#making a set of pregens for if i ever run this again

[patchoulimodelo]

i will again reiterate that city of mist is a good system to make characters for

[thesoundofplunder-blog]

Conan by Modiphius Games

Ever since I first saw Arnold Schwarzenegger swinging a sword in all of his muscled glory, Conan the Barbarian has fascinated me.  It was one of those films that I learned to appreciate anew when I grew up and realized how much effort must have gone into making that film, and how awful it might have been, yet wasn’t.  If you want to know how bad it could have been, look no further than its sequel, Conan the Destroyer, which killed the franchise faster than a broadsword to the face.

Ok, it actually could have been worse - there are plenty of movies in the genre that were.

But Conan the Barbarian was superb, and while it may not have been completely faithful to the original stories of Conan by Robert E. Howard, I feel like the stories owe a lot to the film for introducing a generation of impressionable moviegoers to Howard’s work.

And while I was too young to have seen it at the cinema (I wasn’t actually born yet), I will one day look back and say that I’m old enough to remember when Modiphius Entertainment released the Conan roleplaying game using the 2D20 system.

I’ve let the cat out of the bag now - if you read no further, then at least know that I like this game.  A lot.  If you’re still reading, then let me explain why.

Also allow me to preface the rest of this review with the fact that I’ve only run the quick start adventures - one found on the publisher’s website, and one given away for Free RPG Day 2017.

To Race The Thunder

I downloaded the quick start PDF, To Race The Thunder, from Modiphius’ website a couple of weeks ago, and in between my day job, preparing for two job interviews, running two Savage Worlds games and spending quality time with my wife and kids, I managed to read through the rules and get a feel for the game.  At that point, it still seemed complicated to me, and I thought perhaps I’d bitten off more than I could chew by agreeing to run it for Free RPG Day.

But I arranged for Thom, a good friend of mine, to come over on a Saturday night, and rather than watching England beat Argentina in the rugby, we pretended he was an adventurer in Hyboria while I threw Pictish barbarians his way.  The adventure was ideally designed for 4-6 players, so Thom taking on the Pictish horde on his own had some hilarious consequences.  For instance, I described how the enemies were swarming over a homestead, trapping the family inside, then checked how many there were exactly: 3 for each character.  Oh.  There are three.  They are swarming.  All three of them.

The other hilarious consequence (although I’m sure Thom will disagree) was that in 3 hours of gameplay, 4 characters met their grisly end.  Thom would then pick up a new pregen, who would wander down the road and find the body of the last poor sap to play at being a hero.  It’s a system that feels brutal, but very appropriate to the setting.  When I later played the Free RPG Day quick start - The Pit of Kutallu - there were 4 players, and one still died, kicked to death by pirates.  Players have to learn that things can go very bad, very quickly.

Momentum

I won’t go into detail on the game mechanics, since you can download the PDF and read for yourself.  But I will talk about what seems to be the universally most loved element of the system, Momentum, as well as its counterpart, Doom.

Many systems have some sort of mechanic for what to do when a player rolls above and beyond what they need to succeed.  For instance, in Savage Worlds, when you get a raise on your attack, you deal an extra 1d6 damage.  In Conan, you generate Momentum - tokens that you can use to make things go your way.  This includes rolling extra dice (to increase your chances of success), dealing extra damage, and almost anything you can think of.  If you generate Momentum and don’t use it, it goes into a shared pot that any player can draw from in a moment of need.

Conan is pretty rules light, which I love.  Rather than having a rule for every different thing the players might want to do, the game encourages you to use Momentum.  Want to disarm your opponent?  Use Momentum.  Want to swing on a rope and kick the pirate captain into the sea?  Use Momentum.

The GM has his own resource, too.  It’s called DOOM!  When you need Momentum but there is none in the shared pool, you can instead pay the GM Doom to achieve your goals.  This means it will come back to bite you later, but works surprisingly well at rewarding proactive players.  If your back is to the wall, paying the GM 3 Doom to roll an extra 3 dice on your attack usually pays off - the extra successes you are likely to generate end up as Momentum, so that the needle swings back in your favour.

