Prime Directive PD20 Modern Supplement

Amarillo Design Bureau released the Prime Directive PD20 Modern Supplement as an early bird PDF edition. I have never played the Star Fleet Battles games nor even Prime Directive. My purchase of Prime Directive was to get a D20 Modern Star Trek game. D20 Modern was not a great system but I enjoyed the familiarity of the system.

Prime Directive PD20 Modern Supplement would have gone onto my wishlist and probably languished with Romulans PD20 Modern if it weren't for one thing. I loved the Gorn ever since I saw the Arena original Star Trek episode. In the Star Fleet Battles, they inadvertently wiped out the Paravians which were descended from the original species that developed into the Gorn. This sparked an adventure idea. The material in the Prime Directive book was sufficient to create my adventure but I craved more information on the Paravians. This supplement gave rules for playing as a Paravian.

The book was fifty-two pages. Twenty-one pages were devoted to detailing all the other races mentioned in Prime Directive which haven't been detailed elsewhere. I enjoyed the history behind the empires and how the various races fit into the empires. Some I wouldn't use some because of my interest in a Star Trek rpg and not playing in the Star Fleet Battles universe. I did find the Inter-Stellar Concordium hilarious. Finding eight warring empires shocked the peaceful civilization. They considered it insane to fight over resources in the immense universe. Another empire, he Vudar Enclave split from the Klingons and remain neutral in the Klingons war with the Hydrans. In actuality the Klingons allowed them to be independent to concentrate the Hydran forces to a smaller front. As primarily a war game universe conflict was built into the empires.

The game statistics were consistent with the main Prime Directive book. What I mean by that is that they weren't as consistently stated out as 3.5 Dungeons and Dragons material. The original book had Tellerites with uneven ability bonuses totaling a plus four, a bonus to some will saves, repair skill check bonus and damage reduction. Such a race in 3.5 Dungeons and Dragons would have a level adjustment. The races in Prime Directive PD20 Modern Supplement had varying levels of power. I didn't consider this a problem for the Prime Directive PD20 game but it does mean more caution would be needed before using the material elsewhere.

There were enough races I won't list every one. Prime Directive has several anthropomorphic animals and this book added some more variants. The Rovillians with their dolphin and turtle features were more unique than some of the others. The four armed Brecon were interesting with their insistence of two working together to represent two previously warring ethnic groups. In addition to the Paravians, the extinct Carnivons were included presumably a small group hid away somewhere.

The Paravians stats left something to be desired. In particular the description of the race said most can glide, athletic individuals could fly for some yards and the least graceful were unable to do either. The game rules gave every member of the race fly 20 feet (clumsy). I would have preferred something like the gliding or flight ability of the Raptorans. Just adding a number of rounds restriction to the flight would make the rules much closer to the flavor text of the Paravian.

The rest of book had minor things like age, height, and weight charts, a consolidated weapon chart of all weapons from the supplements, a unified index of all the supplements. They are certainly useful for those playing Prime Directive. The book wasn't as detailed as the previous supplements but was also less expensive. While I'm still hoping for a Gorn book, I'm grateful for this new resource.