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

Reviewed by Matthew Pook

Could 1998 be third time lucky for a Star Trek RPG? It is an important question for what surely has to be the biggest gaming license to rival that of Star Wars, because if you have it, it should also be a license to print money! This last Gen-Con saw the launch of the usual slough of new releases, of which one, Last Unicorn Games’ Star Trek: The Next Generation Role Playing Game had to be one of most highly anticipated. Last Unicorn Games (LUG), are better known for their Heresy and Dune card games and the less than well-received Aria system, and so there were fears that the end product might be disappointing. Even more so, given the short development time that the game also received. In reviewing this new Star Trek RPG, there are two essential questions that need to be answered. How closely does it allow the modeling of the Star Trek setting as shown in the various TV series, and does it compare with the previous Star Trek RPGs?

Let me establish first what this game is, and is not. It is The Star Trek: The Next Generation RPG and only that, covering the time of the Star Trek universe as depicted in the adventures of the Enterprise-D under the command of Captain Jean-Luc Picard on Star Trek: The Next Generation (ST:TNG), ignoring the two film appearances to date. The events and background of Deep Space 9 (DS9) and Voyager are also ignored and saved for later RPGs. Of course, the first aspect of the game that the GM or Narrator will dump is this limitation upon the time frame. I would suggest that the natural inclination is to want to set games in the most up to date Star Trek universe they see each week on television. Further, it is only the setting and background you get to play in, not take the parts of the Enterprise-D crew, whose descriptions and statistics do not appear in the book, instead saved for a later volume. That said, Spot, Data’s cat is given a full description in the section covering the creation of animals. Very useful... Rather than play the crew, the players create junior officers only, as the rules for senior and command officers being saved for... you guessed it, a future supplement. Notice a pattern here? But, I am getting ahead of myself.

The book itself is a pleasingly solid 300 page hardback, weighing almost 3lbs. Inside the contents are very clearly laid out on nice glossy paper. Color is used throughout, both in the use of graphics, which emulate those of the series’ computer consoles, and photographs. These come from the series, some quite literally from broadcast episodes which gives them an irritating, slightly fuzzy quality. A little artwork is also used, which on the whole is quite nice, though tending towards being too dark. In places it is unnecessarily cartoony, particularly those races which did not appear in ST:TNG, such as the Orions, which strangely are now all green. Is it me, or did they used to be blue, apart from the slave woman? The downside to all this quality is the cost of the book. $35 may sound a lot to pay, so one has to ask if the ST:TNG RPG is worth the price. Another question to leave until the end...

Inside the contents are broken down into the standard expected chapters and sections, covering the background and setting, character generation, combat - both personal and ship-to-ship, how to run the game, starships and technology, aliens, as well as descriptions of a starting sector (which strangely enough, lead into a forthcoming supplement) and one adventure. These are fairly comprehensive in that they cover the basics that are needed to know in order to run the game, but then many of the game’s target audience will be fairly knowledgeable anyway. Reading through the history and setting sections, two things are immediately lacking. One is guide to using Stardates - sorry, that is not true. The actual guidelines advise the Narrator to make them up as they go along, and all dates are given in the Western calendar. This strikes me as rather silly, since the Stardate is a continuing motif in Star Trek and has been for thirty years. Also, unlike Star Wars, the ST:TNG universe is a definite place, with political borders and locations known and defined, so why the hell don’t we get a map? Sure, the average Star Trek fan can go to an encyclopaedia or other source, but should they really have to?

And so to character generation. The game provides three methods, which all build towards a junior officer with one tour of duty. The simplest way is choosing an archetype and customizing it with five points. The most complex is starting from scratch with 125 points and this is also the only way to build a non-Starfleet character, but then why would you want to? Of course, if you did, it is bound to be covered in a future supplement... In between is the more interesting method of selecting a racial template and then a professional overlay to represent their Academy training. The choice of race is limited to the usual Humans, Vulcans, Andorians, Tellarites, Betazoids and Bolians. Bolians? Yes, the blue guys with the head ridge in case you need to split them open. This is an odd choice since the only Bolian character of note in the series was the ship’s barber. So, no Bajorans, which will probably disappoint a fair number of fans. Nor do the races from the animated series get a look in, but then the cartoon has never quite been regarded as canon.

