If you’ve never seen Lower Decks before, you’re missing out. Star Trek: Lower Decks is a unique animated series in the Star Trek universe, currently consisting of three seasons and a cameo on Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. It follows the exploits of a group of ‘Lower Deckers’, the people that work in the background to make a gigantic starship run while we as viewers typically only see what the senior staff is doing on the show. It’s a comedy show that manages to appeal to both hardcore Trekkies and casual fans alike with its tongue-in-cheek looks at a variety of Star Trek tropes. There’s also a surprising amount of gore, swearing (censored) and character development that makes for a compelling series.
Translating that into tabletop gameplay is no easy task. As you may be aware, most TTRPGs tend to take themselves particularly seriously (see Dune – review here). Not so with Lower Decks. This is an approach designed for lighthearted gameplay, weird random events, and most of all, fun! Series creator Mike McMahan even has a foreword talking about how he struggles with all the rules and constraints of TTRPG gaming and how Lower Decks is designed for a more casual approach.
We’re not going to get into the basic mechanics of Star Trek Adventures because you can go over all that in the core rulebook review (or better yet just buy a core rulebook). Instead, it’s time to look at how Lower Decks changes the paradigm here and makes Star Trek Adventures feel light and fresh. Naturally, the book starts with an overview of the current state of galactic affairs for the Federation. Instead of dry and obscure references to lore though, there are a number of personal logs from show characters detailing their experiences of humorous situations. Brad Boimler, the main character from Lower Decks, narrates the entire thing as well, making for a much more casual and fun reading experience than the typical sourcebook. There are plenty of direct references to the show too, so if you haven’t seen it yet, just go watch it. You’ll thank us.
With a 24 page detailed background on various groups including the Klingons, Romulans, Pakleds, and various other new species and worlds, you’ve got a lot of background material to work with here. From there, it’s on to the slightly more technical parts of the guide including Starfleet Support Operations, The Lower Decks, new technology and more. Naturally the comedic asides continue throughout the entirety of the book, making sure that the tone of the series is preserved and referenced for players and gamemasters alike. Explanations of Second Contact, diplomacy, duties of Lower Deckers, and even death and resurrection are all explained and a variety of simple tables are provided to assist gamemasters in structuring their adventures. Unlike other Star Trek series, almost nothing is off-limits in Lower Decks so there are even approaches to awkward family situations and bizarre injuries due to odd science fiction accidents. It’s a neat way to approach the Star Trek universe that constantly surprises!
The core of this approach of course is to focus on your characters as Lower Deckers rather than senior officers. Sure, those characters are still ensigns, but there’s a lot more potential here with promotions, transfers, injuries, and reassignments than you might expect. Not only does this allow players to explore a variety of character approaches but the Lower Decks Campaign Guide provides a wealth of background design insight for gamemasters to really enhance their campaigns. Working your way up through the ranks of Starfleet with all it’s weird and exciting nuances can create a much richer gaming experience than simply being a captain and making the hard choices. Let’s see you earn that captain’s chair by realigning the isolinear matrix, ensign! Heck, there’s even a whole page on when and how to address nudity. Just make sure your players aren’t LARPing (unless that’s your thing…no judgment)!
The Lower Decks approach is more of a bonding experience than traditional TTRPG games. Your goal is to work together as a team but that means doing stuff you might not want to do, facing punishments from the captain together for doing something outside of regs, or even spending your downtime together. The Campaign Guide addresses all of that and if you want to play Lower Deckers from different races, you can do that too! There are background settings for Klingons and even Pakleds (although if your whole group wants to play Pakleds, well…). Regardless of which races you choose, there are always crappy jobs to do on a starship and doing those crappy jobs can lead to some interesting situations. Many of the plot devices covered by episodes of Lower Decks are present in the Campaign Guide including anomaly consolidation, buffer time, the ever-present supervisor interaction trope, and a variety of other fun diversions that have the potential to lead major plot points for a gaming group.
