Boldly Going Where I Have Not Gone Before: DMing Star Trek Adventures

Back in the Before Times-- about a year before the pandemic-- my friend Cari came to me and asked if I knew how to play D&D. I think she had been watching Community? Anyway, with her husband, my wife, a grad school friend of Cari's, and our friend Jordan DMing, we soon had a campaign underway, which lasted a little over a year. The pandemic meant we played out the last few sessions on-line, and soon Jordan moved away anyway.

But I have been hankering to play again. I have enjoyed RPGs; this D&D campaign was my third. Before the pandemic, it was one of the most consistent forms of social interaction I had, and it was nice to have one-- as can be so rare if you're an academic-- that had nothing to do with work! And I don't know where it came from, but it soon became a more specific desire to participate a Star Trek Adventures campaign.

USS Ayrton dispatches a shuttle toward the derelict Alcubierre

STA is the newest Star Trek RPG. There have been several over the years, but STA has gotten a lot of positive press for feeling like the show. It's not about fighting or leveling up, but working together as a team to overcome problems.

But I knew this mean that I would have to DM. It's not like someone else in my friend group was going to sign up to run a Star Trek RPG! But I have never DMed before, and if you've played with me, you will know my grasp of the combat rules is often slim. But the storytelling aspect of it all (for obvious reasons) strongly appeals to me.

So I put some feelers out there and got a positive response, and I made it my vaccination celebration: two weeks after I got my second Moderna shot, we would convene to talk basic principles and do character-building.

I have had a vague idea for a Star Trek setting in my head for many years now, based on-- of all things-- a lyric in the theme song to the original Star Trek. I wanted to do an exploration-focused game, so these things seemed to go together well, as my setting was an area of space that was difficult to access and thus largely unexplored, but not totally cut off, so familiar figures could still be seen. I also-- maybe because I had been watching Lower Decks-- wanted the characters to be ensigns just assigned to a starship, working their way up the ranks.

the dice are department color-coded!

Modiphius sells a lot of stuff for STA; I ended up buying the Starter Set and the Gamemaster Bundle. This gave me the Core Rulebook, a lot of paraphernalia like fancy dice and a DM screen, and a few pre-written starter missions designed to make it easier to ease into the game.

There are five of those missions: a three-mission story that comes with the Starter Rules booklet, a one-off you can download for free from the Modiphius site, and a one-off that is printed in the Core Rulebook. I worked out a sequence for those five missions that would allow my players to ease into the game and into my setting. The missions I basically kept intact; what has changed is some of the revealed lore and connective tissue. (I can't say much more because my players might be reading this!) Working out the story has been pretty fun, as the five missions ended up inspiring more ideas in me for my setting, which had developed pretty fast. My plan once we play through the five starter missions is to move onto one of the mission compilations Modiphius sells, adapting their stuff to fit my setting and characters. I'll probably talk more about the setting once the team plays through those starter missions.

I ended up with five players: Hayley, my friend Cari and her husband, and our friend Jeremy and his wife. I obviously have the most Star Trek experience in the group, but Cari has taught an AWR 101 class about Star Trek so you know she knows her stuff too! Jeremy has more of a casual exposure, and his wife Daniela has barely seen any. As Hayley pointed out when she read their bios, they are all playing stubborn people with maverick tendencies, so it will be interesting to see how they work as a group! (The nice thing about STA, though, is that you can railroad your players by giving them orders from an NPC captain!)

We played our first actual session on Sunday, getting through about half of a mission. My players picked up Tasks pretty well, I think, as we went on, coming up with creative ways to get out of jams. There's a bit where they have to open a door that's sealed shut because of power failure; the book gives some suggestions (burn through the wall and access the mechanism, wrench it open with brute force) but they came up with the idea of using the power from a tricorder to temporarily operate it.

the GM screen contains a wealth of information... but to stop Son One from playing with it, I didn't get it out right away... and then I forgot about it, and was constantly looking up stuff in the Core Rulebook that was conveniently printed here for my reference!

Combat was tough, for them and me. The basic Task system is pretty clear, but combat is a bit more complex, and they were sometime struggling to figure out what they should be doing. This was made more complicated by, well, a Complication, making it difficult for them to hit their opponents, limiting their effectiveness. Thanks to this, they ended up in a not-great situation pretty quickly, their commanding officer down, their security officer injured, but the Romulans still fine.

Again, some clever thinking got them through. They had the idea to close the door, shutting them off from the Romulans, and then while the Romulans were trying to reopen it, the away team used their phasers to melt the edges of the door together, and they made their escape.

I think they enjoyed it! I wish I was more au fait with the rules, but I guess DMing is a lot like teaching: you don't have to know everything, you just have to know more than they do.