This is another cool starter set for the Star Trek Adventures game. Yes, I know I wanted to use this for horror (and I have the Alien game), so I will give this a look-over as it is intended. This is a great party-based problem-solving and mission game, and the presentation has heightened the action-oriented combat and danger elements. You see this in the art, everyone is "doing things" like combat, dodging collapsing rubble, exploring, or in the middle of a situation. I like that focus, and the art makes a lot of smart choices in setting the mood (and is way better than static TV still image grabs).
Action Oriented
I feel Star Trek has always had this "sit on your butt in the bridge" sort of reputation. That is partially a problem of TV with the limited budget of sets, action, destruction, cool fights, and special effects. It is important not to let that TV budget limit your adventures, since you can show an entire universe with cool places, sweeping vistas, giant sets, cities, giant space stations, underground installations, labs, mysterious shipwrecks, and fantastic places from beyond your imagination. It is hard to break away from the trope, because what people see and remember is what they expect.
Your adventures should look like a big budget movie, and the art reflects that idea, which is nice. I do like that break from what we expect, and this elevates the game into more of a cinematic feeling, which is nice.
Mission Based
I like this game's "party based" approach, and while the Alien RPG also assumed a military unit or starship crew, this game has more of a structured "get a mission from Starfleet" approach which makes giving and taking adventures easier than a sandbox game. You have this structure in place, your goals are clear, and how you solve it however your group decides. There is a danger of railroading with a bad adventure author, but a good referee knows how to work around this and give a group room to explore and modify an adventure a little to allow for player choice.
This game actually reminds me of the classic Paranoia game, where players are a group of "troubleshooters" and they get a mission from the Computer to solve some problem, investigate some mystery, find a lost ship, check on a distress signal or remote outpost, and the classic "go somewhere and do something" plot setup. Along the way a lot of unknown complications happen and the players need to use their wits to figure out how to adapt and still get the mission done. Unlike Paranoia, this game is a lot more serious in tone and with a lot less dark humor.
Sandbox? I don't think this would play as well with aimless exploration and uncovering hexes. I feel classic Star Trek is this "present an impossible situation" sort of adventure, where if you played it you would just want to give up in frustration and disgust (and I had one of those adventures in old FASA Star Trek), but with enough angles and avenues of exploration that the more information you gather and sub-plots you complete, the situation begins to feel easy.
Almost.
Degrees of Success
Where the Alien game feels like more of a survival experience where winning means getting out alive (and completing optional sub-goals), this feels more objective based with degrees of success. You are sent to provide security for a peace conference between two planets and saboteurs try to stop the agreement. Failure means the talks fail and war breaks out again. Partial success means a less-optimal agreement is reached and the hostilities continue. A little more success means a case-fire holds, or an armistice is declared. A great success means peace is declared and both sides come together.
Completing different objectives brings you towards those outcomes. The player's own ingenuity also could come into play as they figure out a better solution than the ones in the adventure or presented to them by the referee.
In my old FASA experience we played this module that was some impossible situation with a Romulan ambassador, the ship helpless, some colony under threat, and us players could not figure a way out since the module was so railroaded and one solution. If you did not follow the module's script, the only way you could end the night was getting court-martialed for phaser-ing your way through the Romulan diplomats.
Which is how it ended up.
That entire game was a train wreck.
But it does highlight what NOT to do in a Star Trek adventure and how NOT to write one. If you are writing a script for a TV series with one answer and one set path, even down to the things you should ask about and say during the social encounters, you have failed miserably because players will likely never figure that out. You will either be winging the adventure and coming up with alternate solutions yourself, or the player's brains will turn off and their phasers will turn on.
Solo or Party?
This feels like a better "party game" than a solo one, since a lot of the dynamic elements of problem solving should come from a group of players that brings different ideas to the table. Alien, being a lower-level survival experience feels like a better solo game, though party play feels strong as well. Alien I could play like solo survival Monopoly, completing objectives on a ship or station map, managing resources, and doing the best I can with a dwindling crew.
Star Trek I really want to play with a group, since that party dynamic with personalities and different viewpoints and solutions feels like a part of the genre. It feels harder to play Star Trek solo since I don't want a single hive-mind controlling my crew. I want other people in this experience to share and enjoy, and frankly, that is what a great Star Trek experience is in the TV and movies. A diverse crew of different minds coming up with solutions together.
This also looks like a fun game, and yes, I still may mod it for horror, but playing it as-is feels fun as well. More on this soon.
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