Captain’s Log, Stardate 41153.7: I’ve finally found a TTRPG that lets me live my dream of being a Starfleet officer. One of my favorite elements of Star Trek has been the captain’s log. While it is a small detail, it really makes the world feel alive. Suggesting that, even when the camera isn’t on the ship, events are still happening, and hundreds of people are performing millions of tasks to keep everything going. Thankfully, First Officer Reporting captures this beloved Star Trek hallmark and turns it into a really fun world building TTRPG.
First Officer Reporting is a solo TTRPG that casts you as the first officer on a large spaceship of some form. Interestingly, the first phase of First Officer Reporting has you create your ship and crew by assigning various stats. The game has 6 stats (Investigation, Logistics, Science, Combat, Engineering, and Politics), with the player having to pick 3 stats their character excels at, 3 the crew excels at, and 2 things the ship excels at. Once this is complete, the player names their ship and then prepares their journal.
Picard To Bridge
One of First Officer Reporting’s most interesting elements is that the game’s rules suggest you play in short bursts (of around 15-20 minutes) over several days.
Each day, when you wish to make your report, you follow the same procedure. You roll 1D6 to find what type of report you’re making (Conflict, Visit, Ship, Mission Assignment, Crew, Personal) and then a second 1D6 to find out the specific nature of the report you’ll be making. Certain categories of reports will also require a third D6 roll to find out how severe and difficult the event is.
After these rolls, you have to roll another D6. If this D6 lands on one or two, the event will have a complication of some form, which you learn by rolling on the complications table. Once this is all done, you set a 15-minute timer and write your report, covering what happened and how it affected the crew and the ship.
The only break from this structure is the Mission report type. When you get this, you have to roll an extra die to find how many days your ship will need to travel to get to the mission location. After that number of days has passed, you’ll write a special report dubbed a mission report.
First, the player picks what stats they believe best represent the mission. You then roll a D6 to find the mission difficulty, before rolling that many dice. Each die above 4 counts as a success (with your earlier assignments of Captain, Crew, and Ship giving specific bonuses to make this easier), and the more successes you roll, the better the mission goes.
As you play, you’ll have to keep an eye on three different status tracks representing the captain, crew, and ship, which acts as your health. Every bad event (or failure) you report can reduce one or more of these values (and naturally, good outcomes increase them). If two of these status tracks end up at 1, the game ends with a final report where you explain what caused your mission to fail.
A World Of Adventures And Unknowns
First Officer Reporting is a really fun solo-TTRPG that perfectly captures the Star Trek vibe. One of my favourite elements of the game is the stats system. While it is simple, it does really help give the game a lot of replay value, as your choices will heavily affect how certain missions play out.
Plus, the decision to have players pick which stats their captain, crew, and ship excel at really increases the game’s immersion while helping get the player’s creative juices flowing, as it encourages players to think about their craft as an entire ecosystem made up of hundreds of different, unique people and systems, rather than an abstract object that goes from objective marker to objective marker.
Additionally, the health system is also a nice touch. “The ship is about to blow up” is such a key part of the Star Trek episode formula that not including it would feel like a major oversight. However, the system is simple and open enough that it doesn’t restrict your journaling or force you to run from adventure and risk to keep repairing your ship (much like the show, where ship damage only matters when the writers need it to).
I also adore the game’s “short burst every day” pacing. While you could totally ignore this and do as many reports as you want, I totally suggest you follow this structure if at all possible. Having to wait between reports gives each event weight by making it feel like your ship is going on a grand adventure across the galaxy, and adds a great sense of suspense to the missions as you have to wait to learn exactly how they’ll play out.
The game’s layout is also impressive, fitting a surprising amount of content into the standard single-page trifold layout. However, my only issue with the layout is the decision to use pictures of dice faces rather than numbers on the roll tables. While it is a cute aesthetic choice, the tables’ small size means these icons are hard to read at a glance, especially if you use a lower-quality printer.
First Officer Reporting is the perfect TTRPG for people who want to live out their Star Trek dreams without having to find a William Riker or Bones McCoy to play with. While the TTRPG is rules-lite, it has the perfect number of rules needed to simulate the Star Trek serialized sci-fi adventure show vibe, always giving you enough information to move the game forward and give you a sense of venturing into the unknown without ever making it feel like you’re being restricted or railroaded. Because of this, First Officer Reporting is the perfect TTRPG for both sci-fi fans and people who love world building games.
