Good Sci-Fi RPGs?

[cloudjsh7]

Hi fellas,

So after nearly 8 years of sword & sorcery, my appetite for new horizons has finally come full swing. Anybody know of any good Sci-Fi Tabletop RPGs out there? I've played a buttload of d20 Modern/Future, but I'm eager to expand past the d20 motif and want some new systems to delve into.

What I'm really looking for is something with fun ship customization (I'm a Trekkie fan) and something for my fellow Trekkies to droll over and have fun tinkering their ship. But also something for the "character optimizers" or should I say "the people who like to leave the ship with their laser carbine in tow and go all D&D combat on folks."

I've looked at Cortex and I really love it though my players like to look at gigantic feat tables and be like "Ooooh! What do I want now??" In other words, they like options AKA "hard" rules (not the "kind of make it up" kind).

Ideas?

[Grinner]

Eclipse Phase (http://robboyle.wordpress.com/eclipse-phase-pdfs/) is fairly popular right now, though I'm afraid it doesn't match your desire for ships. It is worth a read, nonetheless. If you want to pay for it, you can do that too (http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/64135/Eclipse-Phase).

Sufficiently Advanced (http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?products_id=51719) is interesting in that the mechanics make low-tech characters viable without placing them on the same scale as high-tech characters. In fact, they might overshadow them a bit...Either way, the setting is a lovely piece of writing, though a little strained in places.

Stars Without Number has a bundle (http://bundleofholding.com/index/current) going on right now, and it might be a little easier for you to step into than the other two. There's also a free version (http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/86467/Stars-Without-Number%3A-Free-Edition).

Edit: Doh! I forgot Traveller! That pretty much focuses on ships.

[shadow_archmagi]

Hi fellas,

So after nearly 8 years of sword & sorcery, my appetite for new horizons has finally come full swing. Anybody know of any good Sci-Fi Tabletop RPGs out there? I've played a buttload of d20 Modern/Future, but I'm eager to expand past the d20 motif and want some new systems to delve into.

What I'm really looking for is something with fun ship customization (I'm a Trekkie fan) and something for my fellow Trekkies to droll over and have fun tinkering their ship. But also something for the "character optimizers" or should I say "the people who like to leave the ship with their laser carbine in tow and go all D&D combat on folks."

I've looked at Cortex and I really love it though my players like to look at gigantic feat tables and be like "Ooooh! What do I want now??" In other words, they like options AKA "hard" rules (not the "kind of make it up" kind).

Ideas?

I'm a huge fan of Rogue Trader. The core premise there is that you have the manpower and operational paradigm of the Enterprise (Massive ship, thousands of crew, investigate everything with a six man away team consisting of the command crew and one ensign to hold heavy things) but the morality and end goals of Cortez (Find new places, loot/conquer as needed.)

It has piles of feat tables and whatnot.

The downside is that it can be a bit... silly. It responds very well to optimization, so your players could easily be flying around on hoverboards, dual-wielding rapidfire grenade launchers, protected by high end forcefields.

Some GMs might see this as a problem with the system, others will simply shrug and go "It's a system that lets you be awesome. OK."

[CarpeGuitarrem]

The original Serenity RPG (which runs on the base Cortex system) might help. You can do a lot of ship customization, and characters get Advantages and Disadvantages to flesh them out and give some edges/liabilities. The upcoming Firefly RPG builds on that system, but it might not fit what the optimizers want in mechanics. From what I can tell, there's not necessarily a lot of rules-based combos.

Bounty Head Bebop (http://www.rpgnow.com/product/77995/BHB-Game-Night-Pack-%5BBUNDLE%5D) does some of this, as I recall, but it's been a while since I read it. (It's the unofficial Cowboy Bebop RPG; the owners of the IP weren't interested in making an RPG, so the publisher filed off the serial numbers and fleshed the game out a bit more.) The game definitely lets you customize and tinker with your ship and gear, and I believe I do recall long lists of feats (or at least feat-equivalents) that optimizers would be pleased with. (Not to mention the psyker powers and feng shui abilities.)

