Last year, my Father’s Day gift was the Star Trek: Lower Decks Campaign Guide for use with the Star Trek: Adventures system by Modiphius. This year the Father’s Day gift arrived early with the release of The Federation-Klingon War Tactical Campaign. As with the Lower Decks book and the Utopia Planitia sourcebook, I’ll be writing up a review and initial look through.
The book that was ordered from the Modiphius website arrived shrink-wrapped and in a bubble-wrap filled shipping box. It is a hardbound book with 231 color filled pages and contains a bookmark ribbon. In the book breakdown there is an introduction, eight chapters, and appendices and an index. The ISBN number is 978-1-80281-079-0 with the product number of MUH0142308. The project manager is Jim Johnson and the lead writer is Al Spader. There are a large number of additional writers listed as well. Reading through the credits, I have to wonder… how can I get a job as a canon editor? (Tremble before my encyclopedic knowledge of Star Trek!)
The first chapter includes several new lifepath options with several new races. The blind Aenar (first seen in Star Trek: Enterprise), the Arcadians (first seen in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home), the centaur like Ariolo (also from Star Trek IV), the Betelgeusians, the Cordanites (seen in Enterprise and Star Trek: Discovery) and the Megarites (both the Betelgeusians and Megarites were first seen in Star Trek: The Motion Picture). Previously we had seen roleplaying stats for Arcadians and Ariolo in the Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home Sourcebook Update from FASA. Out of curiosity I looked up the attribute stats for the Arcadians and Ariolo. If I was going to homebrew the stats based off of the information from the FASA sourcebook, I’m sure I would have come up with the same attributes listed in this book.
There are also several new traits, values, talents and equipment listed as well in chapter one. I thought it was interesting that there was random tables for some of the different options and several quickbuild rules for the different roles.
Chapter two is dedicated to the game master for a wartime campaign. It gives advice on a session zero and a safety checklist (very well done by-the-way). The books talks about campaign stages and turns and the types of missions that would be needed. A timeline of key events in the Klingon-Federation war is also presented. I really liked the section for notable star systems. They had a lot more details on the systems involved as compared to previous publications. Planetary classification, land mass, number of moons, etc. The last section in this chapter is some optional rules for “The Admiralty Game”.
In Chapter three we are introduced to the campaign rules of play. It discusses the various resource assets and the power levels they contain. There are also various random charts for some of these. I’m not certain if I’ll be able to play these myself, but I’m interested in keeping an eye on them.
Chapter four talks about the early war campaign, chapter five covers the mid-war and the late war by chapter six. These all contains several mission briefs that can be used by the game master.
Starships are the focus of chapter seven. Some we have seen, some that look new. There is also information on fleet organization, logistics and planning.
The various adversaries and allies are listed in chapter eight. Not only are they from Star Trek: Discovery, but from Star Trek: The Original Series and Star Trek V: The Final Frontier.
The appendices contains the Gamemaster Campaign Tracker, the Player Campaign Tracker and the Safety Checklist.
This is the last publication for the first edition of the Star Trek Adventures RPG. For those of you who don’t know, a second edition of the core rulebook was announced and will be released at Gen Con this August. I’ll be eagerly awaiting the release of that book. While I had some suggestions for it when I first heard the announcement, I felt that Modiphius was probably past the point of using them. So I’ll just have faith in them and eagerly await the publication. I’ve also seen several posters on social media wonder if the Federation-Klingon War Tactical Campaign that could only be used for the Star Trek: Discovery timeframe. The publishers have provided enough information and details that this could be used for wartime conflicts as seen other eras. This will be a book that both gamemasters and players will get use out of.
Have you picked up this book? What did you think of the game information, internal art, or new gaming options that were provided. This article is open for discussion on the TardisCaptain dot Com Discord server. You can also email me at Carl (at) TardisCaptain.com with any comments.