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Star Trek Adventures Gamemaster's Guide
The Gamemaster’s Guide for the Star Trek Adventures roleplaying game presents a wealth of information for new or novice Star Trek gamemasters, as well as for experienced gamemasters looking for additional guidance and new options to enhance their missions and campaigns.
The Star Trek universe is ready to be explored. What kind of campaign will you run?
This full color, 248 page digest-sized book (approx. 17 x 22 x 2 cm) is packed full of gamemaster advice, tables, and artwork, all designed to enhance your gameplay and delight your players.
The Star Trek universe is ready to be explored. What kind of campaign will you run?
This full color, 248 page digest-sized book (approx. 17 x 22 x 2 cm) is packed full of gamemaster advice, tables, and artwork, all designed to enhance your gameplay and delight your players.
- GenresRole Playing GamesGaming
248 pages, Hardcover
Published January 1, 2022
12 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
September 17, 2023
Broken down into seven broad chapters, how much you get out of this gamemaster guide will land squarely on how much experience you already have as a narrator previously in any game. Honestly, Chapter Four, which includes the sections on having a session zero, working with the players to figure out what they want from a game as well as what they're not looking for, and a lot of general advice is full of some great stuff I'd honestly like to see more often in game books.
There's a lot on "What is Star Trek?" and the technology and world-building of Star Trek and the reality is I'm a big ol' Star Trek nerd so this was kinda-sorta fun to breeze through, but mostly just filler. Still, for someone who doesn't have that foundation, there's a lot of great stuff there, too.
Chapter 5 was a solid hit for me, breaking down Mission-scale, Season-scale, and Campaign-scale approaches to storytelling, as well as Chapter 6, which was flush with more drawn out, straightforward examples of the rules in play, and I really appreciated the walkthrough of some of the facets of the game rules that I honestly found the core rulebook didn't leave me with a clear grasp of, even after multiple readings.
Chapter 7 has optional rules, which I doubt I'll use, but also has some more crunch sample encounters, and I flipping love the various sample Extended Tasks, and some tables for using in a bunch of scenarios to get the creative juices going if you hit a wall. So, all in all, I think there's some good stuff here I'm going to use, and for someone newer to being a narrator, there's a great deal of really cool advice included.
There's a lot on "What is Star Trek?" and the technology and world-building of Star Trek and the reality is I'm a big ol' Star Trek nerd so this was kinda-sorta fun to breeze through, but mostly just filler. Still, for someone who doesn't have that foundation, there's a lot of great stuff there, too.
Chapter 5 was a solid hit for me, breaking down Mission-scale, Season-scale, and Campaign-scale approaches to storytelling, as well as Chapter 6, which was flush with more drawn out, straightforward examples of the rules in play, and I really appreciated the walkthrough of some of the facets of the game rules that I honestly found the core rulebook didn't leave me with a clear grasp of, even after multiple readings.
Chapter 7 has optional rules, which I doubt I'll use, but also has some more crunch sample encounters, and I flipping love the various sample Extended Tasks, and some tables for using in a bunch of scenarios to get the creative juices going if you hit a wall. So, all in all, I think there's some good stuff here I'm going to use, and for someone newer to being a narrator, there's a great deal of really cool advice included.
January 8, 2024
This book took me a long time to read for some reason, but I'm glad I have it. I enjoyed the overview of the Star Trek universe and Star Trek Adventures at the beginning. The stuff toward the end probably had the most practical use, especially now that I've run a session of the game and can see how to apply it. I appreciated the discussion on extended tasks. That helped me understand better what they are, although I'm still no closer to understanding how a GM is supposed to decide what numbers to use for the four different difficulty/complexity numbers for extended tasks. This book has plenty of examples of extended tasks, but the choice of numbers for work track, magnitude, etc. still seems completely arbitrary and confusing to me.
My main complaint for this book is also something I've noticed in other STA books: the chapter titles. The "creative" ones in particular, like "To Boldly Go" and "Main Engineering." They're on theme, sure, but it's not at all obvious what those chapters are supposed to be about. The result is severely diminished value as a reference because I still don't know where to find anything. Other chapters have straightforward, "boring" titles and I wish they would stick with that for all of them.
This book also gives me a concern about STA in general. It seems like the game was designed with the idea in mind of having the GM plan out entire plots and take the players along for the ride. In other words, a railroad. The gamemaster's guide does talk a little bit about responding to the choices of the players, but overall it seems to lean heavily on predetermined plots. I am still inexperienced with the game so I may be wrong, and I really hope I am because that's not the way I'd like to play.
Still, I give it four stars, because I like reading about Star Trek and I did find its advice helpful. The print book also just plain looks cool.
My main complaint for this book is also something I've noticed in other STA books: the chapter titles. The "creative" ones in particular, like "To Boldly Go" and "Main Engineering." They're on theme, sure, but it's not at all obvious what those chapters are supposed to be about. The result is severely diminished value as a reference because I still don't know where to find anything. Other chapters have straightforward, "boring" titles and I wish they would stick with that for all of them.
This book also gives me a concern about STA in general. It seems like the game was designed with the idea in mind of having the GM plan out entire plots and take the players along for the ride. In other words, a railroad. The gamemaster's guide does talk a little bit about responding to the choices of the players, but overall it seems to lean heavily on predetermined plots. I am still inexperienced with the game so I may be wrong, and I really hope I am because that's not the way I'd like to play.
Still, I give it four stars, because I like reading about Star Trek and I did find its advice helpful. The print book also just plain looks cool.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews