When I saw these suggestions, I knew I wanted to homebrew something for Star Trek Adventures from the movie Star Trek: Nemesis. Remans had already been officially stated out in the Beta Quadrant Sourcebook. I believe that the Romulan Warbird Valdore had already been covered by another homebrew. I thought that the Type 17 “Argo” Shuttle hadn’t been covered yet and started working on that, only to find out that yes it had been created. There was an alien race called the Kolaran, but they were a pre-warp civilization, and didn’t really catch my attention for the focus of this article. After watching the movie and consulting with Memory-Alpha, I elected to homebrew the Emergency Transport Unit.
Emergency Transport Unit (Opportunity 2, Quality Hidden 1): Developed by Starfleet in 2379, the Emergency Transport Unit is a self-contained one-way portable transporter. This unit has a short range that can be used between two nearby ships or from a low orbit. A free action can be used to attach the Emergency Transport Unit to an individual and activate it. The unit only contained enough energy for one transport. The first test of the Emergency Transport Unit was performed by Lt. Commander Data to rescue Captain Picard from the Romulan warbird Scimitar.
Standard portable transporter units at the time were large and bulky. While they could be carried, they could be easily spotted according to Constable Odo. By the 32nd century, portable transporters can not only be worn, but could transport themselves along with the wearer. 24th century emergency transporter armbands are wearable controls to a transporter unit installed on a shuttle or starship.
Final Thoughts:
There were several good suggestions for this day. I imagine that a lot of DMs may want to share their favorite “Trap” setups. “Crime” is a common theme in several different RPGs, especially Gangbusters. “Found” was probably the weakest of the bunch, but I could see someone getting inspired by it.
I’ve been reading up on the Star Trek Adventures role playing game by Modiphius (I still don’t know how you pronounce that). I’ve only had one chance to play in a session and I’d love to get into an actual campaign. The 2d20 system sounds logical (no pun intended) and I can see how it would work. There are several interesting and huh tidbits about the game. One of the interesting tidbits is one of the subjects for today’s #RPGaDAY2021 challenge. “Momentum”.
When you roll your d20’s in Star Trek Adventures you have to roll under a target number (based upon your Attribute+Discipline+any variables) to earn a success. If you only needed two successes to accomplish the goal and you ended up rolling three or four, you gain what is called Momentum. For example if your character is attempting to scan an energy source on an alien device and you earn Momentum, you can spend a point or two of Momentum to gain some additional information. It is a reward for a well done roll of the dice. Momentum can also be used to create an advantage in a situation (or remove a disadvantage), add additional damage, re-roll a die, and more. The Momentum doesn’t have to be used right away. A player can elect to place it in a pool for anyone in the party to use (max number of items in the pool would be six). Thus the player can decide to help the party if they are having a bad day at rolling dice.
Game Masters have their own pool of dice, called “Threats”. If a player decides that they don’t want to spend Momentum (or they don’t have any Momentum to spend) they can request a Momentum from the GM who gains a Threat to use or place in his pool.
I thought this added an interesting twist to the game. Now if I could get a session in that actually explains how the combat system works.
Final Thoughts:
This was a much better batch of suggestions compared to the past few days. “Fun” is the primary reason we all play role playing games and there was a lot of possible topics that could have been discussed about that. I’m certain that “Limits” could have talked about some of the limits of spells or abilities in various games. “Safety” was another good one as it should be a big goal of both players and game masters.
I’ve always been a big fans of role playing in the Star Trek universe. It is an iconic series so someone will have at least some basic knowledge of it. Plus another geeky activity that Star Trek & SF fans like to do is compare the characters/ships/equipment for series to series or even franchise to franchise (OK, Worf with a Bat’leth vs Chewbacca with his Bowcaster, who would win?) The statistics in role playing games gave fans a chance to at least put these questions in a frame of reference. So when Star Trek Adventures by Modiphius was announced, I was really intrigued. Yes I know that the Klingon Core Rulebook is shown in the picture, but I’m not planning to make a Klingon character as I’m still reading the book. My FLGS just barely got it in stock and my wife got it for a late Christmas present. I was so excited I just had to have it in the picture for this Character Creation Challenge entry.
