How did the Star Trek Adventures Trouble on Omned III module rate?
The crew of the USS Pioneer (my player group’s Intrepid-class starship) finished playing Trouble on Omned III created by Giles Pritchard for the Star Trek Adventures Roleplaying Game available as a standalone module at DriveThru RPG.
We had a really good time playing this adventure, though it did have some repetitive elements from the Star Trek genre: caste systems, paranoia, rebellion from the lower caste. I took some liberty to make the protagonists as alien as possible to avoid redundancy and it turned out as an amusing adventure. It also produced some great extended challenges for my players, which is always a good thing.
SYNOPSIS (spoiler alert)
You are called away from a routine science mission to intervene and mediate a dispute that has erupted on Omned III, on the border between Federation space and the Talarian Republic. Inhabited by the Shean, Omned III is teetering on the brink of civil conflict. While few in numbers, the Shean possesses an insular and rigidly structured society, with the ruling and military classes living in a single large space station while the working classes live on the planet’s surface.
The Shean of Omned III are infected with a subtle parasite that manifests as an apparent genetic disorder, which they call the ‘Omned Curse’ meaning that they age at a vastly accelerated rate.
A vaccine farmed on the surface of Omned III prevents this debilitating disorder from taking hold but in the last month, the vaccine shipped from the surface has failed to take effect. With unprotected newborns suffering, and recent cases of the disorder beginning to activate in adults, tensions between the upper and lower castes are at a breaking point.
As the situation deteriorates even further, can you find a way to avert Shean civil war and help find a cure for the Omned Curse?
THE REVIEW
I gave this module 4 out of 5 Tribbles! Here is how it rated:
Canonicity – This adventure could easily slip into an ongoing Star Trek Adventure game of any era. The elements are not so cemented to be inflexible. I strongly encourage you to make the scene and characters as alien as possible so that your players don’t complain of it being too generic.
Relatability –One of my players put it best when they said, “I enjoyed it. Very Star Trek. I feel like it could have been better if the lower caste had been fleshed out to make it a more dark gray/light gray situation. However, I feel like we mostly got the upper-caste half of the adventure and not really the lower-caste side of things.”
Giles’ module is written in a balanced way to explore both upper and lower caste. It just seems that my group took the upper-caste route, the snobs. However, I do take a star away in that this was a very common Star Trek story plot and not super-innovative.
However, I think this is a must-have adventure especially for first time GMs or players. An easy concept to wrap one’s head around. Not too much technobabble needed. Simple and relatable protagonists.
Likability – All of my players had fun. What they seemed to like the most were two different Extended Tasks that Giles designed.
The first was a medical task to discover the source of the Omned Curse. The second was an engineering problem that needed to be solved in the space station. These two tasks ensured that all players plus the medical officer—sometimes neglected in adventures—had something to do.
Great job on that design, Giles!
Accessibility – Since Modiphius is a little slow with pumping out adventures, worth the $$$ expenditure available as a standalone module at DriveThru RPG.
Quality – I wish there had been more art and pictures in the module, to tell you the truth. However, as a stand-alone adventure, it followed the basic Modiphius design template. Giles’ did a really good job writing enough bullet points to help me understand the motives of the protagonists and the history of the issues my player characters had to face.
As I said before, when they actually get around to it, Modiphius does a good job with the compendiums, making the life of gamemasters everywhere easier and giving players hours of Trekkie fun.
If you want an adventure that has an easily consumable plotline, Trouble on Omned III fits the bill.
(To see our entire play report, see Star Trek Pioneer, Season 2, Episode 9: Trouble on Omned III.)