Any tips for a first time STA GM?

Star Trek Adventures
1

Recently got the core book and have started reading through it. I’ve gone through the quick start to get a rough idea of the 2d20 system. I’ve run Pathfinder, Coriollis, and Exalted 1 and 2 for decently long campaigns but I am new to 2d20. Any tips for kicking off a good run of a 2d20 game STA in particular?

If all goes well I may expand out into a couple other 2d20 games but after looking over most of the quick starts STA seemed to be the simplest to get in to. Less gear, no hit location etc. Thanks for any tips/suggestions!

2 Likes
2

Welcome aboard.
For general suggestions I’ve got the below:

  • Encourage use of Momentum & Threat. It can give your players an edge and allow you to bring in changes to scenes and enemies to help up the tension and challenge.
  • STA leans to your characters playing heroes (Unless you playing Klingons, in which case you are more violent heroes), run with this. The characters from the TV series are larger then life and so are your player characters.
  • Don’t worry too much about spaceship combat at first. Once you are comfortable with the rules you can add them in, but that is probably the most complex element of STA.
  • Have a discussion with your players about the sort of game they want. 2d20 can go in many directions, especially STA which can draw from TOS, TNG, Voyager, DS9, Discovery & Picard (In roughly decreasing value of heroics) A game based on TNG will be radically different to one following DS9 for instance.
  • Ask questions on the forums. There are loads of people here who know pretty much everything. So we can normally come up with an answer or 4 for anything you have.
7 Likes
3

Start with the basics and work from there. Theres a lot of depth in the system, but you can get by without a lot of it while you get comfortable.

Beyond that, make use of the starter set/crb adventure etc that are designed to help you learn the game.

Finally- have fun! You can fix goofs and rulings later, but if you enjoy the game then youll be more likely to go back to it.

2 Likes
4

There’s also this:

4 Likes
5

I’d add the following:

  • STA plays best when you are not trying to simulate the universe the game is set in, but rather when you play it from a tv show/movie mindset. As such you can play long “campaigns” where each adventure does not need to be associated to the last.
  • Teach your players to not be afraid of Threat. The game shuts down and becomes rather boring if the GM can’t up the stakes a little on the fly.
  • Expect your players to achieve the impossible. Momentum is powerful and your players will likely have a lot to swing the narrative in their favour. This is expected. Starfleet officers achieve the impossible almost daily.
  • Because of the possibility of “bottle” adventures, it is a great platform for your players to take the chance to dip their toes into GM-ing. At the end of the adventure everything resets, just like TNG/VOY
7 Likes
6

All great advice.

My 2 cents are:

No scenario survives contact with the players. Embrace it. Unlike combat oriented RPGs, the players charging off down a path you didn’t see doesn’t really hurt anything, even on the prep side. Once youy players grab onto the Star Trek “mindset” the adventure will practically write itself. I can’t tell you how much fun I’ve had running this game as the players completely out-think the outside of the box.

Next. Do not be afraid of momentum and threat. Get your players to realize that the more they “go big” and give Threat, the more fun the game gets.

Yes, you can have more than one momentum pool. While most people simply use a single momentum pool, I will start up more than one if the situation calls for it. And that is OK. For instance, half of the players were trying to hold off the low tech native warriors while avoiding serious injury to them. The other PCs were trying to shut down the ancient alien power generator before it blew up and destroyed the planet. Turns out the generator had become holy shrine to the pre-industrial natives. The security team had one momentum pool while the engineers had their own along with the pithy extended task. Drama and tension everywhere.

I think you will find STA easy to run and more fun than you expect. :wink:

8 Likes
7

We haven’t played in a while but off the top of my head (using thew core book only):

  • In hth combat there is a roll to hit but also a roll to defend. I forgot this a few times.

  • If a PC is attacked and hit a red shirt or NPC can take the blow instead.

  • Use threat to make it interesting not impossible

  • I use threat as a legal way to railroad, if necessary. STA is a cinematic game and IMO this is needed at times. Keeping in mind that the best railroads are when players can’t see the tracks.

  • Jump in with both feet. In my first game I included hth, phaser and Starship combat. Also, extended tasks. The only way to learn is to give it a try.

  • Try to test characters values.

  • Plan for players to have to make moral choices. No dice are involved. They define each players character.

  • Watching examples of play on YouTube helped me.

