Heritage's Star Trek RPG In-Depth (Part 1)

Heritage Model's 1978 Star Trek: Adventure Gaming in the Final Frontier (STAGFF) is not nearly as unplayable as Gamescience's Space Patrol (upon which it's based) and much more polished than that game. But it's still riddled with unnecessary complexity that makes it one of those games where you would constantly have to refer to the rule book for exceptions. The 38 page rulebook is divided into a 7 page Basic Game, 19 pages of Advanced Game rules and 12 pages of tables, maps and lists.

As I said previously in my "first impression" post, it's only fair to note that the game's real purpose was to help sell Heritage's line of 25mm Star Trek miniatures. Nevertheless, it was the first officially licensed Star Trek RPG, so in this two or three part series, I'm going to review it in that light. First, I'll take a look at the Basic Game.

The book opens with an Introduction, going into background on Star Trek itself; the concept of a role-playing game (at one point the book refers to itself simply as The Final Frontier, which doesn't appear again in the book); and a plug for Heritage's line of Star Trek miniatures.

Next, the concept of the "Mission Master" and game preparation is introduced, but without really explaining the concept of a game master as opposed to players and characters. The author assumes that players are already familiar with the concept, perhaps a little prematurely for 1978. The game requires "one set of percentage dice, one set of polyhedra dice, and plenty of regular six-sided dice." The requirement for "polyhedra dice" is the first example of unnecessary complexity in the game. Virtually everything in the game is resolved with 6-sided dice or 20-sided percentage dice. Others (4, 8, and 12) are rarely used and there's no real consistent game mechanic. It also mentions that the game is best played with 6 or less player characters "because the standard Star Fleet Transporter only has 6 places".

The Basic Game section outlines the game as played with the standard Trek characters (character creation is covered in the Advanced Game) and limited equipment rules. Each character has six abilities with a value between 3 - 18: Strength (ST), Dexterity (DX), Luck (LK), Mentality (MN), Charisma (CH), Constitution (CN). There is no Skill or Talent system. Instead, each of these abilities applies to the resolution of specific tasks as you would expect, except CN which is really a hit point metric.

Next is the list the available player and non-player characters ("Star Trek Personalities") of the Basic Game: Kirk, Spock, Scotty, McCoy, Uhura, Sulu, Chekov, Rand, Chapel, M'Ress, Arex, Captain Koloth (of the Klingon Battlecruiser DEVISOR), Lieutenant Korax (Klingon), Standard Klingon Soldier, Sub-Commander Tal (of the Romulan Star Empire), Standard Romulan Soldier, Basic Gorn, Chuft Captain (a Kzin), Kzin Warrior, and Standard Star Fleet Security Guard.


Example Character:
Lieutenant Korax
ST 12.......DX 14
LK 9........MN 9
CH 8........CN 13
Class 3 Hand-To-Hand
+2 to Initiation
+5 in Hand-To-Hand
- Disruptor
- Communicator

The section on Characters wraps with brief rules about the use of Psionics, Saving Rolls (through the LK attribute), and how the Mission Master should deal with the "magical Transporter". There's really no reason for Psionics to be included here as they don't come up in the Basic Game, and no further details are provided until the Advanced Game section.

Next are the Basic Game Combat Rules, though it really covers all Basic game actions. Each round is divided into four phases: Decision, Initiation, Execution, and Record Keeping. Simple rules are provided for Movement, Hand-To-Hand Combat and Ranged Combat.

The section on Hand-To-Hand Combat is a perfect illustration of the unnecessarily complex rules (although they are somewhat simplified from the original Space Patrol rules). Here's an excerpt:

Each Hand-to-Hand (H-H) Combat consists of the attacking character rolling 1 die and modifying the number rolled according to H-H Class, Strength, and Dexterity. The defending character rolls 1 die in the defense and modifies the number rolled according to H-H Class and Luck. The defense roll is subtracted from the attack roll. A positive result affects the defender and a negative result has no effect.

The attacker's die roll is modified plus 1 for each number above 12 and/or minus 1 for each number below 9 in Strength and Dexterity. (This modifier has already been determined for you in the prepared characters described earlier.) The attacker's die roll is further modified plus 1 for each H-H Class rating. Captain Kirk has a ST of 13, a DX of 14, and H-H Class of 2. His total H-H combat modifier would be 5. If Kirk rolled a 4 for H-H Combat, the roll would be modified to a 9.

The defense roll is modified plus 1 for each number above 12 and minus 1 for each number below 9 in Luck and is also modified by the character's H-H Rating. Thus Lt. Korax would have a defense modifier of 3. If Korax rolled a 2 in defense to Kirk's attack, it would be modified to a 5.

If Kirk made a H-H attack on Korax with the die rolls described above, the result would be that Korax would take 4 hit points of damage (9-5=4).

Damage points affect the character's Constitution. Lt. Korax's CT would be reduced from a 13 to a 9. If a character lost one half or more of their current CT points in one attack, the character is knocked out, and falls to the ground.

A character may only attack towards the front. For purposes of this game, the front of a character is considered to be up to 90 degrees from straight ahead, to the left or right. If a character makes an H-H attack from behind another character, the attacking character may add an additional 4 to his or her die roll.

Phew.

Ranged Combat, on the other hand, is a fairly simple DX check with modifiers, rolled against a Hit Probability Table. Now I know why Indiana Jones just shot the gun.

The rules proceed to outline Creatures who only having one rating known, the Ability Rating (AR). An example from the Basic Scenario would be the "cat-like creature" that can move up to 14 meters per turn, has an AR of 10 and long talons that do 2 dice (6-sided?) worth of damage.

Next is the Basic Weapons Table -- Phasers with three settings, the Disruptor, and a Sonic Disruptor -- and the Hit Probability Table for ranged combat. The section finishes with Basic Game Equipment Rules for the Tricorder, Communicator, Medikit, and the amazing "Klingon/Romulan Communicator" which "works the same way as a Star Fleet communicator but can also be used to scan for energy sources in the same way as a Tricorder." And it slices and dices.

The Basic Game wraps with a very brief Example of Play, then the three page Basic Game Scenario "The Shuttlecraft Crash". In it, the Galileo 7 has crashed (again) on a nearby Class M world, and the characters must find some Dilithium in a maze of canyons in order to repair the shuttle. Players will have to confront exciting alien forces such as the aforementioned "cat-like creature", humanoid with spear, a snake and a giant reptile. They must also beware of traps like rockfalls, quicksand and purple grass. A Basic Game scenario map is included, though it's actually the map for the Advanced Game scenario (the Basic map is included a few pages later).

As you can see, there's really nothing in the rules related to role playing, and this doesn't change in the Advanced Rules Section. Like many games of the time, STAGFF is very "wargame-y" and doesn't inspire personality-based role playing in the same way that games like Dungeons & Dragons and Traveller did.

Unfortunately, it also isn't very "Star Trek-ey". It isn't much worse in this respect than the 1983 Japanese Trek RPG Enterprise, but Enterprise's use of Alignment was a nice extra step that helped in both respects. Fortunately, many of these weaknesses are addressed by some wonderful fan-written works published later in the excellent Different Worlds magazine, with "A Star Trek Scenario Report: Kirk On Karit 2" by Emmet F. Milestone (Issue #4, Aug/Sept 1979) and "Star Trek: Beyond the Final Frontier" by Paul Montgomery Crabaugh (Issue #18, January 1982).

In the next part of this review, I'll take a look at the Advanced Game rules of Star Trek: Adventure Gaming in the Final Frontier.