LUG lessons for
Star Trek Adventures
One of the
highlights of 2016 for me was finishing a 12-session Star Trek campaign using
the Icon System developed by Last Unicorn Games. As the campaign neared its
close, news broke that Modiphius was developing the first new officially
licensed Star Trek tabletop rpg in over a decade. Even better, the developer
plans to open up a free playtest, which will give all of us a good idea of how
Modiphius will adapt its 2d20 system to the Final Frontier.
So, in this
season of transitions, with a LUG Trek campaign completed and a brand-new
system on the horizon, it’s an auspicious time to reflect on the campaign-that-was.
Modiphius can learn a lot from LUG Trek but should also take care to avoid some
of the unwieldy mistakes made in previous iterations of the game.
Lesson 1:
Keep LUG’s emphasis on making each session an “episode.”
Tabletop rpgs
carry a lot of baggage associated with how you tell stories. Crack open nearly
any volume on how to be a game master, and you’ll likely run across advice on
balancing “encounter difficulty” and how dole out “experience points”
appropriately. Those gaming conventions carry little meaning to Star Trek
storytelling, and LUG did a tremendous job of replacing those terms with
discussions of scenes and acts, concepts much more in keeping with how Star
Trek unfolds on television and movies screens.
Modiphius would
do well to follow in LUG’s footsteps in encouraging GMs to try to create the
sense that each player is participating in an episode of Star Trek. It sounds
simple, but it requires a lot of gamers to jettison some of the tropes that
have congealed around tabletop rpgs over the decades.
So what does
this look like at the table?
I broke down
each session of my most recent Star Trek campaign into three acts. I didn’t do
this in a film-school or scriptwriter sort of way. Rather, I simply jotted down a scene or two
that establishes a conflict in the first act, takes an interesting turn in the
second act and then winds up with a climax and falling action in the third act.
So my session prep was basically jotting down a few ideas on three notecards. I
found that this was just enough to give me a map of the story while still
opening up possibilities for improvisation.
On the other
hand, I found that it was pretty much always a waste of time to consider “gamey’
concepts such as encounter challenge and combat difficulty. Level-appropriate
combat doesn’t warrant consideration in Star Trek. Instead, replace that
mindset with “drama-appropriate” challenges. That is, what sort of challenges
create the most compelling drama?
I hope Modiphius
carries that mindset over from previous iterations of Star Trek rpgs.
Lesson 2:
Keep character generation flavorful but craft a more elegant skill system
LUG Trek
features a TON of skills, and many of them come with several specializations.
That requires a lot of writing when players are filling out their character
sheets. And the default LUG character sheets don’t offer enough space for all
the skills you’re likely to rack up during character generation.
The good news is
that the detailed skills system allows you to create hyper-competent PCs that
feel like they belong on the bridge of a starship. The bad news is that it’s
often too unwieldy to wade through all the options. I would urge Modiphius to
find a way to simplify the skill system while maintaining the ability to craft
characters with the appropriate intelligence and abilities of trained Starfleet
officers.
How do you
balance those factors? I suspect the trick lies in slashing the number of
skills available and making them more broadly usable. That way, PCs remain
every bit as competent as we’d expect, but our hands won’t start to cramp up
when we fill out our character sheets.
Lesson 3:
Make combat short and narrative-driven
Star Trek often
relies on action scenes and combat to tell exciting adventure stories on the
final frontier. So a Star Trek rpg absolutely should feature robust action and
combat rules. But, while action is certainly an important ingredient, it’s far
from the only one that makes Star Trek such a delicious soufflé.
Think of how
much screen time Star Trek has devoted to action scenes versus how much time
the franchise devotes to scenes that hinge on sharp dialogue, drama or
characters wrestling with difficult decisions. A session of a Star Trek rpg
should reflect those story-telling principles.
I would also
encourage Modiphius to meld the action and combat mechanics with narrative.
Previous Modiphius games have done so, utilizing the company’s 2d20 system to
lend action scenes a ‘cinematic’ quality. Modiphius has already announced plans
to use a modified version of the 2d20 system for Star Trek Adventures. I only
hope they do so in a way that feels in keeping with traditional Star Trek
flavor.
Finally, I want
to address starship combat, another essential aspect of Star Trek storytelling
that LUG got wrong. When it comes to
ship-to-ship engagements, game designers need to stress speed and ease of use
when crafting mechanics. I can’t stress that enough.
In the campaign
that I recently wrapped up, I largely avoided large-scale starship combat
simply because it takes so long and ends up feeling repetitive using the Icon
System. A more cinematic style, as 2d20
purports to be, would improve that aspect of the game immensely. I don’t want to have to teach ops or
engineering officers to track energy units or power output. That’s boring and a
waste of precious gaming time. Rather, focus on the dynamic aspects of starship
combat that we see on screen: evasive
maneuvers, phasers, disruptors, photon (or quantum) torpedoes, consoles
exploding and deck plates quaking. Stopping the action to worry about making
sure the lateral or long-range sensors are powered this round takes away from
what the characters are feeling and experiencing.
In the end, I
really enjoyed the LUG campaign that I ran this year. I had a blast playing
around in the Star Trek universe, and I think my players did too. But, as the
campaign wore on, I found myself growing more frustrated with some of LUG
Trek’s more cumbersome mechanical features. For instance, I usually love
creating NPCs, but having to fill out those character sheets became a daunting
task.
I’m confident
Modiphius will improve on many of those trouble spots. I can’t wait to playtest
Star Trek Adventures!
