star trek adventures a star beyond the stars

Star Trek Adventures - A Star Beyond the Stars

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Summary [ ]

External links [ ].

• Star Trek Adventures - A Star Beyond the Stars at Modiphius.us
• A Star Beyond the Stars at Memory Beta , the wiki for licensed Star Trek works
• 2 USS Enterprise (NCC-1701-G)
• 3 Star Trek: The Next Generation

Variations on A Star Beyond the Stars

Mission SPOILERS follow

Recently I wrapped up running ASBS for my crew incorporating some variations to the mission to accommodate my players and as a start mission for our campaign. Because ASBS is an introductory STA short campaign and is likely a common experience by many, I am wondering how others may have adapted it and why the changes were made? Or, how did the direction or elements of the story changed in play as it came into contact with the players?

Spoilers will abound in the discussion, so be warned.

Set Up: A basic change made with our campaign is that the PCs are crew of a Steamrunner class ship (USS Sojourner). This changes some of the ship to ship encounter dynamics a bit since a Galaxy class ship is presumed, so a Steamrunner is pretty clearly outmatched against the Warbird encounters.

The crew in play were focused primarily on sciences, engineering, and diplomacy. The PC crew had limited security skills which created some issues, and unique solutions, for the combat focused encounters (Security 3 being the max rating).

The home campaign setting timeline starts in 2380 which moves ASBS to the end of the TNG era. We decided we wanted to play after of the established TNG canon. The time change doesn’t really alter ASBS.

The Alcubierre Act I: Although the away mission was nearly thwarted by a broken hand actuator, the crew was able to gain access to the ship. Taking note of the message on the computer monitor, the crew starts heading directly to… Engineering. Because engineers focus on engineering solutions. Who would ever need to go to stellar cartography or the bridge?

Next post Act III.

This is scheduled after the conclusion of the Living Campaign (with extra missions added in). The Federation has just been made aware of changelings, and the pc’s have gotten tangled up with Section 31, so I’m hoping to add some filler missions in between to really heighten the paranoia and intrigue

My crew has a Nova-Class ship. So I scaled down enemy ships to a more manageable size. These ships are not cannon, I clobbered some stats together so that a fight might be interesting but winable. Further the ship is stationed on Narendra Station since I plan to run a campaign in the Shakelton Expanse once the sourcebook is published.

I have 7 crew members, three of them with good security skills so no worries on that part. However since 4 of them have strong science and/or engineering skills there are often 2 or 3 people capable of any given task so we often choose who does what by focus. I change some of the engineering tasks to science so that the science officer has enough to do. And once the crew is on an away mission I often struggle to find things for our Conn officer to do but I do not have a solution as of yet.

Act III: Ensign LaSalle’s directions helped the engineering and command teams to meet up and scale the turboshaft. Given the low security scores of the away team I should have bolstered LaSalle’s security score a bit to assist the PCs. A well timed disabling of the emergency lighting and a phaser attack from the turbo lift allowed the team to sneak into engineering.

The diplomatic characters negotiated with sub-commander D’Nal while the engineer snuck into a computer access room to try and stabilize the Alcubierre engines. The diplomatic distractions and ensuing firefight bought enough time to stabilize the warp field and reestablish communications with the Sojourner. Just in time to request a security team since the away team was rapidly falling to the attacks by the Romulans. However, even the security team was by overwhelmed by D’Nall and the Romulans. Clutching the away team commander in their hands D’Nall was going for the killing blow when the chief engineer was able to roll spectacularly and establish an emergency forcefield trapping the sub-commander. The remaining Romulans were quickly subdued. Engineering solutions for the win.

Conclusion: While no one died on the away mission there were several severe casualties, including the chief science officer. The CSO injuries prevented the primary xeno-biologist from investigating the neural parasite in detail. The captured sub-commander and other Romulans, along with ensign LaSalle, were turned over to Starfleet Command. SC also issued orders to restrict all knowledge of the away mission to the captain and the away team. Meanwhile the captain had a conversation with the commander about the need to strengthen the away team’s tactical resources. Overall the mission was a success, but the lack of away team tactical training and personnel contributed to the high casualties.

Next post We Are Not Ourselves

Our crew started with five players, but dwindled during play due life issues to three players. While a bit short handed, the supporting character option helped to fill out the away team with security personnel.

Yes, I found the options for science checks to be somewhat limited in ASBS, and there was a fairly strong reliance on engineering checks. While this worked out ok for our engineering heavy crew, I can see that you would have issues with a larger crew needing a broader range of skill checks.

Okay, now that life has settled back down a bit I’m going to catch up on this thread.

The crew of the USS Sojourner is running a bit shorthanded with primary players reduced to three PCs. The primary away team is lead by a human CMDR and Number 1 with skill in Command with leadership, diplomacy, and improvisation focuses. Team position two is held by the Tellarite engineer and Operations Manager, skilled in Engineering and Conn with focuses in power systems, warp field dynamics, and small craft piloting. The Holographic LTJG rounds out the trio with skills in Command and Medicine is the Ship’s Councilor and Diplomatic Advisor. Focuses in computers, linguistics, psychiatry, and diplomacy. They are joined by supporting characters as needed, which typically includes a Vulcan ensign from Security.

We Are Not Ourselves Act 1: Kortar Station At the edge of Klingon space the Steamrunner class ship takes an unexpected pounding by the asteroids. While the escape pod was successful recovered from the asteroid field, the Captain was unexpectedly injured when the ship was jolted by a large asteroid (I found it amusing that the Edosian NPC Captain lost their balance and was almost killed by the Vicious asteroid). Number 1, finding themselves unexpectedly in command of the bridge, after investigating the body of the rescued Klingon directed a small away team to Kortar Station.

The engineer, counselor, and security ensign beamed onto the command level of the station in order to investigate and stabilize the station. The overly cautious crew had some difficulty getting the station secured, and generating threat complications as they did so that would cost them later. Concerned about mutated Klingons and Security traps as they investigated the station and infirmary they were overly cautious. In particular at the infirmary where engineering solutions were used to beam in tricorders to the small infirmary for scanning before entering. The threat build up had resulted in the player’s being convinced there was going to be an attack by a mutated Klingon.

The investigation of the infirmary was cut short when the station automated disruptor cannons started firing on the ship. The disruptor cannon variation to this section was fun since the crew had accumulated a bit of threat with their complications, and the CMDR player hadn’t been using their primary character having played the Ensign for most of the session. The attack gave them an opportunity to do something with the ship while in command. The away team was able to deactivate the cannons while the CMDR maneuvered the ship away with only damage to the shields. Improvising a change like this is something I am used to doing. But I am also finding that I like the Threat mechanic as a way of building tension through the session and how it works in conjunction with the improvisation process. The accumulation of threat puts the players a bit on edge, while the use of threat is nice for managing the danger level and impact of the improvisation.

Next post Act II: Cordolan IV

We Are Not Ourselves Act II: Cordolan IV Setting course from Kortar Station to the Cordolan system the recovered Captain directed the CMDR to contact the Klingons about the change in flight plan to Cordolan. A bobbled communications test aroused some suspicion and prompted a demand from the Klingons to keep the Klingons updated on the status of the mission to Cordolan. While Kortar Station and Cordolan are not popular places for the Klingons, they are part of the Empire and cannot be traveled to without authorization.

While this is a minor variation, if I run the ASBS again I think I will fill out the Klingon’s involvement a bit more. This chapter occurs in Klingon space and impacts citizens of the Empire. While these areas are not important to the Empire I think there is a missed opportunity here to have a scene or two that could ratchet up the tension a bit. Challenging the crew with how much the do or don’t reveal to the Klngons about the Neural Parasite, and the impact that decision might have on Federation and Klingon relations. It would also be an opportunity to highlight characters with diplomacy type talents.

Arriving at Cordolan IV, the away team shuttled down to the outpost. Exploring the ground level the team pretty quickly deactivated the device amplifying the diamagnetic interference. Faint life signs were confirmed on the lower level so the away team promptly… went to investigate the Tellarite freighter lead by the Tellarite engineer.

