Modiphius

There's so much to love about this. It takes a really charming, inventive setting, and gives you the tools to play around in it.

My favorite rules are the ones that really contribute to the tone of the game:

1. Kids don't die
2. The GM and players alternate, setting every other scene
3. Failing the roll does not mean failing the task, it means suffering a "complication" or other stressing thing. Success and failure are more narrative than mechanical.

I like to run games more rules-light than this game defaults to, but this book gives me the tools to do that easily. It is always easier to pare mechanics away than to add them.… (plus d'informations)

Being a huge fan of Star Trek, I received this from my Secret Santa and was truly thrilled since I find science missions are in the DNA of Star Trek as a franchise. So it was with delight that I started my reading.

The physical book: First, let's talk about the book itself. Like all Star Trek books from Modiphius, the production value is probably the highest I ever saw in my 30+ years of reading rulebooks, minus one little thing that I will get back to later. The good points includes:
A kind of silky feeling cover with nice art. The characters art look a tad stiff, but the whole scene describe really well what a science mission could be. Very colourful too, love it.
Sturdy hardback and spine. It looks like it should hold very well over the decades.
Great paper weight and feel. Again, a AAA production quality. It reproduce the colours very well too.
The so-so points are:
The characters art suffer from looking stiff in most of the pages where they appear. Look at page 33 to see an exemple: The leftmost character seems to be claping his hand, but they look like prosthesis hands so much they are stiff! An the joyful character next to him looks like she has her arms blocked at shoulder level...
The "i'd change that if I could":
White text on all black pages simply doesn't work for me. First, it makes the font smaller than it should be because there is small bleeing of the black in the white font(looks like a blue color bleeding on the edge of the letters) Second, it seems to strain my eyes when the lightning is not optimum(like when reading in the evening at low light)
If it weren't for the black inked pages, I'd say this would be near perfect production value.

The layout: Before jumping into the content itself, I must comment on the layout. First, because the core rulebook what a total mess(IMHO) in that area, and second, because the core rulebook was a total mess in that area. :P

Here, I must say the layout worked better, there is less space lost, although the margins are still horribly large, and I would again get rid of all the fluff sidebars that really add nothing for the DM or players, and mostly breaks the flow of the text. The Star Trek dashboard graphics that tries to reproduce what we saw on ST:TNG also looks dated somehow. I would have made those bars slightly thinner. Stats blocks still look incredibly weird because of it. So, it's better than the core rulebook, but with still lots of room for improvement.

The content:

Now to the meat of this sourcebook. Like the core rulebook, there are ALOT of repetitions between paragraphs and chapters. Sometimes it feels like multiple people were given a chapter to write, but no editor ever told anyone they were repeating almost word for word what was already told in another chapter...

Chapter 1: Uh, honestly, I would call Chapter 1 a foreword, at best. 3 pages that tries to describe the following chapters. :-/ And right off the bat, we get content repetition; In the "Content of this book" paragraph, we are told the book discusses science officers, medical officers and counsellors, new lifepath, duties, equipment, etc. Then we get a breakdown of what each chapters discuss, like science officers, medical officers and counsellors, new lifepath, duties and equipment, etc.

Chapter 2: Mostly fluff describing what science officers, medical officers and counsellors are expected to do, the kind of missions they go on and where they come from, be it Starfleet Academy or some other institute. This is one of those weird chapters Modiphius seems to love, since they produce so many of them, where you are not sure if it's there to give context to a new players, or story ideas to a DM. In both areas they fell short, so I'm not sure who are the target demographics here. It's still a nice read, but anyone familiar with Star Trek knows everything that is described here, but it's probably not enough for people new to Star Trek to really know how they would fit in the universe, and many references will simply leave them with more questions.(like the reference to Soong-type androids) I also found there are some nice mission ideas hidden here and there, but chapter 5 is supposed to be the chapter dedicated for this. I hope we won't get more repetitions there...

