"What do you want in a SF RPG?" Topic

What sort of game do you expect?

The two classics Traveller and Star Frontiers both center around the crew of travelling Heros. Related to these are the various flavors of Cyberpunk

Then there is the various flavors of 40k RPG, where you play the Dark Heros of the Empire of Man.

The various stabs at Trek, well it looks a lot like playing the Show. Good Guy Military. Tough I have thought a game based in the Mirror Universe might be fun in a Paranoia sort of way.

What sort of game do you want?

What sort of gear? Ships?

Lastly what games do you feel are over/under-rated?

We played a Klingon crew using the FASA rpg rules – it was a whole lot like playing the show…

In my experience sci-fi rpgs tend to be overly technical and detailed with the rules. It's like the authors know that sci-fi enthusiasts are mostly techie oriented and thus assume they want complicated mechanisms. I used to not mind such things when I was young but today I find it unweildy and therefore am unwilling to play them.

a chance to play

What sort of game do you expect?

Something unoriginal, mostly. Every now and then something surprises me.

What sort of game do you want?

Fond of posthuman stuff – settings where many or all PCs are something evolved from or created by boring humans. I suspect that the inevitable result of intelligence in a species is to replace itself. Would like to see a break from the usual "man goes to the stars and colonizes other planets" thing, which is highly unrealistic IMO. Goes to the stars, fine, crawling back down a gravity well to a miraculously-friendly ecosystem, not so much. Dropping magic FTL would be nice too, but you'd need immortal PCs or a game system that supported generational play (maybe ala D&D's Birthright or an extended Ars Magica campaign?) to make it work. Something like Wright's Golden Age trilogy would be close to my ideal.

None of that would sell very well so I'll never see it, but I can dream.

What sort of gear? Ships?

Nanotech is interesting, especially if it's integrated into organic lifeforms. Player character AIs driving robotic shells are neat. Advanced geneering is cool. Ships should be mobile ecosystems designed for permanent habitation, with a sideline "economic" specialty beyond that – resource exploitation, research, data storage and transfer, etc.

A game that actually supported the PCs advancing the campaign tech level by their actions would also be nice. It would fit both the "Golden Age" style of play (with long stretches of downtime passing and inhumanly-skilled immortals doing the R&D – Walter Jon Williams Aristoi, for ex) and space opera (where Science! is something every good hero is a master of – see Doc Smith's Spacehounds of IPC and Skylark books). Many PCs have amazing skill levels in various fields of science, but the majority of settings let them do nothing creative with them – "magic tech" always comes from some fool alien artifact, not a character having a brainstorm. If fantasy can handle PCs crafting magic items, why can't scifi manage new tech?

Lastly what games do you feel are over/under-rated?

Transhuman Space and Eclipse Phase are both phenomenal and under-appreciated settings. Chaosium's Ringworld was years ahead of its time. On the pulp end of the spectrum, Savage Worlds' Slipstream is very good.

No comment on over-rated games. Anything I name will be someone's Favorite Game Ever, and it's not worth arguing about a purely subjective issue. Had enough of that in the various D&D Edition Wars for a lifetime. Ten lifetimes, even.

link

I want "diaspora". It is elegant, has a neat ship Design system that is really flexible and the players help build the universe. Extraordinary set of rules.

I second the motion on Transhuman Space. A fantastic setting.

1. A 'Ringworld 500' racing game. :)

2. Cold Fusion, Psi-based FTL(partially organic with a sentient psion able to plug in and extend performance) with gates, natural and artificial(different races with different tech-FTL, maneuver drive, weaponry etc.)
Ships where only a fifth of its volume/weight is taken up for drives and powerplants.
3. A crowded galaxy with earth having the status of…Albania. Earthers indenturing themselves so their home can be 're-terraformed' to repair damage from multiple wars.

Hive and AI races that don't want to eat/kill everything.

A non-hollywood matriarchal society that works with sensible clothing. 'Just enough boobies'

Simple vector move and combat where a characters' skills are important in STL ship combat.

