Today I’ve got another quick update dealing with the Game Toolkit released alongside the Core Rulebook for Star Trek Adventures 2e. This is a kit mostly geared towards GMs but is really a toolkit for supporting any Star Trek Adventures group trying to get up and rolling.

Let’s look at some of the basic components. As you might guess, there’s a wide GM Screen with many frequently-used STA 2e rules printed on there. This screen includes example difficulties, common Threat spends, common Momentum spends in different sorts of conflict, NPC Injuries, NPC crew qualities, and extra Momentum costs for different situations like terrains, and starship damage details. There’s also flowcharts for creating narratives, for making attacks and for starship combat, as well as lists of common qualities for NPCs, weapons, and starships. It’s a very dense, and very useful screen with a beautiful opposite picture (although you can print it with many different things).

But that’s not all! The Reference Cards are meant to printed out front and back with handy reference sheets listing out common rules (plus page references). There’s a rules reference with a lot of the basics, a conflict reference (unfortunately mostly personal conflict with weapons), a starship combat reference including information, and a breaches reference. My favorite, though, are individual reference cards for bridge positions. On one side of each of these references is the same set of standard starship actions, obviously, and then a back which is for a particular position. There’s a card version with Command and Communications, another for Helm and Navigator, a third for Engineering and Operations, and a last one with all the Tactical actions. You can either print out multiple copies for all your players (the commanders and the comms officer, for instance) or for live groups just have them sit next to each other.

Next up there’s a stellar map of the Federation with the Klingon Empire, Romulan Star Empire, and other polities picked out. It’s hard to pinpoint exactly what era this is from but it’s in a Star Trek: Strange New Worlds style. It includes things like Cardassia Prime which I think is a little early to be on Starfleet charts, but also doesn’t have Ferenginaar, Bajor, or the Breen homeworld so… I think it’s 23^rd century.

The Rules Booklet

The biggest part of this release, though, and why I’m giving it a separate review is the Rules Booklet. This little stealth release includes a number of additional rules and expansions that will give you even more resources for running Star Trek Adventures 2e. It’s split into two sections so let’s take them in order.

First off is the Player Resources which are largely starship-focused. This includes a number of spaceframes that might be familiar from the first edition including some from the core rulebook (the Miranda, Constellation, Akira, Nova, and Defiant classes), some from the Utopia Planitia Starfleet Sourcebook (the Freedom, Oberth, Nebula, Luna, and Odyssey classes), and some 23^rd century frames from the Star Trek: Discovery sourcebook (the Walker and Crossfield classes) keeping up with the overall focus on the current run of Star Trek live action shows. There are even a few that I think are new including the Original-Series-era Pioneer class , the Columbia class offshoot of the NX series, the 25^th century Sagan class, and the Star Trek Online design of the Aquarius-class escort. Outside of Federation designs there are writeups for the Vor’cha class originally seen in the Klingon Empire Core Rulebook and the Romulan Mogai class which I think is also all new.

While there are already some new rules among the new spaceframes (such as the Nebula class’s mission pods or the Constellation class’s four nacelles), the next chapter covers some additional starship rules. First off there are new mission profiles of Civilian Merchant Marine, Colony Support, Logistical/Quartermaster, Reserve Fleet, and Technical Testbed (all but the last updated from Utopia Planitia). There are also a bunch of additional starship Talents (including things like Ablative Armor Generator for the Akira) to provide more options.

For the Gamemasters, there’s a shorter ten-page section covering narrative tools for making your best campaign. This includes some “soft” additions like more storytelling frameworks, B-plots, and narrative consequences, but also some great new crunchy mechanics. Using Threat for ship casualties, establishing new environmental hazards, and even setting players up against impossible foes for the morale quandaries that provides are all represented here.

Conclusion

When I saw this come up alongside the Star Trek Adventures 2e Core Rulebook I thought “oh some nice handouts and stuff go along with it.” It’s helpful to have that so I got a copy but as you can see it’s not just handouts. For the organizational aid but especially the new rules booklet I will say, at the risk of sounding like an old person trying out new slang, don’t sleep on this one.