Looking for a specific kind of Sci Fi system

[Morbis Meh]

Hello Playgrounders!

A friend of mine has asked me to make this thread so he can find an appropirate game system for a future campaign he has in mind. Now it will be of the Sci-Fi genre but has one major requirement: It has to be able to support fleet style combat (large scale ship battles in space) and allow the PC's to fly anything that moves (from freighters to fighters). A boon to the system in question would be a sub system that allows for ground combat (you know if the party decides to board an enemy vessel) but if that is asking too much then no biggy he will hybrid star wars d20 into the ground combat. So in summary my friend is looking for a ship based sci fi game that can handle massive space battles as well as boarding party skirmishes.

Thank you!

[Zavoniki]

Traveller and GURPS Sci-Fi both have fleet combat systems if I remember correctly though I don't remember them being particularly great and somewhat complicated.

To be honest I'm not sure a system like that exists. You would probably be better off finding a good tabletop Space Ship combat system and attaching it to a role playing system rather than finding a System with integrated Ship combat.

[Waar]

Hello Playgrounders!

A friend of mine has asked me to make this thread so he can find an appropirate game system for a future campaign he has in mind. Now it will be of the Sci-Fi genre but has one major requirement: It has to be able to support fleet style combat (large scale ship battles in space) and allow the PC's to fly anything that moves (from freighters to fighters). A boon to the system in question would be a sub system that allows for ground combat (you know if the party decides to board an enemy vessel) but if that is asking too much then no biggy he will hybrid star wars d20 into the ground combat. So in summary my friend is looking for a ship based sci fi game that can handle massive space battles as well as boarding party skirmishes.

Thank you!

Star wars saga edition technically contain rules that handle all that, but since the "math" works in the "same" manner on all sizes it gets both slugish and glass cannon esque when you get to large capitol ships and fleets.

On the other hand you have rogue trader (the basic permise is that your characters have a 1km+ long starship in warhammer 40k space) with to distinct systems to handle capitol ship and character combat (but the stuff in between can be of less quality)

For both of these some additional book(s) may be required (mainly "starships of the galaxy" and "into the storm", repectively) hope that helped :smallsmile:

[Rhynn]

I can't think of any RPG that would fit the bill for fleet combat; ship-to-ship tends to be where games stop. GURPS 4th ed. has a Mass Combat supplement that covers aerospace and naval forces, but not space forces, but the system is abstract enough that you could just treat it as naval combat and it'd work out fine, but you'd have to hack together a lot of stuff. GURPS is generally awesome for sci-fi (it's the genre that feels like the best fit for the system to me).

How big are the fleets, incidentally? And should the system be abstract or precise?

[Morbis Meh]

Size of the fleets should be around 50 vs 50 (according to my friend) and knowing him more precision is better. He wants to reenact the story of a computer game he played a while ago.

[Odo The Brave]

Size of the fleets should be around 50 vs 50 (according to my friend) and knowing him more precision is better. He wants to reenact the story of a computer game he played a while ago.

Since you haven't mentioned a particular setting, I'm assuming that you/he is planning to simply borrow the mechanics from the system, correct?

I have a lot of background in Warhammer 40k, so I immediately thought of Rogue Trader. Waar is correct though in that he'd need Into the Storm and likely Battlefleet Koronus in order to fully flesh things out. However, Rogue Trader isn't anywhere near set up for a combat of that many ships. Using some fusion of Rogue Trader rules and those of Battlefleet Gothic (40k tabletop space combat game)could work, in which you used BFG mechanics for Ship-to-Ship combat and Rogue Trader mechanics for fighter combat and boarding actions could work, and it would be reasonably easy to fit them together.

However, both systems have the 40k setting fairly deeply ingrained in the mechanics (BFG more so than Rogue Trader). This means that you'd probably run into a lot of quirks and rules that would have to be either changed or removed to fit your friend's vision. While I deeply love the setting and both systems, I think that you would probably be better served by some other system- though of course if you're determined enough you might be able to make it work.

Good luck!

[Rhynn]

Yeah, like Zavoniki said, the only option seems to be finding a tabletop spaceship fleet battle game you like (such as Battlefleet Gothic, like Odo The Brave says), and marrying that somehow to a RPG (possibly one with ground combat battle rules). I had the same issue with naval combat: almost no RPG has rules for ship-to-ship battles for Age of Sail...

[Telok]

You should definitely check out the various versions of Traveller. One or another ought to be capable of doing the job. I know the classic version is capable of doing fleet battles by two different methods, one more abstract and the other less abstract.

I don't know if either is in print any more but Starfleet Battles and the StarTrek RPG should satisfy both needs and be reasonably compatible with some work.

[Delta]

Size of the fleets should be around 50 vs 50 (according to my friend) and knowing him more precision is better. He wants to reenact the story of a computer game he played a while ago.

50 vs 50 combined with "more precision is better" means you probably won't find what your looking for in most RPGs, looking at tabletop miniature strategy games might be more useful.

In general, Savage Worlds could be used and offers a lot of different degrees of abstraction, you can use the "default" vehicle rules which work just like a usual miniature game, or you can use the Chase rules for chaotic small scale combats like dogfights or use the Mass Combat system for bigger fleets facing off against each other, but judging from what you wrote I don't think this is exactly what he's looking for.

