The Inside Scoop on Gaming

The Star Trek The Next Generation Roleplaying Game is a game whose cumbersome name needs an acronym as much as any, so I shall refer to it as the ST:TNG RPG.

I've seen wildly conflicting reviews of the same product on RPGnet. In order to help make this review of use, I'm going to provide a bit of background so you know where I'm coming from, and can view this review in the proper light. Although I sometimes play other systems (AD&D, In Nomine, a little FUDGE), I'm primarily a GURPS player, and it is from that point of view that I'm reviewing this game. The other important bit of information is that, yes, I am a Star Trek fan, but I'm not quite a rabid frothing-at-the mouth Star Trek fan. I've been watching the original series since I was a little kid, and I've seen most of the Next Generation (and later) episodes. I enjoy them for what they are-- at least those episodes which aren't screaming out loud bad. I smile benevolently and roll my eyes when Star Trek breaks one or another law of Physics. I am not the sort of fan who keeps detailed notes on the history of the Federation and becomes angry with the producers when they do anything the slightest bit inconsistent; I watch the shows to enjoy the stories and the characters.

In reading through the ST:TNG RPG, my fundamental conclusion is that it's a solid piece of work that achieves the twin goals of providing a decent roleplaying game and providing a game that has a chance of capturing the feel of the modern Star Trek series. The game is written such that the experienced roleplayer who wants to play Star Trek will be satisfied, and so that the Star Trek fan new to roleplaying should be able to get going in a Star Trek RPG in relatively short order.

The game opens with a history of the Federation, which is a good read for the casual (or otherwise) Star Trek fan, even if he has no interest in roleplaying. After that, it gives an overview of the Federation, Star Fleet, and the game world (the "alpha quadrant" of our galaxy in the 24th century). Although some may claim that this overview is lacking in enough details to provide a good game world, it's plenty enough to go on for a game centering on a starship traveling among distant stars. After all, it's far more background than you need to appreciate (or write) most of the episodes of the television series. If the goal of the game is to allow you to roleplay scenarios similar to what might have been seen there, it's plenty of background to allow the GM to provide some context for his games. (Most people playing with these games are probably familiar enough with the series that they can use the actual episodes as another font of source material.)

I haven't yet played the game, so I can't speak for the mechanics in practice. To a thoughtful reader, they seem to be reasonable and workable. It's a skill based system, which does tie the base attributes of a skill into your performance in that skill. One criticism some level at systems such as GURPS is that relatively untrained people with high attributes perform unrealistically well on skill checks in comparison to highly trained people with average attributes. The way the Icon System of the ST:TNG RPG is designed, this coupling is less strong. No matter how high your attribute is, you're going to need a high skill level to succeed at any serious challenge to a given skill.

The character creation system is excellent. It includes an extensive list of skills and attributes, along with all the advice an experienced gamer would need to create his character from scratch. (You get 125 points; have fun!) However, it also includes several pages of templates and overlays that let you build a well-rounded character based on decisions about his background. Was he a Star Fleet brat? Add this package of traits to the character. Did he serve is first tour of duty in Star Fleet Command? Add that package of traits to the character. Although some will doubtless prefer to have complete control over what skills and abilities their character ends up with, the "template and overlay" system allows the beginner (or even the advanced roleplayer) to easily create a reasonable and workable character without the pain that usually afflicts somebody faced with a gigantic list of skills to choose from.

Mechanics are included for personal combat and starship combat. One bit of good advice is included in the personal combat section: take things to fist-fights when possible. While it's not "realistic" to go to a fist fight when you can just level the enemy with phasers (on stun or kill, as the situation warrants), it is more "Star Trek" to slug it out, simply because it adds drama. The fights aren't over in an instant, and the loser isn't vaporized. Starship combat bases the abilities (damage done by phasers, maneuverability, etc.) of the ship on the characteristics of the ship. However, the real performance of the ship in battle is very much driven by the skills of the crew manning the ship. What's more, the starship combat system has nicely made it necessary for multiple characters to actively participate in the combat. A starship in combat is not a single entity, but rather the sum of the efforts of the PCs. Clear thought and effort has gone into making starship combat a fun part of the roleplaying experience that should include participation from many or all of the PCs.

Following the chapters on mechanics is a couple of excellent chapters about playing the Narrator (GM). This includes some good advice for GMs of any system, as well as advice on how to capture the Star Trek "feel" in your ST:TNG RPG game. Rounding out the core of the book are chapters with lists of starships, personal equipment, aliens, and creatures.

The back of the book implies that the book contains information about playing games based on things other than Star Fleet, which is misleading. Future supplements will support this, but the core book makes the assumption that PCs will be members of Star Fleet, serving on a starship or starbase. This is a reasonable assumption; that is probably the game that most people will want to play, and I prefer a more complete treatment of that in the core book to a superficial treatment of "everything".

