Review: Star Trek: The Next Generation Role Playing Game
by Christian Moore, Ross Isaacs, Kenneth Hite and Steve Long
Published by Last Unicorn Games

Review originally appeared on Compuserve RPGForum, submitted here by Jack Gulick

Reviewed by The Ghoul

Let's say, for purposes of argument, that you had just come upon the rights to do a Star Trek RPG.

And let's also suppose that you know Star Trek fans to be among the most loyal, devoted and detail-oriented fans around, well known for their willingness to debate minutia about their beloved series for hours on end.

And let's also suppose you know that there was a Star Trek RPG in the past, one that did fairly well but upset many Trek fans by being ridden with holes, major and minor, frequently disloyal to its source and, in general, not very much like Star Trek.

And, one last assumption. Let's assume you know that the design of an RPG for publication is, on average, a 12-18 month task, allowing time for playtesting, revisions, and all those other things, and the design of a licensed game must also allow for review by the licenser, adding sometimes a lot more time to that.

Given all of these things, would you then rush your licensed game to market in less than half a year with less than 40 playtesters after taking enough license with the source that your first words in the book will be an apology for taking liberties with the series canon?

If you say no, you're obviously not a representative of Last Unicorn Games, because they did just this, with predictably bad results.

I'll be blunt, this is a bad game. Its production quality is decent (though the layout is wasteful of space, the proofreading is wretched and some of the captured stills are either re-used or not from the titular series), its mechanics are transparently unworkable and inappropriate, its character design rules are inadequate and its presentation of the Star Trek world baldly contradicts explicit statements within the series.

Let's do things one at a time.

The book opens by presenting the timeline from 1992 to 2368. Yeah, it's a familiar Trek problem that the original series placed a major war between humans and a genetically enhanced army led by Kahn Noonian Singh should already be over, and no effort is made to explain the fact that none of us noticed. It's odd that they don't address this, because they're perfectly happy to spend quite a bit of time explaining the role of money in the Federation and in Starfleet despite the fact that the series tells us there is no such thing (to which the Ferengi react in horror).

The opening chapters feature a lot of cut-and-paste work, some quite obvious, especially when nearly identical paragraphs on Betazoid history appear in the left- and right-hand columns of page 31. And if you're surprised by the 3/4ths of a page of white space at the end of the first chapter or by the chapter-opening two-page empty bridge picture (only one page of which ever features any text), get used to it. That sort of space-wasting is the chosen style of this book.

Mixed in with the pure background info are several interesting hints for GM's (called Narrators) and players, though they mostly consist of telling players who don't like working within chains of command to find another game (good advice) and to review violations of Starfleet regulations with the PC's (in the role of NPC senior officers) after each mission, but excuse said violations if it all turned our all right in the end (loyal to the series, but just how long can such bald hypocrisy last as Starfleet policy?).

This done, we get into rules for character generation. These rules take a long time to present, far longer than the simplistic characters they produce needed. There are three different generation methods, but one (picking 7 pre-designed sample 'archetypes' and adding 5 points of personalization) is trivial and all but useless... though 4 full pages are used to present it. The next method is a long, complex series of template selection. You chose a race template, a profession template (called an "overlay"), then an early life history template, an academy life history template, a first tour of duty template and then, optionally, additional tour of duty templates (though later ones are worth only half as much as the first). All of the background templates also allow you to just buy an equivalent point value's worth of skills or abilities, though the points given for any one background template are minuscule, from 5 to 10, while the fixed race and overlay templates are 50 and 54 points, respectively. The third and final option is just to spend 125 points and buy what you want, which sounds like it should have the most explanation given to it, but in fact is barely two paragraphs.

What makes up a character? There are 5 attributes, Fitness, Coordination, Intellect, Presence, and Psi and they range from 1 to 6 (though the book says 0 to 5, no PC can ever have a 0 and while Humans are limited to 5's, more than half the races can go to 6 in at least one attribute). In addition, each attribute is linked to two "edges", so Fitness breaks into Strength and Vitality, Coordination into Dexterity and Reaction, Intellect into Logic and Perception, Presence into Willpower and Empathy and Psi into Range and Focus. Edges are rated from -2 to +2 and, except for the Psi edges, serve to modify the base attribute, so that a character with Fitness 5 (Strength -2) is, effectively, Strength 3. Oddly, however, the rules always refer to this a Fitness 5 (Strength -2) not Strength 3, which results in an unneeded level of confusion.

