"What are the hottest Sc-Fi RPGs right now?" Topic

strictly in terms of popularity, and they don't need to have any associated figures.

Thanks!

Eclipse Phase seems to be gathering steam.

The Traveller re-prints are hot sellers too.

Traveller is always a good choice. I like the original LBBs myself, but I did own Megatraveller for a while.

Sedition Wars is a pretty hot topic, but it hasn't been released yet. The Kickstarter went awesome.

I thought Sedition Wars was a board game with miniatures?

The current Traveller from Mongoose is also doing pretty well.

Not sure Sedition Wars is an RPG, despite what their ad copy might suggest.

Eclipse Phase is an odd duck, being almost too strange. I would put Freemarket in the same category.

CthulhuTech and Rifts share a problem (Rifts has others as well) in that they blithely mix vastly different power levels in the setting and expect you to figure out how to make that work. Both also have system-level clarity issues.

There are hints of another edition of Cyberpunk in the works.

Shadowrun is a perennial favorite and is selling well as far as I can tell. The default setting of Seattle has gotten too dangerous for PCs in my opinion, but that may just be me.

Ashen Stars (based on Gumshoe) has potential, but I think Robin Laws let the concept get away from him.

Cascade Failure has a laffer as a basic assumption, to the point that I didn't get to the mechanics.

I think Fading Suns was trying to reach a 3rd edition but suffered a bout of Soap Opera. It may be dead at this point.

I do not know about popularity, but Battlelords of the 23rd Century is a great game. We have been playing it for years.

ssdc.com

Mike

Yup.
Shadowrun is also still popular in some circles.
Mine included.

Eclipes Phase really is, as Farstar said, and odd duck. It mixes The Matrix with Blade Runner, Neuromancer and Aliens.
BUT, if your gang buys "ALL IN" to it, it really is a memorable game, IMO.

If you want to call them scifi, the Warhammer 40K-inspired RPGs (Dark Heresy, Deathwatch, etc.) from Fantasy Flight are probably the big boys sales-wise.

I think Fading Suns was trying to reach a 3rd edition but suffered a bout of Soap Opera. It may be dead at this point.

Last I paid attention they were still swearing it would out at GenCon. If that fails, I believe sending flowers would be appropriate.

So, Fading Suns is appropriately named then?

Never heard of it/them.

Fading Suns is the RPG for the same setting that Noble Armada (including the recent ACTA version) uses. Constantinople in Space.

Traveller, in both the Mongoose flavoured and the just Kickstarted Marc Millar T5 600 page epic tomer version too.

2300AD – my all time favourite hard sci-fi game ever – has just been re-released as a Mongoose Traveller driven stand alone game line.

Eclipse Phase is 4 or 5 supplements in and you can legitimately download it from torrent sites to try it out as it's released under the Creative Commons license. Personally, I think it's so good that I've bought e-copies and deadtree of every book they have available so far even though you can legitimately get it for free.

Marc Millar

"Millar" would be the comicbook artist/writer.

"Miller" is the Traveller guy.

T5 is being billed as more of a toolkit, but it will add up to a complete game.

WEG's 2nd Ed. Star Wars is still the best here. We've been doing about 40 sessions a year since the first Ed. came out, so its easily our most played of anything.

Keep an eye out for The Void, which is the CthulhuTech game that was formerly just a Traveller add-on. I'm hoping to learn more about it at GenCon.

Go to starfrontiersman.com. You can get the old Star Frontiers RPG rules and modules as well as their web magazine for free.

I was in an Eclipse Phase campaign for a while and it really is an intriguing game… but a real mind twister too. Some of the players took to it as a kind of utopia while others (including myself) saw it as a horrible nightmare (which fit my character's origins).
I'd happily play again but I think it would be hard to find a group who would enjoy it… vs. something more mainstream like Traveller or even Dark Heresy.

Nowadays our group is playing D6 Star Wars and it's very accessible for everyone… though I wish the GM would wander a bit farther from the movie content than he has so far.

I just picked up "Slipstream"

link

Retro-Sci-Fi goodness…

Shadowrun is popular at the local games store atm.

Diaspora was nominated for an Ennie and is my current favorite Sci-fi RPG. It's also available from RPGNOW and printable from Lulu. Far and away the most interesting rules out there imo.

I highly recommend Diaspora. FATE-based, great sorta-hard-scifi setting. Wonderful (and simple) world, character, ship, vehicle, weapon creation.

Also worth note the D20 version of star wars, and the current version of Mechwarrior (the RPG set in the Battletech universe).

"current version of Mechwarrior"
called "A Time of War". Got it. Let's just say it was obviously written by Catalyst.