembers, or on a space station or colony instead, if that floats your boat instead.
The game uses Modiphius' 2d20 system. Characters have six attributes, rated 7-12, and six disciplines, rated 0-5. Every check involves rolling 2d20 and trying to get one or more dice scoring under the total of a relevant attribute + discipline. Players can gain more dice by using meta-currencies or giving the GM another meta-currency, or can use another meta-currency to activate their Values to gain additional bonuses... there's a lot of meta-currencies!
Character Creation: This involves a lifepath system, always a favourite of mine. We decided to make a character sheet for Lt. Aroha Pearl, a medical officer. My wife Hiria and I had so much fun making the protagonists of her romantasy for Thirsty Sword Lesbians that we decided to do it again: Aroha is the protagonist of Liliflora, a Trek-esque scifi short story that's being released soon.
You start by deciding your Species, which gives you some modifiers to your Attributes and access to exclusive Talents. Aroha Pearl is a human, so she's versatile and potentially good at teamwork and exploration. Her first value comes now: 'the drive for exploration' which is a very Human value. Next you choose your home planet - is it the homeworld, a colony, a spaceship or another species' world? Aroha grew up on Earth, and she gains further Attributes, Disciplines and her first Value. In the next step, we ask about Aroha's upbringing (agricultural / rural, since she grew up on a marae) and whether she followed or rebelled against that upbringing (she rebelled by going to join Starfleet, which is still a major source of conflict in Liliflora.) This is where she got her second value: 'tradition and innovation hand-in-hand.'
Next your character joins Starfleet! You decide on which track your character follows (Command, Operations or Science), gaining more experience as you go. The third value is earnt here: Aroha discovers the joys of diversity, expressed in the Vulcan philosophy 'infinite diversity in infinite combinations.' After your character graduates, you finally choose how long their career has been - are they fresh out of the Academy, do they have some experience under their belt, or are they a hardened veteran? This is also where your character has some life experiences occur to them, a few random adventures that have also shaped who they are today. Aroha is an experienced Science division, specializing in Medicine. She used her traditional skills at rongoa to help with a plague, after which she received a promotion, and she helped make first contact with a plant-based species. She's currently completing a research term there, and gains her final value: 'lifelong learner.' After some final tidying up, the character is done!
Final Thoughts: A very fun character creation system. It felt very Star Trek to check in with Aroha throughout her life and see how she's doing at each stage, and what life lessons she's learnt. It reminded me of the Star Trek Voyager novel Mosaic, about Captain Janeway's background. Lt. Pearl is also a wildly competent character, on a par with the greatest doctors in Starfleet. That's pretty cool - everyone in Starfleet should be incredibly capable, and it's a nice change from games (like Star Wars) where you start off much, much weaker than the main characters. This is another 'one day!' game: one day we will boldly go where (many) role-players have gone before...
You'll be able to find Liliflora on Headland Journal soon, here: https://headland.org.nz/
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