Characters also have skills, rated from 1 to 5 (though they mention that ratings of 6 are possible with experience). Most skills also have specializations, sub-skills at which the character is one rating (or perhaps more) better. Skills are really the centerpiece of this game since, as we'll find, attributes don't matter much once you're at or above 3. And, appropriately for this mechanic, skills cost more than attributes (3 points per level of skill, while attributes cost only 2 points per level and edges only 1, though you're arbitrarily limited in the number of edges you can buy). Characters also have advantages and disadvantages, most of which are *amazingly* cheap relative to attributes or skills.

What's missing from character generation? Lots. Of the 7 ST:TNG regulars shown on the front of the book's cover, only one (Geordi) could actually be designed as a starting character (and then only as he was in the opening episodes). 4 of the others are too high a rank (the rules for buying rank exist, but are arbitrarily locked away from player use) and there are no rules at all for creating Data (reasonable, he is all but unique) or Worf. Yes, that's right, the ST:TNG RPG left out rules for Klingon PC's. And, just to rub it in, they left space that *could* have held the Klingon race template blank (there are 7 race templates given and the remaining 1/4th of the 2nd page given to this holds only filler art) *and* they referred to the Klingon race template in the "Alien Upbringing" advantage definition. But no template. You can be a Bolian (the blue guys with lines down the middle of their face) or a Centauran (indistinguishable from human beings without cutting them open or using a med-scanner), but no Klingons.

Also missing is any real rational behind the point costs. Is "Eidetic Memory" really worth the same as one level of a skill (3 points)? It's hardly universal in the series, but at this price, it would be. And is "Hides Emotion", the defining attribute of the Vulcan race, really something worth only 2 points, thus bought off with ease if desired? This just isn't right!

Well, if character generation is shaky, play mechanics are downright broken. The basic concept is sound enough. Roll a number of dice equal to the related attribute + edge (Remember how I said it would save time to just record the total? Here's why.), take the highest, add the related skill, compare the total to a target number from 3 to 15 (or perhaps higher), with all ones on the dice being automatic critical failure. As a base mechanic, that's not bad, but it only allows results from 1 to 6 on the dice, severely limiting the range of a character, especially in as cinematic a setting a Star Trek. So *one* of the dice you roll (it has to be a different color so it can be distinguished) is called the "drama die". If the Drama Die rolls a 6, you count that 6 *and* the highest other die. If you're only rolling one die, you roll an additional die on a 6. Problem solved? Not on your life.

Think about it. What's the chance for someone with an attribute + edge of 1 to get a total of 7 or greater? One in six, obviously. And the chance of someone with an attribute + edge of 8? Also one in six, because only the drama die result matters. So if two characters, one a frail Fitness 1 and the other a mighty Fitness 6 (Strength +2) both try to lift a difficulty 7 heavy rock, they have identical chances to succeed, one in six. And that's just not right. That's the sort of thing playtesting is supposed to notice, but clearly playtesting was skimped on here.

To make things worse, the designers clearly don't understand their own mechanic. They present an automatic success rule that says not to roll if Skill plus Edge exceeds difficulty, except that you always have to roll in "tense or dramatic situations". What's wrong with that? Well, for one thing, Edges don't add to skills, they add to attributes; a character with Skill 1 and a related edge of +2 is nowhere near as good as a character with Skill 3. But that's clearly just a logic mistake. More importantly, consider the possible die results. When rolling, taking the best and adding skill, the lowest possible result (since all 1's is auto-fumble) is skill+2. So, really, auto-success (excepting the negligible "one-in-six-to-the-number-of-dice-power" chance of a fumble) is a given if Difficulty is less than skill+2, stressful situation or no. You're rolling dice just for the fun of rolling them, but these rules insist.

Also, the rules talk about some situational modifiers being either changes to the difficulty number or to the dice pool, as if the two were anything like equivalent. In fact, once you dice pool is above 3 or 4, it really doesn't get significantly better, but a 1 point change in the difficulty can improve your chance of success by as much as 60 percent (at 8 dice, from difficulty 7 above skill to 6 above skill). Add to this numerous typos (the modifier for the aim maneuver in normal combat is left blank, for example) and three contradictory hand to hand damage rules (one on the maneuvers table, one in the rules text and a third in the example of a combat) and you've got mechanics that just don't cut the mustard.

Ship-to-Ship combat is really no better (though at least here, the Aim maneuver is defined). One character juggles around 200 energy points around between systems, another rolls to fire weapons (with difficulty modifiers to aim at specific targets that range from +6 to +10... the equivalent modifiers in man-to-man combat range from +1 to +5, far more logical in a system where the range of results is only 2-12 points above a fixed skill base), another tries to keep the engines running and repair damage while a fourth barks commands with highly random effects (if the Captain rolls a 6 on the drama die, the next shot the ship fires will likely be at +3 or better, so kiss that enemy goodbye).