And certainly the needle does swing,  Wildly.  In the two games I ran, the players would find themselves devoid of Momentum while I sat on a mound of Doom.  A few rounds later and our roles were reversed.  The key way of generating Doom during combat seemed to be reactions, which brings me to the other thing I love about this system.

Reactions

In most systems, defending yourself from harm is a pretty passive experience.  You load up on armour, toughness, parry, or whatever your system calls it, and hope that your opponent does not exceed that number.  While this often represents your character ducking and weaving or actively blocking blows, it becomes uninteresting for the player being hit.

Conan does away with that.  You can choose not to defend yourself, in which case your opponent only needs 1 success to hit you.  This is a good way to get killed quickly.  Alternatively, you can choose to gift 1 Doom to the GM and perform a defense reaction, in which you roll against your parry skill to try and cancel out your opponents successes.  This feels MUCH closer to how parrying should be, especially since parry is a separate skill from fighting, meaning that you can be good at landing blows, but not very good at defending yourself from harm.

And every time you want to defend yourself in the same round, it costs you 1 more Doom than last time.  As a result, most characters will get 1 free parry from carrying a sword or having the right ability, making it easy enough to defend yourself from a single opponent.  But as soon as you find yourself under attack from 3-4 opponents, it starts costing 6-10 Doom every turn just to counter your opponents attacks.  At this point you get the sense that it you don’t deal with them quickly, you are doomed (quite literally).  Even if you do get hit, certain items like shields allow you to actively try and soak the damage, rolling to cancel out damage that would be dealt to you.  Making the player roll dice when they are under attack increases the sense that they are in some measure of control, rather than waiting to be told how many hit points they lose.

Conclusion

This was a short review for a short experience of the game.  I haven’t tried magic, character creation, or any of the stuff that turns this into a campaign rather than a one off adventure.  But just looking at the one off adventure, I was very impressed by what I saw.  My players were equally enthused, talking about the Momentum swing after the game had finished and eager to try again.  That’s when you know you’re onto a winner.  For my players, they didn’t care so much that this was the world in which Conan "trod the jewelled thrones of the earth beneath his sandalled feet”.  They were raving about how fast and frenetic the game was.  What is best in life?  To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentation of the GM!

[derkastellan]

Dos and Don’ts of Hosting a Con Game

Yesterday I’ve played in a con again, and even though the cons I have managed to attend were rather small and  informal affairs (as opposed to the ones in the Anglo-Saxon world) there’s still some observations that could be useful for most anyone hosting a game. While I usually GM I like cons to meet people and play, not necessarily to have to pull it all together. I have hosted on cons and it has been enjoyable, too, so knowing both sides of the issue is good. Still, in the last few years attending cons has been a big part of my exposure to the player side of things and the things I’m trying to address should be useful for GMs trying to reach players.

As I am saying, these cons were small, informal affairs. Don’t expect me talking about how to best plan for a 4 hour con slot since these cons simply didn’t abide by that convention and neither never had I to do that. This is not an article about how to provide a three-act structure in one game session or something like that. With these words of introduction, let’s dive in.

Know your audience 

The last game I joined yesterday had a complete newbie plus someone who was playing for his friends’ sake plus another newbie, second session in. Basically there were three new-to-the-hobby people in the group, comprising half of the actual players.

This calls for structure and restraining choice a bit, simply because people need orientation. If you just come prepared to do what you came up as your original plan then this is not necessarily a recipe for disaster, but it’s not a recipe for greatness, either. I noticed the two newbies with the least exposure to roleplaying to stay mostly quiet because their characters were not involved. Find occasions to spotlight them in non-overwhelming ways.

The things you can do with a jaded group of long-time players and a group of newbies are very different. In a con you have to explore the group contract and limits rather quickly unless you are fine with running a completely conventional game with the most simple engagements. I personally enjoy playing with newbies both as GM and as a player. But you need to prepare to nanny a bit and show the way.

Don’t encourage antagonism

Same game as in the previous section. Several newbs at the table. The GM has his wife in as a 2nd player with system knowledge. I usually think that is a very smart move for running with people new to any system, the experienced player acting as a second source of system knowledge and guidance.

