Hey folks, I’m thinking about eventually revising the standard STA character sheets and ship sheets. Given the current version of them in the core book and those available for free download, what do you like about them, what don’t you like about them, and if you had suggested changes you’d like to see, what would they be? Open-ended question and no idea is bad.
A little more info—the character sheets would still probably need to be 1-2 pages (though I like having the reference sheet on the back like in the starter set) and they’d have to be zero-functionality sheets or maybe simple PDF fillable forms.
Fire away and thanks for your support of the game.
*FYI, cross-posting this to the Modiphius boards, the STA subreddit, and Facebook group. Feel free to post in more than one place if you feel so moved. Share this with other sites if you want, but those are the only three I frequent with any, uh…frequency, so if there are comments posted somewhere else, I probably won’t see them.
I know everyone at out table woudl love some more space for talents. Being able to have a short description of the effect would be nice.
While I love the LCARS look, it does take up valuable space. Would there be a way to integrate headers into the LCARS look to free up some vertical space?
I’m not sure this applies to every game, but in ours we don’t really need the Environment or Upbringing sections. That would free up some space.
Those are just my top of the head thoughts
A section for milestones, preferably integrating milestone progression guidelines (I.e., after x arcs, receive spotlight) would be a plus. I’d also like a section tracking reputation, responsibility and privilege for each character.
For the ships, it would be problematic in hard copy, but maybe a version in the online generator which adapts the ship silhouette according to the actual class in use. (My group is using a little scale 3 Nova, so I can’t complain about the space for weapons and talents, but maybe some other ships would need more space?)
Maybe a dedicated spot for a picture/portrait?
A reduced width for the LCARS color bars would be nice.
Maybe a place to list your medals (and their description)
I’d like to have different era themes for the sheets. That’s a lot of work, but there are some really nice fan made ones. (psssst, throw in a DISCO one for extreme bonus points)
Putting the horse to the whip one more time, but yes, I too would love to see a Modiphius-produced LCARS-style updated/expanded character sheet, and one for the ships probably wouldn’t hurt either. First points of addition would be the actual fricking planet the character was born on (presuming it wasn’t in space, a la James Kirk from Star Trek ‘09), along with listing the events that occurred on tours - even if that was as simple as listing “Required to Take Command” and so forth, along with whatever bonuses were accrued on said tour. Room for other, less consequential tours might also be appreciated, as those could be utilized for eventual story generation, even if nothing definitive happened at the series’ outset. Two pages should probably be sufficient to cover the waterfront on this; any longer - and there have been a few that went on for multiple-pages length - is starting, in my opinion, to turn the character stats and origin/skill points into a short story. Could be interesting, but it ain’t what this particular game aid is meant for.
Having a few lines for personal development, such as pre-Academy life events and other, notable occurrences - character X fell in love with someone on Risa five years ago and it’s a point that has never seen resolution - could be worked in as well.
Just to mention, I - and I suspect most others here - have seen x-number of Star Trek RPG character sheets that have run the gamut from head-shaking “There is no God” examples to others where we’ve thought, “Why couldn’t the other ones have been this good?” I’d suggest that Modiphius post the iterations of such efforts online so that the population here can comment on the latest version, offering comment/support/criticism and perhaps some suggestions for revisions. As previously noted, the current version certainly keeps at least certain basics addressed, but could use some serious alterations. Hoping the Devs can put some effort into this soon.
I’d think in terms of 2 forms that can be used together. One keeps the basic game info as now (traits, attributes, talents etc, but lose the environment and so on), possibly with more space for descriptions, then the second is for biographical details, such as the character’s background and career, along with other elements important to roleplay, but not rules - even portraits. You could even add a third form for personal log entries, if you were so inclined. Players and groups could then use the extra forms or not as they see fit (this kind of thing is quite common in D&D, Savage Worlds and a couple of other systems I’ve played).
You could do something similar with the ship sheet - but I would definitely opt for a blank space instead of the ship silhouette - you could then add your own outline or image. There are also a couple of elements that could be added - active shuttlecraft in the landing bay, a threshould chart for combat damage.
Oh, and I’d love to see era-themed sheets as well! Done carefully, the form elements can be the same on all of them, just the background changing.
I’ve seen some good ones so far, including room for Career Events and Milestones. I love the idea of having ship sheets with different spaceframes and would like to see room for additional weapons (especially for Defiant class ships).
Urgh, I hope the starship sheets don’t need modification. I just spent the last three months cleaning up (and creating) more than 140 Corey Belote-style starship sheets and compiling and pre-statting them in my GoogleDocs here.
Current tally (organized by class alphabetically):
82 Federation starship PDFs
19 Federation shuttle PDFs
22 Klingon starship PDFs
1 Ferengi starship PDF (it’s the D’Kora-class raider, natch)
17 Romulan starship PDFs
Disclaimer: I didn’t create most of these PDFs; Corey Belote of Continuing Mission did. I just took up where he left off since he’s been out of contact for a while. See here for more details.