Only catch is, BHB uses a roll-under system, which might initially throw people for a loop. It makes for a very elegant system, though: you use an attribute (such as Strength or Constitution) as the Target Number they have to roll under, and then you can set a Difficulty from 1 to 5, which their roll has to be higher than. That's a very cool feature.

[Black Jester]

The classic of Science Fiction RPGs is of course Traveler. I know little about it honestly, but as far as I know, it has a small but loyal cult following since the early 80s and is still around, which is impressive in its own rights.

What I personally can recommend however is Transhuman Space. Not only is the game so... colourful in ts options, it is still somehow relatively realistic and a ngh perfect match of setting and system (it uses GURPS, which delivers great game mechanics as always).

[Grod_The_Giant]

I have a friend who's really into Traveller, although I've never quite made it into one of his games. But he says good things.

Last semester I ran a sci-fi game using FATE-- the Dresden Files ruleset, specifically, but a lot of it should be translatable to Core. I'm particularly proud of the space combat rules (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=14562010#post14562010); we had a good number of battles using them and they worked pretty well. (The rest of FATE works pretty good too, as I'm sure three-quarters of the posters on this board will tell you)

[CarpeGuitarrem]

Traveller is great; I don't remember it being very heavy on feat-style character abilities/customization, though.

[skyth]

If you want lots of options, I would suggest Spacemaster.

Battletech (Using Mechwarrior) is another good system.

Traveller and Star Frontiers are options, though they are simple and there are issues with both (in my opinion).

[Telok]

I've actually run a Traveller game. It has it's pros and cons.

Pros: Easy to hack and modify, it can do Star Wars (the books have stats for Luke and Vader), Star Trek, Firefly, or most any other SF style with a few tweaks. Simple fast abstract combat that's always dangerous while still giving the appropriate edge to higher tech. Simple and effective character design (it helps to read the rules instead of taking internet hype as gospel).

Cons: Limited optimizing or tweaking of characters, because it takes a year or two of study to get a point of anything (not as bad as it sounds, read the rules). Simple fast abstract combat that's always dangerous while still giving the appropriate edge to higher tech. Not a modern RPG that caters to big swords/guns and combat solutions.

Really I think that the biggest thing that comes up when using Traveller is that it's from an older era of gaming where the assumptions about player/character interaction were different. These days many gamers seem to take the attitude that what's on the character sheet is the total of what the character can do. When Traveller was written the assumption was that your character was a starting point, a personality with skills, for you to go on and accomplish almost anything. For example in most modern games if you want to raise and lead an army there are feats, classes, skills, and stuff on your character sheet involved because it's assumed that you can only do what is on that sheet. In an older game you don't worry about the character sheet, you just go and take the in-character actions the lead to you raising and leading an army. If it involves impersonating the crown prince or stealing a fortune to hire mercenaries, then so be it, that's something to use your character sheet to accomplish.

Before choosing Traveller decide: Do you want an awesome character sheet to be a goal? Or do you want a chracter sheet to be a tool for players to use to become awesome?

[Rhynn]

Alternity is cool; it's very much a toolbox to use to run a setting of your own. Hard to get now, though.

Stars Without Number is pretty awesome: it's a D&D scifi retroclone sandbox game with awesome support for creating sectors and systems and planets with stuff to do. The default setting is post-apocalyptic/diaspora, where humanity is rediscovering lost worlds and technology.

I'm not too familiar with Thousand Suns, but it might be your thing...

Fading Suns is awesome; it's very Dune-like, with a feudal space empire struggling to get together long after an apocalyptic event that set them back into a dark age; worlds were lost, et cetera. Five great noble houses, guilds, a powerful universal church, and aliens.

GURPS is great for scifi; Transhuman Space is an awesome setting of hard SF in a transhumanist near future with post-cyberpunk flavor. Definitely a lot of options and hard rules; using GURPS Lite will make the mechanical side much easier, though.

Blue Planet is less space opera, more post-cyberpunkish.

Some people like Spacemaster, but tables upon tables upon tables to do anything isn't my thing.

[golentan]

I'm going to suggest (as some have before me), traveller.