Several fine tooth combs later, the GM spends some threat and redirects the Romulan centurions up to the ground floor to investigate the change in the diamagnetic field. A difficult fight later resulted in one of the centurions being stunned and the other transported to the ship’s brig. Engineering solutions again. The Neural Parasites are tough for the away team, but the fight also establishes that some of the away team seem rather phaser averse. The Neural Parasites don’t allow for many diplomatic solutions which is a bit frustrating for the diplomatically focused characters. Realizing that the lower level is likely to be a fight, the CMDR orders a Security team to beam down to the outpost. A crowded turbo lift ride takes both teams to the lower level.

Next post Act III: Machinations Revealed

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A Star Beyond the Stars

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• 1.1 Characters
• 1.2 Starships and vehicles
• 1.3 Locations
• 1.4 Races and cultures
• 1.5 States and organizations
• 1.6 Other references

References [ ]

Characters [ ], starships and vehicles [ ], locations [ ], races and cultures [ ], states and organizations [ ], other references [ ].

• 1 USS Enterprise (NCC-1701-B)
• 2 Ferengi Rules of Acquisition
• 3 USS Voyager (NCC-74656-A)

Continuing Mission

A Fan Site for the Star Trek Adventures RPG by Modiphius

Adventures Index

This is a living index of all  playable adventures  in official  Modiphius   Star Trek Adventures  releases, as well as homebrew adventures here on  Continuing Mission , as well as other online sources (where known).

This list will be updated when new materials are released or found, so check back from time to time for new materials. We welcome other adventures that we may have missed. Just  let us know .

Note : There may be spoilers in some podcasts/streams, either in shows you haven’t watched or adventures you haven’t played.

Complete Adventures

Modiphius compendiums.

• The Alcubierre
• We Are Not Ourselves
• The Pierced Veil
• The Oracle of Bar’koth Reach {TNG}
• Abyss Station
• Fury of the Hive
• Bacchus’ Irresistible Call
• We Came Forth To Contemplate The Stars
• Punishment And Crime
• Decision Point
• Doomed to Repeat the Past
• Fading Suns
• Convoy SE-119
• We Are The Stars That Sing With Our Life
• Assessor’s Gambit
• The Displaced
• Bacchus’s Irresistable Call {TOS}
• Punishment and Crime {TOS}
• The Assessor’s Gambit {TNG}
• The Displaced {TNG}
• As Many as Six Impossible Things {TNG}
• Joy’s Soul Lies in the Doing {TNG}
• The Needs of the Few {TNG}
• Prism {TNG}
• Envoy {TNG}
• Deliverance {TNG}
• A Cure Worse Than The Disease {ENT}
• Plato’s Cave {TOS}
• Drawing Deeply From The Well {TOS}
• No Good Deed {TOS}
• The Whole of the Law {TOS}
• Footfall {TNG}
• A Cry From The Void {TNG}
• Darkness {TNG}
• The Angstrom Operation {TNG}
• A World With A Bluer Sun {TOS}
• Border Dispute {TNG}
• Entropy’s Demise {TNG}
• Forests of the Night {TNG}
• Biological Clock {TNG}
• Plague of Arias {TNG}
• That Which Is Unknown {TNG}
• The Shepherd {TNG}
• Shadows and Whispers {TOS}
• The Way Out is In {TOS}
• Breaking the Lock {TOS}
• A Bridge to Everywhere {TOS}
• Home and Hearth {TOS}
• One Step Beyond {TOS}

Modiphius Standalones

• A Forest Apart  [ Modiphius ] {TOS}
• A Vulture Among The Stars [ Modiphia #2 ] {TNG}, free
• Call Back Yesterday  [ Modiphius ] {TNG}
• Ends And Means  [ Modiphius ] {TNG}
• Hard Rock Catastrophe  [ Modiphius ] {TOS}
• Kobayashi Maru [ Modiphius ] {TOS}, free
• Nest In The Dark  [ Modiphius ] {TNG}
• Remnants  [ Modiphius ] {TOS}
• Signals [ Quickstart Guide ] {TNG}
• Stolen Liberty  [ Modiphius ] {TNG}
• The Ghost Writer [ Modiphia #3 ] {TNG}, free
• The Gravity of the Crime [ Modiphius ] {TNG}
• The Rescue At Xerxes IV  [ Core ] {TNG}
• Trouble On Omned III [ Modiphius ] {TNG}
• The Prize [ Modiphius ] {TNG}
• Back to Reality [ Modiphius ] {TNG}
• The Burning [ Modiphius ] {TOS}
• Another Roll of the Dice [ Modiphius ] {TNG}
• Upsetting the Balance [ Modiphius ] {TNG}
• Better Days [ Modiphius ] {TNG}
• Storms of Kiselia 7 [ Modiphius ] {TNG}

Other Mission Compendiums

• Pieces of Eight
• Enigmas and Variations
• Twilight Season
• To Face The Darkness Your Heart Must Be Pure
• What Shadows Obscure
• Have Bait Will Travel
• The Fathomless
• Hidden Secrets
• The Weight of Decision
• Dish Served Cold
• Heart of Steel
• New Neighborhood
• Polished Mirror
• Mirror of Steel
• Crystal Mirror
• Broken Mirror
• If the Shoe Fits
• Shattered Time
• Caught in the Web
• Pandora’s Gate
• Planet of the Ebon Pearl
• Prayers of Suppression
• Latinum Ocean
• First Contact: K’Si
• ADV010: Catch and Release [ CM ]
• ADV017: Dark Secrets [ CM ]

Other Standalones

• A Visit To Armageddon [ Other ] {TOS}
• Absent Friends [ Other ] {TOS}
• Banned From Argo [ Other ] {TOS}
• Dail Colony  [ CM ] {TNG}
• Decay [ Other ] {TNG}
• Demon World  [ CM ] {TOS}
• Do Mudd-Droids Dream of Electric Sheep?  [ Other ] {TOS}
• Dormant Life [ CM ] {TNG}
• Enigma [ Other ] {TNG}
• Flora & Fauna  [ Other ] {TNG}
• Ghost In The Shuttlebay [ Other ] {ENT}
• Life Itself [ CM ] {TNG}
• Most Wanted Klingon  [ Other ] {TNG}
• Pilleurs d’Epave  [ French ] {DIS}
• Poseidonis [ CM ] {TNG}
• Psi-Shift [ CM ] {All Eras}
• Qilling Time [ CM ] {TNG}
• Rig For Red  [ CM ] {TNG}
• Risa [ CM ] {TNG}
• Solomon’s Dilemma  [ Other ] {TNG}
• Shadows Fly On The Wind [Currently unavailable] {TNG}
• Shadows of the Past [ Other ] {STO}
• Sovereignty [ Other ] {TNG}
• Symbiosis Failure [ Other ] {TNG}
• The Best Crew in the Galaxy [ CM ] {TNG}
• The Flying Dutchman [ Other ] {TOS}
• The Gene Genie  [ Other ] {TOS}
• The Listening Post [ Other ] {All}
• The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same [ CM ] {TNG}
• The Negative Paradox [ Other ] {TOS}
• The Quadrupole Quandary  [ Other ] {TNG}
• The Rescuers [ Other ] {TOS}
• The Roord [ CM ] {TNG}
• The Ruin of Maxanor [ Other ] {TOS}
• The Wedding of S’zera [ Other ] {TNG}
• There Ain’t No Such Thing as a Free Lunch [ CM ] {TNG}
• Through A Forest Wilderness [ CM ] {DIS}
• Time And Time Again  [ Other ] {TNG}
• Time Skips [ CM ] {ENT}

Supplementals

• Lower Decks Adaptation [ CM ] {TNG}
• Beyond the 2371 Finale [ CM ] {TNG}

Misson Briefs

Most of these can be adapted to different eras or non-Federation settings with some work.

