Official Product Wishlist

Star Trek Adventures
251

I don’t know whether this can be categorized as an ‘official product’, but:

I would really wish for more general information at the website. The content is, in part, outdated and lacks information about some announced but delayed products. E.g. some people have already paid for a PDF of the Alpha/Gamma/Delta Quadrant sourcebooks that were initially announced to be released in 2018. We expect Alpha to be released in July (fingers crossed), but there is nothing about the plans for the other sourcebooks. A hint on the status, maybe with “planned/work in progress/waiting for licensor’s approval” or even a more general “upcoming, but release-date still to be decided/announced” would be really appreciated.

Also: I do not know how this fits in with your communications procedure with the IP-holders, but this would also be fine for the ‘smaller’ products like adventures, crew supplements etc. I really appreciate the occasional email with links to a new STA-product like a new stand-alone PDF-adventure or the DS9-crew. But I would also really appreciate the note “Stand-Alone PDF Adventure, ENT Era (title yet to be announced): Release yet to be decided”. Same for e.g. the VOY and/or ENT crews that we keep telling rumours to each other about.

And another thing: I remember the discussion about pre-orders for the Science-Division supplement. As I read it now, there were misunderstandings and miscommunications in several posts (e.g. some people thinking this was good for both the community and Modiphius, some people thinking it was bad for the community etc.). Maybe a bit more transparency would help to prevent these misunderstandings in future…

Please do not get me wrong: I can imagine that these kinds of announcements are a difficult topic, especially when there is a third party involved that can cancel publication until the last minute. Please also do not take offense, I do not want to blame anyone for anything. I would just wish for a bit more info; this would make waiting so much easier (and sweeter. :slight_smile: ).

Thank you. :slight_smile:

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As many others have stated, I am major late to this, but just wanted to mention a couple of points (and there is every likelihood that they have already been addressed multiple times).

First, the mention of a DM’s Guide or the like has got some limitations, although the concept would be applicable in some respects (addressed below); in my opinion; AD&D and its ilk were premised on the fact that every game world was different; styles ranging from My Little Pony-type innocence to Game of Thrones outright nastiness. Star Trek…well, yeah, we certainly can end up doing x-number variations on the main theme (Mirror Universe and the like), but the point being just that: they’re variations, not independent worlds that have been constructed from ground-up by GM X. Again, in my opinion, I’d far prefer to have soucebooks covering specific non-Federation type cultures, especially the Klingons, Romulans, Gorn, Borg and The Dominion. These, along with the pre-set modules, are excellent resources and can provide yea-amount of material for enterprising GMs to rip off of; let us not count the number of times that we, and others, have stolen select bits and pieces from modules to utilize for otherwise independently-crafted games. Such thievery is supported and encouraged in the RPGing world, and I would support Modiphius whole-heartedly in producing this type of game material.

Also, what might be nice is some furtherance on character origins; while the current set-up certainly provides the basics - and, of course, we never got anything more than the root essentials on any character in the series/movies, aside from Spock (James Kirk comes from Riverside, Iowa, has an older brother with a family, his father was killed by Kodos the Executioner, he had various experiences in previous assignments that are utilized occasionally for stories, and aside from that, he’s a fair blank as histories go), we know only points of origin, and, as one solid point, that Leonard McCoy is divorced. Supplements could be released - again, DM’s Guide-style, that would allow for expansion and history/character creation to be played on for in-game stories: past romances, rivalries, conflicts, criminal histories.

Apologies for doing the soapbox-thing here, but I have a real love for Modiphius’ iteration of the game, and want to see this expanded and continued. Hope to see more soon.

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I’ve gone through and flagged the piracy subthread posts in hopes that staff will pull them to a separate thread.

1 Like
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The lifepath system in place does that to some extent. Going into deeper detail on character backstories and histories and past relationships is certainly doable too but I don’t know that we really need mechanics for that, do we? That stuff’s been part and parcel for every RPG I’ve ever played, not just Star Trek games. Maybe it’s just second-nature to me now. I guess I can see where it’d be useful for newbie players to have access to some verbiage around it being a good idea to develop their character’s backstory?

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It’s useful to many older players, too, Jim, to have a mechanical option for more details.
Forcing oneself into random gen is, for many, older, slightly jaded, players to get into a new, novel, character.
As far as it goes, STA allows for that… kind of. Only the high points.

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The lifepath system in place does that to some extent. Going into deeper detail on character backstories and histories and past relationships is certainly doable too but I don’t know that we really need mechanics for that, do we? That stuff’s been part and parcel for every RPG I’ve ever played, not just Star Trek games. Maybe it’s just second-nature to me now. I guess I can see where it’d be useful for newbie players to have access to some verbiage around it being a good idea to develop their character’s backstory?

I assume you’re familer with the lifepath approuch to character generation in games like Traveler, or Mechwarrior Third edition? I think he’s thinking something like that. It’d be an intreasting option but Im not sure it’d work with STA given the limited skills list the game has compared to the two aforementioned games

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At least I am not. Could you maybe go into a bit more details, please? :slight_smile:

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Agreed with MisterX’s comment regarding the MechWarrior third edition stuff; I have absolutely no familiarity with that either, and, again, I think Modiphius constructing - or at least approving - a life-history mechanic based on pre-, during and post-Academy timeframes would be quite useful. While players/GMs may not end up using said mechanic/table/chart/whatever in a pure or verbatim fashion, it might at least provide inspiration for the gang to draw up previous instances that form the basis for in-game conflict, e.g., James Kirk serves on the U.S.S. Farragut, and ends up running into a vampiric cloud-creature that essentially annihilates much of the ship and crew; this becomes the basis for an episode that allows the James Kirk player (transferring the concept to an RPG situation) to play on their Values and Focuses, and perhaps even make a change at the story’s end.

FASA’s character creation process, the most detailed system for such thus far, could form some sort of adaption for use in STA; how many cruises does a character have in total, and the life-path ones used for character creation in the game are the stand-outs with regard to Talents, Focuses, Values and so forth, while the others are “Situation X occurred here, and we’ll see what we can do about using it as a story at some point.”

Again, I’ve gone into probably far too much detail on what is a rather minor issue, overall, but I do think that points to evolve character - which is what STA is supposed to be about, as opposed to something like D&D, which is mostly “Roll to-hit, roll to-hit, make your saving throw, these are how many experience points you got” - are of crucial importance in setting up a narrative, story-based, cinematic game.

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intreasting you should mention the FASA system as mechwarrior third edition was designed by the same company. the lifepath system for mechwarrior third edition had you select a background for your character much like STA does, but it’s a little more detailed and a lot more random. each stage you’d get some small skills and traits and then you’d random roll 2d6 to generate an event, the event would give you some skills and traits, negitive or positve the value basicly being along a bell curve. the 4th edition abandoned this for life modules as well a neat idea it did remove a lot of the agency from the player at designing a character and tended to lead to uneven groups. That said I could attempt to do some STA style life paths. I’ll work em up and post something.