Customer Reviews

Star Trek Roleplaying Game Aliens

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Decipher's latest RPG guide, "Aliens", is another attractive volume in the familiar style, well worth picking up even if you never play the roleplaying game itself. There are 58 alien races here, lots of non-canonical elaboration about Star Trek aliens' planet names and (rather overly stereotypical) physical and emotional traits from all live-action incarnations of Star Trek. Most entries come with at least one colour photo.

As with Last Unicorn Games (LUG), the previous RPG licensee's efforts, "ST: The Motion Picture " is represented by Betelgeuseans and Zaranites, but this time there are no photos for these guys. Ilia represents the Deltans.

Some other ST races are conspicuous by their absence; I guess Decipher's authors have been cautious about expanding some races we know little about, but even races covered in earlier Decipher volumes aren't in this one (ie, no Regulans/Caitians of ST's old Animated Series this time).

No Grazerites. No Zaldans. There's an Elasian (of TOS), but no Troyians. No "Nemesis" Remans. The Suliban of "Enterprise" are included, but no Denobulans, even though Dr. Phlox is mentioned in the Introduction. Several major Delta Quadrant aliens are included for gamers wanting to keep the USS Voyager lost in space.

One surprise is that the Efrosian UFP President of "ST VI: The Undiscovered Country" is given yet another overhaul. (The name "Efrosian" was supposedly given to the alien race introduced in "ST IV: The Voyage Home" by the Makeup Dept. and named for Paramount's Mel Efros. The term was then popularised by "Cinefantastique" magazine and the old FASA RPG materials - and most recently by the Pocket Books novel "In the Name of Honor". Other Pocket novels and novelizations have called the race "Deltan".) However, in Decipher's "Aliens" volume, the ST VI UFP President's pic represents the Atreonids of Atreos IV. Sigh...

Anyway, this book is beautifully presented and well worth checking out! Green cover this time.

The previous review of this book was pretty solid, but there are a few points that I think need to be made. First of all, the missing races such as the Regulans/Kaitians and the Grazerites were made available in the previous volume by the same company, book 3 Starfleet Operations Manual along with the Bolians, Centaurans, Tellarites, Tiburonese and Zaldans. I am leaning to the thought they opted to not duplicate all of the offerings in the alien book so that there would still be value to buying the Starfleet Operations Manual for expanded racial offerings; after all, the Andorians and Romulans were included in the Narrators Guide already as well.

Regarding the Efrosians change of name; I'm inclined to think that was a choice of Paramont, not Decipher, just as the previous game under LUG was required to call the previously established Kaitians to Regulans.

Anyway, back to the book. I loved it. The Betazoid section finally includes specific tenants of the Betazoid Code of Sentience (this was lacking in previous write ups); the section on the Q provided really fine ideas on how to use the Q in your on stories; the Klingon section included bits about thier societal structure that allows you to remember why they used to be the bad guys and wouldn't be accepted into the Federation even if they were inclined to join. Other TOS era offerings include the ever popular Gorn and Capellans, to name a few more; but almost *every* species included has a Use in Era blurb telling you what they might have been up for each major era (Enterprise / TOS-Movie/ TNG+).

I think you will find it interesting even if you are not a fan of the Decipher system; those of you still playing LUG can easily reverse engineer them over, those playing Prime Directive powered by GURPS can likewise do the same; and if you don't game at all... well heck, it's still a pretty sweet source book; after all, the gaming supplements of today have to be gone over with a finer tooth comb than the Pocket Books as far as canon adherance and such go -- and frankly, the DS9 relaunch Andorians are painfully poor in comparison to the Andorians in the Decipher book which build off of the fabulous treatment in the LUG Among the Clans: Andorian Sourcebook of a few years back.