I was put off, however, by her almost instant encouragement of bickering and antagonism. It’s one thing to tell a player that there is really not much anything they can do wrong. It’s a wholly ‘nother thing setting up an antagonistic group dynamic before the first die is thrown.

Most RPGs are games of cooperation and problem-solving. A certain amount of player antagonism and banter will happen, and a con is not a good place to demand serious in-character interactions - your players don’t know the world, they often don’t know each other. Everything is new. Cooperating under challenging circumstances is not easy. Consider the behavior of your NPCs - are they antagonistic? Is the world hostile? Are players confronted with hard or impossible-seeming or frustrating problems? The more of these you have, the more antagonistic the group will become anyway. Bickering and in-fighting and “Why don’t you do something?” will result. Such a dynamic is difficult to control and such a game difficult to hold on to. It leaves me baffled why anybody would encourage this to happen.

So, the GM aide player is usually a Good Thing (TM). Except here it wasn’t. Her whole character concept was based on being a stubborn and combative dwarf following a warrior goddess. There was a constant barrage of “Did you just insult me?” or “I’ll cut you off at the kneecaps.” I can tolerate a fair amount of banter and dish it out and receive, but I was getting tired, worn down, and irritated. I bowed out of the game and left in spite of wanting to spend more time with most of the people at the table. I was seriously wondering if I could get rid of her character altogether. If you have such a player and you’re not the GM you usually don’t have much options - usually they end up playing a tank - making them unassailable in many systems by other group members - or a role they group needs like the healer. Worse, if it’s the GM aide or a significant other, you’re out of options. 

I recommend for anyone in such a situation to leave a game table. When you start contemplating getting rid of another PC you know things have soured for you. You can also openly complain and demand adjustments. Criticism is certainly warranted here. But this late into the evening nobody is at their mature best, I sure wasn’t and so I didn’t.

I have another example to add but it serves as a good demonstration of another principle, so here it comes...

Watch out for cliques

Chances are that several people at your table know each other. Entering a game is often easier when knowing someone else, so you bring a friend. Or several. Unless all of your players are from one clique the round will fill up with "outsiders.”

Cliques can be great if they are inclusive. Hell, I had a wonderful time yesterday, I felt part of a group I’ve never met before. Good people!

But... Last year I joined a group a friend was hosting at a con. I made a bit of a silly character concept - a fat elf bard. It was meant to break the ice, being after all the odd one out in that setup. Quickly NPCs were antagonizing me, and within no time about two out of the clique abused me too, taking it as implicit permission from the GM’s behavior to do the same. The fact that the adventure was challenging, the NPCs all extremely antagonistic, one player too drunk to really follow, and the “group leader” too dense to actually pick up on the events in-game made it all spiral out of control. 

The signs were written in ten foot letters on the wall. Player vs Player abuse. The group split. Nobody was cooperating anymore. The resolution came about in a chaotic and haphazard way and as a total surprise to half of the group. 

The things is: A GM cannot simply stir a pot and watch. PvP is okay if all are okay with it. But there are restraints and limits, and it’s up to the GM to actually manage them, to check if somebody feels left out or openly antagonized, if players opt out or openly oppose the group. I was playing the fat elf bard the second time that day, having one good and one bad experience. And I consider this one as a thoroughly bad one. It’s one thing trying to subvert a stereotype (graceful, haughty elves) and another to being openly abused by other players. I’m obese. It stopped being fun very quickly. I don’t see having a character with a quirk or flaw as a reason to call open season on them. 

Inclusive cliques can give a game a great bond that allows exploring, playing around with banter and fun. Exclusive cliques make people feel left out or worse.This is also an encouragement for players to include others. Do not just talk to your friends, do include others. It’s not only the job of the GM to make a good, inclusive round.

Keep it simple

There are systems suitable for con playing and some are simply... a lot less suitable. The more options and things you have to explain, the worse. Dungeon World is a great con game because it was tailored to make playable characters by making a few choices that you can tick in check boxes or select from very short, compact lists. It’s one of the few games I’d ever run where I will allow character creation at the table anytime, anywhere.