[MukkTB]

Is there a tabletop miniature game that fits well with roleplaying specific characters in any genre? This is complicated. We now need compatible strategy and rpg games, and a workable interface for combining them.

[Waar]

Size of the fleets should be around 50 vs 50 (according to my friend) and knowing him more precision is better. He wants to reenact the story of a computer game he played a while ago.

Persice tabletop combat with 50 vs 50 units is going to be very slow (100s of dice per round) capitol ship space combat is going to be even worse since large ships have multiple attacks in most systems (for instance: in star wars saga edition the biggest capitol ships, such as the executor can make 100s of attacks per round, each).

I can see three different solutions to this:
1 run this on a computer (huge time saver on the dice Rolling, to hit and damage aspects)
2 less presicion (simplified rules, moving and attacking with groups of ships in unision)
3 (only if the above was to be used as part of a roleplaying game) focus on the area around the Pcs and let the more distant parts of the battle be heavely abstracted or just backdrop.

[skyth]

Of the systems that I am aware of:

Star Frontiers: Very old system that has fleet combat designed in. A plus (or minus) in the system is that the ships accellerate or decellerate rather than are set to a fixed speed. One con is that players have to be very experienced to be able to pilot a spaceship. No mass ground combat system that I am aware of.

Traveller: Relatively simple system (With the potential for unbalanced character creation). The skills to pilot spaceships are fairly easy to obtain if you want in character generation. The space combat system is very abstract and somewhat unbalanced. Most ships are disabled rather than being destroyed. There are a couple mass ground combat systems that I am aware of.

Prime Directive: It's a TOS Trek-based game. Can't remember if piloting is automatic :) Fleet combat uses Star Fleet Battles and maxes out at 15 ships per side (Not counting fighters/shuttles/PF's). There is a ground combat system, but it's fairly abstract.

Robotech: Characters can learn piloting skills in generation easily. Can get complicated (Lots of die rolls) for fleet combat. Not many different types of ships out there, and each race can pretty much only pilot their own things due to bilogical differences. No mass combat system.

SpaceMaster: Pilot skills are easy to obtain in generation. Very detailed ship combat system. Fleet combat would require lots of record keeping/die rolls. I believe you could port War Law from Rolemaster in to handle mass ground combat.

WEG d6 Star Wars: Anyone can fly anything. Fleet combat is possible, as there are tables for battery fire. Still somewhat abstract. System is more designed for ship on ship dueling combat, not fleet actions. I am not aware of a mass ground combat system.

Edited to add:

Mechwarrior: RPG game for Battletech. Skills to pilot stuff fairly easy to get in character generation. Fleet combats can be complicated (I'd suggest using Megamek for that) and the aerospace rules are a little harder to grasp than the mech rules. There are a couple mass combat systems. Problem is the universe revolves around 'mechs rather than space battles and the rules show it.

[Grod_The_Giant]

I wrote up a space-opera hack of the Dresden Files RPG (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=268483). (Which is itself the draft of FATE immedietly preceeding Core, I think; it shouldn't be too hard to adapt to Core). It worked pretty well in the short campaign I ran with it. I never had formal rules for representing fleet combat, but I did come up with some ways you could work it.

[hamlet]

Actually, FASA's Star Trek could do what you need it to do.

It had an excellent starship combat system including mass battles.

[LibraryOgre]

D6 Space (and Star Wars 2e, Revised and Expanded) have battle rules, but probably not with the precision he's looking for.

[caden_varn]

While I doubt you'd be able to get your hands on them these days, if you can the Renegade legion games from FASA might suit.
You have 3 hex based war games, similar to Battletech - Leviathan for Capital ships (with rules for swarms of smaller ships), Interceptor for fighters and Centurion for ground combat (primarily grav tanks). There is also Legionnaire, which is the role playing game in the universe, using similar rules to the war games.
It has been over a decade since I have even looked at them, so I don't remember them that well, but I seem to remember the war games were fairly fun (comparing them to the likes of Battletech that I was playing back then). Did not play the RPG that much, so not much idea if it was any good...

[Gnoman]

You should definitely check out the various versions of Traveller. One or another ought to be capable of doing the job. I know the classic version is capable of doing fleet battles by two different methods, one more abstract and the other less abstract.

I don't know if either is in print any more but Starfleet Battles and the StarTrek RPG should satisfy both needs and be reasonably compatible with some work.

THe Star Trek RPG is called "Prime Directive". Both can be purchased from the publisher at http://www.starfleetgames.com/. There is also a rules-lite version of SFB called Federation Commander, and a strategic-level game called Federation & Empire. However, none are well suited for anything but the Star Fleet Universe (although I'm in the process of writing rules to convert SW Saga's vehicle combat to the SFB engine).

[skyth]

THe Star Trek RPG is called "Prime Directive". Both can be purchased from the publisher at http://www.starfleetgames.com/. There is also a rules-lite version of SFB called Federation Commander, and a strategic-level game called Federation & Empire. However, none are well suited for anything but the Star Fleet Universe (although I'm in the process of writing rules to convert SW Saga's vehicle combat to the SFB engine).

There was one pre-dating Prime Directive from Fasa. I believe it was % based as far as skill checks (I have some old articles/modules for it from Challenge magazine. Never actually seen the rules)

[LibraryOgre]

Ah! And Fading Suns, many moons ago, also had an associated space wargame.