• Strength of Belief {ENT}
• The Honored Undead {ENT}
• Disruptors At Dawn {ENT}
• Move and Counter-Move {TOS}
• The Great Gorn Gaffe {TOS}
• Dinner For Two {TOS}
• Gale Force {TOS}
• Subversion {TNG}
• My Ally Or My Enemy {TNG}
• Broken Promises {TNG}
• Who Holds Dominion Here? {TNG}
• Where’s The Gagh? {TNG}
• False Readings
• Uzaveh the Infinite
• Targ-et Practice
• Revenge of the Illyrians
• Solkar, Captain of the T’Plana-Hath
• Hunting Lemurs
• Tell Tales to the Tellarites
• General Order One
• The Rush of the Belt
• Going Viral
• In the Dark
• Uninvited Guests
• Rude Awakening
• The Order Beyond
• The Other End
• Fluid Mechanics
• Follow the Leader
• The Space Between
• Anachronism
• Dilithium Dirge
• The Funeral of Captain Mandolini
• The Gemulon Run
• Bedlam on Baham
• Squirk’s Scheme
• S.S. Tranquil
• Daddy’s Little Girl
• Life’s Gamble
• Bandits of Zanthica
• Dead Men Close No Deals
• Imminent Collision
• Imperatives
• Holographic Will
• Surgical Strike
• Examinations
• Repair Time
• A Majestic Matter
• Burden of Guilt
• Everlasting
• Freedom of the Mind
• Forget Me Not
• Two for One
• Side Effects
• Inner Workings
• One Small Step
• Deadly Cirrus
• Guilty Till Proven
• Dinner and a Show
• Primum Non Nocere
• Echoes of the Past
• The Planet Next Door
• Jaded Scorpion
• Wreck of the Stardust Ascendant
• Treasure of the Spindrift
• Cat’s Meow
• The Ark of Caledon
• Stitches in Time and Space
• The Mighty Gorgon
• Vent Qui Rend Fou
• Origin Unknown
• Suffer the Little Children
• The Maelstrom Imperative
• Cloaks and Daggers
• First, Do No Harm
• Can I Play With Madness?
• Dangerous Liaisons
• Tooth and Claw
• A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing
• Frontier Diplomacy Blues
• Bid Time Return
• Adrift {TOS}
• Splinters of Fire {TOS}
• Abyss Station {TOS}
• Fury of the Hive {TOS}
• We Came Forth to Contemplate the Stars {TOS}
• Simplicity {TOS}
• Into the Heart of Murasaki 312 {TOS}
• Return to Beta Niobe {TOS}
• Emergency on Ceti Alpha V {TOS}
• Piece of the Puzzle {TOS}
• Decision Point {TNG}
• Doomed to Repeat the Past {TNG}
• Fading Suns {TNG}
• Convoy SE-119 {TNG}
• Tug of War {TNG}
• Signals {TNG}
• We are the Stars that Sing with Our Lives {TNG}
• The Orion Heist {TNG}
• Second Contact {TNG}
• Disunification {TNG}
• Cleft of the Rock {TNG}
• Time Machine {TNG}
• Defending Narendra Station {TNG}
• The Fallen {TNG}
• The Qofuari Conundrum {TNG}
• A Picture’s Worth {TNG}
• Strategic Location {TNG}
• The Chimes at Midnight {TNG}
• Unintended Consequences {TNG}
• Safe Passage {TNG}
• War Torn {TNG}
• Early Warning {TNG}
• The Fight for Betazed {TNG}
• Viral Battlefield {TNG}
• Strange Bedfellows {TNG}
• The Expanse Initiative {TNG}
• Hidden in the Depths
• The Orion Trap
• The Shadows Have Eyes
• Forming Glory
• What Follows
• Gormagander Migration
• Mirrored Aspirations
• Triumvirate Games
• Contaminant
• Tardigrade Trip
• Muddied Waters
• Arena of Relics
• Starbase Naught
• The Basest Bones
• Worthy Prey
• Peer Pressure
• Jefferies Tube Jam
• Playing Along
• It Takes a Village
• Retrofit Gone Wrong
• Bilitrium Blues
• The Handler
• Surface Issues
• ADV001: Order of the Amber Pendant [ CM ] {TNG}
• ADV002: A Surplus of Problems [ CM ] {TNG}
• ADV003: Prix and Proxy [ CM ] {TNG}
• ADV004: NX Squared [ CM ] {TNG}
• ADV005: Hyperspace Blues [ CM ] {TNG}
• ADV006: The Orb of the Exile [ CM ] {TNG}
• ADV007: Deepen [ CM ] {TNG}
• ADV008: Planetoids [ CM ] {TNG}
• ADV009: I, Hologram [ CM ] {TNG}
• ADV010: Supreme Mandate: Catch and Release [ CM ] {TNG}
• ADV011: The Hur’q [ CM ] {TNG Klingon}
• ADV012: Family Matters [ CM ] {TNG}
• ADV013: A New Warp Signal [ CM ] {TNG}
• ADV014: Find [ CM ] {TNG}
• ADV015: Blueberry Trill [ CM ] {ENT}
• ADV016: Waste of Time [ CM ] {ENT}
• ADV017: Supreme Mandate: Dark Secrets [ CM ] {TNG}
• TNG502: Darmok [ CM ] {TNG}
• The Roord, Part II [ CM ] {TNG}
• The Path of Distress [ CM ] {TNG}
• The Cure [ CM ] {TNG}
• Deadlock [ CM ] {Any}
• Extraction [ CM ] {TNG}
• Pocket Planet [ CM ] {TNG}

Partial Adventures

• Ackworm  [ CM ] {TNG}
• One Dam Problem  [ CM ] {TNG}
• Ping Pong [ CM ] {TNG}
• Sentient Seed  [ CM ] {TNG}
• Tsunkatse [ CM ] {VOY}
• The Best Pilot In The Galaxy  [ CM ] {TNG}

In Progress

• Transplant (Act I) [ Other ] {TNG}

Settings and Inspirations

• Sargon & Beyond  [ CM ] {TNG}
• Star Trek: Explorations [ Other ] {2200s}
• The Tekli Campaign [ Other ] {TNG}
• The Gathering [ Other ] {TNG}
• Three New Worlds [ Other ]
• 20 Side Plots [ Other ]
• A Setting Overview for 2380 [ Other ] {2380}
• Home Ground [ Other ]
• Where No One Would Ever Want To Go [ Other ]

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Science's Less Accurate Grandmother

Steve[n] Mollmann's blog: it only knows that it needs, but like so many of us, it does not know what

11 March 2022

Star trek adventures starter campaign and missions: my experience as a gm.

I lasted posted about DMing Star Trek Adventures some ten months ago , promising a further post once my players had got through my opening story arc... that has finally happened! It was a five-episode arc, so yes, it takes us about two months to do a single episode. I want here to reflect on the game in general so far, explain my campaign, and review the individual episodes we've played.

Our Campaign: Beyond the Rim of the Starlight

Our campaign is set in 2371, the year after The Next Generation ends but before Generations ; after the Dominion has been discovered on Deep Space Nine but before the Dominion War has begun. This lets us play with most things in the TNG / DS9 toolbox without worrying about the continuity of the big political changes DS9 introduced. The "Rim of the Starlight" is a barrier in space, beyond which lies a largely uncharted mass of the galaxy... but occasional holes do open up, meaning there have been sporadic visits by the Federation or other familiar species, which would let me make use of the published missions.

There are five published missions that claim to be designed to introduce players to the system:

• "The Rescue at Xerxes IV" (included in the Core Rulebook )
• "Signals" (part of the "Quickstart" free download)
• "A Star Beyond the Stars" (a three-part campaign, part of the "Starter Set" pack)

I decided to incorporate all three into my opening campaign, designed to introduce the players to the game, and the characters to the area beyond the Rim of the Starlight. There's a narrative break between parts one and two of "A Star Beyond the Stars," so I put "The Rescue at Xerxes IV" there, and then I stuck "Signals" at the end. This also worked well in terms of introducing the mechanics... mostly.

I wanted my characters to be "lower decks" ones, a group of ensigns just graduated from the Academy. I guess I was influenced by watching Lower Decks , but also I was coming from a traditional D&D idea of RPG progression: start at the bottom and work your way up. This, I would come to realize, is not how STA conceptualizes things. It would be easier to go all lower decks if I was writing my own missions from scratch, but so far I have stuck with published ones, and some require some pretty big tweaks to explain why a group of ensigns is at the focus! (I assure my players that between missions, the ships gets into all kinds of exciting scrapes in which they play absolutely no significant role.)

