Player’s and Gamemaster’s Guides

Whatever the case, added some clarification to the webstore listings.

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I preordered these books, and they are FANTASTIC.
This is one of the best books besides the discipline specific books.
Really a ton of new options (Players guide: character creation advice, roles, General talents, Esoteric talents, Discipline related talents, alternetive life paths, focuses,…) and rules (Gamemasters guide: Extended Consequences, Advanced Traits, Injuries Variant, Mental stress, Morale, Fatigue, Brace for impact, Dive for Cover, Squads, Squadrons of small craft, cover, surprise attacks, weapon ranges, tactical combat using meters instead of zones, tactical space combat using km, casuality report, sample of extended tasks)

If I would have to nitepick I would have loved to see the following thing to be included, but hey that can always be integrated in future products:
Roles: Pirate, Assassin, Bounty Hunter
Technology: Transwarp drive, Slip stream, multi vector assault mode (Rules for using for playing characters (may be even allowing using the squadron rules).
Species: An additional number of additional species would have been nice.

One question just pops to my mind, will the digital pdf be included in our personal Drivethurpg library.
The reason why I ask is if there are updates on the book you can download the newer version on Drivethrurpg. How will we be able to receive the uptaded books?

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You should have received the digital files via Sendowl. Updates will be sent that way. If you’d rather have DTRPG files, I think you’ll have to email support once the digital release happens (when the physical copies ship).

Glad you like them!

New blog post is up about these two books, with more information.

Holler with questions.

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so the players guide referances the curiosity class…
Space frame when? :slight_smile:

Some questions:
Tactical movement (GM guide pg 218-219):
-How do you handle vertical movement and swimming (1/2 movement?)
-When using these rules how much meters could you move when taking the disengage and shove Melee combat options (player guide pg 175)?
-How do you handle the tactical movement for the Dive for Cover option?
-Injuries (GM Guide 213-215): How does the Intense Damage Effect (player guide pg 192) works with the Injury rules (One additional Inury like the Grievous Attack Quality of Infinity or the Intense Qualit of Conan ?

@Modiphius-Nathan

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An initial disclaimer: as these are mostly about combining different optional rules, they’re left to the GM applying those rules to rule upon - we obviously don’t have the time or space to create optional variants of other optional variants, which is why those mechanics are separated out in their own chapter for experienced GMs to apply at their own discretion.

A character can climb or swim half their Speed, though a character with an appropriate Trait (GM’s discretion) may be able to climb or swim at full speed - Denobulans, for example, are extremely fast climbers.

Disengage is a normal move, so move up to your Speed.

Shove, I would rule as moving the shoved enemy a number of metres equal to half the attacker’s Fitness (round up), again with potential adjustments for particular traits - a Vulcan’s enhanced strength (or that of an android) could allow them to shove or throw someone further.

Move up to half Speed (round up) towards the nearest source of cover as part of the reaction.

Use the Achtung! Cthulhu version (as that’s the closest fit to the Injuries in the GM’s guide) - if one or more Effects are rolled as part of the damage roll and the target suffered one or more injuries, then they suffer one extra injury.

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Or comments about favorite chapters. I would love to answer some questions on this forum that you might have about sections I had the privilege of writing.

I seem to remember the Player’s and GM’s Guides being shown as part of the Tricorder Set… Am I just misremembering that? Anyway, I’m guessing the two guides are going to be the standard size for Modiphius’ RPG books, and if the Tricorder Set is going to be about the size of a TOS tricorder, then they probably wouldn’t fit in the box, so it’s probably better that the guides are separate…

The PG and GMG are separate products from the tricorder and are digest sized, approx 6” x 8” hardcovers.

Thx.
It clarifies a lot.

Eventually, yes. It’ll have to wait until after the books actually ship, though.

BC

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Thank you for all of your hard work. After making this post, I did some digging and found out that Modiphius didn’t make the character creator.

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I’d recommend to send an email to support@modiphius.com to ask your question there. They’re a) very nice and b) very competent. Could take them a day or two to answer, though.

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Thanks. But @Christoffer deserves the lion’s share of the credit: he created it originally.

