Day 31 and the last day of the 2026 #CharacterCreationChallenge. For this character, we are going back to the beginning. On Day 1 of the challenge I made a merchant character for the FASA Star Trek RPG. Some of the feedback from that character encouraged me to follow one of the comments that I had made in that post. “I’m wondering how the Star Trek Adventures 2nd Edition merchant character would roll up? Perhaps I’ll pick that for one of my later characters in this challenge.” Thank you for the encouragement. Another factor that pushed me in this direction was getting a Christmas gift in the mail that my daughter sent me. The STA2e 23rd Century Campaign Guide (review post is half-way complete and will be released soon) which contains some additional rules on creating the Free Trader as a career path option.
Frequent readers of my blog (thank you) will recall that I used the STA2e game as my first entry for the 2025 Character Creation Challenge where I made a Trill Starfleet officer named Keman Les. In that entry I go into detail on the attributes and steps needed to generate a character. So I’m not going to go into as much detail here other than switching books to the 23rd Century Campaign Guide. Also to note, this is a creation challenge and I’m comparing the creation process between the two games. So this isn’t a direct migration of the FASA character to STA2e. However I’ll be using the same name (Kraxx) and species (Edoan) and trying to mach up what I can.
Step One: Species- As mentioned above, Kraxx is an Edoan which isn’t listed in the core rulebook. But it is listed in the new STA2e Species Sourcebook that just went on sale from Modiphius. Since I have purchased it the publisher has already sent me the PDF and I will use it here. And yes, there will be a review when I have the physical book in my hands. I wrote down the attribute adjustments, traits and species ability.
Step Two: Environment- For the FASA merchant character, I had to roll what type of background the character had (disadvantaged, normal or privileged) but not what environment they were raised. I had rolled normal for that system so I looked at the environmental list and eliminated some of the colonies and being raised on the world of another race. I’m going to roll the d20 and if it comes up on one of the options that I crossed out, I’ll just re-roll. It came up as Frontier Colony. That would work as it could be disadvantaged, but would easily fit the normal background. I’m not hoping over to the 23rd Century Campaign Guide (23CCG is how I’m going to abbreviate that from now on) but there are additional options for this step listed on page 8. I added Kraxx’s first value and added to the attribute and department scores.
Step Three: Upbringing- Do I automatically pick Business or Trade and accept it, or one of the other options and then rebel against it? 30 some odd characters ago, I don’t recall what I was thinking when I originally made Kraxx. Since he had a normal upbringing in the FASA game, I’m going to accept the Business or Trade option. Had he been disadvantaged, I probably would have picked something he rebelled against. I added the character updates from this step to my notes.
Step Four: Career Path- Now this is when I’m moving over to the 23CCG book page 12 and selecting Free Trader. There is Civilian (Trader) option listed in the STA2e core rulebook. I compared the two of them together and I can see where some things are similar and some things were changed. I think I like the Free Trader more in the 23CCG book. I wrote down the adjustments and additions to my notes.
Step Five: Experience- Stepping back to the core rulebook I elected to pick this one. Since Kraxx was new to the trading universe, he is going to be a Novice. I added the Value and Talent for the Novice to my notes.
Step Six: Career Events- I would like to note that the 23CCG does have some new Career Events based upon the historical periods of the 23rd century that were quite interesting. There was also some guidelines for the GM to create their Career Events. However, I’ll be randomly rolling from the core book and adjusting them for a non-Starfleet character such as this one. With the FASA STRPG entry the character did start merchant academy, get kicked out and was later re-admitted. So I let the dice decide. (clacking sound on table) I ended up with “Dealt with a plague” and “Lauded by another culture”. I wrote down the adjustments as per these two entries.
Step Seven: Finishing Touches- These are the same as before since I’m still in the core rulebook. I used this time to see if I could match this Kraxx up with the FASA STRPG Kraxx. I did have to wonder about him carrying a phaser. He was trained to use one on the FASA side so I gave him a Type-1 cricket phaser. Since there wasn’t a sheet for merchants (hint, hint) I used the Federation sheet.
Afterthoughts:
In one big way, the STA2e creation system is simpler. Instead of adding 5% here and 8% there to the multitude of skills listed in FASA, they are quickly added to the departments and focuses. While I do like the FASA creation system, it does take a little bit longer to complete. The 23CCG adds some additional stuff for those wishing to play a merchant campaign in STA, I feel that there could (and probably will) be more details added soon. I don’t know if this will be by the fans or the publisher.
When writing things down on the character sheet, I always seem to run out of room in some areas and have too much in others. I noticed that when looking at last year’s entry as well.
Something to note for STA players. The Multi-Tasking talent listed on page 158 of the STA2e core rulebook is different from the Mult-Tasking Edosian species talent in the new Species Sorucebook. When writing down the information on your character sheet, you may want to include the description or source to confirm what your talent abilities are.
Additional Notes:
So this completes my 31 characters in 31 days. For those of you who joined me in reaching this milestone, please email me at Carl (at) TardisCaptain dot com, on the Discord server or by your preferred method and I’ll see that you get the award graphic. Thank you for taking this journey with me and congratulations for making it this far. Even if you only got a few characters in before real life got in the way, you should still be proud of yourself. I hope you all had fun with this challenge.
I do have one more bonus character coming up before I write up my after-action report. If you liked this entry, you’ll love the next one as well.
Coming Up Next:
Special Bonus Character
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