I will be attending FallCon for the first time this year, and I’ll be running a couple sessions for the Star Trek Adventures Roleplaying Game from Modiphius as part of the RPG Alliance group.
I’ll be running a Starter Adventure with Pregenerated characters, so no previous experience is necessary. My games run on Saturday September 28th from 2 pm until 6 pm and on Sunday September 29th from 11 am until 6 pm.
The adventure I’ll be running is “Signals“: A month ago, Starfleet picked up an unusual alien signal emanating from the Seku system, deep inside the Carina Nebula. The runabout Susquehanna was initially dispatched to investigate, but the crew failed to report and is presumed lost. Starfleet must investigate the source of the signal and locate the missing runabout.
The RPG Alliance group is running several other games as well, such as Conan, Star Wars, Rocket Age, and The Expanse. We’ll also have a Community Booth where you can stop by and ask us any questions you may have.
Check out the RPG Alliance Fallcon page for additional details and descriptions of the games being run.
A series of photos of the painting I did on the Modiphius Star Trek Adventures Next Generation Bridge Crew and the Star Trek Next Generation Away Team miniature sets, with a few other minis in the background of some shots.
I recently volunteered to run a couple sessions of the Star Trek Adventures Roleplaying game at the Calgary Expo. I suspect the reaction of some of my family and friends was probably along the lines of “How the hell did that happen?”
For those that don’t know me that well, I would describe myself as a sociable introvert. I don’t generally like crowds, and I seldom initiate conversations with people I don’t know, but once I’ve been introduced to someone, if we find we have something in common, then I can be somewhat talkative and sociable.
So, how did I end up at the Calgary Expo running games for complete strangers?
I picked these miniatures up a couple years ago from Hasselfree Miniatures while looking for Battlestar Galactica characters. It has been more years than I care to figure out since I last painted any character miniatures, and I didn’t want to start right off the bat with the expensive sets of Modiphius Star Trek Adventures minis. I’m quite happy with how they turned out.
I recently ran the first adventure in the three adventure mini campaign from the the Star Trek Adventures Starter Set from Modiphius Entertainment. Overall we had a good time playing through it and it worked quite well. Here are a few random observations and questions that came up along the way. I’ve also tried to avoid any major spoilers for the adventure.
The first thing I noticed is that the Starter Set comes with five pregenerated Player Characters and one Ship. The Quickstart Guide which is available for free on the Modiphius website has the same five pregenerated PCs plus one additional one, the Denobulan Science Officer.
This is a follow-up/companion article to my “Corsec Bases and Rods with tweaks” posting that I did back in November of 2015. I’ll repeat the first three paragraphs from that posting and then go on to show in more detail both the standard way that the system can be used and then add some additional information on some of the tweaks I described in the earlier post.
Over the years I’ve tried out several different types of stands and bases for my miniatures, but I think I’ve finally settled on the using the Omni-Stand system from Corsec Engineering. What I like about it is that it is very versatile, especially when combined with a few accessories from a fine tool store like Lee Valley.
There are three main parts to the Omni-Stand system, the base, the supporting rod, and the mount, all of which are interchangable, which means you can use the same miniature for multiple games and just swap out the base, going from a round base with 30 degree firing arcs for something like Full Thrust, to square bases customized for use with the X-Wing Miniatures Game.
I’ve been thinking about this update for awhile and just haven’t been able to find the time to do it all in one go, so I’m going to split it into several smaller postings.
I did do a mid year update for 2018 so you would think there would be few things to review, but that isn’t really the case. There have been changes related to jobs, the loss of a friend, some additional work on the house, a couple of new apps I’ve been using, getting out and meeting new gamers, and the regular updates on various projects to cover.
I think I’ll start with an easy one, health and fitness. I see from last year’s New Years posting that I started at 260 lbs which was down from 268 from 2016.
I made some decent progress again this year, primarily around May and then maintaining it through the rest of the year. My actual weight on Jan 2 2018 was 252.5 lbs, which is a pretty good indication of most of the year, I’ve been bouncing between 250 and 255 since my initial drop in May. And, here is a nice little graph that shows my progress throughout the year.
I’ve started working on a Campaign for the new Star Trek Adventures Roleplaying game. I’m basically going to convert some of the material from my old FASA Star Trek campaign, using some of the ideas and adventures I used in that one, along with some published adventures, some stuff lifted from some of the novels, and some tie ins to the original television series.
The campaign will start in 2269, which puts it after The Original Series (TOS) and part way through The Animated Series (TAS).
The characters will be part of StarFleet Intelligence and their primary goals will be gathering information on Klingon and Orion activities in the area around K7 Space Station, which is along the Federation/Klingon border. According the “Stellar Cartography” maps, the nearest Starbase in that area is Starbase 46 or Starbase 2. I’ll probably have them working out of Starbase 2 as it’s also along the border. Also, Starbase 46 is only mentioned in Star Trek: Discovery, which I’m pretty much ignoring in my campaign.
I am going to have the characters assigned to an Archer Class vessel which comes from the Vanguard series of novels. I like that it is a small ship, with only 14 crew. This means I can easily have four to six regular players, and either they can each play a main character and a supporting character, or I can easily create the rest of the crew as Non Player Characters. It also means the players will have to solve most things themselves rather than calling up the resident expert on the ship, which can happen on the larger ships. I’ll know exactly what the skill sets of all the crew members will be.
I also like that the transporter on the ship can only beam one person up or down at a time. The ship is capable of landing on planets, so that is generally the main method of travel. It seems like every second published Star Trek adventure includes an ion storm, or strong electromagnetic field around a planet, or something else to prevent transporter use. This will help get around having to do that.
It also allows for the flexibility of having a few guest players from time to time as well. And, I have a nice set of deck plans from Starship Dynamics.
I was able to scan in the sheets that have the areas accessible to the crew and created a set of deck tiles at miniature scale for those areas.
Archer Tiles
I’ll have them supported by a Ptolemy Class tug with various specialty cargo pods, a throw back to some adventures I ran in FASA’s Triangle Campaign. I haven’t decided yet if the Triangle will exist in my current campaign or not.
For the first adventure, I’m going to adapt the “Again, Troublesome Tribbles” adventure from the First Edition FASA Star Trek Roleplaying game box set. I’ve just started working through converting the NPCs, then I’ll try converting the creatures. And, I’ll change enough things around so that any other old Trekkies that might have played the original may not know exactly what’s going on.
I’ve got a discussion started on Meetup for those in the Calgary area that might be interested in playing. Whether I go ahead with it will depend on the level of interest. I’d want to get at least four committed players in order to start.
I recently picked up the new edition of “Star Trek Stellar Cartography” and thought I would do a comparison between the new 2018 edition to the original 2013 edition.
2018 Edition and 2013 Edition:
(Note, I will be added some additional photographs, links, and some notes on a comparison of the Poster Maps in the near future)
The descriptions on Amazon for the two products are identical:
The Starfleet Reference Library: Stellar Cartography collects together ten original, never-before-seen large-format maps of the Star Trek universe. Pulled from the cartography archives of Starfleet Academy, these beautifully reproduced maps provide a rare opportunity to view the expanse of Federation space (and beyond) through the multiple lenses of the Galaxy’s key players.
The maps include an ancient Vulcan map, a Klingon Empire map from the pre-Organian Peace Treaty era (in the native Klingon), an official Romulan government map of the Empire, a native Cardassian Union map from the Bajor occupation, along with Federation maps from the modern era. Housed in a handsome clamshell case and paired with a fully-illustrated reference book providing detailed information on planets, systems, and topography, this exclusive collection showcases the Star Trek universe like never before.