The tricky thing has also been creating a senior staff for their ship, the USS Ayrton . I mean, they all exist with names and stats, but I've struggled to work them in without overshadowing the player characters, which means the senior staff barely appear, and my players never really remember anything about them.

(The Ayrton is an old Constellation -class starship that has served on many venerable exploration campaigns. My players have complained that whenever the ship rolls to assist, it fails, so it must not be a very good ship.)

Our players have fluctuated. So far they have included:

• my wife Hayley as Liana Carver, human science officer (all episodes)
• Cari and Andy as Jor Lena, Bajoran security officer, and Gurg bim Vurg, Tellarite doctor (all episodes)
• Jeremy and Daniela as Samel, Vulcan engineer, and Ioza Morganth, Betazoid pilot (episodes 1-3)
• Claire as Mooria Loonin, Trill command officer (episodes 3-4, but intends to return in future)

(Two new players have joined us beginning with episode 6, as well.)

I will say the Star Trek format makes characters appearing and disappearing much easier to justify than D&D . ("Uh, this guy stayed in the tavern this week.") Especially with my lower decks focus, I just have to say that the captain didn't assign someone to beam down this episode!

Episode 1: "A World Beyond the Starlight, Part I: The Alcubierre "

As published, this mission is about the player characters going aboard a derelict Federation starship, the USS Alcubierre , that was testing an experimental engine, which would allow it to go faster than warp five without causing subspace pollution (tying into the TNG episode "Force of Nature"). They discover that the ship was attacked by Romulans, but end up discovering on top of that that the Romulans are being controlled by the parasites from the TNG episode "Conspiracy."

I retooled this to fit my campaign: the Alcubierre was testing out a device to cross through the Rim of the Starlight at will. When it crossed through, the device malfunctioned, stranding it, but also it was attacked by Romulans. In a last-ditch effort, it was able to cross back; the Romulan warbird was cut off, but the ship had still been boarded. I wasn't interested in working with the "Conspiracy" parasites, though, and replaced them with a fungus, loosely based on the so-called " zombie-ant fungus ."

I had the player characters shuttle over to the Alcubierre with an NPC first officer character in command of the mission. This meant that I could provide some guidance as they figured out the system, but my plan was also for the commander to get knocked out at some point, so that one of the players would have to be put in command.

Overall, this mission went pretty well. The players spent their time learning the system, but soon figured it out. They quickly proved themselves adept at coming up with interesting solutions. In this mission, they find there's just one survivor on the Alcubierre , Ensign Jim LaSalle, an engineer who helps them do the cold restart of the ship's engines, which allows the players' ship to beam people over and win the day. The players are supposed to fight their way into Engineering and then fix the engines.

My players had the idea that instead of coming with them, LaSalle should stay behind and cause a distraction, drawing some Romulans away from Engineering. I let them do this, but I think I should have handled things slightly differently: if I was making the combat tasks easier by reducing the number of Romulans, I should have made the technical tasks harder. (Instead of having LaSalle there to talk them through things, they had to depend on his notes.) I still think this would have played to their strengths; at the time, there was just one character who was worth anything in combat. But overall it went well!

They did some creative stuff, too, in terms of capturing a Romulan. On the other hand, we struggled a bit with combat, and it wasn't until partway through episode 2 that I realized there was a very basic rule about how to use STA 's custom "command dice" when rolling for damage that I had totally overlooked because it's printed in a different part of the CR than all the other information about combat! It's a good system, but it's not always well explained.

Episode 2: "A World Beyond the Starlight, Part II: The Rescue at Xerxes IV"

So I had episode 1 end with a tug arriving to tow the derelict Alcubierre back to Deep Space 8, and the player characters being assigned to go with it to do debriefing on the fungal threat. Episode 2 opened, then, with them flying on a runabout back to their own ship, the Ayrton , allowing me to integrate the starter mission from the Core Rulebook . In the mission as written, the characters discover that all life-forms on Xerxes IV are devolving, including a Federation science team which they have to evacuate. The scientists don't want to leave, though, because they're researching a medicine, and if they don't get samples now, the plants they need will devolve too.

I tied this into my ongoing plot by having it be an antifungal that they were researching—and by giving a piece of paper to Gurg's player that indicated this antifungal was, according to a medical briefing he'd seen on DS8, exactly what was needed to remove fungus from someone's brain without harming their brain. Pretty big coincidence? Well, they also learned that a mysterious signal had been intercepted by the Xerxes outpost computers several months ago... the outpost hadn't been able to decode it, but a couple days later, they'd received orders from the Federation Ministry for Science telling them to research antifungals. Only, later the characters would learn the Ministry had never sent any such orders...

Other than this, I didn't change much. The mission works really well as an introduction to the STA mechanics overall: it begins with some basic tasks, then some simple combat, then teaches you Extended Tasks. My players again surprised me: at the beginning, they get attacked by devolved scientists ("Neanderthals" according to the mission; my players made fun of the science here), and they managed to capture one and brought him along with them! Which was not a thing I had anticipated. This proved especially challenging when the players had to cross a ravine, and they had to get this tied-up Neanderthal to walk across a log! There were some good shenanigans there.

The climax of the episode is both clever and somewhat confusing for a first-time GM. Basically, the characters have to split up and undertake three different things simultaneously, all within a time limit: they need to find parts to repair their damaged runabout, they need to cure the devolution, and they need to gather plant samples to use in the fungicide, but an ion storm is bearing down on the planet that will make taking off impossible. My players debated what to do a bit. Ioza, who was in charge of the mission, didn't think gathering materials for the fungicide was worth the time. On the other hand, Gurg knew how valuable the fungicide could be... but the briefing he'd learned that from was classified, and I'd added a Mission Directive of "Maintain operational security and protect classified information."

Carver, our science officer, was game to find the samples, and Ioza was willing to go with her if she insisted; it seemed logical that Gurg would cure the devolution, and Jor the security officer wanted to help him. But Gurg kept insisting he didn't need help—his way of trying to make Jor go work on the more important task without revealing what he knew! But one of Jor's Values is "Tight with Gurg," and I ended up giving her a point of Determination if she refused to listen to Gurg in order to help Gurg.

According to the mission as written, the characters should have 15 intervals to do all of this. In STA , a Task by default takes 2 intervals, though players can spend Momentum to reduce that to 1, and if they roll a Complication, it increases to 3. The mission seems to indicate that you should rotate between the characters, with each Task taking 2 intervals, but 1) doing all three of those things would be totally impossible, you would just run out of time, and 2) it also doesn't make much sense from a narrative standpoint. The characters are working simultaneously: why should Carver scanning for samples in one location give Samel less time to look for engine parts in a different location? It also says to spend some Threat to add Neanderthals to some scenes, and that combat should take 1 interval... but also to just integrate the Neanderthals into the turn order. So the whole combat is 1 interval? How can you do that and maintain the turn order?

I ended up treating each location as its own separate Timed Challenge, and just trying to move back and forth between them in a way that made sense: if 2 intervals passed in one location, but 4 in another, then I went back to the one where 2 had passed to "catch it up," so to speak. And I had player combat Tasks take 1 interval by default. This all worked out very well, actually; pretty much every group finished in the nick of time, and there was some good rolling and rerolling. But it was more confusing than I feel like something aimed at first-time GMs and players ought to be! I posted in one of the STA facebook groups to ask if I was interpreting things correctly, but the advice I got didn't really clarify. I've never seen anyone else complain about this mission being confusing, though, so maybe it's just me!

Anyway, that aside, it was overall a fun one, and it was by the end of this mission that I felt that STA as a system had really clicked for me and my players, with them effectively using Momentum, Determination, Talents, and Focuses to their advantage, and me figuring out what to do with Threat.

It took two-and-a-half sessions to play this one; one of my players complained after the first session that she didn't really know what was happening narratively in the first Extended Task. She understood the mechanics, but what was actually taking place? This was good feedback, and I made many of the Tasks in the later scenes more detailed as a result. As written, the mission just says the characters are collecting samples, for example, but I would say things like, "you're looking for a tree of genus Ditasa ," which I think helped the immersion.

I had the episode end with the Xerxes science outpost broadcasting a mysterious signal through the Rim of the Starlight, opening up a hole in it. (All this stuff with the signals was me working in foreshadowing of what would be the arc's last episode, "Signals.")