Warhammer Fantasy we played with rolling the character creation and since we had time and everybody opted into that it was also fine and added to the fun. In comparison, the Palladium character sheets of pregens took a long time to explain. That’s a red flag for me. People can tell me that they love a game so much but when I see three different intelligence stats on a character sheet and somebody struggles a bit to explain me the difference, then I know that was a poor choice for a con.

Few or no cryptic abbrevations are a good sign. “AR comes into play when the opposition rolls between 6 and your AR and then your (other cryptic acronym) is reduced instead of your HP” is definitely bad sign.

I’m a fan of old school play but I have to say that “You roll under for this, you roll over for this, and this is rolled only for thieves on another set of dice” is not a good resolution system to have to explain at a con. Still, if there are few stats and you are well-prepared to say “roll this”, “roll that”, “you are good at this”, or “your chance for making this roll is really low, it is essentially beyond you” then systems with a few quirks can be managed. If push came to shove I would chose running Labyrinth Lord (the rules of 80s Basic Dungeons & Dragons with a tiny bit of streamlining) any day over a stat monster like Palladium simply because the cognitive load for the players can be extremely manageable.

Don’t (ever, ever, ever, ..., ever) hand out a shopping list (ever)

I seriously dread handing a list of anything to players. As soon as a few lists are involved, somebody will bend over it and an hour is lost in no time. Why is the character creation in Mouse Guard one of the slowest I’ve ever experienced in a game I picked up for a limited set of testing sessions? Because there are lists of skills and traits and talents everywhere. One player starts to cross-reference and compare. There’s always at least one. It’s a law of the known universe.

A con is no place for a list. If a player thinks they need a special kind of equipment, say yes if it doesn’t ruin game balance or seems reasonable, say no else. Fudge the money. Money is a vague motivation and reward, not something to track in a con game. In my experience most systems don’t even have anything sensible to buy if you have enough money, anyway. Give everybody reasonable gear to bring along, ignore food rations, kick off the game. Don’t expect groups to bring the perfect gear of their own, don’t penalize people for trying to figure out a game they’ve never played before and can’t reliably gauge.

I’ve made the mistake of indulging a relentless shopper in a home game. I won’t repeat that at a con.

Keep the group size down

We were seven players to one GM. There’s some serious logistical problems to such a setup. On any rectangular table this usually means one player at one end, GM at the other, 3 at each side. (I personally would not sit at the end in such a setup, preferring to be in the middle, but I digress.) This means the players at the corners have serious problems interacting with each other, especially those at the same side. For purely logistical reasons therefore 5 players are a much better maximum - you never have another player between you at the same side. (To make matters worse, GM and GM aide had the ends, making her stand out and taking a prime spot from another player.) 

Issues that crept up were that players at the far end didn’t hear the GM or engaged in separate conversation. This is normal for bigger groups, everyone wants to be engaged but there is too little GM time and spotlight to go around. More active players hog spotlight, newbies and introverts tend to fall by the wayside. Combats, in turn, end up having more opposition and longer turns, guaranteeing longer periods between players being engaged.

I would personally violate my five player limit only for exceptional reasons, like if not including someone would mean they are the odd one left out or go home. Small cons often require compromise, but if I have that many people I try to engage them, keep things simple. I had larger groups than 7 even and they become unmanageable in no time.

Restrict the archetypes & prepare for those you allow

GMs often like to demonstrate the variety of a system and bring many archetypes. The problem of group size can escalate this - everybody wants a well-defined niche to quickly build a character on, so more archetypes are needed. This is why authors of simple fiction starring groups often stop at about five characters to give each of them a clear archetype. In teenage fiction somebody is the cool kid, somebody the smart one, someone the sports nut, etc. If you have two of the same type this is often results to in-story rivalry or another relationship requiring them to work together.

But hey, you are at a con. Giving everybody a niche and a stereotype gives everybody a quick way to define a character. (Rivalries and other relationships pretty much require players to know each other which you can’t rely on.) I’ve seen many drunken dwarven tanks over the years and while one can easily get jaded and tired of stereotypes, these things are easy to pick up and run with. 

That said, not all archetypes are created equal. For different reasons, too. Spot your problematic archetypes and be aware of your restrictions. If tanks are nigh-unstoppable in your system compared to support characters, tanks become a problem in the hand of bullies. If a player feels bullied and helpless to respond, you as GM need to spot this and sort it out quickly before a bad dynamic develops. Bully tanks badly spoil con games quickly.

