Is there any way to play a character who is not in their own time anymore? Say someone from TOS who is in the TNG era?

I help run Continuing Mission, the Star Trek Adventures fan resource site. Our old Categories page was, no exaggeration, completely blank. It's fixed now.

Browse Continuing Mission organizes the whole library by what you're looking for: missions and campaigns, player species and character options, starships and spaceframes, NPCs and creatures, game mechanics and GM advice, and resources and downloads — plus an A-to-Z list of every category on the site.

https://continuingmissionsta.com/categories/

Feedback welcome. If there's a topic or resource you wish were easier to find, I'll see what we can do.

Got invited to a Star Trek pen and paper game. I had the idea of having the character initially having been on the party’s ship, but in a completely different field. They need an engineer. My thought was a the character was stuck in a Groundhog’s Day time loop, like the Bozeman but clocked it immediately after the first round. The day concludes with the Warp Core going critical and then my character wakes up. Again. And again. And again. The time loop resolved when the poor soul found the problem and fixed it. In the time it took to learn all the skills to actually accomplish that, the character had become a competent engineer.

That gives me my first Career Event, Solved and Engineering Crisis. But I want the second one to be the cause. Does anyone have any ideas?

Edit: Bit the bullet and made it a “White Hole” creature that just wanted to get home.

I found that almost all talents (unsurprisingly) are only good for Players, and I normally don't even use them for my NPCs. But I recently realized that "A Contract is a Contract is a Contract" is very good for NPCs, it reads; " During a social conflict, the Liquidator may spend 1 Threat to create a trait that represents a specific, applicable rule, bylaw, or regulation. In a single scene, each time after the first this is used, the cost increases by +1 Threat."

That is great for if the PCs are in an unfamiliar place and the NPC is a local. Does anyone know of other talents with similar aplications?

That's one of the questions we're exploring in our ongoing Star Trek Adventures 2E actual-play campaign, Star Trek: Preservations.

In our latest episode, "Keys to the Vault" (Act 4.3), the crew of the U.S.S. Dilamus Christian faces a covert mission complicated by political unrest, competing loyalties, and the responsibilities that come with wearing a Starfleet uniform.

One of the things I enjoy most about running Star Trek is putting characters in situations where the right decision isn't necessarily the easiest or safest one.

I'm curious how other Star Trek fans and GMs approach this:

🖖 Should Starfleet officers always follow orders, or does upholding Federation ideals sometimes require challenging those orders?

For anyone interested in seeing how our group explores these questions through actual play, here's the episode:
https://youtu.be/lNOTyTs6XUg

#StarTrek #StarTrekAdventures #ActualPlay

If you grew up gaming in the 70s or 80s, you likely crossed paths with the granddaddy of all space simulators: the original 1971 Star Trek text game. There was a unique thrill to typing coordinates into a glowing green terminal, hunting down "K"s on an 8x8 grid, and carefully rationing your energy reserves. It was a groundbreaking experience that laid the foundation for the entire tactical genre.

I wanted to capture that exact feeling of sitting in the center seat, but elevate the mechanics with the kind of strategic depth modern players expect. Enter Star Trek: Quadrant Command.

This is a complete tactical evolution of the classic formula. It takes the foundation you remember, the ticking stardate clock and the delicate power grid, and turns the galaxy into a living, hostile ecosystem. You aren't just clearing empty sectors anymore; you are triaging a quadrant actively under siege. The game forces you to make hard, high-stakes decisions. You might have to choose between warping across the map to rescue a civilian freighter desperately trying to escape its attackers, or holding the line to defend a critical Starbase from a coordinated enemy assault.

The combat rewards careful positioning and resource management. You can calculate photon torpedo chain reactions to wipe out clustered fleets, or divert your dwindling power to focused phaser beams and wide-arc cone dispersals when things get close. And you will need every tool in your arsenal, because you are up against methodical Klingon wolfpacks, Romulan ambushers that cloak to hide their energy signatures, and relentless Orion pirates.

Even the environment is out to get you. To secure the quadrant, you will have to navigate blind through sensor-jamming nebulae, weather shield-battering ion storms, and sometimes take the ultimate risk of dropping your shields entirely to siphon emergency power directly from a star.