Episode 3: "A World Beyond the Starlight, Part III: We Are Not Ourselves"

Episode 3 thus opened with the main characters back on the Ayrton , joined by a new crew transfer, Loonin, and the ship assigned to cross through the Rim of the Starlight to find the Romulan warbird and the alien fungus. I set it up with a series of chained Tasks as the ship crossed through the Rim: Carver was in the science lab on scanning duty, Samel was on the bridge on Engineering duty, Gurg was in sickbay, and the other three characters were on a damage control team together.

• Carver in the science lab does a Reason + Science Difficulty 2 Task to determine where the Rim is going to fluctuate. She sends this information to Samel on the bridge...
• Samel on the bridge does a Reason + Engineering D2 Task to figure out where to send the damage control team...
• Loonin does a Command + Presence D2 Task to get the damage control team moving quickly and efficiently...
• Ioza does an Insight + Engineering D2 Task to fix the system while...
• Jor does a Fitness + Security D2 Task to rescue a crewman trapped by the damage and get him to sickay...
• Gurg does a Reason + Medicine D2 Task to stabilize him.

Each player could spend Momentum off the back of a successful Task to reduce the difficulty of the next one, e.g., if Samel did a very good job identifying where the damage would happen, that would make Loonin's job easier. My players seemed to like it, it gave their "lower decks" characters something to do, and they ended up with a nice big pool of Momentum at the beginning of the episode.

This episode has two discrete parts as written: first the players investigate a derelict Klingon space station infected by the parasites (fungus in my version) and then they go to a base where the parasites are performing genetic experiments. As written, the parasites are trying to create superior hosts for themselves, but keep triggering devolution by mistake. I had to change this a bit: we had just done devolution in the last mission! I also wanted the fungus to be up to something more interesting (more on that when I get to episode 4). So I had the fungus experimenting to make itself more intelligent; they were inducing mutations in the Klingons to increase their cranial capacity, and then harvesting those neurons and injecting them into fungal samples. Despite this, my players made a connection to the devolution they had seen on Xerxes IV. Two totally unrelated phenomena in two weeks making people devolve: that's just life in Starfleet, I guess.

Investigating the Klingon station was kind of tricky. Mostly it's a series of Tasks where you look at a thing, then learn something. The players were a bit unlucky with some bad rolls, and also it was hard to use Threat in a way that made things more fun, I found. Also this is where I learned that making transporting into a Task with a Difficulty beyond 0 can backfire when the plot requires that the characters beam over! Because they did poorly on that Task, they had to use a shuttle... and then they did poorly on that one! So, if something needs to happen, and you don't want to explore negative repercussions, your best bet as a GM is to just make it D0 and let your players earn some momentum.

The second part of the mission was better, though; I did have an NPC member of the senior staff beam down with them, but here is where I learned that that is hard to play an NPC right when the NPC is in command but you also want to maintain player agency, and the NPC mostly faded into the background, her personality not emerging as I'd hoped.

Again, my players surprised me. (Always a good thing.) Advancing on a place where they knew there were some fungus-controlled Romulans and Klingons, they wanted to draw them out in smaller numbers. They had the idea of Loonin—who had a Focus in Animal Handling—making the call of an animal they had been hearing (alien apes the fungus was experimenting on). I liked this... but also thought that it was pretty unlikely Loonin could skillfully mimic something she'd only heard a couple times! So I set it to Difficulty 5. They grumbled a bit, but used their ingenuity to come up with a new plan: they recorded the animal noise on a tricorder, then "bluetoothed" a comm badge to the tricorder, placed the comm badge ahead of them while they hid, and then used the tricorder to make the comm badge play back the noise, drawing out a Romulan, who they took down quite effectively.

They then ended up capturing one of the fungus-controlled Romulans, pointing out it was the only one left. I made this appeal a D4 Task, but they pulled it off in style.

Something I hadn't anticipated when changing the parasites into fungus is that when a fungus-controlled person dies, they release a cloud of spores, which made my players paranoid they were going to be taken over. Eventually, we figured out that they could just set their phasers to "vaporize"! (The fungus absorbs stun blasts, so you have to set your phaser to kill to combat it effectively at all.)

Episode 4: "A World Beyond the Starlight, Part IV: The Pierced Veil"

This episode begins right where the previous one ends on a cliffhanger. As written, the "Conspiracy" parasites are out for revenge, and they have found an Iconian gateway that they can use to travel anywhere in the galaxy once they reactivate it. What I changed this to was that the fungus had found an ancient device that could establish reliable travel though the Rim of the Starlight, allowing it to run rampant in an unsuspecting galaxy. So the players need to find the planet where the device is and stop the fungus.

This mission I made a lot of changes to, the most thus far. Some because of my ongoing plot, some because of player availability, and some because I think the mission as written is actually quite bad.

So the first key one is that the player ship, once it tracks down the ancient device, is supposed to get into a battle with a Romulan warbird, introducing your players to ship combat. But from reading the rules, it seemed to me that ship combat really depends on having the engineer and helm officer as player characters... and ours had quit during episode 3, leaving me with a science officer, a doctor, a security officer, and a junior command officer. So I came up with a different idea: while the NPC senior staff was fighting a pitched battle, Carver would be working in a sensor suite, and the other three would be on a damage control team together. But then Hayley had to put the baby down for a nap when the relevant scene actually happened, so it ended up just focusing on the trio.

This turned out to be pretty fun. I reused a corridor map from the starter set (originally representing part of the Alcubierre ), and told them there was a device they had to repair, a plasma fire they had to put out, and a trapped engineer they had to rescue. There was some good tension and drama, especially when Gurg disobeyed Loonin's orders: he had a chance to fix the device, but instead helped someone in medical danger. And then Gurg was put in charge of the away mission!

The mission as written presents a pretty pointless "moral dilemma": the "Conspiracy" parasites say that if the player characters let them go, they'll just go infect the Romulans instead. The players can let them do that, or arrest them. Like, what? Really? Would any Starfleet officer be remotely tempted by this?

So I switched things up a lot. The fungus wasn't innately sentient: it only becomes sentient when inhabiting a sentient host. This was the reason for the experiments from the last episode; the fungus was trying to make itself independently sentient. The players ended up in a situation where they could create a fungicide gas or shut down the cross-through device, and what I wanted to happen was this:

• they would trying to shut down the cross-through device, but something (ultimately revealed to be one of those signals again) would stop them
• they would thus have to create the gas
• they would then be captured and learn that if they gassed the Romulans, they would wipe out the only remaining sentient fungus
• then the signal would cut the power to the base they were all in, removing the threat of the cross-through device, and also ensuring that the gas (on its own power supply) would be released
• then the players would have to help save a fungus aliens in true Star Trek fashion, despite the apparently genocidal agenda of whoever was behind the signals

But my players were too damned principled to even make the gas as a last resort! I guess this is what happens when you try to railroad.

So things went a bit differently. An NPC they had met (LaSalle from episode 1, out for revenge against the fungus for killing all his crewmates) was outraged at their principles, and he cut off the air to the base they were in. So now the issue was they would all asphyxiate. Here I got to use Threat effectively: Loonin scored a good hit on LaSalle, which ought to have stunned him, but I spent 2 Threat to Avoid an Injury, giving LaSalle enough time to destroy the air system. It's situations like this that make Threat really shine: instead of having Loonin fail due to GM fiat, she failed because I had the Threat in my pool to spend, which feels less arbitrary and more satisfying, I think.

The characters were able to convince the fungus-controlled Romulans to help them fix the air control system and surrender to the Federation, where Federation scientists would work to find a way to extract the fungus while maintaining its sentience. Diplomacy in action!

So overall, it ended up being an exciting and tense mission, but I feel like that's partially in spite of how it was written.

I will say that overall, "A Star Beyond the Stars" is kind of meh as a starter set. Every episode basically requires combat, but on the other hand across three episodes, there's just one Extended Task! It doesn't really work as written to introduce the players to the full breadth of what the STA system can and should do. And like I said, the supposed moral dilemma is bad, and as written the players don't really play a role in the climax; things fail, but not because of them.