With this basic template and overlay, the character is put through a life path section, covering their early life, the Academy and a tour of duty. At each stage a set number of points can be spent freely or a package of skills, advantages and disadvantages can be selected. These are fairly interesting, but do steer the character towards being very professionally orientated, allowing little room for personal interests. Thus if you wanted your character to play a musical instrument, then this would invariably come at the cost of a probably more useful professional skill.

The completed character is thus defined by their race and Starfleet training. In game terms, each character has five attributes: Fitness, Co-ordination, Intellect, Presence and Psi, which range from one to five, averaging two, although Psi is zero for most races. Further, each attribute has two Edges, which can be positive or negative, rated no more than two either way. Fitness has Strength and Vitality, Intellect, Logic and Perception, and so on. Skills also range from zero to five, and a fairly comprehensive list given. Many skills are further broken down into specializations, which are rated higher than the parent skill. Thus a character can be trained in general Space Sciences, but actually specialized in Astrophysics. The aim is to have the characters able to work throughout a ship if necessary, as well as their own assigned station. Advantages and Disadvantages add more definition, some of them from the racial template, whilst others are personal. Finally, the Renown system rates a character’s reputation in a number of areas, such as Aggression or Skill, and can also be positive or negative. This system works to generate characters that do feel as if they junior Starfleet officers, that is, bar the relatively small problems given. Unfortunately, not all of this information is going to fit on the character sheet provided at the back of the book. It looks great, but is seriously lacking in space and is colored in blue/grey/mauve shades that defy easy photocopying...

Now to the game mechanics. This is LUG’s trademarked ‘Icon’ system, and despite that trademark, is not really that original. Players of Star Wars or even Task Force Games’ own Star Trek (actually, Starfleet Battles, or SFB) RPG, Prime Directive, will spot similarities. D6s are used throughout, and this greatly speeds play. For each test, the player rolls a number of dice equal to an attribute, modified by the appropriate Edge. One die must be a different color - this is the Drama Die. When a roll is made, only the highest rolling die is used and to this is added the appropriate skill rating to get a total, which is compared to a target to gauge success. If a six is rolled on the Drama Die, then it is added to the next highest score on one of the dice. Dramatic success comes if the total score is six higher than the required target, whilst Dramatic Failure only results when all of the dice roll one, including the Drama Die.

Whilst this system is clear, simple and fast, it has one slight flaw. Average starting skills are two or three, making even moderate rolls less than easy. Targets of more than nine are difficult to make if only rolling a six on the Drama Die is the only chance. Characters have Courage Points to spend, and some Advantages give a player more, depending upon the situation, which improve the total score by one for each spent. To increase the chance of succeeding at even Challenging tests, I would suggest that for each Courage Point spent, the player is actually provided with another Drama Die to roll in addition to the normal one.

To this basic system are added rules for combat, both personal and ship-to-ship. These work well, and only add a reasonable level of complexity. The starship combat rules emphasize role-playing in a manner similar to that of FASA’s old Star Trek III game. LUG plans to release ship miniatures, so no doubt they will give us a more detailed supplement covering starship combat in due time...

The rest of the book provides support material. Primarily this is in the form of a starting ship, sector and scenario, all set on the Romulan border. As has already been said, this will lead into a forthcoming supplement. Most of this is useful, and is good enough to give the novice Narrator a solid start. For the more experienced it will not be so useful, and this applies to the adventure in particular. ‘Shakedown Cruise’ is really aimed at the novice Narrator and player, getting them used to the system. Unfortunately for more experienced player and Narrator, it is rather a shallow affair and certainly would never been used as an episode in the series.