20th/21st C. 'Buck Rogers' sleepers so Snake Plissken, John Mclane and Alice can ruin a space pirates' day. "Now I have a Simple Blaster, Ho, Ho, Ho."

or

a Game of Thrones/Spartacus SpellJammer rpg

I want "diaspora". It is elegant, has a neat ship Design system that is really flexible and the players help build the universe. Extraordinary set of rules.

Looks interesting. The starship combat rules are free demo material too:

PDF link

They remind me a bit of Metagaming's War War, which is a Good Thing.

Palladium Rifts sans awful mechanics and Kevin Siembieda.

There are 2 games in the GURPS line, Lensman and Tales of the Solar Patrol which I like very much. I also like the Ginsberg world in Alternate Earths 1. That's the good news. The bad news is that GURPS is too complex for me.

Classic Traveller in the Original Traveller Universe is what I want… a nice little campaign nestled between the Imperium and the Two Thousand Worlds…

So tochtli been a fan of K'Kree BBQ long?

Ok, showing mine….

I want a future you can drive to, with a strong post-human ethos. And Aliens and their hot rods…..

Sometimes I am thinking that I am vering into the Car Fleet Battles sorta terrain, but I am trying to limit the gear/vehicle rules to simpler choices.

As I write this, the game all starts to look like Traveller but with cars…

I want the FASA Star Trek RPG back in print.

Or the 2300AD background with T2K second edition rules.

I've never been able to RPG Star Trek…never had the FASA rules and it was before the OGL Trek rulebooks (which I heard were terrible). Once I tried to convert TNG into GURPS 3rd Edition, just to see how it would work. I created Tasha Yar just to see what point level we'd be working with…IIRC she came out somewhere around 700 points!

Kind of scrapped that idea after that. I mean could you imagine the number of points Picard or Data would be?

We occasionally play a Retro-themed Cliffhanger series with a lot of sci-fi and pulp elements thrown in for good, silly fun. We use GURPS for that. I recently tried to resurrect Star Frontiers, but the terrible system made it a bust. Still love the setting, though. For serious sci-fi, well…we haven't really found serious sci-fi yet.

> IIRC she came out somewhere around 700 points!

You certainly overdid it then. She showed no skills or talents above the 12-13 skill point level, and had the MOST disads of any character on the show. She deserves to be a 100-250 point character in 3rd edition GURPS.

Well…
It's mostly covered for me already.

If I want cinematic space action…
Star Wars (WEG d6 or Saga Edition)

Space Fantasy
Shadowrun

Space horror
Eclipse Phase

Space pulp
Reich Star or Star Ace.

Space Humor
Gamma World

All of that kinda sums it up for me…

Have any of y'all played any version of Prime Directive? It is Star Fleet Battle Trek Role Playing. Which having read through the Gurps Version sounds kinda playable. Especially in light of George Takai's current constant stream of commentary, it could make for a darkly humorous sorta game in that light…

Certainly, peoples tastes in 'settings' will vary tremendously.
However, 'sci-fi' being what it is, I feel that there are two very important components for any sci-fi RPG (often overlooked by many publishers who seem recently to focus more on 'gee-whiz' content and rules mechanisms)…
These are:
1)Background. Unlike traditional 'fantasy' RPGs, the amount of assumed background in a 'sci-fi' setting is minimal (what passes as 'sci-fi' varys A LOT). For the setting to feel 'real' it must address many questions bound to come up concerning the origin of political, economic, and social systems, as well as scientific realities and technological basis (see below) etc… this doesn't have to be a proffessional scientific treatise, but must be addressed to provide a believable universe with depth and internal consistency.
2)A certain level of detail in the technological workings of the setting, as based on certain scientific assumptions for the setting. Obviously, we can not describe how a ray-gun works, since it is FICTIONAL, but there should be internal consistency and some sort of explanation as to why certain technologies are used or are effective… The TRAVELLER 'Tech Levels' took a stab at this but failed to address the logical progressions of some technologies and made the error of lumping various TYPES of technology all under single 'Levels'… providing a book full of hardware is neat, but some categorization and explanation of the FOUNDATIONS and capacities of specific technological FIELDS is required. This is because 'sci-fi' is very dependent upon technology as a source of wonder: failure to address these basics soon destros the suspension of disbelief and the game becomes a hardware accumulation contest or the equivalent of 'things work because they make a neat plot'…(This is okay for miniatures games, where the action is all tactical, but in a RPG not so much… Players will soon be asking things like: "but if lightsabers can parry blaster-bolts, and explosives exist, why can't we kill Jedi with hand-grenades…?"
This technological compexity is what makes believable sc-fi settings hard to manufacture: even with 'magic/psionics' there are certain natural laws which much be respected and certain technological elements that players will expect (guns, maybe space-travel, etc…) RPG settings must be internaly consistent, this is more difficult in sci-fi than in fantasy because sci-fi is by definition more technologically complex (and generally more politically and socially complex because of those technologies…)

