I’ve tweaked the above based on comments. Now onto personal combat!
Wow, we’ve barely even said hello!
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“Men, you’re lucky men. Soon, you’ll all be fighting for your planet. Many of you will be dying for your planet. A few of you will be put through a fine mesh screen for your planet. They will be the luckiest of all.”
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“We know nothing about their language, their history, or what they look like. But we can assume this, they stand for everything we don’t stand for. Also, they told me that you guys look like dorks.”
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Dammit. Forgot my own joke.
Proper Star Trek fight music below.
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“But in these red tunics; we do look like dorks sir.”
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Oooh does this mean we get lightsabers, sir?
Portable Mauler weapons. But note, they cannot be swung about, a la lightsaber.
At least per the rules of Star Fleet Battles.
For some reason I’m reminded of the apocryphal instruction by a Lieutenant of Engineers: “Sergeant, that hill offends me. Make it go away.”
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Or the alleged marine artillery motto one of the JROTC sergeants proffered: “where it is is where it was.”
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Yerp. The game states that the PCs should “always” get initiative unless very specifically the GM decides to ambush them or there are cloaks involved. You can also use Threat in order to allow the NPCs to activate either first, or back-to-back. Several of the Feats and Traits allow the PCs to string actions together or to give actions to each other (the “Command” Trait, it’s called something else but I forget, allows one player to specifically spend an action to let a different player immediately do an action).
Initiative is Players - NPCs - Players until everyone has activated once, and then starts at the top. But the players can adjust their initiative order at any time (Bob activates, then a Klingon Stabber, and then Alice, and then a Klingon Puncher, and then Jim, and then a Klingon Hugger. Now everyone has activated, and the PCs decide they want Jim to activate first…).
There is also a wall of text for the spending of Momentum in combat, most of which I think is stupid or a waste of time, and then a different wall of text for specific keywords (“Lethal” or “Variable” or whatever).
Oh, and Lethal combat is so poorly explained that I’m still not convinced I’m doing it right. Like, do you have to make every attack Lethal in order to kill an enemy? Or just the last one? Or you can switch? Does Lethal do more damage (I’m pretty sure the answer to that is “no”)?
Yeah. Combat is the weakest part of ST:A. It functions. It works. But Spaceship Combat is much better and I would still say that’s only “okay” and there are still a lot of fiddling around and charts (How many Engine Damages result in a Reactor Breach? How many Breaches before the ship is almost exploded vs going to exploded? Can the Pews make the Pew-Pew Stopper stop working, or can you target your Pews at specific parts of the ship? The answer to all this is “maybe!”).
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Sorry Gang. I shook hands with a Ferengi whilst negotiating ownership rights for a seemingly stable wormhole* and I have been in bed ever since.
Other combat rules are now summarised in post 1 for checking.
*Katy Perry (2008)
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Looks correct to me. You should probably mention/know that the Delta symbol (the “swoosh” on the die) is both a +1 result and may trigger a bonus effect (as dictated by the list of keywords some weapons have).
So a roll of Blank / 2 Stars / 2 Stars / Delta would inflict a total of 5 damage (before reductions from Resistance) and may trigger additional effects like more damage (“Vicious”) or hit additional targets (“Wide”) etc.
There are rules for Cover (partial, 3/4, and total) as well, but I’ve almost never bothered with them unless my players specifically say they are jumping behind cover (which, in a year of playing, they have done a total of… never).
Ok.
I’m super up for GMing a Star Trek RPG, but I don’t know.
I’m bouncing off this system so hard.
Anyone got a simple system we can PBF?
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One reason I’m here is to try to learn the 2d20 system, but not the only reason. 
Some ideas that come to mind:
The original FASA RPG, if you know someone who has it available (hint: you do).
Star Trek: Alpha Quadrant - somewhat modified Cepheus engine.
Where No Man Has Gone Before and Far Trek – more action-orientated, rules light (and D&D-derived).
Ashen Stars - GUMSHOE game, “the crew of Serenity try to do the job of the crew of the Enterprise”.
The only one of these I’ve played is the original FASA one. The three with links are all free.
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I’m familiar enough with the system that if you want, I can run a reasonably short one-shot to let you figure out if you want to play a longer campaign with the 2d20 rules. Our ST:A campaign is still running, and we’re having a lot of fun (although I have basically dropped combat completely aside from very short narratively-driven battles).
I try to approach each episode/ark like a space-mystery, rather than wandering-murder-hobos. It seems to work out okay. The writing in the pregenerated campaigns is all over the place (some are pretty good, some are awful, all of them have face-palm moments), but the system has some legs. The whole “Tell me what you want to do, tell me what skills you want to use, and then justify to me why those skills work” is actually a lot of fun, especially when I can say “Okay, your difficulty is 4, but I’ll drop it to 3 if you can give me a technobabble explanation for what you’re doing!”
Also, the “You rolled a 1, tell me how your lives have gotten harder” thing is really neat. My PCs have turned at least 6 tricoders into smoking blast-craters. They’ve gained “a reputation.”
Anyway! Let me know if you want me to run a couple weeks or a few months worth of ST:A. I won’t be able to maintain it past November (one of the many “joys” of working at a toy and game store), but until then I can probably swing it.
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I’d love you to run a scene, get a handle on it.
If it works I’m happy to have a GM poking me whenever I mess up.
Also Roger really needs to get an ascendancy game running.
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I think I might just ignore the Breen and Dominion content and run with the stuff I already have.
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