There is one final and very irritating problem with the game. Essentially, it is the coverage or lack there of the Federation’s allies and enemies that lets the game down. First off, the Borg are ignored and no details of them are given, which is going to be a big disappointment to many. Where there are entries for a race, such as the Klingons, Romulans, Cardassians and Ferengi, they are reasonably well described and a Narrator should have no difficulty using them in a game. Essentially, what is lacking for each race are not the description and basic statistics, but the racial advantages, disadvantages and skills. A practiced referee could go through the list under character generation and assign the appropriate ones, but fundamentally, he should not have to. Further this prevents a player from choosing a race other than the ones listed under character generation, and it hobbles one particular advantage, Mixed Race Heritage, so that you could not take a character of Klingon/Human parentage, who been brought up as a Klingon, because no details are given of Klingon cultural advantages, disadvantages and skills. I am sure that all of these details will be covered in future releases, but this is a seriously irritating shortcoming, which LUG have no excuse for, except of course, to sell more books.

This latter point all is well and good, and I have no problem with the idea of LUG wanting to sell more books, but it is the way in which it is waved so blatantly in your face as you read through the book that is so irksome. By this I do not mean they are stating in the text, rather that it comes through in the omissions from the contents. The book ends with adverts for future releases and an order form, which does not give release dates. Fine, but so far, only the Narrator’s Toolkit, which includes a screen, has been released. I have only glanced at this and was unimpressed by its appearance, being black and white throughout. I have also been told that the screen is not a great deal of use either. The one big flaw in the Narrator’s Toolkit is the scenario, which the game needs more than it needs sourcebooks. Unfortunately, this scenario is based on a episode from the first season of ST:TNG, where Q offers Riker the chance to join him. At its beginning, the Narrator is advised that the scenario should not be played by anyone who has seen this episode. Duh...! This is a game squarely aimed at Star Trek fans, so how many will not have seen this episode? In my opinion this has to be the biggest waste of paper and time I have seen in a RPG product in a long while. I really would have expected something a lot better than this...

All right, so my comments have been rather scathing these last two paragraphs, is that what I really think? I have been highlighting the problems because, essentially, they are little ones. They are not big, but they are irritating and I don’t think there is an excuse for them. In many cases, such as with the races, the lack of information makes the game just ever so slightly incomplete, such that it grates. Thankfully, due to the dedication of some fans, there is material out on the Internet (such as TrekRPGNet! -Ed), that I can use to fill in these gaps. Older gamers will of course go scurrying off to unearth the FASA Star Trek books for ideas and stuff, and the few supplements for Prime Directive can be raided for the same purposes.

So what is good about this game? It is well presented and looks great. The rules are reasonably simple and fast. I know I can run a Star Trek game with these rules and the characters created do feel like they belong in that setting. It compares very well with the previous Star Trek RPGs, lacking Prime Directive’s overly complex rules and density of text, and FASA’s dullish layout and propensity to take liberties with the Star Trek canon. There is always the Internet alternative of GURPS Star Trek, but to be honest, that is just too clunky in its attempt to cover everything, lacking the new game’s simplicity and clarity.

Simply put, and despite the problems I have pointed out, this is the best Star Trek RPG to date. It is expensive and perhaps given its petty deficits, may not be worth the full value of $35, but it does look like you have spent that amount of money. Otherwise, it succeeds in targeting both the gamer who is a Star Trek fan and the Star Trek who is new to gaming, and this should be big market for LUG. The price tag does mean that this is not going to be an impulse purchase, and if you are not going to play Star Trek, it probably is not worth that price. For the gamer who wants to play Star Trek, then this is definitely a good buy and they should get the mileage from it. Finally, despite what I have said, I do like this game and think it deserves to do well. As with any game, it will succeed or fail on the quality of it future releases...