8 Likes
8

This may have been covered but do not over prepare your missions. it is better to have a setting and maybe a few key events and notes on npc values and goals so that you can adapt to your players naturally; rather than constantly trying to “push” them to play as you have written the scene to take place.

Also make failure at tasks fun (even comical at times) This can make or break a game. Dont use complications or failures to jab at or antagonize the players but rather to add a fun new challenge to the group. This also helps so that your players will want to try some extremely difficult tasks rather than sticking to the mundane low difficulty stuff.

Encourage GROUP PLAY. Nothing can ruin a fun experience like a single player trying to cover every base on their own. Let them players know from the start and show them with challenges throughout the adventure that each member is a valuable part of the team.

Going along with this avoid your own personal bias. Many GMs have their own personal preference of play but keep in mind that just because you have one or two players in the group that play that way all your players need to be rewarded and able to contribute equally

5 Likes
9

This. This is a big thing.
STA is a game that does not need too much detail in preparation. Of course too little can be an issue too, but too much is far worse.

2 Likes
10

Best rule in the game: support characters

  • they lack a skill call for a support character that has the skill and can add a dice (they can’t succeed at diff>0 but can help), once they improved, they can give their focus and discipline to player with the appropriate talent (Colllaborative X) for 1 momentum, they will not overshadow a character
  • Your pilot has no role to do in a scene: make him incarnate a support character. Since he is played he can succeed at difficult tasks.
  • Your group split: make 2 scenes and other players will play support characters, no one is bored for half an hour
  • less remorse at killing support characters, even if played by players they aren’t their main characters
    I make extensive use of them
3 Likes
11

I wanted to add one other thing. As a GM relish in being beaten. It is essentially your job to through challenges at your players and be defeated session after session. Play to the characters (NPC’s) Values and “personalities”. If every one of your encounters is just you using every special rule and GM ability to bring the players to their knees then at the end “allowing” them to finally triumph, it can get old real quick. If the PC’s do somthing unexpected by you (the GM). Play your NPC’s like they are caught off guard as well. Depending on the amount of players you have and their enginuity go into each session “anticipating” being at a disadvantage and playing out that disadvantage to the amusement of the table (youself included).

4 Likes
12
  • When in doubt, difficulty is 2 modified by any traits that make sense.
  • When someone goes straight to mechanics, ask them to narrate up to the point they can fail, then go to the mechanics
  • When players come up with weird ideas, don’t say “No” as your first response. “How?” is a much better one. It also allows for a lot of flexibility to use alternate attributes, and sometimes even alternate disciplines.
  • Describe, Describe, Describe.
  • borrow actors/characters from TV and movies for helping you visualize characters and/or their personalities and mannerisms…
  • short but meaningful notes
  • don’t let threat pile up.

Borrowing Characters
The borrowing is often an easy shortcut. For example, a particularly pricly NPC science officer might be “Lt Shevik: Sheldon Cooper from Big Bang Theory, but as a Vulcan”. A gruff CPO from security might be “Chief Torkik: Tellarite version of Anthony DeMarco from Blue Bloods.” Or “Chief Jack Samson, Half-orion half-human security officer, played by Samuel L Jackson.” These give instant ability to give one a description physically, and to help describe mannerisms. Chief Samson probably swears… a lot… but basically, is a nice guy with some mad action skills. Tall, dark brown skin, infectious smile, thin but muscular…quite possibly with a catchphase, “What’s in your braincase?”
Don’t tell the players, don’t show them the picture, but use it as a reference for describing the character. (And sometimes, players will ask, “Is he played by ___?” Establish the character before admitting to it.
And casting the same character with different actors can shade your roleplay… “Lt T’vek, Comm Officer” built off of Zoë Saldono is going to be quite different from one built off of Nichelle Nichols or Zendaya (sp?)…

Short Notes
One of the reasons I recommend the borrowing above is it allows a lot less writing about the character and more just being able to visualize and then describe them. It’s a lot shorter to write, “Jarvo Milon, Deltan councilor, think Shepherd Book” than to describe the character in detail.

Don’t write paragraphs of dialogue. Write the points you need to get across, and the ones they can get with extra information spends. Flesh them out at the table.

Map only what you need. (Blame this on Marc Miller of Traveller fame.) Maps are part of your notes. They can also be part of the play experience.