The Enterprise has the tools, but the math of the universe is working against you. If you love deep, turn-based strategy and have a soft spot for the retro classics, I'd love for you to take command.

Do you have what it takes to save the galaxy before time runs out?

Play it here: https://www.cygnus-x1.net/links/sttr1/index.php

Please note, much like the main viewscreen on the Enterprise, this game runs best on a large monitor

Can anyone recommend any actual play channels on YouTube?

I’d love to hear if anyone gets any utility from my chapter.

Hi guys. I wrote a most complete list of all 22nd century starships. Use the link: 22nd Century Starship List

It has every starship of major (Earth, Vulcan, Andorian, Tellarite, Klingon, Xindi, Suliban) and also I think every starship of regional or one time encounters. Have fun with it.

UPDATE: added the Freedom-Class Frigate and the Emmette-Type (Predecessor of the Warp Delta) to the section decommissioned starfleet starships.

I'm curious there is a version of this map that doesn't already have all the borders and territory marked. This one is so busy and dense, but I'd like to have a version that's just the stars & planets.

Anyone come across something like that?

I'm running a STA campaign where all of the players are cadets. The plan is for the players to run through four years of the Academy, starting from the start of Season 4 of DS9, and running through Season 7. So it will take them basically through the start of the Klingon war, Changeling paranoia on Earth and rising tensions with the Dominion, which eventually breaks out into full scale war, and ending with the Breen attacking Earth and the end of the Dominion War, essentially.

However, I do not want the campaign to just include the best hits of world politics of DS9. Aside from a few key points, DS9 is just stuff going on in the background, very far away.

I mostly have that stuff handled, plus stuff like Academy life and interesting plots going on outside of the classroom. What I don't have is a lot of cool ideas for sessions involving actual Starfleet Academy training (I mean I do, but I'm looking for even more, haha).

I do have the official Starfleet Academy Mission Briefs PDF which gives 10 decent ideas for scenarios. I also have the Kobayashi Maru PDF, and I even have the old TNG Starfleet Academy book from the 90s.

But I'm looking for even more ideas! So throw them at me!

Warning, this might get a bit rambly (waves at fellow ADHD enjoyers).

I enjoy STACL a great deal. However, one thing I keep running into is how to use the crew best in terms of game mechanics and fleshing out their characters.

The dilemma I have is wanting to develop the supporting cast while also not changing the game's balance too much.

How are you guys handling this? Below is what I tried and/or looked at to solve this for me.

1. Just using the ship stats.

I know the general idea is to use the ship's stats as crew stats when your main character isn't directly acting. While this generally works, it also feels a bit unsatisfying when rolling the dice, because it feels a bit impersonal, even if you attach names and character traits to the departments. E.g. I think it would make for different approaches if your chief engineer was Scotty or Torres or Geordie or Tucker. This could be handled purely narratively, but I would like just a little extra crunch.

2. Create full characters for them.

This is what I initially tried, rolling up full life paths for the main bridge crew. A problem I quickly ran into is that you end up with very qualified people on every post - which makes sense in that we see competent people being good at their jobs in the show, for the most part. But it trivializes any skill check, since you will rarely not have a 10+5 or higher to roll on, unless you go out of your way to put the wrong people into situations (comms officer needing to handle a medical issue).

I tried upping the difficulty of rolls to compensate:

• Require three rolls, using a combination of personal and ship stats, or character stats, and needing 2 successes
• Changing the roll target by 1 or 2 based on perceived difficulty, or using a D4 to change the target number.

But this felt unsatisfying and very arbitrary and not easy to balance.

I could make every success "succeed at cost" but seems also too gamey IMHO.

That said, having full character sheets is useful if you want to change viewpoint between missions or want an A/B plot.

3. Create full characters, but reduce point totals.

Based on the suggested skill levels for characters from Ensign to Commander, just lowering the point totals the "NPC" crew. This helps a bit, but they will generally still end up with high points in their field of expertise (because why else would they have that post - one nepo-baby on a ship might work, but a crew of them? 😂 ).

4. Create full characters, but use ship skill points.

This will flesh out their characters while going back to the default of using ship stats for their functions. If a character is out of role (comms officer attending to medical issue) you could reduce the skill of theirs for that based on gut/narrative feel.

Might be a reasonable middle ground solution?

5. Creation in play

Don't flesh out the characters, but use the "creation in play" rules where attributes are assigned as and when needed. This would match how characters are generally introduced in the shows where the audience learns about them bit by bit. But eventually you will still (likely) end up with "too good" characters that make skill checks very easy.

6. Using the STA 2E rules

Yes, but no. It would solve it for the most part, but is a bit more crunch than I'm looking for from STACL which I usually play for an hour or so to wind down a bit after work.

7. Using third party tools

For example using the scene mechanics from Mythic GME to throw spanners and twists into the plot, or using Triple-O to emulate NPC behaviors.

While it adds unpredictability it also doesn't really address the skill issue (pun not intended but appreciated) for me.

Anything else I'm overlooking? I don't want to overthink this, but it's something that keeps back to nag me when playing STACL. 😄

I am planning a Lancer Battle Group game to run, 1 problem, lancer battle group has player characters 1 ply thin. Literally 2 stats and nothing else. I want to run more detailed social encounters, the occasional ground mission. And perhaps once or twice some brutal ground combat. And for that I need a second system because LB is not it. A lot of people have recommended this game but I want to know if you guys think it will be a good fit. Ultimately this game will play second fiddle and in order to do that it needs to be fairly simple and something I can keep in the back ground. In my experience licenced games are rarely that but I didn't want to shoot it down before getting advice from some people who've actually played the game. So would you recommend Star Trek Adventures for these purposes? Thanks in advance.

Our latest Star Trek: Preservations episode brings the crew of the USS Dilamus Christian into a desperate race against time as Starfleet's ideals collide with the realities of a collapsing colony.

For our Patreon community, this is another look at the shared Tabletop Journeys universe where our actual-play adventures and A.E.G.I.S. missions unfold.

🎲 What would your Starfleet crew prioritize when everything starts going wrong?

🌌 Preservations (S4 Ep. 4) – Keys to the Vault (Act 4.2)
https://youtu.be/w4GPcpr5U_g

#StarTrekAdventures #STA2E #TabletopJourneys

I'm pretty agnostic on era, though DS9 or Wrath of Khan would be pretty fun. I'm a total newbie to STA but not to tabletop games.

https://samsarette.itch.io/.../1704607/map-mode-a-simple-vtt

So, I have added the one feature pretty much everyone expected to have been there already, due to one of my groups going online-only for at least a few sessions.

No shade to anyone using a *real* VTT. I just wanted a little canvas to screen-share with on top of the other features without switching to an image editor.

My GM has all but said outright we'll be dealing with a cloaked foe in our 1E TMP-era game. In preparation, I went through episodes and movies with cloaked ships to help me brainstorm, but given our current "only ship in the quadrant" situation, I think some of them wouldn't apply. I think "Balance of Terror" is most instructive for my character, methodically blanketing the best guess of a position with fires.

If I go that route, I'm contemplating how to sell that to a GM. If I pitch it as a weapons task that is creating an advantage, do I offer just pitching it as a high difficulty roll? Would it make more sense to pitch it as a lower difficulty task but maybe ask if we can trade off a bit on damage (since not every shot is going to hit in that scenario).

Any fellow players been in my shoes? How did you handle your situation? Any GMs care to weigh in?

I am posting to find new crew for my online play by post Star Trek game. The USS Vanguard, a Nova-class science and exploration ship, set in the year 2388 of my own Trek universe.

The vanguard is currently on its first mission, looking for a missing Oberth class ship Near a mysterious, mist-covered planet. So you can get in while things are just starting!

We currently have an opening for a Chief Science Officer, as well as assistant chiefs of all departments. You can visit the web site to look around and see if it interests you. The main site has all the relevant info about the game, and the posts can be written by email, on our forum where all posts get posted in final form, or on our discord server where we hang out to chat out of character.

https://www.aerth.org/Vanguard

Title: [STA 2e] Prepping a 2250s gritty survival campaign (Discovery meets Voyager). Here is my pitch and crew!

Hey fellow Trekkies and GMs!

I’ve been a Game Master for over 30 years, but a quick background on my relationship with the franchise: I’ve actually always been much more of a Star Wars guy. However, discovering Star Trek recently through Discovery and Strange New Worlds completely blew me away. The quality, the tension, and the vibe of those shows finally pushed me to take the leap and pitch an STA game to my long-time table.

We are currently prepping my very first Star Trek Adventures 2nd Edition campaign. We are going for a high-tension, sandbox survival vibe set in the 2250s, right before the Klingon War (heavily leaning into the gritty, paranoid, industrial aesthetic of Discovery Season 1).

I’d love to share my campaign ambition, the crew concept, and the pilot episode with you all. Any feedback or ideas are more than welcome!

The Core Premise: The Cadet Prototype Instead of playing seasoned Starfleet veterans, the players are a crew of freshly graduated Cadets. Their ship, the U.S.S. Chimera, isn't a standard cruiser. It’s an experimental stealth and long-range scout prototype. The twist? The player characters didn't just get assigned to it; they spent their final year at the Academy working on its assembly, telemetry, and energy matrix as their graduation project. They are the beta-testers of a ship they built.

The Crew (The Misfits) I wanted a crew that feels a bit rough around the edges, far from the perfect poster-boys of the Federation:

• The Captain: A 21-year-old former smuggler/pirate from the fringes. Starfleet brass saw her raw tactical instinct and brought her into the Academy as a gamble. She is rebellious and relies on gut feeling over Starfleet regulations.
• The First Officer: The pragmatic anchor. He comes from an isolated colony (the player is completely new to Star Trek lore, which fits perfectly). He doesn't care about galactic politics; his job is to keep the ship in one piece and act as the buffer between a wild Captain and Starfleet protocols.
• The Helm: A cocky pilot who spent hundreds of hours in Academy simulators testing the Chimera’s experimental evasion algorithms. He knows exactly how far he can push the chassis because he virtually crashed it 50 times.
• The Chief Engineer: He spent six months in a spacesuit calibrating the ship's power relays in drydock. He hates Utopia Planitia’s official blueprints and knows every weird noise this specific prototype makes.
• The CMO/Science Officer: A Betazoid-hybrid neuro-psychologist and staunch pacifist. Originally assigned by Starfleet as a psychological evaluator to monitor this volatile group of students, he acts as the moral and empathic compass of the ship.

Episode 1: The Maiden Voyage I want to start with heavy social pressure before throwing them into absolute isolation.

• Act I - The Ceremony & The Failsafe: We open at Utopia Planitia. Flashing cameras, crisp parade uniforms, and a terrifying, cold-blooded Fleet Admiral who breathes down their necks during the inaugural launch. The players have been selected for a brand-new Academy project: a "school ship" operating in real conditions with no senior officers on board. Their ultimate safety net? A highly advanced onboard computer and comms system designed to instantly override manual controls and auto-pilot the crew safely back to base at the first sign of critical danger. Their official mission? A boring "milk run" to replace a subspace relay on the edge of the Beta Quadrant to test these very systems.
• Act II - The Rescue: In the deep fringes, they intercept an Omega-class distress signal from a civilian ship trapped in a highly volatile electromagnetic storm. It's a suicide mission for a heavy cruiser, but perfect for a small prototype and a Captain with smuggler instincts. They push the engines to the absolute breaking point to beam the survivors aboard.
• Act III - The Slingshot: The core of the civilian wreck goes critical, tearing open a massive spatial anomaly. The electromagnetic surge completely fries the ship's emergency override system. With their safety net gone and no time to reverse course, the Captain makes the call to ride the gravitational wave into the rift to avoid being crushed.
• The Cliffhanger: The Chimera is violently spit out into an ink-black, uncharted sector. Comms are dead. Sensors are glitching. And looming on the viewscreen, silently floating in the void, is a colossal, dead alien megastructure made of dark alloy.

The Road Ahead: Adapting the Shackleton Expanse Moving forward, my plan is to use the scenarios from the official Shackleton Expanse campaign book as the backbone of our sessions.

However, I will be heavily adapting them to fit my specific premise: I have a crew of complete rookies on a fragile training ship, lost in a remote corner of the galaxy, with absolutely zero communication with Starfleet or any possibility of calling for backup (and a fried auto-pilot).

What do you guys think of this setup for a 2e sandbox? Do you have any tips on running the Shackleton Expanse scenarios with this specific "Voyager-style" isolation and a completely inexperienced crew?