Stivon is a male Vulcan Science Officer serving on the USS Tacoma, an Excelsior-Class starship during the 2290’s (around the time of Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country). In STA you have six attributes. Control (How the character controls themselves both physically and mentally. Think dexterity plus focused mind), Fitness (Physical strength, health and endurance), Insight (Understanding others people, their feelings, your self-awareness and wisdom), Presence (Charisma and diplomacy basically) and Reason (Logic, learning and observation). Characters also have six Disciplines. These are Command (Leadership skills), Conn (Piloting skills), Engineering (Fix things and build things skills), Security (Shoot and don’t be shot skills), Science (Understanding things around us skills) and Medicine (Fix up character skills). In the game when facing a challenge the GM will tell you to add an Attribute with a Discipline to come up with a target number that you need to roll under. You roll at least 2d20 (or more if you can pull them from a pool) and each roll under your target number counts as a success. Some more difficult tasks may require a certain number of success in order to succeed the task.
Each character starts with 7 in all Attributes and 1 in each Discipline. Then you go through a “Life Path” creation process with opportunities to add to both Attributes and Disciplines until you get the end. Each character will end up with a maximum of 56 points in Attributes and 16 points in Disciplines. You will also end up with some history, Values, Talents and Focuses. The history gives your GM some possible plot points to use in the game later. The Values are something your character believes in represented in a short quote (example: I’ll give Stivon “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.”) The Value can be used in gameplay to gain extra dice to roll or other bonuses if applied at the appropriate time. Focuses are specialized skills (such as Cybernetics or Small Craft Piloting, etc.). These give you additional die or other bonuses during play. Talents are items that come naturally to your character through it’s development (such as Mind Meld or Neck Pinch) but may have specific requirements (Vulcan only, etc.). As with Focuses and Talents, they add bonuses to gameplay and flesh out the character.
Stivon was born and raised on the planet Vulcan so he gains the advantages from this environment. While I selected the homeworld for Stivon’s environment, I randomly rolled for the upbringing which resulted in Artistic & Creative. The RAW state that my character could be accepting or rebelling against the upbringing. Stivon’s parents were musicians so in being accepting, he grew up with the logic of how music was created.
Next Stivon entered Starfleet Academy. He wanted to explore more of this universe and was torn between the path he choose and the Vulcan Science Academy. Eventually the opportunity to see music from other cultures was the deciding factor in selecting Starfleet. This resulted in additional values, attributes, disciplines, focuses and talents. I decided that Stivon would be an experienced officer (other than young officer or veteran officer) and added the value and talent from that step.
There are at least two career events that can happen to a Starfleet Officer durring their many tours that are randomly rolled. These can create plot points for the GM to use as well as adding attributes, disciplines and focuses. For my first event, Stivon discovered an artifact from an extinct civilization. While on Rolvath Prime, Stivon discovered a device that allowed two individuals to instantaneously share each other’s history in a matter of seconds. While this gave a young Caitian ensign a vast appreciation of music, Stivon was unnerved by the encounter in experiencing the family history of many siblings. For the second career event, Stivon was mentored. Inspired by the first event I decided that Stivon would seek out a Vulcan officer to help him meditate and calm his mind. He took ten months of leave on Vulcan and studied various techniques to return his mind to normalcy. While he felt confident enough to resume his duties, he now understands Caitian history and culture.
The finishing touches wrapped up Stivon’s stats, stress value, damage bonus, department position and assigned equipment. The character sheet is posted below.
Afterthoughts:
With other entries in the Character Creation Challenge, I only used the primary rulebook to create the character. After creating a Star Trek Adventures character last month for an upcoming campaign I elected to use a fan-made character creation guide just because it was all laid out step-by-step. The STA core rulebook has a lot of good rules in it, spread out in different sections. The character creation guide quickly pointed me directly to the page numbers I needed to see. As I mentioned above, I just picked up the new Klingon core rulebook. I’ve heard that it is better organized (I’ll check that soon). I can say that I’m very happy that the Klingon book design was dark text on white pages. The black pages with white and orange text was very hard on the eyes. The character creation process reminded me a little of the FASA Star Trek system. I think if I create a bunch of new characters the system will make a little bit more sense to me. I’m really interested in creating stats for characters we see in the expanded Star Trek universe.
I almost forgot to mention, technically I was suppose to create two characters for STA for a campaign. A secondary character just in case the session doesn’t call for your primary character. An away team is heading down to the planet to rescue the hostages? Instead of the player with the science officer being bored while his character is stuck on the ship, he just grabs his secondary character that is a lower ranked security officer and continues with the game. I thought this was an excellent idea.
Additional Notes:
I have not discovered any new blogs displaying new characters today. But there is an active hashtag in social media for #CharacterCreationChallenge which has been getting used a lot. There is also a lot of players participating in the challenge on the RPG.net message board.