(One other nitpick: there's a bit where the scenario suggests that the situation should be paranoid because the characters won't know if any of the crew has been taken over by the parasites... but also checking to see if someone has been taken over is a Difficulty 1 Task, so how could you not figure it out? I made it harder to figure out if someone had been taken over—you had to try to knock them unconscious and see if the fungus prevented that from happening—but also didn't do anything to make them think any of their crewmates had been taken over. That said, Jor began to be paranoid that she had been infected by fungal spores and didn't know it!)

I was ultimately pretty happy with how I tweaked it... but I also feel like I ought not have had to do so much tweaking!

Episode 5: "A World Beyond the Starlight: Epilogue—Signals"

"Signals" is, like I said, a mission that comes with the free Quickstart. I placed it last because of my "signals" story arc: the players are trying to track down the mysterious signals that influenced events in episodes 2 and 4. But as I came to write it up in detail, I realized that it was a bit of an anticlimax after the events of "The Pierced Veil," more about setting up what is to come than anything else, hence why I ultimately designated it "Epilogue" rather than "Part V." I had a belated idea of making it go between "We Are Not Ourselves" and "The Pierced Veil"; the players could come across Seku VI as they searched for clues about where to find the fungus. But by that point, I'd written up episode 4 already and didn't feel like rewriting.

Also once I dug into it, I realized that "Signals" is super-basic. It opens with the away team already having beamed down to Seku VI, looking for both a lost runabout and some mysterious signals; they fight some Romulans who run away, find two dead members of the runabout crew, find the crashed Romulan ship, meet some settlers who let them see an alien artifact, the artifact self-destructs, and then they leave. It felt more like "and then another thing happens..." than a coherent story. This is kind of intentional, as it's designed to be simple: it's supposed to be someone's first mission, not their fifth !

But I learned that it was a cut down version of a mission from the " Living Campaign ," which was a thing where Modiphius would post free missions on the web across the course of a year so that groups could play along at home. That version of "Signals" is more complex: there's some scenes before crew beams down, there's more dangers on the planet, there's a whole space-based subplot about the ship searching for the missing runabout in a nebula. I didn't want the ship subplot, but I added the other stuff back in.

I also had the idea that the settlers wouldn't want the crew to see the artifact; I made them into refugees who saw the artifact as the only thing of value they possessed. So the players would have the dilemma of maybe betraying a trust if they wanted to see it. I then realized this would be more effective if they met the settlers earlier, so I moved the settlement encounter up, and had one of the settlers accompany the players to the crashed Romulan ship.

It still played quicker than any other mission (a single three-hour session got us up to halfway through the last scene!), but it worked even better than I hoped. The players did a great job befriending nervous young Drev Katel, and our Bajoran security officer particularly bonded with them, telling them how hard things had been on Bajor, and what a difference the Federation had made in her life. Drev offered to get the Starfleet characters into the mines to see the artifact, provided they turned it off so outsiders would stop coming to their settlement.

The players, however, had rotten luck and failed the Task to bluff their way into the mines. They then tried to tell the guards why they were really there, but the guards were unimpressed, and an impulsive decision by the security officer to disarm one of them ended with the guard unconscious, forcing a conflict, while a horrified Drev watched the supposedly friendly Starfleet officers knock out their comrades. At that point, the players were committed, and went to investigate the artifact. Then they rolled very well and deactivated its self-destruct, and the security officer stunned the group of four Romulans who pursued them into the mines with one shot.

I had 5 Threat left, so I brought in two more Romulans, and spent one extra to give one of them a good roll, and they managed to stun the security officer. The science and medical officers, Carver and Gurg, are not good at fighting, and came up with a plan: convince the Romulans to let them turn the artifact back on under the guise of sharing data, but in actuality reactivate the self-destruct and run away. Unfortunately, some bad rolls meant they failed to convince the Romulans, who compromised at letting the Starfleet officers run away with their lives.

The episode ends with them going back to the ship, knowing the settlers are going to hash it out with the Romulans over a disabled artifact they learned little from. Talk about a downer! I ended up feeling kind of bad for the players, especially my wife, who had been in command. I feel like player failure has to happen sometimes, but it's not fun when it does.

Star Trek Adventures Overall

In the main, I really like the game. The 2d20 system is very easy to pick up. There are some fiddly bits, especially around combat, but the fundamental idea of always rolling two dice, always aiming to get below a target number, and always needing a certain number of successes, is pretty simple I think. It's also very adaptable: as GM it's easy for me to determine what the players need to do to succeed at something even if it's an idea that would never have occurred to me. The collaborative nature of it is fun; the Star Trek focus on diplomacy and science as solutions is great and has lead to some inventive stuff by my players. They are very prone to going, "no, let's not shoot these guys who are shooting at us, let's ask what they want!"

I'm in a STA GMs facebook group, and occasionally there are questions like, "How do you make travel times work?" Then people will say, "We fudge them," and the asker will say, "Don't your players notice/object?" Well, mine never would! But even so, I would say this is approaching STA wrong. One time, someone in the fb group asked why junior officer player characters with no experience were basically as good as senior officer players with 30 years of experience. I wrote:

The thing you have to keep in mind with STA is it's not a "life in a 'real' Starfleet" simulator, it is a "main characters on a Star Trek tv show" simulator. If a main character on a show is a junior officer, they're generally no less competent[,] because they're still the star.

It got a like from the game's designer, so I'll take that as a win. But it's what I really like about the system, and what makes it fun. It fudges the bits the show itself would fudge, allowing it to emphasize the things the show itself would emphasize: creative problem solving in difficult situations, and working together as a team. Things like Momentum, Threat, Values, and Focuses all work together really well to make that happen.

I have a twelve-episode "first season" very loosely plotted; we started the first episode of it, "Biological Clock," at our last session. If the first five episodes are any indication, it will take us two years to get through that season! I don't know if my players will be up for it for that long, but I will. I have to contain myself, actually, because I keep thinking of ideas faster than we can play them!

(Clearly the solution is to start a second campaign!)

The dedication plaque I made by tweaking a template provided by someone in one of the STA facebook groups; I can't figure out who! The other images are from the game books themselves (episode 1 art from the Starter Set, episode 2 from the Core Rulebook , and episode 3-5 from the Quickstart).

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Star Trek Adventures: A Star Beyond the Stars

“Captain’s log, Stardate 47515.4: We are in the remote Elicona sector, investigating the disappearance of the  U.S.S. Alcubierre . After three days in this unpopulated region of space, we found a promising lead. Hours ago, long-range sensors detected a vessel and the presence of subspace interference. The ship is several parsecs outside Federation territory. The Alcubierre was on special assignment, testing new engine systems designed to exceed warp 5 without damaging subspace. I can only surmise that something went terribly wrong with the experiments.”

This three-mission campaign PDF is great for beginners, as it guides the Gamemaster through the core rules as they play, and introduces them to all aspects of the game, including basic Tasks and Challenges, as well as Social Conflict, Combat, and Starship Combat.

Please note: this three mission collection was originally offered as a pre-order bonus for Modiphius customers who pre-ordered the physical Star Trek core rulebook between June – October in 2017 and is now being made available for sale for other Star Trek Adventures fans .  This campaign will also be released in the Star Trek Adventures starter set .

• Star Trek Adventures: Trouble on Omned III
• Star Trek Adventures: The Prize Supplement - PDF
• Star Trek Adventures: The Gravity of the Crime
• Star Trek Adventures: The Burning Supplement

• Star Trek Adventures: Voyager Player Characters
• Star Trek Adventures: Tribble Player Character (FREE)
• Star Trek Adventures: These are the Voyages - Volume 1

• Modiphius 2d20

Star Trek Adventures: A Star Beyond the Stars

“Captain’s log, Stardate 47515.4: We are in the remote Elicona sector, investigating the disappearance of the  U.S.S. Alcubierre . After three days in this unpopulated region of space, we found a promising lead. Hours ago, long-range sensors detected a vessel and the presence of subspace interference. The ship is several parsecs outside Federation territory. The Alcubierre was on special assignment, testing new engine systems designed to exceed warp 5 without damaging subspace. I can only surmise that something went terribly wrong with the experiments.”

