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Modiphius Entertainment is offering up plenty of strange new worlds with their latest release for the Star Trek Adventures second edition roleplaying game. Entitled the Star Trek Adventures Exploration Guide, the book introduces a ton of new character options along with Gamemaster advice, random tables and new rules for creating complete star systems with fully populated planets and unique terrain.
The sourcebook is available now in hardcover from your local gamestore and the Modiphius website or you can snag a PDF version on DriveThruRPG. Below, we fire up our tricorders and scan all the details.
What’s included in the Star Trek Adventures Exploration Guide?
The Star Trek Adventures Exploration Guide is 144-pages in length and includes the following (all of which is compatible with both the first and second edition of the game, as well as the Captain’s Log Solo RPG):
- New character options: The includes two new career paths, 10 new career events, 21 new character talents and five new options for awards and honors. It also includes new options for characters who want to possess a secret value, talent or trait that is slowly revealed throughout the course of a campaign.
- Space sector creation: This is a collection of both GM advice and a ton of random tables to generate key star systems, the total number of planets and other unique features for a sector.
- Star system creation: Drilling down from the sector level, the book also provides rules and tables for populating individual star systems with unique planets, including moons and inner and outer worlds.
- Planetary terrain: The book also offers guidance and random tables for generating planets, including details and random tables for nine types of unique terrain (cave systems, deserts, forests, jungles, mountains and hills, plains, swamps, tundra and water).
- Adventure creation: The Exploration Guide includes a ton of random tables to help GMs brainstorm for their campaigns or generate quick story hooks, advantages and complications which can be associated with specific planetary terrain types.
- Double-sided poster map: This features a star chart for the 23rd century on one side and an updated star chart of the 25th century on the other side.
How much is the Star Trek Adventures Exploration Guide?
The books are priced as follows:
- Standard Hardcover: $48 USD (not including shipping and handling), which is comparable to other Star Trek Adventures 2e sourcebooks we’ve seen (including the recently released Technical Manual).
- PDF version: $18 USD, which is a solid price point and also comparable to other PDFs which Modiphius has released. Notably, unlike many other publishers, Modiphius sells PDF versions of their books almost exclusively through DriveThruRPG.
Why is the Star Trek Adventures Exploration Guide worth picking up?
- Robust tools for world-building: The Exploration Guide doesn’t just give you surface fluff. Rather it offers a structured frameworks and random tables to generate entire sectors, star systems, planetary bodies, biomes and spatial phenomena. That means you can create your own sandbox or expand already established sectors from the series.
- On-the-fly inspiration: When your players ask “what’s on that planet over there?” or “what’s this weird anomaly?” and you don’t have an answer, this book steps in. It includes story generation tables, complication/advantage tables, biome encounters, and ready-made prompts to help you improvise on the spot without stalling play.
- Enhanced character creation: The Exploration Guide also offers an array new player options, including a new feature that lets your character have a secret value, talent or trait that’s slowly revealed through play. It’s a novel concept that sounds like it offers a ton of narrative and gameplay potential.
Final Thoughts
Modiphius’ Star Trek Adventures second edition is still a relatively new product having only been released in August 2024, so it’s great to see them continuing to support the game with new content. In fact, one of things that felt like it was missing from the Core Rulebook is the ability to really flesh out the galaxy with living, breathing locations. The new Exploration Guide seems like a solid approach to handling this type of content both during campaign planning and on the fly.
You can pick up the Star Trek Adventures Exploration Guide now from your local gamestore, the Modiphius website or as a PDF on DriveThruRPG.