Federation-Klingon War Tactical Campaign

Star Trek Adventures
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The all-new “Federation-Klingon War Tactical Campaign” takes a very interesting approach: It seems to be (still have to buy it, but most likely will) so much a campaign (setting) as an era sourcebook as a rules supplement.

For a starter of the discussion on the latest printed STA supplement, I want to highlight three points that excite me in particular, quoted from the book’s description in the Modiphius shop:

  • “A new system that applies scars to characters, representing the toll war has had on them”
    – We already have a ruleset on Trauma (and counselling) in the Science Division supplement. While I never had the chance to try them out (yet! :smiling_imp: ), I’m wondering whether this is a complete new system or an improvement of the existing. Either way: rulesets that focus on creating (personal) drama is always something I love, so this is one of the things I’ll check out first!
  • “Optional rulesets that enhance the tactical side of roleplaying.”
    – Actually, not so sure about this one. The great, great advantage of the 2d20 system is its simplicity. It’s focussed on narration and drama and in recent productions (especially in Dune and also Captain’s Log) it has been further boiled down to a fast and relatively rules-light system. I might be a bit prejudiced but anything that leads the system away from narration and (back?) to the tactical/gamist focus of, say, other big Fantasy RPGs out there, is something I see with suspicion. Still, I know some out there love tactical rules and sometimes I, myself, am one of them. So I’m probably happy these optional rules are there.
  • “An optional campaign overlay that puts the players in the role of admirals while making decisions about the war effort.”
    – Hype, hype, hype! this alone would be enough for me to buy this book. I will include such an admiralty layer for my upcoming Shackleton Campaign that will hopefully start this year. While there already is a starter of such a system in the Command Division supplement, I always hoped it would be refined and expanded. I read this system to be able to procedurally create a campaign and given the outstanding quality of everything this line has come up with in the past, it will be great.

So, to quote Sam de Leve: “I’m excited!”

What do you think?

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I have a question or two for those in the know…

  1. Is the war strategy bit easily cannibalisable for other eras and opponents? Would it be easy for me to adapt it to, say, a Borg incursion or a Romulan invasion in the TNG era? Or is pretty esoteric to DIS Klingons?

  2. I notice that only the physical book is currently for sale…is that just a short term thing? Will they be selling the PDF soon?

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Currently, the printed book is offered as pre-order. According to the blog post on the Modiphius website, general sale for both print and PDF is scheduled for March 27.

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  1. Yes, the book is (by design) easily adaptable to other eras. Rules are included to do this.

  2. Physical book is on pre-order; you get the PDF immediately as a thank-you. The standalone PDFs always go on sale later, when the physical book ships. According to Jim Johnson, the STA project manager, the standalone PDF should go online at the end of March.

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Questions were covered, so I’ll just add that to adapt the tactical campaign component to another era, you would want to adapt two random tables with era appropriate characters and ships and locations. The two included in the book are specific to the Federation-Klingon war. The rest of the campaign ruleset is era agnostic.

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Just took a first look on the newest aquisition for my library. Only first glance, here, so no in-depth commentary (yet). But:

@Modiphius-Jim May I humbly suggest to make the Safety Checklist as given in the Reference Sheets PDF publicly available? The topic is touched in several publications and the write-up in this product is particularly concise/useful!

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It will be once the book goes on general sale on March 27. We’ll add the downloadable forms to the STA forms page.

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Great!

Follow-up question: Will the Role Ability of the Intelligence Agent/Officer (p. 25) be released on said date, as well?
(I like the idea that this specific ability is classified and subject to Sloan’s NDA. :rofl: )

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Are these different from the Intel roles in the Player’s Guide and Command Division?

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The Tactical Campaign features 12 Roles additional to those presented in the (Starfleet) core rules. As far as I can see, only the “Tactical Officer” is entirely new. The other Roles are taken from the Command Division (1) and Operations Division (6) supplements, and the Player’s Guide (4). These sources though only present brief descriptions and the Role’s crunch, i.e. the Role Affect, resulting in short paragraphs per Role.

The Tactical Campaign expands each description to half page writeups, featuring more fluff and quick-building advice. Some Roles are slightly rewritten, mechanically, though this might be a result of the new presentation and no change might be intended.