I was curious to see what the counsellor section would look like, and it was like I thought it would be; 4 paragraphs long, not even a whole page. I wasn't surprised, there isn't much to say about space-shrinks :P

Chapter 3: New lifepath options(Yay!)
Here we get tips on choosing a lifepath with a science/medical focus. We also get some description of what each stats could mean for a science/medical officer. We then get a list of possible science/medical focuses for gaining those 2 success when rolling. The list for both science and medical are fairly generous, with about 15-16 focuses. all are not really useful though, I did raise an eyebrow at the "Dentistry" focus... I wonder when that focus might ever come into play for a player..? And then we get about 10-13 new talents for each new class(medical has a few more to cover cousellors. Some talents really open the field for some nice roleplaying and shaping of character, like the "mental repository" and the "I'm a doctor, not a..."

All in all, a great chapter to shape some fun characters!

Chapter 4: R&D
In this one we get new me equipment. Ever wonder what that cortical stimulator really can do and how it does it? We get the answer here. Stuff like that always makes me wonder where RPG writer gets their sources. They must have to read tons of references! We also finally get a drug section that describe the different drugs the hypospray can apply!

We also get a few pages of unusual lifeforms and a few notable NPC derived from this, and then some pages of space mysteries/phenomenom, like subspace corridor and rifts. Fun read that gives plenty of ideas for creating adventure for sure(but again, this make me wonder what will be in chapter 5...) And finally, we get almost 3 pages for the Q continuum. I skipped over as I have to admit the Q episodes really annoyed me most of the time.

Then we move on to the headache section: Time travel. It's a very interesting read but, for me, time travel can quickly kills the fun of a universe. I mean, when you start going back in time to fix the present or future, where do you stop? And why would a species like the Romulans agree to any kind of self-restrain when it come to using time travel once they know how? I don't think I will use that section, but I know there are already some time related published adventures out there, so who knows, I might change my mind if they are really well done.

I find the mix of information in this chapter a bit weird as some info is clearly useful for players(med equipments) while the rest look to me to be mostly DM oriented.

Chapter 5: Finally, we get to the meatiest chapter, clocking at around 30 pages.

In the first part, we get plot ideas based on the Red, Blue, Gold color code we first saw in the Core Rulebook. The plot ideas in the Red category(leadership) were far fetched for both Science and Med officers, and probably requires way too much work for little return on the investment to be ever worthwhile to a GM, but that was expected. Counselors fit better, but... I simply don't see the interest of playing a couselor :-/ Blue category plot(science) are, of course, the best suited for science officers. Sadly, I didn't find the plot seeds in that category really triggering any great adventure ideas. Gold(action and combat) plot seeds actually looked better to me. I guess I'm more action oriented even in my science :P For the medical officer, the Red plots were meh, but the Blue and Gold really started my head thinking of arcs of adventures I could build! I actually found the sidebars pretty useful here! They are titled "Episodes focused on.." and they list episodes from the various ST show that focus on science or medical challenge. Nice touch!

I won't go into details, but the following section of chapter 5, space and planetary phenomenons, was actually more useful as plot seed than the plot seed section! I used many post-it to mark interesting paragraphs.

I skipped the couselors section(I think you see a trend here) I also only skimmed the alien creation section, which look well one, because I don't think I will ever have the need to create new species. Lastly, we get some pages on hazards, and their description, that would fit in a science scene, and again, those triggered many ideas in my mind of how I could use those.

I will be frank, I was expecting to destroy this chapter, saying it's mostly a repeat of all the plot seeds I spotted in earlier chapters. Well.. no! It was a VERY nice surprise to see it wasn't the case. It was actually a very enlightening read and, combined with other seeds from earlier chapters, it offers a wide variety of potential plots. Of course, they are only plot seeds, meaning they will require alot of work from the GM to shape into a final storyline.

The final chapter: Bascially, pre-gen NPC for various science-type peeps. All good stuff here to help when you need to squeeze in a NPC quickly.

And... An INDEX! YES!

Conclusion: Some weak, or so-so chapters at the beginning, but chapter 3, 5 and 6 are keepers, while chapter 4 is a tad less useful, but still relevant for the equipment and mysteries described. This supplement will be used for sure, especially the lifepath section, with many other sections re-read to plunder their treasure. It's also a great book to hold in hands(but get rid if the black inked pages).… (plus d'informations)