Although my overall impression of the game was positive, there are a few things that disappointed me about it. One of them is probably unavoidable, but that is what is missing. Of course, there is only so much you can fit into a core book, and probably most of this will show up in supplements, but I did notice the absence of several things. For example, the "starships" chapter provides a nice sample of alien (or "threat") vessels, as well as a workable selection of Star Fleet vessels. However, there are classes of ships referred to throughout the text which do not appear in the starships section. It would be nice to see a larger sample of the Star Fleet vessels that exist.

The collection of Federation races presented (Human, Vulcan, Betazoid, Centauran, Bolian, Tellarite, Andorian) represents plenty of PC races to get you started in a RPG. However, the list seems somewhat odd for ST:TNG. Until I read this RPG, I wasn't even aware that there was a Centauran race. While Tellarties and Andorians may be important members of the Federation, they were never very significant during the Next Generation series. (A tipoff to this is that the pictures of those races are taken from one of the movies featuring the original cast.) Although doubtless LUG is saving Bajorans for the upcoming Deep Space 9 game, Bajorans had more of an impact on ST:TNG than Andorians or Tellarites.

The chapter about creatures seemed a tad gratuitous. While the general information about animals was good, the three page list of creatures almost seemed an afterthought. The problem is that while beastiaries and monsters to fight are a staple of RPGs, monsters are singularly unimportant in most of Star Trek. Thinking briefly about it, I can only come up with a couple of creatures at all significant in a ST:TNG episode that weren't better described as aliens (Data's cat Spot, and the beast from "Darmok"). (There are assuredly more which I haven't thought of, but I don't have the whole series memorized.) While a supplement on creatures and monsters would certainly be reasonable, in the core book I would have rather seen details on a few more alien races.

Finally, in a few places the RPG offended my scientific sensibilities as a physicist. This is, of course, very much in keeping with the series itself. Unless modern astrophysics really doesn't understand what they are, a quasar is not something you're going to come across in our galaxy. The starship movement in combat rules are particularly unscientific. Not only do they seem to get the speed of light wrong by a factor of five (or infinity, if you're talking about lateral sensors), they don't make sense for space travel. They work better for cars or airplanes, which are moving through a medium (roads or an atmosphere) than for spaceships moving through space subject to the laws of Special Relativity. On the other hand, the movement rules should serve to simulate the (airplane-like) banking and swooshing maneuvers that one sees the Enterprise perform in the series.

Production values of the game are quite good-- and given the cost, they had better be! The hardback cover is solid and attractive, and the glossy pages are printed in two-column sans-serif text which is easy on the eyes. Most of the illustrations are stills from the series, and contribute to a professional look. In a few places, there are hand drawn illustrations instead of photos from the series, and sometimes they come up looking amateurish in comparisons to the stills from the series. Although I thought the hand-drawn art accompanying the sample adventure was appropriate and reasonable, I did not like the drawings of the sample characters. Perhaps it is because most of them are in stilted, strange, and unnatural poses, or perhaps it is because they all have shaggy, stringy hair styles that don't look like anything I've ever seen on a Star Fleet officer. Whatever the reason, the sample characters section would have been better off without the drawings.

One thing that unsettles me most about the game is the promise of what's coming. Last Unicorn Games is going to release Deep Space 9 and Voyager as stand-alone roleplaying games, using (so they say) almost the same system, tuned to each series. To those who want to play Deep Space 9 without messing around with The Next Generation, this would be good news, but I predict that the majority of the audience for these games will not fit into that category. The most recent two Star Trek series are really "supplements" of the Next Generation. The universe is the same, the fundamental assumptions are the same, the general background is the same... it's just a different set of characters in a different situation telling different stories. It would have made more sense to present the RPGs in this manner, rather than forcing those interested in two or three of the games to buy the same set of rules multiple times. There is very little in the ST:TNG RPG which a "Deep Space 9 only" fan would be angered at having, and doubtless the space taken by the mechanics in the upcoming DS9 game will mean that some background or other information will be left out.

In the end, perhaps one of the best things to be said about the ST:TNG RPG is that, while not written for laughs, it doesn't take itself too seriously. Star Trek is not by any stretch of the imagination hard science fiction; it's more about the stories and characters in a space operatic background. The game does a good job of capturing this. Mechanics, advice to the GM, character creation, and the like, are not built around brutal realism and absolute consistency or scientific accuracy, but what will work best for the story and capture the themes of Star Trek.

