Alpha Quadrant Sourcebook

Considering your first comment and the fact that, according to one Modiphius-prefixed poster around here whose nickname I do not recall, everything has to be sent to CBS(?)/Paramount(?) for approval, also licenses could be an issue…

After a cursory glance through, a few things stand out to me.

As with the Beta Quadrant book, lack of art for all the additional species in the lifepatch section is a huge shame. I was a bit surprised by some of the options – especially the Arbazan, which seem like a complete nothing burger – but the only species I thought might be included that weren’t are the Orions and the Troyians and/or Elassians.

Having details about the Tzenkethi culture, with no ships stats or pictures of the species is kinda odd, as is having ship stats for the Talarians, with no details about their culture or NPC stats. Seems like we could have had one complete civilization, as opposed to two incomplete ones. There’s even a picture of of a Tzenkethi ship – from STO, despite the fact that the Tzenkethi are based on the novels, and not the STO interpretation – and not pictures of Talarian ships, which we saw in TNG.

Nice to get some Gorn NPCs which were missing from the Beta Quadrant book. NPC stats for Tholians would have been cool, too, though I suppose their unique physiology is going to prevent any handshakes.

All in all, while I’m sure I’ll get a lot of use out of the book, I can’t help but be initially disappointed by what seems like a kinda sloppy presentation.

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Skipped through the PDF, this wil definetly improve my game. One thing I liked in particular was the sidebar on a Maquis-themed campaign (p106). More of these, please!

(Also: yay, Caitians! :smiley: )

Okay, Edit, because I could not let off the PDF. I love those encounter seeds that are within the Encounters and Adversaries chapter. Also more of these, please. :slight_smile:

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Couple quick hits–glad you liked the campaign themes; you’ll see more of those in Gamma and Delta. Also more encounter seeds and plot hooks; all to give GMs more tools in their toolkit.

As for character art–I’d love to include more character art in the books, but each book has an art budget so we have to pick and choose and decide which species gets art and which don’t. I applaud the original decision to go with original art over still shots for the STA line, and so we do what we can. With hundreds of species in the Federation and thousands more in the Alpha and Beta Quadrants, no surprise that we couldn’t fit them all in. Stay tuned for future products to continue chipping away at the breadth of species out there.

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Second. I very much like the style of the species images. Much better than ‘screen-shots’, imho. :slight_smile:

I agree. I also would have liked the book to be twice as big for the same price and to contain all my personal favorite species with all original art, plus ships obviously. Irony off.

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I’m sure every game company in business would love to find a way to produce 500+ page full cover hardcovers and keep the cost under $40. :smiley:

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Personally I’m so relieved that they didn’t go with the STO rendition of the Tzenkethi. I understand they were going off what the original designer had in mind, but they ended up looking like they were designed by a 10-year-old boy. I’d be fine with them making them into something new, but I’m fine with them going with the novels depiction (which are humanoid, despite that description being missing lol).

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I have not picked up this book but I have bought the Science Division book which seems to have a lot of this in it.
Just giving my opinion but encounter seeds and plots hook do not help me much as a GM. They create work - rather then cut down on prep time. In the old days, D&D modules included many random encounter tables but they also followed these up with full stated encounters and sometimes with motive. That cuts down on prep time.
Again , just my 2 credits and your efforts are appreciated.

I have some thoughts on that and will start a new thread for it so as to keep this one focused on the AQ book.

Regarding the Grazerite “Communal” talent: Who does it increase the Focus range for; the character attempting the Task, the assistant, or both? It sounds like it could be both to me.

As for the Zaranite “Hardened Hide” talent: What exactly does “natural Resistance” mean? Does it only apply to environmental damage (damage from nature), or is it just a straight up 2 Resistance?

The idea is a Grazerite benefits themselves and the person they’re assisting. So the character attempting the task would benefit from an increased Focus range, as would the character with this talent. (Great talent for a player character Grazerite engineer to have.)

Zaranites with that talent have a naturally hardened hide, so effectively Resistance 2 against whatever they might need resistance against; not just environmental damage.

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Thank you for your quick reply Jim, I really appreciate it. That’s what I thought, I just wanted to be sure.
They would make really good engineers! Add in Advisor and maybe Pack Tactics and delegating repairs in a crisis will go very well! It would also be nice to have a Gazerite supporting character with Communal and Pack Tactics.
It looks like Zaranites will be my go-to EVA specialists. Being able to survive hard vacuum makes it so much safer for them!

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One thing that bothered me is that one of the Edosian Talents is called “Multi-Tasking” even though there is already an unrelated Talent called “Multi-Tasking” in the Command Division book.

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You’re not the only one, Shran…

Likewise, the Ferengi talents in AQ are not the same as the ones in the TNG Characters. The Ferengi have 3 in AQ, 2 in TNGC, and one more on an NPC template.

Makes me wonder who’s getting oomaks for buffing the Ferengi in STA…

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I was actually happy to see that the Ferengi had different talents than in the TNG character pdf since it would’ve otherwise been wasted space in the book. Sill would’ve rather seen Saurians, but oh well.

Hah! I’ll admit I missed the Multi-Tasking name duplication. They’re different enough that should a PC have both, feel free to rename one of them (esp since talent names are pretty easy to change anyway to fit a given need). I’ll review the two and see if I can change one or the other in future printings (and in the PDF).

As for the variety of Ferengi talents, I intentionally chose to present them differently to give more choices to players. I may do likewise for some other species in future supplements, depending on what the writers come up with. This was a way to get at the idea that there’s flexibility in the system and character templates.

And this discussion reminds me to update the internal documentation on talents, so thanks for that! :smiley:

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Now my Ferengi can choose from 5 species Talents. Also, I renamed the Edosian Talent “Triple-Tasking”.

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That’s absolutely not what I was saying.

It just seems like the book was poorly planned; they could have focused on having either the Talarians or the Tzenkethi so we’d have entries regarding their culture, NPCs, and ship stats for one or the other, as opposed missing parts for both.

Also, there would have been more space for Alpha quadrant stuff in this book, if there had been Gorn NPC examples in the Beta Quadrant book along with the Gorn information.

I don’t think it’s unreasonable to point at those sorts of decisions and think, “Well, this could have been better planned.”

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My point is that there are so many cultures and nations in the Alpha Quadrant that it is impossible to produce a book that covers everything to everyone’s liking at an affordable price.

Tzenkethi are literally only referred to in one episode. There is no canon information to go on. So any information comes from STO or other sources and there isn’t much to go on in the first place.

Talarians could have been in there, yes. But so could Kzinti, Sheliak, Angosians, Anticans, Selay, Suliban, Lysians, Satarrans, etc (some may be Beta Quadrant). All interesting cultures in my opinion.

Some species choices for lifepath options are questionable, agreed (for real this time). I would have preferred some that occurred in more than one episode and especially those that have been “resurrected” in Discovery.