By Jim Johnson, Star Trek Adventures Project Manager
Art by Tobias Richter
Developing a core rulebook for a game line, particularly a game line based on a popular, long-running franchise such as Star Trek™ Adventures, requires a delicate balancing act when it comes to deciding what content to include in the core rulebook versus what content to hold back for future products.
Star Trek has presented more than a hundred ship classes over its many decades on screen, and secondary media for the franchise has introduced hundreds more—each one has its cadre of enthusiastic fans extolling their virtues.
Additional complications to our task was our design mandates to offer non-Starfleet options in the core book experience for playable character species as well as starship spaceframes, and that we represent as much of the franchise’s breadth as possible. Knowing we couldn’t possibly include every starship class in the core book, we had to make some difficult choices.
The development team and I came up with an initial list of approximately 40 spaceframes across Federation and non-Federation starship classes, then pared it down and then down again. Once the book went into layout, we had to trim a few more in order to keep the core rulebook to a manageable (and affordable) size. In the end, we settled on 15 spaceframes.
The nine Starfleet spaceframes include the NX class, Constitution, Excelsior, Ambassador, California, Galaxy, Intrepid, Sovereign, and, appearing for the first time in Star Trek Adventures, the Constitution-III class as presented in the third season of Star Trek: Picard. This spread of ship classes spans the 22nd to early 25th centuries, giving groups options when it comes to picking an era of play and a ship to call home.
Art courtesy of Thomas Marrone
Those ships are joined by six non-Starfleet vessel classes: the Klingon B’rel bird-of-prey and the powerful D7 battlecruiser; the Romulan T’Liss bird-of-prey and the D’Deridex warbird; the Ferengi D’Kora-class marauder, and the Cardassian Galor-class warship. These six options support non-Federation gameplay should your group choose to explore the universe beyond the scope of Starfleet.
Stay tuned for next week’s article, where we’ll discuss the new Game Toolkit in detail, including some of the 17 spaceframes offered in that booklet.
Pre-order your copy of the second edition Star Trek Adventures core rulebook now in standard format or one of three limited edition covers! And preorder a copy of the second edition Game Toolkit as well, to expand your options for exploring the final frontier.
2nd Edition Core Rulebook (Command):
2nd Edition Core Rulebook (Sciences):
2nd Edition Core Rulebook (Operations):
Thanks for reading this article, and thank you for your interest and support of Star Trek Adventures! Keep frequencies open for news about other upcoming Star Trek Adventures product releases. Live long and prosper!
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