Style: 4 (Classy and well done)
Substance: 4 (Meaty)

ST: TNG RPG
Author: More, Isaacs, Hite, Long Category: game Company/Publisher: Last Unicorn Games Cost: $35 Page count: 300 ISBN: 188953300-9 Capsule Review by R. Knop on 11/13/98. Genre tags: Science_fiction	The Star Trek The Next Generation Roleplaying Game is a game whose cumbersome name needs an acronym as much as any, so I shall refer to it as the ST:TNG RPG. I've seen wildly conflicting reviews of the same product on RPGnet. In order to help make this review of use, I'm going to provide a bit of background so you know where I'm coming from, and can view this review in the proper light. Although I sometimes play other systems (AD&D, In Nomine, a little FUDGE), I'm primarily a GURPS player, and it is from that point of view that I'm reviewing this game. The other important bit of information is that, yes, I am a Star Trek fan, but I'm not quite a rabid frothing-at-the mouth Star Trek fan. I've been watching the original series since I was a little kid, and I've seen most of the Next Generation (and later) episodes. I enjoy them for what they are-- at least those episodes which aren't screaming out loud bad. I smile benevolently and roll my eyes when Star Trek breaks one or another law of Physics. I am not the sort of fan who keeps detailed notes on the history of the Federation and becomes angry with the producers when they do anything the slightest bit inconsistent; I watch the shows to enjoy the stories and the characters. In reading through the ST:TNG RPG, my fundamental conclusion is that it's a solid piece of work that achieves the twin goals of providing a decent roleplaying game and providing a game that has a chance of capturing the feel of the modern Star Trek series. The game is written such that the experienced roleplayer who wants to play Star Trek will be satisfied, and so that the Star Trek fan new to roleplaying should be able to get going in a Star Trek RPG in relatively short order. The game opens with a history of the Federation, which is a good read for the casual (or otherwise) Star Trek fan, even if he has no interest in roleplaying. After that, it gives an overview of the Federation, Star Fleet, and the game world (the "alpha quadrant" of our galaxy in the 24th century). Although some may claim that this overview is lacking in enough details to provide a good game world, it's plenty enough to go on for a game centering on a starship traveling among distant stars. After all, it's far more background than you need to appreciate (or write) most of the episodes of the television series. If the goal of the game is to allow you to roleplay scenarios similar to what might have been seen there, it's plenty of background to allow the GM to provide some context for his games. (Most people playing with these games are probably familiar enough with the series that they can use the actual episodes as another font of source material.) I haven't yet played the game, so I can't speak for the mechanics in practice. To a thoughtful reader, they seem to be reasonable and workable. It's a skill based system, which does tie the base attributes of a skill into your performance in that skill. One criticism some level at systems such as GURPS is that relatively untrained people with high attributes perform unrealistically well on skill checks in comparison to highly trained people with average attributes. The way the Icon System of the ST:TNG RPG is designed, this coupling is less strong. No matter how high your attribute is, you're going to need a high skill level to succeed at any serious challenge to a given skill. The character creation system is excellent. It includes an extensive list of skills and attributes, along with all the advice an experienced gamer would need to create his character from scratch. (You get 125 points; have fun!) However, it also includes several pages of templates and overlays that let you build a well-rounded character based on decisions about his background. Was he a Star Fleet brat? Add this package of traits to the character. Did he serve is first tour of duty in Star Fleet Command? Add that package of traits to the character. Although some will doubtless prefer to have complete control over what skills and abilities their character ends up with, the "template and overlay" system allows the beginner (or even the advanced roleplayer) to easily create a reasonable and workable character without the pain that usually afflicts somebody faced with a gigantic list of skills to choose from. Mechanics are included for personal combat and starship combat. One bit of good advice is included in the personal combat section: take things to fist-fights when possible. While it's not "realistic" to go to a fist fight when you can just level the enemy with phasers (on stun or kill, as the situation warrants), it is more "Star Trek" to slug it out, simply because it adds drama. The fights aren't over in an instant, and the loser isn't vaporized. Starship combat bases the abilities (damage done by phasers, maneuverability, etc.) of the ship on the characteristics of the ship. However, the real performance of the ship in battle is very much driven by the skills of the crew manning the ship. What's more, the starship combat system has nicely made it necessary for multiple characters to actively participate in the combat. A starship in combat is not a single entity, but rather the sum of the efforts of the PCs. Clear thought and effort has gone into making starship combat a fun part of the roleplaying experience that should include participation from many or all of the PCs. Following the chapters on mechanics is a couple of excellent chapters about playing the Narrator (GM). This includes some good advice for GMs of any system, as well as advice on how to capture the Star Trek "feel" in your ST:TNG RPG game. Rounding out the core of the book are chapters with lists of starships, personal equipment, aliens, and creatures. The back of the book implies that the book contains information about playing games based on things other than Star Fleet, which is