Modiphius Entertainment’s Star Trek: Lower Decks Campaign Guide for the Star Trek Adventures RPG is, without a doubt, awesome and I’m very impressed.

Not only does the book capture the art and humor of the animated series, it expands the game overall with several elements that work with any and all eras and settings. For example, this book contains the first full-on alien creature design system. I’m not only amazed it took this long for the game to have such a thing but that it should first appear in the Lower Decks sourcebook is both wild and much appreciated.

The more I read, the more ideas I get for a Lower Decks campaign but there are some changes I would make to the ‘Core Game’ to add an additional level of emulation to the part of the Star Trek universe we are focusing on.

Optional Lower Decks Character Creation Ideas

It bugs me a little that they didn’t change or add much to the Character Creation process for Lower Decks characters. To me, there are some considerations from the show that, if addressed, could be a lot of fun.

For instance, standard Character Creation involves having two Career Events: things like Conflict with a Hostile Culture, Ship Destroyed, and Transporter Accident. These events give the PC bonuses to an Attribute and a Discipline, as well as providing a prompt for some backstory. Cool right? Sure but…Lower Decks characters haven’t had a Career yet, let alone two character-building Events. They’re just getting started as Starfleet Officers.

I would like to suggest a few alternative options for making a Lower Decks PC in Star Trek Adventures. Here goes nothing…

Environment and Lower Decks Upbringing

Environment and Upbringing seem to be a big deal for the characters in Lower Decks, especially Mariner and Tendi, though Boimler too to a lesser extent (I’d love to meet his parents in the future). I think this element should be evident in Character Creation, perhaps giving the PC something a little different from Homeworld and Science and Technology.

I’m thinking you can probably keep Environment as is (haven’t decided) but Upbringing should carry more weight. Maybe with Lower Decks Upbringing you get only one Attribute bonus, one Discipline bonus, a Talent, a Focus, and then you have Issues.

Issues are drawbacks that can benefit your PC sometime later in the adventure by giving them a disadvantage now. Something like Rebels Against Authority for Mariner or Embarrassing Heritage for Tendi. Hmm, so maybe you get to roll with a third D20 when interacting with your Issue ( say, when Mariner is disobeying an order from the First Officer or Tendi is trying to explain away how she knows where the secret compartments on a Smuggler’s ship are located) but they have to take the highest two rolls. Later, near the climax of the adventure, the Player Character must face the consequences and/or truth of their Issue (be it real or perceived) and if they can get past it, they gain an additional D20 on the next roll to follow.

Academy Major and Academy Minor or Academy Event

Instead of Career Events, the player chooses an Academy Major and an Academy Minor.

Academy Major: Character receives a +1 to one particular Discipline and a Focus related to their career objective. Command Officers might take Command and a focus in Diplomacy or Starfleet Protocols, Security Officers might take Security and a focus in Energy Weapons or Small Unit Tactics, etc. You also get to come up with a story on how, this one time, you aced a test the rest of the class did poorly on or helped a classmate get past a mental block preventing them from grokking a subject. Gain a Contact! In the first example, the Instructor was so impressed she stayed in touch. In the second situation, you and the other Cadet remained friends even though they’re stationed on another ship.

Academy Minor: The PC receives a +1 to one particular Attribute and must choose a Focus that will not come up that often. The Focus has to be a very niche area of knowledge or a not generally applicable skill. There forte’ is this obscure piece of esoterica! Maybe they excelled at reasoning out Retro-Active Time Paradoxes in Temporal Mechanics Class. Perhaps they’re extremely well-versed in early period Andorian Pre-Warp Ice Sculptures.

Alternatively…

Academy Event

A Lower Decks Player Character receives a +1 to any one Attribute and a +1 to any one Discipline as well as two Focuses related to whatever the event was. It could be interesting for one of the Focuses be more serious and the other more trivial but it isn’t necessary I suppose. I just think it’s a fun idea.

Goals

A lot of Star Trek Adventures players I know have difficulty understanding the Values feature and the rules around it, myself included to some degree. Part of the problem is I’ve been gaming for so long without using or needing role-playing mechanics (that is, a rules sub-system governing aspects of role play) that it takes me a while to wrap my head around rules that adjudicate my acting. Another issue, one I come across very often, is that player don’t always know their character’s values at Character Creation. Sure, they have some ideas but a lot of them develop their PC’s outlook and beliefs as they play. Making Values before playing the Character is counter-intuitive to many of my friends, let alone coming up with ones that will aid them in a mechanical way.

In our [now 11+ year long] Star Trek: Prosperity campaign, we just don’t bother with Values at all. Determination is spent when it seems dramatically appropriate to what is going on in the session from a narrative, what makes for ‘good TV’ kind of way. In other games I’ve run I let people leave them undefined at Character Creation to be written in later as they get to know their character.

For Lower Decks, I’m thinking of replacing Values with Goals. Instead of identifying the attitudes and convictions of a young Starfleet Officer who may not have figured those out for themselves, we go for the more straightforward objectives of a newly minted Ensign. Some possible Goals inspired by the show include:

Find a Bridge Buddy
Get noticed by the Captain
Join a Clique/Club (For example: The Bear Pack, The Redshirts)
Get a promotion
Get transferred to a cooler ship

If it fits what’s going on, talk with your Narrator about making a ‘B Plot’ for your character that explores your Goal while participating in the latest ‘episode’ of the campaign. Perhaps your Goal is to get transferred to a cooler ship in the standard fleet. At the end of a tough adventure you’re finally awarded exactly that after you work with your friends to save your current ship, a California Class vessel. Sure you get what you wanted but you turn it down to remain with your Cali-Class starship and crew. In the recently finished adventure you gained a new found appreciation for your ship and your crewmates. You might then swap that Goal out for a different one moving forward.

I have more thoughts on this, including working out some new Talents, as well as Academy Majors, Minors, and Events to use with the idea above but I’ll leave things here for now.