Using Traveller to Run a Star Trek Campaign (Part 2)

The Galaxy of Star Trek has a bewildering variety of new life and new civilizations for a crew of player characters to seek out as they boldly go where no one has gone before. Especially in a Starfleet centered campaign that diversity will be front and center on display. Using the Traveller rules, it is not difficult to create a species for players to use. Modiphius has also recently published a Species Sourcebook for Star Trek Adventures, which is an excellent resource (obviously) for adapting the different species to Traveller.

Vulcans Break the System

When running a Star Trek game, character balance is not the point. Species are not all created equal. Vulcans (and Romulans) I’m looking at you.

Vulcans (even mixed-species Vulcans like Mister Spock) have big bonuses to Strength, Endurance, Intellect, Education and have Psionic training in their backgrounds. Though I think Vulcans are limited to Telepathy and probably Awareness. I cant think of any Vulcans displaying Clairvoiyance, Telekinesis or Teleportation.

As mentioned last week, the Vulcan Science Academy is exclusive to Vulcan students, and is a far better University than what other educational institutions offer. Vulcans also live over 200 years (on average), sometimes approaching 300. Add to this the “Vulcan Nerve Pinch” which could be a variation of Telepathic Assault with the range reduced to Personal. This also conveniently explains why non-Vulcans cannot normally perform the attack.

Humans and near-Humans

Most of the sophonts in the Trek Universe are human (at least in the Federation) are “human”. They may be from Rigel or Proxima, or Utopia or any number of colonies and systems that present human parallel evolution. For purposes of species, these all count as Human. Cultural and Ethnic diversity can account for different background skills, but for purposes of Starfleet characters, they count as human.

Near humans are those non-human species that are so similar to humans that, like human characters only minor changes to their background abilities are really necessary. Betazoids, Bajorans, Cardassians, Orions are examples. They are not especially more or less strong, dextrous, intelligent, etc.. than humans. Their cultures make relatively minor adjustments to their character generation (Betazoids, for example, start with Psionic Training and Telepathy presented as reading emotions)

Uplifted species like Terran Dolphins, Great Apes and Beluga also work well in Star Trek (just travel down to Cetacean Ops and party with Lieutenants Kimolu and Matt if a wanna know). Traveller already has templates for uplifted Terran species so adapting to Star Trek becomes that much easier. In the Star Trek Dezzyverse I’d allow Vargr because they are, in the Traveller Universe, an uplifted species from Terran Wolves. Also, I like Vargr and I think they ‘re neat. After all, if a Ferengi can join StarFleet, a rough-around-the-mange Vargr can join too.

Non-Humans and Aliens

Non humans are a category of sophonts that have fundamentally different characteristics and abilities from humans. Kzinti, Gorn, Ferengi, Klingons, Andorians, Tellarites. They are in general different enough from human that they have positive and negative Characteristic adjustments and abilities. The Kzinti in particular have a strong parallel in Traveller with the Aslan.

Especially as the Star Trek Universe expands into more, shall we call them “Mileus” the variety and expanse of represented species expands far beyond the human and-near human. Star Trek Crew can venture beyond the humanoid, or even carbon-based forms. In one of the Star Trek comic book series, there is a Horta Bridge Officer on the Enterprise for a time. There’s a Medusan and a Brikar who join Starfleet in Star Trek: Prodigy. Some of these more extreme examples may be a challenge to model, but, like with Vulcans mentioned earlier, game balance is really not the point. Just work with your players to make something interesting and fun that satisfies their character idea.

Of course, when discussing non-humans, Star Trek has plenty of examples of artificial, or engineered life. Androids like Data, Photonics like SAM, Ex Borg, Cyborg, the list goes on and on. In Traveller there are multiple resources to model these forms of life. From the rules in the Robot Handbook all the way through the campaign adventure Singularity. Of course, this brings up the question of Starfleet’s Tech Level, which we’ll be covering next week.

Infinite Combinations

The thing I absolutely love about the direction Star Trek has gone in Strange New Worlds, Discovery, and Starfleet Academy is how the Federation and Starfleet are no longer presented as majority human. It was impractical back in the 1960s and even the 80s and 90s to have too many radically non-human characters. And even the diversity, especially in the Original Series and Next Generation era was mostly focused on Earth culture of the time. James Kirk was famously from Iowa, William Riker, Alaska, Pavel Chekov was Russian and Nyota Uhura was Kenyan.

As Star Trek has developed, not only were the species of the characters expanded, but where they came from got a more attention. Tasha Yar was from a colony where public security had broken down completely, Worf was an orphan raised by a human Russian couple, Deep Space Nine dealt with people recovering from a brutal Cardassian Occupation, Voyager XO Chakotay came from Trebus colony, Seven of Nine was a colonist from Tendara colony (before she was assimilated and subsequently recovered from the Borg). The point here is that players should be encouraged to explore the breadth of Star Trek’s potential through their character’s culture instead of leaning heavily on present-day cultural stereotypes. Nothing is entirely wrong with being proud of where you were raised, but Chekov has pretty much overdone the stereotypical over-the-top Russian for everyone at this point. If a player wishes to use an Earth culture (even if it’s a transplanted Earth culture onto a distant colony world), just tread lightly. Remember that if an existing culture is being used, real people, some of whom may be at your table, or at your convention, or are in your local Star Trek gaming community may belong to that culture. Be respectful.

The existing promise of Star Trek, the Federation, and Starfleet is that all of these cultures, all of these People can coexist and work together. There is still conflict, and there are still a host of prejudices that the peoples of the Star Trek Universe continue to hold in their hearts. But the hope remains that the future continues to progress towards inclusion and diversity. Live Long and Prosper!