LUG lessons for Star Trek Adventures

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!