Mark the stardate: on October 30, 2026, the Captain’s Log 2026 edition reaches game store shelves. (One quick aside, in the interest of honesty: global shipping is what it is right now — there is a war on, after all — so your local store’s timing may vary a little. But it is coming this month.)
For anyone meeting it for the first time, Captain’s Log is the solo Star Trek Adventures game I was lead writer on. No gamemaster. No scheduling five adults across three time zones. Just you, a character you built from a lifepath, a ship of your own, and what I like to call the probability matrices. You may know them as random tables. Oracles. Roll, and the galaxy answers back — a world, a complication, an NPC with a motive you did not see coming. Then you write the log. Your log. The game is a machine for making Star Trek stories only you could tell.
I have watched this book do its quiet work at conventions. Time and again I met people who had played the Star Trek Adventures RPG and bought the core rulebook, but could never find a regular group to play with. They came back and picked up Captain’s Log — because this is the Star Trek game that does not ask you to find a crew first. You are the crew.
I play it myself, alone, more than I probably admit on the podcast. My favorite way in: open the complication tables and just start rolling, one after another, and let the rolls become the story. No plan. No outline. Every time a complication comes up, roll on the next table and find out what your ship is dealing with now. I tell players this all the time, and it is the truest thing I know about this game: lean on the tables. They will carry you somewhere your imagination alone wouldn’t have gone.
So what is actually new in the 2026 edition? I will be straight with you, because Modiphius is straight about it too. The game itself hasn’t changed — no new mechanics, no secret extra chapters, and the content is otherwise unchanged. What you get is a brand-new cover featuring the iconic captains, the streamlined 2d20 rules with all the collected errata folded in, and the print edition brought fully in line with the latest digital version. If your 2023 copy is holding together, it still boldly goes. But if you have been solo-curious from the sidelines, this is the copy to start with: 326 pages, full color, completely standalone — no other book needed — and playable in any era from the 21st century to the 32nd.
Come October 30, it will be out there on shelves, waiting for captains who haven’t written their first log entry yet.
So tell me — if you sat down with Captain’s Log tomorrow, what era would your first log be set in, and who is the captain writing it?
— Michael