By Jim Johnson, STA Project Manager
After years of development and planning, I’m excited to announce that the release of the Star Trek Adventures tricorder box set is finally upon us! Almost as soon as we finished developing the core rulebook, we started developing the tricorder as our key original series product, essentially a love letter to our hard-core original series gamers. We knew that while many of our fans loved the look and feel of The Next Generation era LCARS style layout we used in most of our products, some fans wanted a core product that felt more familiar, something that evoked the original series they knew and loved.
So, here it is. A tidy box set shaped like the classic original series tricorder, with a flip-open lid and a strap that you can use to carry your game with you wherever you may roam. Our original series page design is evident through all the components of the set, including the reference cards, campaign booklet, rules digest, and pre-generated characters. We even made sure to revise the core rulebook from the top down, focusing the lens more tightly onto the original series.
The rules themselves haven’t changed much at all from the core rulebook. The rules were designed to enable you to play a Star Trek adventure in any era or any time frame, from Star Trek: Enterprise to the far future depicted in season 3 of Star Trek: Discovery.
Because this set was in development even beyond the development and release of the Klingon core rulebook, we had just enough time to implement some of the rules tweaks we introduced in the Klingon core. We weren’t able to implement every little tweak, but I made sure to get the optional, fan-favorite set of character advancement and reputation rules introduced in the Klingon core into the tricorder rules digest. They’re not an official replacement of the rules in the core rulebook; they are more tools for your toolbox to use as you see fit.
I have more to say about the components of the tricorder set and will save them for future blog posts. I’ll end this one by noting that this collector’s box set is not another starter set, nor is it a “reskin” of the existing Starter Set. This collector’s box contains a core rulebook with the full set of rules, a 3-part campaign booklet, two sets of pre-gen characters, reference cards, tokens, and a double handful of dice – all you need the get the full experience of Star Trek Adventures in one box. The only thing we didn’t include was tribbles (though we did look into it)!
I hope you enjoy the original series look and feel, and I hope you enjoy all this box set has to offer!
Thanks for reading this article, and thank you for your interest and support of Star Trek Adventures! Keep frequencies open for news about additional STA products in the coming months. Questions, comments? Let me know! Live long and prosper!