Welcome to Starship Sunday, presenting a new spaceframe for the Star Trek Adventures roleplaying game, filling in some gaps until official material can be released.
For March I’m detailing some civilian ships, for players who might be uninterested in playing bright and shiny Starfleet officers, preferring to be simple merchants or down on their lucky traders. For people wanting to be a crew of scoundrels that’s more akin to Malcolm Reynolds, Han Solo, or… well, Harry Mudd. For games like this, an alternative is the Antares-type freighter.
Although this name was also used to describe a carrier and a later class of freighter. It’s easy enough to handwave the varying appearances as different makes and models launched over different years, much like how there have been makes of cars that have had very different appearances over the years, such as the Impala or Mustang.
The Antares works in most eras, allowing the group to tell stories of struggling traders just trying to maintain their beloved ageing craft, doing whatever work falls their way. The PCs could be honest traders, slightly crooked smugglers, or outright self-serving criminals. They are also the most common ship used by the Federation’s Merchant Marines, which evolved from the Earth Cargo Service of the 22nd Century. This type of craft would also work nicely for smaller groups, who might only have two or three players trying to do everything. Alternatively, this type of craft could be a temporary ship being piloted by a group of Starfleet officers in disguise.
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Neato! In my campaign, the characters are the crew of an Antares-class ship…but it’s the one from the Star Trek Concordance (http://stevepugh.net/fleet/images/antares.gif). I always liked the design, so I made it a surveyor, said it was the first of its class, and sent a crew out to do first contact and survey stuff.
…which reminds me, now that we’ve switched to STA, I’ll need to booger up some stats for it…
Anyway. Awesome work, fella!