Issues setting up a New Group

I am working to set up a new RPG group within an already establised online Star Trek fanclub, and I have run into a few snags. It seems that getting the Core Rule book and other text suppliments are fairly easy to obtain, however, the dice & token sets are out of stock pretty much everywhere. (I’m guessing that is due to the world wide “thing” that shall not be named). We were hoping to use real dice, but conduct the game over discord.

As an alternative my group is considering Roll 20, which I am not familiar with at all. I signed up for a free account and I am not seeing any tutorials on how to specifically set up a STA game. Does anyone have any good resources or advice on how to start setting up a game from scratch for a complete Roll 20 Noob.

Thanks

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When you create a game, there should be an option to select a Character Sheet. Someone set-up the STA sheet for use with Roll20, so that would be the option you would select. There are a bunch of short tutorials you can find on Youtube to set you up with the basics, what I used and still consult after almost 9 months of being on Roll20. A question you might wish to ask yourself is whether you’re going to run a narrative/theater-of-the-kind style of game? If so, then Discord or Zoom might be the better way to go.

The Roll20 character sheet has a lovely built in dice roller. You can add a dice roller plugin for Discord. I use Discord for audio and roll 20 for the rest of the game experience.

Agreed on the R20 dice roller - it’s very well-done! My set-up is identical. Having said that, we start on Saturday…

There’s a little bit of a learning curve involved, but Roll20 is a lot better suited than it looks if you want a more visual game. If you want to use STA zoned movement, turn off the grid and upload your own maps - you can also purchase the official deck tiles if that seems appropriate.

Also @bettybadazz, you don’t need to have the official tokens and dice to play the game - you can use whatever tokens you like - including check marks on a piece of paper (traditionally I use poker chips). Standard d20s and d6s will also work - although you will need to be able to convert the d6 results to effect results. Continuing Missions had some suggestions for making your own with some white d6 and a marker pen.

@bettybadazz Modiphius sells the d20s in singles and the challenge dice in packs of 4 off their website: https://www.modiphius.net/collections/star-trek-adventures/star-trek_accessories?page=1

Hello!

The official dice are nice, but you do need to roll big handfuls of them at times; while this situation persists and you can’t share, generic d20s and d6s are cheap and easily available (check your local Amazon). I prefer real dice too, even for remote games, but as Jim mentioned there’s a virtual roller built into roll20 and there’s actually a custom STA Discord bot you can install. She’ll roll dice for you and break down the results as well as various other fun STA type things: https://github.com/engooyen/majel/blob/master/README.md

I use blue and red Lego bricks for threat and momentum. I like that I can stack them, add or break bits off as appropriate, and that my players can sometimes hear Ominous Lego Sounds as I add to or spend threat behind the screen. Having forgotten my ‘tokens’ once or twice, it is much nicer to have a physical threat / momentum guide than trying to keep notes.

We have a Discord we use for other purposes anyway. I anticipated using that for STA as well.

Yep, also agree with the comments that talk about just using normal dice. There is a section in the book that tells you how to translate.

Roll20 is fine, it does a job. There is a learning curve, but if you follow the built in tutorials for how to use the system, you should be able work out how to port in STA.

The Majel bot for discord is also an option…

You can add a dice roller plugin for Discord.

Is there a good dice roller that can, for example, parse challenge dice?

BC

@bcholmes I believe the Majel bot can handle it.

Caveat: I’ve not used it, as I’m using the Roll20 set-up!

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Thanks, @Astronut.

From my initial experiments, it’s looking quite good.

Sooooooooo many options… I’m liking the Discord as it seems easier to use.

The Roll 20 option is still tuggin at my heart strings because of all the things I am seeing others have done on youtube sessions. I’m just having a hard time setting it up. Maybe Im not finding the right tutorials people are mentioning.

Even if I dont use Majel for the game she is kinda fun to have in Discord anyway…

Discord is really the best for voice, I’ve not used anything other VTT than roll20, but wouldn’t want to either.
There used to be a tutorial, but that got disused some time ago. They released a series of video tutorials you can find them on YouTube https://youtu.be/9ekQ3uLLqL8
The sheet is very useful, has some cool functions, a few of the ideas were yours truly. Only downside is it’s tricky keeping abreast of the momentum/threat, I used a token with both so all players can see it. Only downside is there’s no compendium to easily drag and drop NPCs from.

Speaking of which, I made a whole bunch of tokens for characters you may find useful.
https://www.deviantart.com/thebalzan/gallery

Yeah, a group point pool is not something Roll20 is set up to deal with easily. The character sheets for STA have an odd entry for momentum as if it’s an individual thing.

I’ve set momentum/threat up as a pair of “decks” . I’ll deal a pile of tokens on to the “table” for momentum, with threat dealt into my “hand”. That way, the players can manipulate the momentum and can see my count of threat without it occupying too much space. I got the idea from the Savage Worlds entry in the Roll20 wiki (which it has to be said, is incredibly helpful - I might look at creating something similar for STA once I’ve got it all figured out).

I do have your combined momentum/threat token available as a back up if that doesn’t work though!

Your tokens are works of art! But unfortunately, I’m doing my own as I’m playing in the late 23rd century. I should post those…

If I remember correctly, I believe the tutorial is built into the “my games section”. Its definately still there somewhere

I’ve slowly started working my way through the tutorial. The character sheet is nice looking, I havenet really used it yet.

It’s just going to take time to set all of it up. Unfortunately there arent the neat packages that there are for other brands. Still it seems like Roll 20 is the most viable for our group at this time.

Keep the suggestions coming. They are all a big help.

Thanks!

We used it in our last gaming session. Most of the players got it pretty quickly, and it made the reading of dice pretty easy.

The only part that required a bit of adjustment was that players were less likely to announce “…and a complication” because that was information that was on the Discord screen. So I had to be a bit more careful about checking to see if there were complications.