misleading. Future supplements will support this, but the core book makes the assumption that PCs will be members of Star Fleet, serving on a starship or starbase. This is a reasonable assumption; that is probably the game that most people will want to play, and I prefer a more complete treatment of that in the core book to a superficial treatment of "everything". Although my overall impression of the game was positive, there are a few things that disappointed me about it. One of them is probably unavoidable, but that is what is missing. Of course, there is only so much you can fit into a core book, and probably most of this will show up in supplements, but I did notice the absence of several things. For example, the "starships" chapter provides a nice sample of alien (or "threat") vessels, as well as a workable selection of Star Fleet vessels. However, there are classes of ships referred to throughout the text which do not appear in the starships section. It would be nice to see a larger sample of the Star Fleet vessels that exist. The collection of Federation races presented (Human, Vulcan, Betazoid, Centauran, Bolian, Tellarite, Andorian) represents plenty of PC races to get you started in a RPG. However, the list seems somewhat odd for ST:TNG. Until I read this RPG, I wasn't even aware that there was a Centauran race. While Tellarties and Andorians may be important members of the Federation, they were never very significant during the Next Generation series. (A tipoff to this is that the pictures of those races are taken from one of the movies featuring the original cast.) Although doubtless LUG is saving Bajorans for the upcoming Deep Space 9 game, Bajorans had more of an impact on ST:TNG than Andorians or Tellarites. The chapter about creatures seemed a tad gratuitous. While the general information about animals was good, the three page list of creatures almost seemed an afterthought. The problem is that while beastiaries and monsters to fight are a staple of RPGs, monsters are singularly unimportant in most of Star Trek. Thinking briefly about it, I can only come up with a couple of creatures at all significant in a ST:TNG episode that weren't better described as aliens (Data's cat Spot, and the beast from "Darmok"). (There are assuredly more which I haven't thought of, but I don't have the whole series memorized.) While a supplement on creatures and monsters would certainly be reasonable, in the core book I would have rather seen details on a few more alien races. Finally, in a few places the RPG offended my scientific sensibilities as a physicist. This is, of course, very much in keeping with the series itself. Unless modern astrophysics really doesn't understand what they are, a quasar is not something you're going to come across in our galaxy. The starship movement in combat rules are particularly unscientific. Not only do they seem to get the speed of light wrong by a factor of five (or infinity, if you're talking about lateral sensors), they don't make sense for space travel. They work better for cars or airplanes, which are moving through a medium (roads or an atmosphere) than for spaceships moving through space subject to the laws of Special Relativity. On the other hand, the movement rules should serve to simulate the (airplane-like) banking and swooshing maneuvers that one sees the Enterprise perform in the series. Production values of the game are quite good-- and given the cost, they had better be! The hardback cover is solid and attractive, and the glossy pages are printed in two-column sans-serif text which is easy on the eyes. Most of the illustrations are stills from the series, and contribute to a professional look. In a few places, there are hand drawn illustrations instead of photos from the series, and sometimes they come up looking amateurish in comparisons to the stills from the series. Although I thought the hand-drawn art accompanying the sample adventure was appropriate and reasonable, I did not like the drawings of the sample characters. Perhaps it is because most of them are in stilted, strange, and unnatural poses, or perhaps it is because they all have shaggy, stringy hair styles that don't look like anything I've ever seen on a Star Fleet officer. Whatever the reason, the sample characters section would have been better off without the drawings. One thing that unsettles me most about the game is the promise of what's coming. Last Unicorn Games is going to release Deep Space 9 and Voyager as stand-alone roleplaying games, using (so they say) almost the same system, tuned to each series. To those who want to play Deep Space 9 without messing around with The Next Generation, this would be good news, but I predict that the majority of the audience for these games will not fit into that category. The most recent two Star Trek series are really "supplements" of the Next Generation. The universe is the same, the fundamental assumptions are the same, the general background is the same... it's just a different set of characters in a different situation telling different stories. It would have made more sense to present the RPGs in this manner, rather than forcing those interested in two or three of the games to buy the same set of rules multiple times. There is very little in the ST:TNG RPG which a "Deep Space 9 only" fan would be angered at having, and doubtless the space taken by the mechanics in the upcoming DS9 game will mean that some background or other information will be left out. In the end, perhaps one of the best things to be said about the ST:TNG RPG is that, while not written for laughs, it doesn't take itself too seriously. Star Trek is not by any stretch of the imagination hard science fiction; it's more about the stories and characters in a space operatic background. The game does a good job of capturing this. Mechanics, advice to the GM, character creation, and the like, are not built around brutal realism and absolute consistency or scientific accuracy, but what will work best for the story and capture the themes of Star Trek. Style: 4 (Classy and well done) Substance: 4 (Meaty)

ST: TNG RPG