This three-mission campaign PDF is great for beginners, as it guides the Gamemaster through the core rules as they play, and introduces them to all aspects of the game, including basic Tasks and Challenges, as well as Social Conflict, Combat, and Starship Combat.

Please note: this three mission collection was originally offered as a pre-order bonus for Modiphius customers who pre-ordered the physical Star Trek core rulebook between June – October in 2017 and is now being made available for sale for other Star Trek Adventures fans .  This campaign will also be released in the Star Trek Adventures starter set .

• Star Trek Adventures: Trouble on Omned III
• Star Trek Adventures: The Prize Supplement - PDF
• Star Trek Adventures: The Gravity of the Crime
• Star Trek Adventures: The Burning Supplement

• Star Trek Adventures: Voyager Player Characters
• Star Trek Adventures: Tribble Player Character (FREE)
• Star Trek Adventures: These are the Voyages - Volume 1

• Modiphius 2d20

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Star Trek Adventures Starter Set - Print and Play Pack

Description, engage in  star trek adventures roleplaying.

The Star Trek Adventures Print and Play Starter Set takes you to the final frontier of the Galaxy, with everything you need to begin playing the tabletop roleplaying game with a set of PDFs that you can print at home!

The Print and Play PDF Starter Set contains:

• Starter Rules PDF:  Giving you an overview of the Star Trek Adventures  2d20 system.
• A Star Beyond the Stars - A Three-Mission Campaign PDF: That guides you through the game mechanics as you play.
• 6 Pre-Generated Character Sheets: Including 5 Starfleet officers and 1  Galaxy- class vessel.
• Tokens PDF: Tokens for Momentum, Threat and characters.
• Maps and tiles PDF: For locations in the campaign

This is a print and play PDF version of the starter which comes in Black and White for ease of printing and does not include physical dice or the tokens of the main starter set.  

TM & © 2019 CBS Studios Inc. © 2019 Paramount Pictures Corp. STAR TREK and related marks and logos are trademarks of CBS Studios Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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Star Trek Already Has the Perfect Prequel

Posted: March 26, 2024 | Last updated: March 26, 2024

Recently, Paramount baffled fans by announcing that not only are we allegedly getting a Kelvinverse sequel to Star Trek Beyond but that we would also be getting another Trek film, a prequel set decades before Star Trek (2009). From Enterprise to Discovery and Strange New Worlds, the powers that be seemed determined to try to bring the perfect franchise prequel to life. However, Paramount should realize that the perfect Star Trek prequel has already been written: Federation, by Enterprise writers Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens, has a Zefram Cochrane storyline that is begging to be turned into a film.

Star Trek Federation

When this Star Trek book came out, the main thing that excited fans was that Federation told a tie-in story connecting The Original Series and The Next Generation. The way this worked was that the first half of the novel jumped between three different time periods: one focusing on Captain Kirk and crew, one focusing on Captain Picard, and one focusing on Zefram Cochrane and the early days of warp drive research. While the parts of the story focusing on Kirk and Picard are certainly captivating, it’s the story focusing on Cochrane that (with a bit of tweaking) would make for a great prequel film.

The Story Of Zefram Cochrane

You might think that such a Star Trek prequel would be disrupted by the events of First Contact, but aside from Cochrane’s personality being a bit different, the setting of Federation is perfect because the storyline begins shortly after Cochrane completes the first warp voyage to nearby Alpha Centauri and back (in other words, after the successful warp test we saw in First Contact). His technological achievements are threatened, however, by the “Optimum Movement” of Earth, a group comprised of extremists who want to emulate and improve Khan Noonien Sing’s attempts to take over the planet.

Works Around The Original Series Appearance

Later in this unconventional Star Trek tale, Federation shows how an older Cochrane is pursued by Optimum Movement leader Adrik Thorsen, a man who is convinced that Cochrane’s tech can be used to create a devastating warp bomb. Eventually, Cochrane escapes with the help of an interstellar Companion, setting up his later appearance in The Original Series episode “Metamorphosis.” Later, in plot points that I don’t want to spoil for you, both Cochrane and his enemy survive to encounter two of Starfleet’s most famous captains, and the Federation would never be the same after their meeting.

A Different Part Of The Star Trek Timeline

Not all of this Star Trek story would work well as a movie (particularly the crossover material with Kirk and Picard), but Federation gives us a cool Zefram Cochrane backstory that would work stunningly well as a prequel. Much of the book takes place nearly two decades after Cochrane’s early warp testing; if we shift that time frame up a bit, we could even have James Cromwell reprise his role as Cochrane. Additionally, such a movie has the potential to showcase an important time period in Star Trek history that we hardly know anything about.

Boldly Go Where No Series Has Before

From the sound of things, current Star Trek writers and producers have no interest in bringing the plot of Federation to life, but that’s because they are afraid to take any real creative risks. That’s why every franchise prequel has been a “new” way to package some very stale Trek formulas. An adventure about Zefram Cochrane protecting the most important technology in the franchise could give us a revolutionary new type of Star Trek film, so here’s hoping that Paramount, like Cochrane himself, is willing to take a leap of faith into a brand new adventure. 

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Published Mar 25, 2024

What The Mariner-Freeman Family says about Starfleet and the Star Trek Community

Despite its imperfections, Starfleet has always been a hopeful model of the future.

StarTrek.com

Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 3 begins with Ensign Beckett Mariner throwing a potted plant against a wall. Her mother, Captain Carol Freeman , is facing tribunal. Her ship is docked. She and her friends are grounded (which also happens to be the title of this aptly-named episode). Her father, Admiral Alonzo Freeman, is insisting she wait and let the Starfleet judicial system do its job — her mother didn’t destroy Pakled Planet , after all. Everything will be fine.

However, Mariner refuses to take this crisis lying down. Rounding up her friends and a few surprising allies, Mariner plans to break her mother out of Starfleet custody and clear her name. After a handful of daring heists, Mariner nearly does just that... only for Starfleet to absolve Captain Freeman of all charges.

When she meets back up with her family, Mariner’s father scolds her for not listening to him when he said that Starfleet would come through. By the time the credits roll, it seems like the moral of the story is that Mariner was wrong, Starfleet is a morally good organization, and that’s the end of it. Right?

"Grounded"

Despite the pro-Starfleet conclusion of " Grounded ," there’s abundant evidence in other Lower Decks ' episodes — and even other Star Trek series — to demonstrate that there’s more nuance to this conversation about Starfleet and its "goodness." In fact, the Mariner-Freeman family itself is a great microcosm of Starfleet perspectives. Depending on which generation you're talking to, they might favor the goodness of the individual officer or the organization as a whole, proving just how complicated the conversation about Starfleet's morality can be.

Let’s start with Ensign Beckett Mariner. As one of the four main characters of Lower Decks , viewers get ample insight into her personality and experiences — especially when it comes to Starfleet. For example, Mariner's personal history demonstrates that she has reason not to trust Starfleet as an organization. In her time as a young officer, she's been a firsthand witness to Starfleet's negligence, such as the choice to cover up the loss of the U.S.S. Atlantis crew simply to avoid embarrassment (" Mugato, Gumato "). Instead of admitting they lost so many crewmembers to lice, they said those officers disappeared, thus denying those crewmembers' families closure. Meanwhile, Mariner’s also been known to be friendly with non-Federation personnel, including the likes of the Ferengi Quimp and the Klingon General K'orin (" Parth Ferengi’s Heart Place " and " Envoys ," respectively). This means she’s heard more outside perspectives on the Federation and Starfleet than the average Ensign — the good and the bad. It makes Mariner quick to act if she feels like Starfleet isn’t doing its best to help people.

"Parth Ferengi's Heart Place"

For example, In the first episode ever of Lower Decks , Mariner broke protocol to give extra resources to the Galardonian farmers (" Second Contact "). She knew that if she waited for Starfleet bureaucracy, some of the Galardonians would starve. She complains to Boimler that the Starfleet hierarchy cares more about a "pension and a place in the history books" more than they do about the little guy. So, she bypassed Starfleet paperwork entirely to get the Galardornians the farming equipment they needed.