(Yes, I’m actually talking about thieves from here on till the next sub-heading.)

But this is a social dynamic problem. Beyond that, each archetype has a role to play and demands certain scenes to engage. If you include a “thief” archetype be prepared for players to want to steal stuff. Seriously. Thieves have been among the most problematic stereotypes of all times because they tend to solo, tend to antagonize other players, involve the group in unwanted trouble, and encourage selfish play. Include them at your own risk!

Allowing a thief opens Pandora’s Box because it is like giving license for certain behavior. The original thief archetype is modeled on adventurous types with a rogue-ish character, not career criminals. They also survive because groups in games like Dungeons & Dragons have needs of their skills for getting through locked doors, accessing treasures, scouting. But the skill set also is prone to abuse, breaking down group cohesion and cooperation, and disrupting the adventure.

You see, a certain reliance on a preconceived plot is a huge boon in con games. But even in your home campaign players will probably get tired of being run out of town from every civilized place they enter because Mr Longfingers’ first request is a pick-pocket roll in the market square. Having a thief in the group is a social contract that I would always make explicit and ask other players about, letting that player know what the group is okay with. And voting him off the island should be allowed if the contract breaks down.

(Yes, still going on about thieves. And spotlight. Do spotlight!)

But hey, when it comes to problematic archetypes, the thief has even further drawbacks! (Oh boy...) You see, if you are a newbie player or had trouble picking a suitable character, you often struggle to define your character, to flesh them out. So, newbies tend to look on their sheet, see what they are supposed to be good at, and try to do that. If your skills are pick-pocket, open lock, and stabbing people in the back, people often take the shortest route and play a selfish scoundrel, not a heroic glorified door-opener. Everyone wants to shine, but not everyone has the same definition thereof.

But this is not about chiding players, this is about making clear some of the potential problems for GMs. It’s not only about excluding problematic archetypes. Certain games require certain roles to be filled. Prepare to spotlight them in a sensible way. Thieves engaged in helpful stuff are much more likely to play along and cooperate, if not, let them know that the group has them along for a reason. Even if that means pointing out they are at times a glorified door-opener. Nobody made them pick the thief unless you brought only as many pregens as characters. A group can tolerate easily several differently-equipped tanks but maybe not even one ill-conceived and -played thief.

Realize that each role requires being engaged. Don’t bring a group predominantly consisting of tanks to a tea and biscuits murder investigation. And if you have a thief and they need to think they have to steal everywhere, resolve it with a few sentences and a roll and move on. 

But don’t bring a pregen archetype and then simply refuse them any spotlight. A player picked a thief (again, 7 players require many, many niches...) but the adventure was mostly wilderness. One could rely mostly on playing an interesting made-up persona, but again this was a newb. And in the only city he was told that stealing would earn him being nailed to the wall by the thieves guild. Nothing makes a player feel like being a burger-flipper in the vegan beach resort than being denied playing to one’s strengths. Very few players would rise to such a challenge in a sensible way. It amounts to playing an impossible character.

Quickly establish a simple group contract

Just because you have a strong idea what your game and system are about, players don’t. If you do dark fantasy, do include a disclaimer. Explain what that means. If you offer archetypes like assassin make sure the group agrees what is okay to them. You can’t combine a group of fluffy bunnies with somebody sacrificing goats (or worse) for his demonic rituals.

People will come in not knowing what to expect, or with potentially a lot of expectations. If you run counter to common expectations of a game - like a D&D game with no combat encounters or an extremely morally upright organization everyone is a member of in a dark fantasy setting, then you invite trouble if you don’t spell it out. Be prepared for people to leave after the intro. Challenging expectations is best done openly and early on instead of having a group blow up halfway in or near the end.

Give players information, establish if everybody is comfortable with what will be likely going down, and if needed establish a limit and let anybody go that does not agree to it. Nobody has to join a game they find boring, and no GM should have to endure a player who acts out because they came in with different engagements than were filled in the end.

