I ran my first S&S adventure over the Thanksgiving weekend, and it went GREAT! It helped that we have a great group - several of us are long-time Star Trek fans, and one of our players is able to rattle off technobabble like a pro. I ran a modified version of the 'Mind Masters' sample adventure, and it's really been a TON of fun. I think we'll likely grow this into a full-blown campaign once the party gets through with Zeta Herculis IV.
In the interest of helping out my fellow SMs and possibly giving the Goblinoid folks some direction for version 2.1, here is some feedback, both good and bad. Please take this all in the context of the above, i.e. we LOVE S&S and just want to see it get EVEN BETTER.
Character creation
Character creation went very well, mostly due to the fact that I spent several hours in advance building a nice spreadsheet that automates most of the calculations (if anyone's interested, PM me). The players were unhappy with their first batch of characters, due to low ability score rolls, so I allowed them to roll 24d6 and combine the results any way they like. I would recommend supporting that, plus a point-buy system to allow players to build the characters they want to roleplay.
One pet peeve of mine is that you can never find minis for sci-fi rpgs. If you stick to human, there are minis out there if you look hard enough (e.g. http://www.victoryforce.com/Merchant2/graphics/00000001/006601logo.jpg), but once you create a character with a different race, it's fairly impossible to find a matching mini. If you're a big company like Paizo, you can partner with Reaper to develop (for example) a special line of Pathfinder minis, but if you don't have that kind of industry clout, it might not be a bad idea to find a manufacturer who is already producing space-themed minis and match your PC races to ones they already offer (e.g. http://www.victoryforce.com/Merchant2/graphics/00000001/006607blogo.jpg). Then both companies can partner to cross-promote each other's products, creating a win-win. Just a thought.
By the way, same suggestion for the alien races. Make it easy on us table-top gamers.
Galactic Mapping
I placed Sol/Starbase Alpha at the center of my hex map and Zeta Herculis on the edge, and then I used the random space hazard generation rules to build out the map. This worked pretty well, and when I was done I had a fairly detailed and adventure-rich galaxy map. The most common feature was the gas cloud, which was fine. I realized early on that gas/dust clouds are only interesting if they take up more than one hex (so you can hide other hazards inside them
Rogue planets came up more frequently than I liked. Now I have to come up with a quest or story hook for each one (or just let them be boring rocks in space). It'd be great to add some random element to them, e.g. sensors detect a.) some frozen ruins on the surface, b.) a power source, c.) it's hollow, d.) etc.
Time warps are a great feature for a planned map, but a terrible one for a random encounter. Imagine the poor SM who rolls that one up in the middle of a gaming session: "Oh, well, you encounter a time warp. Ok, let's adjourn until next week so I can work out what temporal paradox you need to solve."
Computers
I discovered this weekend that in the future, computers are extremely user-unfriendly. No one on the bridge could get the thing to work. They had to summon the chief medical officer up from sick bay so that she could give it a try. And when she finally got it working, the thing would only answer four yes/no questions. While this was good comedy relief, long-term it is going to get tedious.
Might I suggest that using a computer is like riding a horse. If you're just going down to the tavern, you don't need to make a Ride check. But if you want to do something that involves some risk of failure, such as jumping over a ravine, then you roll.
Combat
Space combat went very well, after we figured out how to do it. It would have been nice to have a few step-by-step examples of combat in the rulebook to help us get the hang of it. Everyone liked not having to refer to a long list of complex rules or a hex map to resolve combat. Roll for attack, roll for damage, next turn. Easy.
My one suggestion in this area is that combat be modified to involve more players. It felt very much like the person in the captain's chair was doing all the fighting. It would have been nice to give everyone a job, so that the win would feel more like a team effort. For example, the Communications officer rolls to jam the enemy sensors (and give a penalty to their combat rolls), the Navigator rolls for evasive maneuvers (and give a penalty to enemy combat rolls), the Science officer rolls for sensor checks (and gives a bonus to combat rolls), the Engineer rolls to give temporary boosts to PPB ("Scotty, we need more power!!!"), etc. You get the idea.
One problem with planetary (person-to-alien) combat is that everyone has one action per round (unless I'm reading the rules wrong). That means that in order to engage an opponent in melee, you have to first advance to an adjacent square, then wait for the next round (while you take one on the chin) before you can attack. I would suggest that either a.) S&S support charge maneuvers (i.e. move & attack), b.) S&S support a move and a standard action per round, or c.) S&S support multiple 'phases' per round, allowing characters with higher DEX to do multiple things in one round.
Equipment
I like S&S's approach to equipment. You don't buy gear with gold pieces; you just requisition it from the supply officer. Your only limitations are a.) what you are able to carry, and b.) what you are authorized to use, the former specified by encumbrance, and the latter as defined by your Units. In this respect, equipment in S&S is more like spells in D&D or Pathfinder.
I would like to see characters have a 'Max Unit' stat. This would serve to limit the highest Unit equipment the character can requisition. So for example, if you can carry 4 Units, but your Max Unit is 2, you can requisition two items of 2 units each (2+2=4, and no one item is more than 2 units), or one item of 2 units and two 1-unit items, etc. Characters who happen to come across an item of a higher unit than their Max during the course of an away mission would suffer a penalty using it that would increase with the difference. So if the character above found a device worth 3 units, he could use it at a -2 penalty. A device worth 4 units would carry a -4 penalty, one worth 5 units would be -8, and so on.
I would also like to see a lot more equipment. In particular, I would like to see a good/better/best approach, where there are low-Unit items that perform a certain task, but mid-range and higher-Unit items that do the same task, only better. For example, there might be a Health-Pack that your average Ensign Med Officer can readily afford that will heal 1d8 damage before being used up. Then there is the med kit that Lieutenant's can afford that heals 2d8 and is used up after 3 uses. Then you get the full med pack that is Commander-level and can heal 3d8, 5 uses. Same thing with weapons, computers, etc. This kind of variety will help players customize their characters and provide more benefits to leveling up.
That's enough for now. I'll post more as we get farther into our adventure. Again, LOVE this game.
Regards,
Stephen