Edit: @Modiphius-Jim Any chance, typos can still be corrected for printing? If so, check whether the Saurian Lieutenant on p. 40 is called Dillon or Dillion. :slight_smile:

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Thank you @MisterX @PGoodman13 and @Modiphius-Jim for your answers!

Are there actual missions? Or is it more like the Shackleton Expanse (minus the Tilikaal arc) where the tools are most for setting up the framework for a campaign (like in SE it’s setting up the star systems)?

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@Linklite To quote from the book’s description in the shop:

It’s 24 Briefs, to be precise. Also, there are 6 full Adventures.
In comparison, Shackleton featured 10 full Adventures and 25 Briefs.

I havn’t finished reading, yet, so I’m afraid I cannot comment further than that.

You can take a look on the book’s table of contents in Jim’s blog post I linked in the starting post. Yet, in my opinion the “Stellar Cartography” chapter of Shackleton, as great as it is, is by no means the whole supplement. In contrast, It’s even optional, I’d say. It seems to me that the campaign overlay within the Tactical Campaign is more integrated.

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I didn’t mean to suggest that SE was purely about Stellar Cartography, it was just to provide context of what I meant about whether the book is mostly the framework or based on missions etc.

The contents is also hard to judge what’s what (with zero experience of the book itself). For example, you say there are 6 adventures, but I there are more entries, so knowing what’s an adventure, what’s providing more lore etc is hard to see. That’s why I’m asking, since I’m in theory interested, but we wouldn’t be interested in a Disc campaign. The question is how useful it would be for my SE campaign (since my planned season 2 will likely involve an invasion). I’m happy to cannibalise, but it’s a tradeoff of putting extra effort in to it myself v paying Modiphius for their framework.

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The tough thing for me is that no one stocks STA near me, so I can’t have a flick through to judge how useful it would be.

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It’s in the Player’s Guide on page 180 and in the Command SB on page 39. The version in the PG is a bit more comprehensive and is worded to better fit any Intel officer, not just Starfleet. We didn’t have room to include it, but I’ll add it to the Klingon War book errata so that folks don’t have to think they need to buy either of the other two books.

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Edit: @Modiphius-Jim Any chance, typos can still be corrected for printing? If so, check whether the Saurian Lieutenant on p. 40 is called Dillon or Dillion.

Could be either. Hard to tell with Saurians.

Might also be a glitch with the universal translator. Or a glitch with Reno. Who knows what pharmaceuticals she needed to keep going while on that asteroid and how they might have impacted her log entry recordings.

For that matter, it might be an error with the audio to text transcription program. All the electrical activity in that area may have wreaked havoc with the gear.

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Are there actual missions? Or is it more like the Shackleton Expanse (minus the Tilikaal arc) where the tools are most for setting up the framework for a campaign (like in SE it’s setting up the star systems)?

Six full-length missions, 24 mission briefs, and a handful of scripted events to help tie in your campaign with what was happening canonically.

All of the missions and briefs could be adapted for some other timeframe; you’d just need to change the adversaries and likely the planet names, etc.

There are two missions for early war, two for mid-war, and two for late war, though I’m pretty sure you could run them in any order for any wartime campaign. I’d have to take a deeper dive look at them again and refresh my memory.

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I’ll take the TOC and try to summarise contents of each chapter in one or two sentences.

Chapter 1 – Character Options

01.10: Lifepath Options

Contains six species wrtite-ups unique to this book.

01.20: Wartime Characters

Contains advice on wartime character traits, sample Values and Focuses and alternative Career Events to choose from for characters created in an environment of warfare.

01.30: Wartime Talents

Contains 14 Talents. I have not checked (yet) whether they’re unique to this book.

01:40: Wartime Roles

See above; 12 roles from Operations Division (6), Player’s Guide (4) and Command Division (1); 1 is unique to this book as far as I see. Descriptions are expanded.
Also contains advice on playing the Roles from the Core Rulebook in a warfare environment.

01:50: Weapons and Gear

Optional Rules on (shipboard) phasers and torpedoes. Not checked whether unique to this book, some rules felt familiar from Utopia Planitia. Yet, it might be that that book covered similar but not identical topics. I would have to refresh my memory on that. Includes rules for Planetary Defenses that I have not seen before in any STA supplement.

01:60: The Trauma of War

Introduces an alternative system of character development revolving around “scars” that builds on characters’ Values and their suppression in situations of war. Rules on casualties aboard the ship and PvP. Also, lots of advice on off-game safety in gritty settings and/or with PvP in the game.