BC

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Some more question that I hope they have an answer to:

Injuries (GM Guide 213-215):
-How do you combine these rules with some of the hostile enviroment rules (Science Division book pg 105-108). Do they all do lethal damage instead of nonlethal? The reason I ask is that many of there rules cause non-lethal damage at first. Using the original rules a character can always Avoid an Injury, and they can continue to act by taking a complication. This option is not present for the optional Injuries rules in the GM guide, even stronger the character is defeated when gaining 1 non-lethal injury.
-Falling rules (GM Guide 203). When combining these rules with the Injuries variant a character can fall from great hights and still survive and walk away (max 2 injuries). In reality there is no chance that they would walk away. If you use a formula called “lethal doses” to determine the likelihood of death in a fall. At four stories, or about 15m above the ground, half will survive. But at*seven stories or 25m, only 10 percent are expected to live – that is, 90 percent will die. So would’nt it be best to add the Intense stress effect from falls greater than Close range? And is there a way to lower the damage with a successful Task as a free action (Difficulty 1 Daring or Fitness + Security, Success = 1 resistance to the falling damage + 1 extra resistance per momentum spent).
-How does the Tough talent work with these rules?

Fatigue (GM Guide pg 213, Science Division pg 106):
In these rules they say that charcters can fatigue from intense heat, extreme cold. But in the science devision book on pg 105 under the temperature rules they say that it does lethal damage. So does Extreme cold or Heat cause both fatigue and regular lethal damage or do you choose?

Tactical movement (GM guide pg 218-219):
-How would you handle a reach weapon using these rules?
-Stronger characters can thow object much farther away. So can you use a characters fitness (double or half with the apropiriate trait) to determine the distance throwed ( grenades and knifes nr of meters equal to fitness and a spear 2 times the fitness??)?

You do choose whether you apply either or both.

First, even non-hazardous temperatures can induce fatigue, if exposed long enough with the wrong clothing. Imagine a long walk at 10°C (not Hazardous as of p. 105, Science Division) in summer clothes. Or a day out in winter even in warm clothing.

Second, fatigue and hazards are different effects. Fatigue alters the stress bar, while hazard deals damage (and thus fills the [remaining] bar). In case characters do not actually suffer stress via the environmental hazard (because of high resistance and/or sheer luck), they might still suffer fatigue.

Initial Disclaimer: When implementing optional rules into the game, the GM has the final say as to how specific mechanical interactions like talents apply; we simply wouldn’t have the space to devote to explaining every resultant rules change caused by implementing one of the optional rules in the GM’s guide. Rulings given by staff in this regard are suggestions only.

Simply put, we didn’t have the time or space to devote to dealing with every rules interaction caused by these optional rules, because that would require providing rewritten versions of whole chapters of the text. The reason they’re presented as optional rules is that they will require work from GMs to implement.

This is left for the GM to rule upon.

Falling damage is an issue in a lot of RPGs, because any fall significant enough to kill a PC is likely to be something that should be avoided entirely (the GM saying “you fell down a hole and died” is a sign to leave the table and never come back, because that GM has no imagination), but also because combat damage mechanics basically never model falling well.

Falls being potentially deadly is one of those things that ticks a box for a lot of people’s sense of ‘realism’ in a game, but realism isn’t really a satisfying outcome here. Most times in Star Trek where a character suffers a fall, it means they’re trapped somewhere, or they’re separated from the rest of the group and need; it’s a narrative setback to overcome, rather than an instance of damage to endure.

Plus, we’re talking about the interaction of two different sets of optional rules here, and if I answer all rules questions like that, I’ll never have any time in my work week.

The Tough talent, in a game using Injuries, could do one of the following:

  1. the character suffers an Injury after suffering 6 or more stress, rather than the usual five or more.
  2. the character can withstand one additional Injury.

Use whichever version fits your game better.

The Science Division book has rules which build upon the core mechanics of the game. If you’re using an optional rule in your game, you determine how and when that optional rule applies when it interacts with supplementary rules or other optional rules, again because we don’t have the time or page space to discuss all the potential interactions.

In short: it’s up to you.

Reach weapons: A Reach weapon would allow you to make a melee attack from up to 4m away, rather than the normal 2m. If making a melee attack against an enemy who is outside of normal reach (i.e., you’re 4m away attacking an enemy who lacks a Reach weapon) the enemy cannot inflict stress if they win the opposed task, but they can still disengage.

Thrown weapons: Range based on Fitness is a reasonable ruling to make.

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Thanks, Nathan!