We get a cursory chapter on basic GM'ing next, nothing new or groundbreaking, then we get a chapter on how to make a game Star Trek. This is actually a fairly good chapter, clearly pointing out all the aspects of Star Trek and specifically Star Trek: The Next Generation that this game lacks real support for. For example, they talk about how Starfleet personnel are defined by their drive to master skills, both in and out of their job, pointing to Riker's trombone playing or Picard's passion for archeology. Now, in a point based system where one point in a skill can mean a 35% to 60% improvement in one's chance of success, are you going to skimp on Engineering skills in order to play trombone better? If so, I hope I'm on another ship!

The experience rules are OK, but a little bothersome in that the cost to improve things via experience seem totally unrelated to the cost to gain them during character creation. For example, during character creation, learning a new skill, going from level 1 to level 2 in that skill or going from level 3 to level 4 all cost the same (3 points). But with experience, the costs are 5, 3 and 4, respectively. This is just weird. There are rules for gaining Renown, and they seem interesting, if a bit overly complicated (you keep track of reputations in several areas, modifying them quite often). There are also vague rules for promotions, job changes and ship transfers, with instructions to not let players just buy them despite the fact that they are priced in the advantage rules and other advantages *can* be bought with experience (at four times their list prices).

We then get a sample ship and crew. This ship is *not* the USS Enterprise-D, this crew is not the ST:TNG regulars. The ship and crew are inventions of LUG's designers and they are a waste of space that could have been used to give me ST:TNG rather than generic Starfleet. In fact, the only ST:TNG regular whose stats appear in this rulebook is Data's pet cat, Spot. The others will appear in a later supplement because, according to project leader Ross Isaacs, there wasn't space here. Given the space wasted by poor layout, fat tables and excess white space, let alone flat out garbage chapters, this is obviously not true.

We then get some ship definitions (nothing spectacular and several glaring omissions), then some equipment rules. Did you know that phasers had 16 settings and 4 band widths for a total of more than 50 possible settings to choose from during combat? I didn't, and I can't imagine Starfleet thinking they could ever train anyone to be quick-witted enough to always pick the right one (especially when there's usually very little difference... every setting over 8 is, essentially, "kill whatever gets hit"). I also couldn't previously imagine any published game with 5 typos in one half-page table, but there's the Phaser Damage Chart (p. 234) and there's the typos! Amazing!

There's more. Some minimal stuff about planet design, sketchy rules for non-PC races (so sketchy that you couldn't even construct a Klingon PC template from what you're told about Worf's folk), hand-waving "rules" about omnipotent beings (a stable of Star Trek, unfortunately), animal rules (for those rampaging monsters) and a four page index.

Oh, and then there's 3 pages of ads. One for the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine RPG coming in February of 1999, one for the Star Trek RPG in August of 1999 and the last for the Star Trek: Voyager RPG in February 2000. Then an order form listing 15 ST:TNG RPG products for sale, though only one of them (the rulebook) actually exists yet. Of course, LUG will happily take your order now. Interestingly, since half of the ST:TNG book was core rules, I'm guessing the four RPG's will all be substantially the same, leaving us paying for the same 150 or so pages over and over and over. Guess it works for White Wolf, right?

Feh.

This isn't to say there aren't a few gems among this mess. The Courage rules are good (Courage points can be used to modify a roll *after the fact* to snatch success out of failure) and interact with several advantages in interesting ways. For example, "Curious" is an advantage in ST:TNG, giving a bonus Courage point to spend when investigating the unknown. More rules like this and less space-wasting drek might have saved the game.

Oh, wait, there is one more important thing. Did anyone notice the one ST:TNG word I haven't mentioned in this review so far?

Maybe... BORG?

Well, that's because they aren't in here. Nor are they hinted at being in any of the first series of 15 support products. I mean, what were they other than the one real, serious and amazingly popular villain the series produced? Clearly, not worth including when space could be put to better use repeating pictures or putting official game stats on house cats.

Final Rating: LUG's Star Trek:The Next Generation Role Playing Game wins barely a single tombstone out of five (not worth owning), even (if not *especially*) for die-hard Trek fans. And though its glossy production values and sturdy-seeming binding might win any other game a few lilies, this time they're just varnish on a hollow box. And I can't in any way encourage other RPG's to emulate *that*.

Skill Probablity Chart

EDITOR'S NOTES
This review was submitted to me and has been totally unedited by myself. I present it as it was presented to me. I have placed it online to show that contrasting opinions are welcomed here. I am sure that some will want to read this review and examine its claims for validity. The accompanying chart was also included with the article to illustrate the flaws in the game mechanics. I also present the chart in its unedited format.