Or one could just play PARANOIA…

I miss the old SPI Universe RPG…..

On another note, Mongoose is publishing GDW's old 2300AD game as a setting book for their Traveller system (ala Hammers Slammers, Babylon 5, and Judge Dred).

billthecat states "Or one could just play PARANOIA…", and I must agree, the two games I am working hardest on are inspired greatly by PARANOIA.

Crash Test Clones which is dungeon crawl in abandoned sectors of the Complex and the city rules above.

and..

Walled Gardens which is a exploration/trade game in the wider world of the same Post Apocalypse that Crash Test Clones also is in.

Both are more Roll Play over more Traditional RPGs in that moving lead on the table is more the focus than heavy duty character development. Think along the lines of Laserburn, Necromunda and related rules sets.

What I really, really want in a SF RGG is for someone in my city to RUN one!!!

In terms of system, I want something that handles firearms in a realistic way, but isn't too crunchy.

If the setting is more space opera than near future/hard SF then I'm happy with psionics, so long as they don't act more like spellcasters than science fiction. The Vulcan Mind Meld is acceptable. Superman's heat ray gaze vaporising main battle tanks is not.

As to under-rated games, I liked High Colonies. The system was nothing to write home about, but the background was neat: Earth is nuked to uninhabitable, but the solar system is full of asteroid colonies, space stations, etc, with complex political alliances and emnities – some due to which country on Earth built them, some due to post-Earth history.

I prefer making my own setting to running something from TV or the movies. So I'd run a game using HERO or GURPS. That said, I'd want this in a SF rpg:

1. It can be customized to suit your tastes. It can be used to run hard science fiction, space opera, or Pulp science fiction. And it should be able to replicate a TV show, movie, or book without too much tinkering.

2. Good vehicle (especially starship) combat rules. I was never satisfied with the way HERO, GURPS, or Traveller ran space combat. I use Starmada or Full Thrust instead. But it would be nice to have it all in one game.

A well developed background which is harmonious with its internally consistent technologies. The rest is just rules, which should reflect said background. I'm not sure there is such a thing as 'generic' sci-fi, just popular settings and assumptions. Generic rules suffer from the 'jack of all trades and master of none' syndrome, IMHO. Same goes for miniatures/wargames… setting is essential, otherwise you end up with checkers/parchisi/etc…

Hard sci-fi; I find 'black box' lasers and exotic weapons to be completely against the spirit of the 'science' in science fiction. Respecting orbital dynamics is always a good thing as well.

I'm working on-and-off on a universe tentatively called Galaxia. It actually seems similar to High Colonies in that Earth is mostly uninhabited, and the human population is extremely low. There are around ten shirtsleeves-habitable planets in known space; the largest population is around thirty million, while most planets have under five million inhabitants. There are some aliens, but a friend of mine is largely handling them.

I did a lot of research on technologies being developed for use in my hard science fiction campaign, as well as technologies in use now. Having set my game in the near future (about 50-100 years from now), I wanted to use stuff already being tested, although I made allowances for improved versions.

FASA's Star Trek- The Role Playing Game updated for Deep Space Nine and the Dominion War. Love to be able to play as a Cardassian Obsidian Order operative.

OR

ST-TRPG modded to the Star Trek: Enterprise era, playing as an Andorian crew vs. those deceitful Vulcans.

>A crowded galaxy with earth having the status of…Albania.

Good one.

Russ