However, what’s interesting about Mariner is that her distrust of Starfleet does not extend to its people. Her relationships with her fellow lower decks ensigns as well as her previous peers from the Academy ("The Inner Fight”) or the U.S.S. Atlantis / U.S.S. Quitos (" Cupid’s Errant Arrow ") have given Mariner a lot of faith in the kind of people that join Starfleet. She often willingly jumps into danger to protect them, even if that danger means trying to kill a fellow officer who she thinks is a parasite ("Cupid’s Errant Arrow"). Meanwhile, influential colleagues like Sito Jaxa still inform her behavior to this day. This firm belief in the individual is something that, by the end of Lower Decks Season 3, you realize her parents (particularly her mother) do not share to the same degree.

"Old Friends, New Planets"

No episode proves Captain Carol Freeman's struggling faith in Starfleet individuals more than the Season 3 finale, " The Stars at Night ." Once one powerful individual turns on her — Admiral Les Buenamigo and his Texas -class ship Aledo — Captain Freeman very readily assumes that she and the U.S.S. Cerritos are doomed. It never even occurs to her that individual Starfleet officers would defy the Admiral to come and save her. This isn't the first time Captain Freeman doubts the individual Starfleet officer, either. For example, she openly admits in the Season 3 episode " Trusted Sources " that she finds many lower decks officers inexperienced and embarrassing, only trusting the "Starfleet elite" to represent the U.S.S. Cerritos . Captain Freeman even goes as far as to reassign her own daughter to Starbase 80 when she thinks she gave a poor individual interview about the ship.

Yet in her direst hour in "The Stars at Night," Ensign Mariner is the one who rallies other California -class starships to save the day and the U.S.S. Cerritos , contradicting Captain Freeman's negative assumptions.

"The Stars at Night"

Let’s take a journey through Captain Freeman and Alonzo Freeman's lives to understand why they so readily support Starfleet as an organization but fear the individual. Both of Mariner's parents are career Starfleet officers who consider either starships or the Starfleet San Francisco base their home. They’re friends with Starfleet poster boys like Will Riker and have had successful careers following the rules and working within the lines. Captain Freeman has been nurtured, taught, and rewarded for trusting Starfleet’s rules to succeed. Meanwhile, she’s watched officers beside and below her struggle to accomplish the same because of their rebellious or insubordinate behavior. This of course also includes Mariner, her daughter.

Even in her pet project, Project Swing By , Captain Freeman assumes updating Starfleet protocol and sanctions is the most effective way to improve First and Second Contact — not by bending the rules or going out of her way to get involved in trouble like Mariner does.

Star Trek: Lower Decks - Project Swing By

Ultimately, though, neither Ensign Mariner or Captain Freeman are more right than the other. Throughout Starfleet history, both the individual officers and the organization itself have done tremendous good. And, in Starfleet's many years, there have been events of both individual officers and the Starfleet organization acting corrupt, negligent, and even downright evil.

For the case of Starfleet as a whole failing, the Maquis are a great example. While Starfleet and The Federation understandably prioritized ending war with the Cardassians, they never did enough work to help mediate the conflict between the border and the Cardassian Central Command. Instead, the Maquis grew into an active rebellion group which — over time — infiltrated Starfleet itself and used the organization as a resource to fuel their acts of sabotage. Speaking of, Starfleet has had a persistent problem with allowing systemic infiltration into high positions of power and not noticing it until it's almost too late (" Paradise Lost ," " Conspiracy ").

On the other hand, during her time in Starfleet, Mariner has made friends with the kind of people that get hurt the most by these oversights. The red shirts, the lower decks, the fringe farmers, or non-Federation peoples.

"wej Duj"

In Star Trek: Discovery 's premiere episode "The Battle of Binary Stars," Michael Burnham says in reference to her defiance of her captain’s orders, "You wanna know how I turned on you? I believed saving you and the crew was more important than Starfleet's principles." That’s exactly the kind of mindset that Mariner finds herself more aligned with even if, like in Burnham's case, it doesn’t always fit within Starfleet regulations.

Sometimes, though, Starfleet does go above and beyond its own rules to make positive changes in the galaxy and protect its own people. That singular fact is why Captain Freeman and Admiral Freeman have such faith in Starfleet.

For example, in " Parth Ferengi’s Heart Place ," Captain Freeman takes a dangerous risk by agreeing to Nagus Rom 's swindler’s deal... as long as he brings Qo’noS, the Klingon home world, into the Federation. Thankfully, this encourages Rom to begin real, above-board negotiations with Starfleet. But despite the risk — what if Nagus Rom had managed to effectively conspire to make it happen? — Captain Freeman got praised for her quick thinking; AKA breaking rules as long as it didn't cause Starfleet any problems.

However, Starfleet has also risked conflict with major civilizations simply to protect one officer — Wesley Crusher in " Justice ," Miles O’Brien in " Tribunal ," or Worf in " Rules of Engagement ." While a captain or commander often led the charge, Starfleet tended to ultimately support them. Even in the severe case of situations like " The Menagerie , Parts 1 and 2 ," Starfleet put Spock on fair trial and then ultimately exonerated him, despite the many Starfleet rules he broke for Captain Pike. So, Mariner's parents — Starfleet vets who feel like Starfleet is where they belong — have no doubt Starfleet can make the best decision for "the Greater Good" most of the time.

Meanwhile, Captain Freeman has historical evidence to be anxious about the actions of individual Starfleet officers. When talking about the aforementioned Maquis, Sisko's security officer, Michael Eddington, single-handedly stole secrets, smuggled weapons, and hurt fellow officers to help the Maquis resistance before he was discovered (" For The Cause "). Even on her own ship, Peanut Hamper proved to be unhelpful and individualistic, which led to the death (and later traumatic resurrection) of her beloved security officer Shaxs (" No Small Parts "). Captain Freeman knows and fears just how much damage one rogue officer can do.

"No Small Parts"

In this way, both Beckett and her parents represent some of the differing perspectives in the Star Trek community. Some think of Starfleet as a beacon of hope while others see Starfleet as an often-corrupt organization. Some take pride in the goodness of officers while others discuss the villainy that comes with power, even in Starfleet. Multiple writers and video essayists like Luke McKinney , Steve Shives , Lore Reloaded , Venom Geek Media , and Christine Dinh have all come to bat for either side of the conversation, discussing Starfleet's principles, officers, and incidents.

Ultimately, neither perspective is wrong. Starfleet's rules and ideals have wronged entire civilizations "outside their jurisdiction" and saved entire planets from imminent doom. Starfleet members have been heroic and well-intentioned and they’ve completely failed or even exploited people who needed to help. Starfleet was made to do good in the galaxy, but also still has a long way to go to repay the mistakes they’ve made or the injustices they’ve allowed. In Lower Decks alone, if the higher-ups kept a better eye on Starfleet negligence, Buenamigo's rise or the underestimation and then escalation of the Pakled incidents could both have been stopped. Yet at the same time, without Starfleet's (and the Cerittos ') positive interventions, the Betans would still follow the dictator A.I. Landru ("No Small Parts"), Areolus would’ve been doomed ("A Mathematically Perfect Redemption"), and Nick Locarno would’ve started an ensign war with the Federation (" Old Friends, New Planets ").

"Twovix"

Both Ensign Mariner and her parents have every right to believe in and be critical of Starfleet and its officers. But there needs to be a balance in these perspectives to get the most honest view of Starfleet.

Starfleet — and by extension The Federation — has always been a hopeful model of the future. All members of the Mariner-Freeman family (just like the Star Trek community members and writers) have valid points about Starfleet's imperfections in its leadership, organization, and people. At the same time, no organization or person can be perfect. The best one can do is lend an honest ear to criticism while still working to be better. The Mariner-Freeman family's experiences prove that Starfleet can be both — flawed and altruistic; selfish and galaxy-changing.

From its individuals to its organization, Starfleet is a symbol of hope that always needs improvement.

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Stephanie Roehler (they/she/he) is a freelancer who loves to write about video games, books, movies, TV shows, comics, and especially Star Trek.

Star Trek: Lower Decks streams exclusively on Paramount+ in the U.S. and is distributed by Paramount Global Content Distribution. In Canada, it airs on Bell Media’s CTV Sci-Fi Channel. The series will also be available to stream on Paramount+ in the UK, Canada, Latin America, Australia, Italy, France, the Caribbean, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Ireland and South Korea.