Reflect on your mistakes

Some of these should have been no-brainers. When you play at a con you play with strangers. There’s a very limited amount of trust and safety when compared to more stable groups. There’s also limited time.

In this context, many of these previous guidelines should be almost self-evident. Does anybody truly enjoy being antagonized and belittled in front of strangers? Do you? Don’t make it an element of your game. People don’t go to games to be bullied or antagonized. Nobody goes to a con to be exposed to a one-hour character building session for a few hours of play, either. 

People want a quick payoff, they want to experience something, they want a reasonable safe environment. They want to be involved. 

Every GM has to learn how to do these things. To be a good con GM you need  to make these your priorities. Use the game to build the group since you cannot rely on the group to do it for you - you just don’t have the time for this to happen. Be in the driver seat until you see players are picking up the reins, then manage.

Above all, observe and self-improve. Cons are great for learning about playing with different people. I’ve played with high school students and old school greybeards. I’ve played with rule nerds and story gamers. Hosting many groups helps broaden the horizon and this kind of experience will help put the ongoing things with your home groups into perspective. It’s good to know what’s out there. And it’s good for the hobby to expose people to it and them in turn to different GMs.

For players cons are opportunities - to try new systems, to risk things in one-shots, to try a different concept of themselves. Such training grounds need to be reasonably safe and trustworthy. No better service can be done to your favorite system or hobby.

[gamethyme]

