Star Trek Adventures

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That’s enough of that, probably.
Star Trek: Adventures was a...

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I have had this for ages and never played it, I really appreciate this review.

I got a bunch of the PDFs via the Humble Bundle promotion last year, and then I bought the Starfleet core rulebook (which was the only one till the Klingon core book came out). I can't really argue with any particular point of the review, and certainly not with the writer's subjective reaction. I'd love to say that I've played it and had a great experience despite all that, but all three games I've tried to join and gotten some way with in Roll20 have fallen apart before the first session.

The layout and the choice to use white text on black backgrounds are remarkably terrible in terms of functionality and basic readability, sacrifices to some sort of "cool" aesthetic. (As a sort of admission, Modiphius even has a PDF version with no background.) The art is, as noted, strikingly inconsistent. I would single out pretty much every rendering of Klingons as especially egregious. There are too many systems, and too many similar systems. Etc.

In the right hands, though, I think the system could work reasonably well, but, as noted, the GM would have to bring a lot to it, particularly if they are less knowledgeable about ST than the players.

The Klingon core is reportedly an improvement on the rules (and it's black type on white background), but it's not really a complete replacement for the Federation-oriented one as it swaps out some mechanisms and focuses on Klingon-based campaigns (surprise!).

I have some very mixed feelings about this game.

The few games I've played of it have been all over the place. Out of three adventures played, one was quite fun, another was just fine and the third was kind of a mess. The fun one, oddly enough, was a beta test.

The system is much too crunchy for my tastes. I haven't read it, but I can't fathom it being a good fit for Conan. I also feel that Star Trek is hard enough to write for TV, creating adventures for the tabletop isn't anything I even want to attempt to do (and I love Star Trek!)

Lasers and Feelings is still the best Star Trek RPG.

I ended up switching to a Fate Accelerated hack that worked pretty well. One of the things Fate allows you to do is create aspects that can be tagged by other people for benefits. This means you can technobabble something and someone else can get bonuses off it. Doesn't matter if you don't know what it means.