At the start of July, I officially retired from the United States Navy after 20 years of service.

That’s a strange sentence to write. Twenty years is a long time. It’s long enough to feel like a whole lifetime, and also somehow like something that passed in a blur. I served on active duty, in the Reserve, on full-time orders, aboard an aircraft carrier (USS Enterprise, ironically), at major commands, in places across the United States, overseas, and alongside people from every kind of background imaginable.

And through all of that, Star Trek was never very far away. Star Trek is not, strictly speaking, a military show. Starfleet is exploratory, scientific, diplomatic, humanitarian, and, when needed, defensive. It isn’t the Navy in space. It’s not supposed to be. But anyone who has served can recognize certain truths in Star Trek almost immediately. Beneath the warp drives, alien worlds, and transporter rooms, Star Trek often understands the culture of service better than many stories that are actually about the military.

It understands that the ship matters, but the crew matters more. Star Trek is at its best when the Enterprise, DS9, Voyager, Defiant, Cerritos, or whatever ship we are following feels less like a vehicle and more like a living community. A ship is metal, systems, engines, passageways, offices, work centers, and watch stations. But after enough time, it also becomes memories. It becomes the place where people grow up, fail, learn, argue, laugh, mourn, and become better at their jobs.

In the military, your world often becomes very small. Your division. Your shop. Your watch team. Your command. The people around you become the people who understand what the job actually feels like. Star Trek gets that. It knows that the bridge crew is not just a group of officers standing dramatically under perfect lighting. They are coworkers, professionals. They are tired people making hard decisions with incomplete information while trying to take care of each other and accomplish the mission.

Star Trek also understands the strange rhythm of military life. There are moments of crisis where everything happens at once, where seconds matter, where training takes over, and where everyone has a role. Then there are long stretches of routine. Reports. Maintenance. Briefings. Watches. Inspections. Training. Qualifications. Meetings about meetings. The mission may be noble, but the day-to-day work is often ordinary, repetitive, and deeply necessary.

That’s something Star Trek Adventures can capture beautifully at the table. Not every mission needs to begin with phasers firing. Sometimes the best Star Trek stories begin with a briefing, a strange sensor reading, a personnel issue, a junior officer trying to prove themselves, or a routine assignment that suddenly becomes anything but routine. The routine matters because it makes the extraordinary feel earned.

Star Trek gets chain of command right more often than people realize. Yes, captains give stirring speeches. Yes, admirals create problems. Yes, bridge officers sometimes debate the moral nature of the universe while a warp core counts down in the background. But at its core, Star Trek understands that rank isn’t just about authority. It is about responsibility and trust.

A good commanding officer is not simply the person who gets to make the decision. They are the person who has to live with the decision. They are accountable for the mission and the people. They listen to their experts. They trust their crews. They make space for disagreement, but when the moment comes, they decide.

The best officers and senior enlisted leaders I served with understood that leadership was not about being the loudest voice in the room. It was about judgment. It was about knowing when to speak, when to listen, when to step in, and when to let someone else grow. Star Trek is filled with those moments: Picard asking for options, Sisko weighing the cost of action, Janeway carrying responsibility alone because she has to, Pike making leadership look compassionate without making it weak.

A captain in Star Trek Adventures shouldn’t be the only important character. The captain sets direction, but the story comes alive when everyone has expertise, everyone has a role, and everyone can contribute to the outcome. That is not just good game design. That is how a capable crew works.

Star Trek also understands mentorship. This may be the part that hits me the hardest now that I have retired. Over 20 years, one of the things I am most grateful for is the chance to mentor junior Sailors. You do not always know in the moment whether you are making a difference. Sometimes mentorship looks like a major life conversation. Sometimes it looks like helping someone write an award, prepare for a board, fix a mistake, or understand that one bad day does not define their whole career.

Star Trek is full of mentorship. Picard and Data. Sisko and Nog. Janeway and Seven. Pike and almost everyone around him. The franchise understands that service is generational. Someone taught you. Then, one day, you realize it is your turn to teach someone else. Eventually, if you did it right, they no longer need you in the same way. They stand the watch. They train the next person. The service continues. That is one of the most military truths Star Trek has ever shown.

It also gets the friendships right. Military friendship is hard to explain. You may serve with someone for only a short time, but because of the intensity of the work, the hours, the stress, the absurdity, and the shared mission, they become part of your story forever. You remember the people who made the hard days better. You remember the people who could make you laugh when everything was going wrong. You remember the people who had your back.

Star Trek understands that a crew is not just an organization chart. It is relationships. It is trust built over time. It is inside jokes, meals together, arguments resolved because the mission still has to happen, and quiet moments after the crisis has passed. The friendships in Star Trek matter because they are not separate from the mission. They are part of why the mission succeeds.

That’s worth remembering in Star Trek Adventures. Give the crew time together outside of danger. Let them eat together. Let them disagree in a briefing. Let them check on one another after a hard call. Let junior officers look up to them. Let the ship feel like a command, not just a map with rooms.

Finally, Star Trek understands that service is bigger than the person serving. That doesn’t mean it’s always easy. Service takes time. It takes energy. It takes you away from people you love. I am incredibly grateful to my wife and kids, who spent more time away from me than any of us would have chosen. That part of service is real, too. Star Trek touches on it in different ways: families separated by duty, officers carrying old losses, people choosing the mission while still feeling the cost of that choice.

But Star Trek also believes that service can matter. It believes that professionalism matters. It believes that courage, compassion, discipline, curiosity, and sacrifice can exist in the same person. It believes that a better future is built by people who keep showing up, keep learning, and keep trying to leave things better than they found them. That’s the part that still moves me.

As I retire from the Navy, I find myself thinking a lot about legacy. Not in a grand, dramatic way. I don’t mean monuments or medals or speeches. I mean the small legacy of people helped, lessons passed on, standards upheld, and a service left in good hands.

That, to me, is something Star Trek gets right.

The mission continues. The ship sails on. The watch changes hands.