Wednesday, January 5, 2022

2022 Character Creation Challenge 5) Star Trek - Last Unicorn Games

 On to a somewhat disappointing Day 5 of the #CharacterCreationChallenge




Moving the second of my two Star Trek games, the earlier of the two chronologically, and this one was a MUCH WORSE experience in character creation. This iteration was purely Original Show, and the rulebook spends a lot of time fleshing out all the alien races that appear just for an episode as being full-fledged Star Fleet races that would cross populate the ships. I mean, I get it from a player choice perspective but it a) doesn't really capture the feel of the show, and requires way more digestion of data than the similar wall of aliens does in the Decipher version, as those aliens all have much more meat on their metaphorical bones. 

In any event, I found every step of the LUG character creation process less intuitive, more poorly laid out (everything is so cramped!) and harder to work through. By trying to give more options  - you can skip away from the tour of duty process to stop selecting options and instead build your own tour experience – I'm left feeling like I missed something because I didn't. The Edges and Drawbacks design is in full bloom here, but while it is also in Decipher Trek, the Drawbacks there feel like an afterthought, and you don't need them to move forward, and you'll pick up edges otherwise. Here? Not so much. 

In the end I put together a junior Navigation officer from an dangerous tide ocean and cliff colony world fresh off her first tour, named her after the She-Ra and the Princess of Power creator. She's playable, but I don't love her. I loved She-Ra more. Go watch She-Ra. 



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