<i>Star Trek Adventures</i>

It hasn't come up much, here, but I am a huge fan of Star Trek.  When I was younger, I was very much the stereotypical Trekkie. I was rarely found without at least one Star Trek novel in my backpack, I could ID a dozen or so classes of starship (both Federation and hostile), and I could rattle off numbers and statistics and trivia like nobody's business.  I was obsessed. So it's appropriate that the first RPG book I ever owned was for FASA's old Star Trek: The Roleplaying Game. The book was the Star Trek: The Next Generation Officer's Manual, and I owned it long before I owned a copy of the game. I didn't even know it was a game book (and neither did my parents, or I would never have acquired it ...). One of my first gaming experiences was with FASA's game. I won't say it was a good game, but it wasn't bad. We were handed pregens by the GM, and we went from there into a more-or-less typical D&D-style hack-and-slash adventure with phasers instead of crossbows and Klingons instead of orcs and so on.  It was oddly dissatisfying even at the time, because this isn't what Star Trek was about. A few years later, I acquired a copy of the game, and I even ran a few brief campaigns. I tended to base the campaign premises off of some of the novels (which still, I think, was not a bad idea - depending on the novel). One of my favorite games was set on the USS Excalibur (before the M-5 insident as seen in "The Ultimate Computer"), and I based it on the novel The Abode of Life (which I need to re-read to see if it's held up as well as I remember). I loved character generation in the game. The guided lifepath was a great way to handle it, and it allowed for a great deal of diversity in characters (and skill levels). I read somewhere that Gene Roddenberry also really liked the lifepath process, and made it a condition of the license for future Star Trek roleplaying games. Fast forward a decade or so, and Last Unicorn released Star Trek: The Next Generation Roleplaying Game. Mechanically, it was very different from the old FASA game. Its production values were very different. Instead of three little blue books, it was one glossy hardcover book that was quite a bit thicker than the three blue books combined. And it still had a lifepath for character generation. They also published a Deep Space Nine game, and a classic 'Trek version. I never actually got to play LUG's version of the game. The friend who was going to run a campaign dropped off the face of the earth before the campaign started. And then the license expired and someone else picked up the ball and ran with it. Decipher, who I knew from the TNG collectible card game, had snagged the license after LUG was bought by WotC and lost it. Decipher's Trek was similar to LUG's in presentation, but it was two hardcovers (at first), one for players and one for the GM. It still had a lifepath, but the system was almost d20, only with multiple d6s instead of a single d20. I bought it. I read it. I ... wasn't interested in playing it. It just ... didn't feel right. Last year, Modiphius announced that they had acquired the license. They did a huge open playtest (that I did not participate in), and early reviews were ... pretty good.  So I did a bit of research, and I discovered that they'd be using their house system - the 2d20 system. I grabbed Mutant Chronicles (another universe that I have a deep fondness for), and started to learn the system. And I was ... nervous. The 2d20 system has a lot of moving pieces, with multiple player currencies in play.  I didn't understand how this system was getting such rave reviews for Star Trek. I backed Conan on Kickstarter, and it's that same system. And Conan was ... okay. Not amazing, not game-breaking. Still a bit clunky with all those currencies to keep track of. My fear for Star Trek grew. But I resolved to pre-order anyhow. When the pre-order went lived, we bought in that first day. GM Screen + limited-edition core book.  A short time later, we had the PDF (because Modiphius is really good at getting the PDF out there). And I read the PDF. Devoured the PDF. It's still recognizably the 2d20 system, but it's both streamlined and altered. Where Mutant Chronicles has a sizable skill list, Star Trek Adventures has six skills, and they related to the various departments found on a starship - Command, Conn, Medical, Science, Security, and Engineering. Want your character's stats to be more detailed than that? Use a Focus to narrow it down. This change streamlines the system quite a bit, and, at the same time, results in the sort of hypercompetent characters you tend to see in Star Trek. Star Trek Adventures also added character values. They're almost like Aspects in Fate - they define your character, and you can pull a couple of mechanical tricks with them, too. This increases the feel of Star Trek. It means that the game is about your characters' beliefs and goals and - yes - values, just like the TV series and movies have been. The more I drilled into the PDF, the more excited I got. Your ship is treated like another character, with its own separate character generation process. You're not limited to the eight PC species included in the core book, and they give a few guidelines for creating your own species. It's simple enough to homebrew ship classes that you find elsewhere. There are still a few currencies for players to keep track of - they can spend Momentum or add Threat to the GM's pool or spend Determination on a roll, and some of these things go to party pools and some go to the GM's pool and some are just ... spent. It's not a completely intuitive system (like I'd prefer), but it's solid and seems functional without a huge number of "Gotcha" bits. My good friend Wade went to GenCon this year, and he texted me on Thursday morning. Modiphius' first sale of the day was a copy of the core book. For me. "But Eric," I can hear you saying, "Didn't you already buy the limited edition book?"  Yes. I did. But I am a player who likes having multiple copies of the core rules at the table. That way, the GM has one to reference, and so do the players. If there's a rules question in the game, there are two sets looking for it. With PDFs, I can hand both physical copies to my players and search the PDF, resulting in three sets of eyes looking to answer questions. The only real bad thing about Star Trek Adventures is that it's sucked me back into Star Trek fandom. And not a little bit, either. I am all the way back in. I went out to the garage and I dug out Mr. Scott's Guide to the Enterprise, and my Star Trek Technical Manual and my Star Trek: The Next Generation Technical Manual and half a dozen other "in universe" books with varying levels of canon compliance. I filled my Kindle with novels and novellas. And I started playing Star Trek Online (which - for the record - could do with a decent help guide for the PS4 version). And I've decided to run a campaign again. But, looking at advancement in Star Trek Adventures, I think it'll work really well for a new-to-me structure of game. What I'm doing right now is assembling a player pool. A large one. More players than any GM ever wants around their table.  When I have an episode idea, I'll figure out when I have time to run it, and I'll send a message to my players. That message will read something like this:

Season 1, Episode 1: "Pilot, Pilot, Who's Got The Pilot?"

The Tethys' new helmsman has disappeared in transit to the ship. It's up to an away team in a runabout to follow his path and figure out what happened to him. 

This episode is for four to six players, and will be played on Date at Time.

 Then I wait.  The first six players who let me know they're available at that date and time will be the featured characters for that episode. If I don't get at least four players for that time, I go back to my calendar, figure out a different date and time, and try again. Most of the advancement in this game is small. "Lower one number to raise another." That means that if Player A makes it to 15 sessions and Player B only makes it to two or three sessions, there won't be an overwhelming experience advantage for Player A. And it feels "in universe" accurate to have different characters featured periodically. It also means that grown-up players with busy lives who can't make a regularly-scheduled game very often should have no problem still fitting around my table occasionally. So thanks, Modiphius. I look forward to exploring the galaxy with you. from Blogger http://ift.tt/2goSa52 via IFTTT