Star Trek Adventures by Modiphius Entertainment

A Guide for a GM looking to expand their stories in the Star Trek Adventures Galaxy.

Our friends at Modiphius have recently released a new book for their Star Trek: Adventures RPG. It’s their Exploration Guide, and they were kind enough to send us a copy for a read and a review. Thanks to them for supporting Woehammer!

Modiphius Entertainment

Regular readers may be better acquainted with the wargames that Modiphius sell (and they’ve got more than a few including Fallout and Five Leagues from the Borderlands). But they also have an extensive range of RPGs (role playing games) including the Star Trek Adventures series – now going into it’s second edition.

Star Trek Adventures

Star Trek Adventures RPG provides the players and their GM with all the tools needed to play through Star Trek episodes (or ones of their own imagining). It uses the 2D20 system from Modiphius and it is great fun! I’ve loved Star Trek since The Next Generation, and my credentials go all the way back to joining and Star Trek society at university, so I’ve been a fan for a long time.

Exploration Guide

The Exploration Guide is a full colour, hardback book of 144 pages with a full colour double side map of the Alpha and Beta quadrants. It includes everything a GM needs to create their own missions on the strange new worlds which are present in the Star Trek galaxy.

As with most expansions there are some new character options, but where this book really shines is the creation of sectors, solar systems, planets and biomes. And if that sounds like a lot of potential you would be right.

Each section is beautifully illustrated (with artists credited… /cough), and with many, many tables for generating the next away mission.

And did I mention the tables… I love the tables. My RPG playing goes back to the days of Traveller, and I sometimes struggle with story telling when being a GM, so a table is great to prod me into action. Just remember to bring the D20s… no D6s here!

Playing in Biomes

The majority of the book covers nine different Biomes from cave systems (complete with 60s polystyrene if you want), to deserts and everything in between. In each section there is a description of what our intrepid explorers might meet, the sub-types of biomes and potential threats and advantages of being there.

Of particular note here is that each section is crammed full of mission ideas and story hooks. For when you are struggling for inspiration.

So grab your GM, D20s and an exploration party and soon you may find yourselves in a Temperate Flower Forest, in the middle of a recent Burn Scar that has torn through a Glade. But remember the mission: There’s a distress call from deeper in the Forest.

And if I can do that in a few D20 rolls, imagine where it can take you!

Buying a Book?

The book costs £35, and as always, buy where you play; so check your local FLGS to see if they have a copy or can order in.

Alternatively check out Modiphius Entertainment’s own website.

If you are in the UK, you can find them at Dragonmeet at the end of November on stall D22.

What’s the conclusion?

This is a great book and a brilliant edition to a franchise I love… so it was always going to go down well. But the production quality, artist credits on the superb pictures and tables, tables, tables… have all combined to definitely convinced me it’s worth recommending.

So we give it 5 Woehammers!

And just in case you run other sci-fi RPGs or skirmish wargaming, and you’re looking for inspiration the solar system generation, and the biomes sections of this book are mostly rule agnostic and you could easily use this in another setting as an aide for idea generation.

Thanks again to Modiphius for providing us a copy to review.

— Declan and Eeyore