Moving Between Captain’s Log and Star Trek Adventures

By Jim Johnson, Star Trek Adventures Project Manager
Art by Rodrigo Gonzalez

The earlier blog posts in the Captain’s Log series discussed character generation, ship generation, setting up your first story, and then writing your first mission’s opening log entry, and telling your story scene by scene to reach a satisfying conclusion. Now, let’s talk about the game’s portability to Star Trek Adventures, and vice versa.

In addition to using Captain’s Log as a solo storytelling game, you can use it to ‘ramp up’ to the Star Trek Adventures game and ruleset. Since both games are built on the same core 2d20 engine, the similarities between the two should be clear. Character generation and core task resolution are nearly identical between the two games. Momentum and Threat usage are similar, though the total amount of points you have differs between the two games.

If you work your Captain’s Log character through a few solo adventures and then want to port the character into a Star Trek Adventures game, the process to do so is simple, as detailed on pages 137–138. Select up to four talents for the character, calculate their Stress and Resistance ratings, assign some gear, and then assign a character role so they can make use of the role benefit as needed as part of the crew they’ll be joining. Ideally you would conduct a Session 0 with the group to help determine where your character would best fit into the game.

Maybe you’re playing Star Trek Adventures and want to tell a few Captain’s Log-style solo stories with them, perhaps as adventures told in between group missions, or stories that add detail to some element of your character’s back story. If so, there’s no additional preparation needed. You can use the character as-is to tell solo stories, though there are some mechanical elements, such as Stress and talents, you won’t need to use in Captain’s Log. The character talents could influence the storytelling and add detail to how your character approaches certain situations, but you won’t need the talents to influence the game mechanically.

The Captain’s Log design team endeavored to make the transition between the two games as seamless as possible, to help you tell amazing Star Trek stories with a minimum of difficulty, no matter which game you chose to use. I hope you tell many incredible adventures and share them somewhere for everyone to read. Have fun, and go boldly!

Order your copy of the Captain’s Log Solo Roleplaying Game now and receive the final PDF right away and start creating your own Star Trek stories!

Thanks for reading this article, and thank you for your interest and support of Star Trek Adventures! Keep frequencies open for news about Captain’s Log and other Star Trek Adventures product releases. Live long and prosper!

Go to Captain's Blog #6