Star Trek wouldn’t be Star Trek without weird creatures and space anomalies either and the Lower Decks: Campaign Guide has you covered there too with full breakdowns on how to generate alien life, approach various anomalies, and prep them for inclusion. There are also new lifepath options here (read: character archetypes) which means that you can even play some of those weird creatures, provided they’re sentient ones. After all, who doesn’t want to be a sentient computer or a carnivorous reptile?
Naturally, over half the book is given over to information and data for gamemasters. After all, it’s important to be able to actually run a campaign mechanically no matter how silly it may get. That means that just like the Core Rulebook, there’s a loose guide for gamemasters to get into the mindset of Lower Decks with all the silly tropes and weird occurrences you might need to plan a successful campaign including all the ways technology can (and has in Lower Decks) go wrong. There are even guides over Trek ways to word your pseudo-science, how to approach humor, and even openers to get your story started.
This segues into the information you were really looking for, especially if you have a bit of experience with Star Trek Adventures. The Lower Decks Campaign Guide provides the expected ship starts of various vessel classes for various races that you’d expect, expanding a gamemaster’s repertoire of both starships and ground vehicles. Not only are there detailed stats but also background on each ship and a list (and stats) of notable ships too. What’s new here is a set of mission briefs, giving basic outlines of a number of different potential scenarios that you can expand into scenes or even whole missions if the mood suits you. The way things are broken up in the book are a bit odd for this however, as mission briefs are separated from the actual mini-campaigns included at the end of the book.
Sandwiched in-between that information is all the starship and vehicle stuff, a list of key characters and their stats from the Lower Decks TV series, and an absolute ton of interesting NPCs along with their designations (major character, notable character, minor character). After you get through all of that, chances are you’ve really fleshed out at least one of those mission briefs or have some really good ideas and it’s finally time to see the campaign that is included in the Lower Decks Campaign Guide. Since this is a guide to designing your own campaigns, having a structured campaign included is a great way to really visualize how to approach design in the style of Lower Decks. “Unsung Heroes” consists of three major sections and each section consists of three scenes, the basic building block of the Star Trek Adventures TTRPG. Because gameplay is designed to mirror the structure of episodes of the Star Trek series, each scene has some sort of objective that players must overcome. With the Lower Decks, that involves adding more than a small dollop of comedy to the mix too and the Unsung Heroes campaign manages to be an enticing experience for an entire gaming group.
Unlike the main Core Rulebook, there are far less tables and charts in the Star Trek: Lower Decks Campaign Guide. There’s an index in case you need something specific of course, but you’re definitely going to want to use some post-its and the included bookmark ribbon to mark out the things you really need here. As a reference guide for expanding your Star Trek Adventures TTRPG gameplay, the Star Trek: Lower Decks Campaign Guide really rocks. It’s not often that a sourcebook is a fun read all by itself but the entirety of the text captures the irreverent flavor of the series and has the potential to inject boundless levity into your Star Trek campaigns. Granted, comedy in Star Trek isn’t for every fan or player group, but for many, it’s a welcome addition to an already rich and robust universe. Considering that Lower Decks is canon as of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 2, chances are that at least a little comedy is warranted too! This is a resource that Star Trek Adventures players and gamemasters should definitely not be without and will be well worth your time to pick up!
This review is based on a physical copy of the Star Trek: Lower Decks Campaign Guide provided by the publisher. The Star Trek: Lower Decks Campaign Guide is available wherever fine books are sold and on the Modiphius website here in both digital and physical formats.
Nate Van Lindt has been a gamer since the days of yore (aka Commodore 64), and has played a bit of virtually everything out there. He's also an avid comic book collector, both vintage and current, and reads a fair amount of sci-fi and fantasy. On top of that, he watches a fair number of movies and TV shows as well. Oh, and he has a family, a full-time job, and lives somewhere in the urban wilds of Southwestern Ontario, Canada, foraging for old video cables and forgotten game soundtracks.