"Best Rules for Star Trek ground combat?" Topic

When your Away Team goes into action, which rules do you prefer?

Could use Traveller with a few minor changes/additions.

FiveCore works perfectly. Star Trek away teams rarely feature more than a half dozen guys on each side. FiveCore also has rules for space monsters, insurgents, hidden antagonists, really everything you need.

I have used FiveCore for away team action, it works wonderfully.

Yep, FiveCore is my suggestion too: very felxible for any setting, easy to learn and play, and very entertaining games to be had.

There is/was a set called Away Team, available for free, that looks to be pretty simple (FUBAR-like, or simpler even than that), as an option.

Very simple D6 rules, IIRC, with little tweaks like roll 1D6 for the encounter – 1 to 3 = on a spacestation or aboard a vessel; 4 to 6 = scenario occurs on a planet.

Never played them, but they are/were available for free, as a PDF.

FUBAR should work too.

2d6 Sci Fi Combat would work. Garb the Crossover and you can add monsters and aliens. For free and found here.

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I've been looking at Pulp Alley as a first choice, with others like 7TV or 5Core as backups.

I guess it depends on the scale of the action. I have been wondering about armoured warfare in the Trekverse… 60's retro SF hover tanks and the like. Starfleet's ground combat resources can't be exclusively Red Shirts with hand phasers!

For ground combat with some problem solving, I'll use Pulp Alley. For pure combat, I'll use 5150. Away Team is fun, but very lightweight.

Currently looking at Rogue Stars to see if that is suitable.

ADB has a board game called Starfleet Marines which covers away teams. Far simpler than SFB. 2 player with solo options.

Haven't tried it yet, but curious: how well would 7TV work for this?

When I scouted out 7TV (1st edition) to use for this, I thought it would work ok. It's kind of like Pulp Alley or Fantastic Worlds (which I forgot I'd also looked at and could work for Star Trek) in that it has rosters with several strata of characters – your main character, some sidekicks, some tertiary characters, and then your mooks.

You'd need to handwave a bit for the weapons and tech, but it's not a stretch to go from 1960s/70s TV sci-fi to, well, 1960s/70s TV sci-fi.

Pulp Alley's challenge I think is that for the Enterprise crew, you'd need to have variable leagues depending on who was on the away team. Kirk + Spock + McCoy + red shirts is a different roster dynamic than Kirk + McCoy + Sulu + red shirts.

I must admit I use the crew of the USS Endeavour for my Pulp Alley Star Trek gaming. I have the Captain, two sidekicks (Chief Medical Officer & Chief Science Officer) and then swap in various allies/followers as needed.

For specific missions, I have a 4 person league made up of sidekicks (1st Officer, CMO, CSO and one other as needed).

There is a gent who has run TOS games in 28mm using a Flying Lead variant at Cincycon a couple of times. Nice looking game.

@MacrossMartan

Based on what I saw on DS9 during the Dominion War I'm pretty sure the federations ground forces are just red shirts with phasers

I would probably start with Savage Worlds….

Excellent Character Support, Good Red Shirt Support…

BTW have y'all seen Litko's new Red Shirt damage markers?

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The best rule I can think of is : "Let the Redshirt check for enemy minefields/boobytraps/whimsical alien godlike beings".