Threat Pile…
Don’t let the threat pile up to huge amounts. Nothing makes astute players feel less important than the realization of, “We succeeded, but there’s 20 threat on the table…”
A complication should have a good chance of being a problem, but not be a constant problem. Nor should it ever be worse than what one was trying to fix with it.
And be VERY sparing in using increasted complication range…
Some complications should be applied as environmental ones, rather than personal. This allows players to use them against the NPCs, too. And vice versa…

7 Likes
13

The first thing IMO to ask yourself and your players… what kind of Trek do they want to play?

Are they big on combat, non-combat stuff, and/or role-playing?

For instance, a lot of the demo stuff focuses on combat. Like “A Star Beyond the Stars”. I hated it. I understand that combat is an easy thing to run a demo. You can slot it in pretty much any characters regardless of Discipline, species, and/or personality. But… it’s very generic. And non-Trek. How much combat do they have in TOS? TNG? I wanted to play those, not fight fight fight.

Even when they have combat, it’s less about the mechanics and more about the personalities. Look at “Journey to Babel”. It’s less about the mechanics of the Enterprise outfighting an Orion cruiser, and more about Kirk outsmarting his opponent.

So what I’d suggest focusing on is the PCs. What are their personalities, their background, their hopes, their dreams? You can write stories just looking at the PCs and the stuff they came up with character creation. What Talents do they have? What Values? What Upbringing? What Focuses? Then multiply that by the # of players you have and Hey Presto, there’s your first few weekly adventures.

Don’t usurp the players. If a player has a PC with Diplomacy, and a Value of “Thinks Peaceful Negotiation is Best”, let him do it. In our first adventure, based on the one above, the PC couldn’t do any Diplomacy with the bad guys, and had no chance for a peaceful resolution. It was “Pew Pew Pew” combat, and then somebody showed up and negotiated peace. Very disappointing for the player.

The Values in the rulebook are mostly… eh. They’re very generic. Encourage players to take Values that are unique. And that they’re comfortable using in situations. And that they’re comfortable challenging.

As a GM, go where the players lead you. Someone plays a Bajoran: what did they do during the Cardassian occupation? Don’t worry about the mechanics: those will come. Work on the stories and the role-playing opportunities.

4 Likes
14

Hi.
Relax. It’s all for fun.

To start, have your PCs all junior officers, Lieutenants and Ensigns aboard a large starship so the big, big decisions are out of their reach. They are Landing Party 3 on the roster, for example.

Preparation for tangents. I prepare alot of NPCs and Supporting characters in advance, by Division, Specialty, and Species. So If I need a Security Officer for the Brig I can use one I just made.

Locations: Players want to wander an open world, so have some premade generic locations and some NPCs to staff it. Bar, Temple, Shops. Make a floor plan so you can keep it straight. What ever you name, then write that directly onto your copy.

Hold back rewards and experience, string it out. Exceptional items require exceptional enemies to counter them. Sort of why these shows keep having to save the entire galaxy in seasons 1,2,3. Players carry the Starfleet issue, not the quantum, wormhole tech powered, ultra fusion phaser with AI targeting assist. If you give something that unbalances your game, take it back. It’s stolen, a stray disruptor beam strikes it, Section 31 has Admiralty orders to confiscate.

Build Missions to hype one Division, give your players a chance to be the hero of the Mission. A Command mission that needs diplomacy. Engineering that solves a village crisis or restores power to an alien sleeper ship, a Security mission that thwarts Orion Pirates smuggling operations, the Medical mission prevent a virus or render aid in a catastrophic natural event.

When you get good at that, combine Command / Security mission to uncover criminals, Security / Engineering mission to infiltrate a pre-warp civ and clean up or recover lost tech or a accidental contamination. A Security / Medical mission to infiltrate a Badlands former Fed Colony to gather evidence of Augment experiments.

Stat out ships, shuttles, and small bases. You will go through those alot.

For practice, have a session zero, had out some pre-gen characters and set up for a few rounds of combat, so you and your players have expectations of how Combat and Skills are run.

2 Likes
15

Having just ran a long campaign of STA, read the source material books. Then re-read them. Then re-write them. Sorry Modiphius, STA is a fun system but my god the source materials are bad. No useful indexes for ships, races, stat blocks for ships, no lists of talents anywhere. Rules spread across multiple pages interspersed with non relevant lore bits. I had to practically rewrite most of the rule book as a handout for my players and without community handouts out there in the internet this game would have been so much harder to play.

2 Likes