A review of LUG’s ICON system for Star Trek rpgs

Last Unicorn Games’ Star Trek rpg, first published in 1998, runs on an engine the designers called the ICON System. ICON brims with the sort of crunch and mechanics popular among tabletop rpgs during the late 1990s and early 2000s. That shouldn’t come as a surprise, nor does that disqualify the game from being any good.

But, in a gaming climate today that’s rife with “light” systems, I simply want to point out that this isn’t one of them. LUG’s Star Trek rpg packs some crunch and is very much a product of its time. One look at the standard character sheet, with its 24 blank slots for skills, should convince anyone that this game comes with a little bit of a learning curve. If it had been designed today, I suspect it would look quite different.

Don’t let that discourage you from giving it a shot, though, if you’re itching for a chance to play in the Star Trek multiverse. No modern game designer would describe LUG Trek as ‘light,” and ‘elegant’ probably doesn’t always apply either. But it’s greatest strength is that all that crunch was designed from the ground up to tell Star Trek stories. That lazer-like focus on creating a uniquely Trek platform pretty much saves the game and makes it a viable option today.

To paraphrase a different mega sci-fi franchise, ICON may not look like much, but she’s got it where it counts, kid.

LUG Trek strips away many of the conventions long associated with tabletop gaming that don’t really apply to how stories are told in Star Trek. Narrators (the term used for the GM) are encouraged from the start to do whatever they can to make players feel like they’re participating in an episode of Star Trek, not a session of D&D reskinned to look like Star Trek.

If everyone keeps that tenet in mind, a gaming group can have a blast with LUG Trek.

Character Creation -- Ugly Bags of Mostly Skills

The main criterion through which I view character generation in an rpg is whether the system allows for me to build a character that plays in a way that’s consistent with my original conception of the character. If I’m going to play Dungeons & Dragons, for instance, and I want to base my character on Conan or Aragorn or Elminster, does the character generation process allow me to churn out a character that captures that archetype? If the answer is yes, it’s probably a good character creation system. If not, you’re bound for frustration and disappointment.

Viewed through that lens, ICON does just fine. If you want to play a Vulcan science officer or a Betazoid doctor, you’ll end up with a character that has all the strengths, weaknesses and abilities you’d expect if that character appeared on an episode of Star Trek. You start with a race and then pick and overlay that acts much the same way as a class in D&D. You then pick packages that represent your character’s early life experience, education and previous tours of duty.

If you want a less Starfleet-focused campaign, there are options for raiders, merchants and spies in the DS9 core book and further options in the wide range of supplements Last Unicorn Games published while they had the Star Trek license.

So character generation succeeds in providing you with a pile of mechanics that approximate the kind of character you want to play. But the system takes a turn toward inelegance with the sheer number of skills each character will end up with. 

Starfleet characters are hyper-competent, so it stands to reason that a character in a Star Trek rpg would need a lot of skills. The standard character sheet in LUG’s Star Trek:  The Next Generation core book comes with 24 slots for skills, but that isn’t always enough for a new character. That’s a lot to keep track of, especially when each skill usually comes with a specialization. Filling out the character sheet becomes a chore, and remembering all the skills your character has is nearly impossible, at least in the first couple play sessions.

In summation, the ICON character generation works and produces characters that feel very Trek. But you usually end up with unwieldy bags of mostly skills.

Action & Combat:  The great Trek conundrum

The ICON system utilizes a d6 system that grants a player a dice pool equal to a character’s attribute level and then adds skill levels as modifiers to the roll.  It’s pretty standard rpg stuff that should feel familiar to anyone who’s played a lot of tabletop games.

Combat, however, poses a different challenge in a Star Trek rpg than it does in a traditional fantasy rpg setting. The series, at least in the prime TNG universe, often favored character development and ethical dilemmas over cinematic and detailed action. To be sure, action and combat have their places in any Star Trek series, but I struggle to think of many episodes that depended entirely on action to tell a story.

Accordingly, I try to make combat move as quickly as possible in my Star Trek campaign. Maybe there are folks out there who disagree, but I feel strongly that if you’re spending a majority of your sessions on combat, you’re probably not recreating the feeling of an episode of Star Trek.

And that’s where I think the designers of ICON made some missteps by creating mechanics that actually slow combat down. For instance, the default rules recommend players roll initiative at the beginning of each round. I prefer to do it once and then follow that order through the entire combat (which I try not to let drag on much past three rounds at a maximum). Or, even better, sometimes I don’t even bother with initiative. I’ll ask the players what they want to do once it becomes clear that combat is about to break out. Then, I simply have the bad guys respond appropriately to whatever the PCs decide.

Another mechanic that slows down the flow of combat is dodging. If I’m interpreting the rules correctly, players can choose to dodge any time an adversary makes an attack against them. The rule adds another interruption that can bog down a fight.

Some folks might be tempted to complain that the combat rules are too lethal, especially when phasers or disruptors are involved. Those rules make a lot of sense to me, though. If a brawl with a handful of aggressive Klingons escalates to the point where disruptors are drawn, there ought to be a serious chance of a PC getting dropped.

But overall, the melee combat rules will seem fairly standard to most tabletop veterans, even if they play a bit slower than I’d like.  It’s the starship combat rules that offer a more interesting challenge.

The developers of the game clearly put a lot of thought into the starship combat. They set out to give each crewmember something meaningful to do every round while making each PC’s role modular enough that a gaming group doesn’t get penalized for not having every bridge position filled.  For instance, a science officer has to get a sensor lock on a target every round of combat. If they establish a good sensor lock, the tactical officer gets a bonus for any attacks they make during the round. But if you don’t have a science officer, no sweat. You can ignore that rule and it won’t impact the game much. You need someone to fly the ship, fire weapons and keep track of shield strength and structural points.  Any additional crew beyond that is gravy.

I can almost see the game designers sitting around a conference table hashing out just how they can give every player something fun to do during starship combat while simultaneously keeping the system flexible enough to work with smaller groups. In that sense, the ICON system succeeds, and my hat is off to the designers.

But, just like melee combat, starship battles play pretty slowly, at least in my experience. Starship combat is deep and crunchy and simulates what you see on the TV show in many ways. It’s even got rules for the Picard Maneuver.  The downside is that starship combat, more than any other component of the system, comes with a learning curve that makes it somewhat difficult to teach new players.

Conclusion

The Last Unicorn Games Star Trek rpg line drew on the talents of a lot of good tabletop designers, including Steve Long, S. John Ross and Ross Isaacs. It was clearly built from the ground up with a focus on telling Star Trek stories, and, because of that focus, remains a viable option for enthusiastic gaming groups looking to play in the Star Trek multiverse.  The system shows its age in a few areas, mostly in the unwieldy number of skills characters possess and in the combat rules. But it works.

Many of the supplements produced by Last Unicorn Games to support the system are excellent and contain a lot of imagination and story seeds. I plan on reviewing individual supplements right here on this blog in future installments. Most of the books can be found online for fairly cheap too. If you like rpgs and Star Trek, then ‘make it so.’ (Sorry not sorry)