Chapter 2 – Gamemastering the Campaign

02:10: Group Preparation

Advice on Session 0 and Player Safety. Refers to the checklist I have mentioned before that is super super helpful imho.

02:20: Planning the Campaign

Lots of background-information on the Federation-Klingon War and how to use it as a backdrop of a STA campaign.

02:30: Running the Campaign

Advice on different “types” of Missions a bit like the “Division”-supplements offered. Descriptions of “points of interest” that foreshadow the strategic overlay in Chapter 3. Contains advice on how to use and adapt the Mission Briefs in the Discovery Campaign Guide for the Strategic Campaign. Advice on pacing of the campaign.

02:40: Notable Star Systems

Star Systems for use as a backdrop of (an) adventure(s). Six in total with 2 in high detail and 4 in low detail. One detailed and two rough descriptions for each Starfleet and Klingon Empire.

02:50: Optional Rules

Advice on how to adapt the Strategic Campaign for an Admiralty Campaign instead of a Bridge Crew, or a crew of independent traders (or mercenaries), or a Klingon crew.
Variant rules on combat (introduction of “Reactions”), initiative variants. Also (each) a more detailed approach on power management (esp. during combat), chases and pursuit, and stealth and infiltration.

Chapter 3 – Campaign Rules

17 pages of an all-new strategic layer mini-game that simulates the allocation of resources during a war campaign. In essence, your players, in between missions, take the seats of admirals and/or their staff and decide which ships or persons within a fleet shall deal with several problems that pop up. They also decide upon which mission they want to deal with themselves with their main characters on the bridge of their ship. Outcome of each problems may influence each other; a failed roll on a problem on the strategic layer may complicate a mission as well as a successful mission may generate and/or improve new assets for the strategic layer.

If you’re interested in such a game, this chapter alone makes the book completely worth it! In my opinion, the rules blend in well with 2d20 and are able to provide a great and immersive benefit for the game while staying fast and unobstrusive.
Really, I love it already and can’t wait to try it out! :heart_eyes:

Chapter 4 – Early War

Two full adventures, 8 mission briefs. Also, description of two scripted events (The Battle at the Binary Stars, Sarcophagus Destroyed) that can take place during Early War.
These missions are specifically tailored for the period of Federation-Klingon War. Yet, as always, they should be able to be tweaked to any timeline and faction with low-to-medium effort. I have yet to see the published adventure or brief that I’m unable to get some ideas from.

Chapter 5 – Mid War

Again, two full adventures, 8 mission briefs, two scripted events (U.S.S. Discovery Disappears, The Starbase Assaults).

Chapter 6 – Late War

Again, two full adventures, 8 mission briefs, two scripted events (U.S.S. Discovery Reappears, The Truce at Qo’nos).

Chapter 7 – Starships

07:10: Fleets of the War

Background information on how the Federation and Klingon fleets were structured during that era. Also optional rules on swarms of size 1 and 2 ships.

07:20: Federation Starships

Stats for 14 named Federation Starships of the Discovery era / Federation-Klingon War.

07:30: Klingon Starships

Stats for 15 named Klingon Starships of the Discovery era / Federation-Klingon War.

Chapter 8 – Allies and Adversaries

08:10: Federation and Starfleet

Stats for 9 NPCs.

08:20: Klingons

Stats for 5 NPCs.

Appendices

Three reference sheets for use in Session 0 (Safety Checklist) or the strategic layer of the campaign (Player/Gamemaster Campaign Tracker).

I hope that helps. :wink:

My personal conclusion: Despite I’m not too much into DISCO as an era, the book was worth it. Some of the alternate/expanded/optional rules will prove valuable for all my games as a GM and the strategic layer – I simply love that one! :heart_eyes:

For everyone into DISCO and/or a more sandbox-style game with lots of options for players where to go and explore next, in my opinion, buying this book should be a no-brainer.

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@Modiphius-Jim I just realised the USS Republic (p. 78, entry No. 17) lacks a designated primary power.

Also, one question for clarification: Does unused Campaign Momentum that is the reason for award of Progression Points vanish or stay for the next turn? (cf. p. 88)

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Thanks everyone! Looks like it’s going on my list of goodies to get…

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