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.