It's not much of a system for optimization of characters, but it really, really has a good ship-building system that functions for everything from one man fighters to small starships in any role imaginable on up to dreadnoughts of ridiculous scale (and they have deckplans for these monstrosities, I believe the Tigress Class Dreadnought clocks in at about 33 pages of detailed diagrams).

For optimizers, most of the fun is in gear. As Telok says, the assumption is that the skills are a framework. But put together the talents and scratch for battledress, and almost anything is possible.

The system has a bunch of supplements and customization rules that make it viable for almost any sci-fi setting with a little work. Here's the current edition of the rules. (http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/56586/Traveller-Main-Rulebook)

[skyth]

For Traveller, it depends on which version you are talking about Classic Traveller and MegaTraveller have the problem where ship combat/design has some serious balance issues. Also, Fighters generally are not useful at most tech levels (Realistic, but not to some people's taste).

In addition, there is the problem of wildly varying intra-party balance.

[skyth]

Some people like Spacemaster, but tables upon tables upon tables to do anything isn't my thing.

Yes, there are numerous tables. No, you do not need to always use them. Generally, 101+ is a success on any skill check. Combat uses tables, but they are fairly contained in one place.

[Magesmiley]

I'll second the Alternity suggestion. We took a break from running my D&D campaign and did Alternity for the better part of a year (using the StarDrive setting), and everyone enjoyed it.

The biggest downside is that it has been out of print for quite awhile.

[golentan]

For Traveller, it depends on which version you are talking about Classic Traveller and MegaTraveller have the problem where ship combat/design has some serious balance issues. Also, Fighters generally are not useful at most tech levels (Realistic, but not to some people's taste).

In addition, there is the problem of wildly varying intra-party balance.

Fighters are too useful, people just use them wrong. Pound for pound and credit for credit, they're the best way to crack fortified ground positions without resorting to WMDs or escort landing boats as the marines make their assault, or to defend such positions against other fighters, and they also make good System Defense Boats for use against small time pirates and smugglers since <100 dton vessels are the only ones who can break 6Gs of acceleration when you need to scramble to a distant call for help quickly. Sure, they can't do much against capital ships unless you break out flotilla and barrage rules, but that's not their role...

[skyth]

Fighters are too useful, people just use them wrong. Pound for pound and credit for credit, they're the best way to crack fortified ground positions without resorting to WMDs or escort landing boats as the marines make their assault, or to defend such positions against other fighters, and they also make good System Defense Boats for use against small time pirates and smugglers since <100 dton vessels are the only ones who can break 6Gs of acceleration when you need to scramble to a distant call for help quickly. Sure, they can't do much against capital ships unless you break out flotilla and barrage rules, but that's not their role...

Ummm...There's no rules for cracking fortified ground positions or escorting landing boats. Plus, a 100-400 ton ship could do the same thing and potentially better :) Fighters are more expensive per ton than bigger ships without a significant bonus to effectiveness.

And any size ship can get 6G accelleration and 6G accelleration is the max any ship can get. In Traveller, a 200,000 ton Dreadnaught can be as fast and maneuverable as a 20 ton fighter, even in an atmosphere. Heck, the DN is a little more maneuverable because of the better computer power.

Now if you want to house-rule fighters to be more effective in certain situations, that's fine. Plus at certain (lower) tech levels, they can be somewhat effective. However, in most cases, you're better off with a bigger Battlerider as opposed to a small craft Fighter.

[Yuki Akuma]

Traveler is great. It's possible to die during character creation. How awesome is that?

(Note: this is a serious post. Not sarcasm.)

[golentan]

Ummm...There's no rules for cracking fortified ground positions or escorting landing boats. Plus, a 100-400 ton ship could do the same thing and potentially better :) Fighters are more expensive per ton than bigger ships without a significant bonus to effectiveness.

And any size ship can get 6G accelleration and 6G accelleration is the max any ship can get. In Traveller, a 200,000 ton Dreadnaught can be as fast and maneuverable as a 20 ton fighter, even in an atmosphere. Heck, the DN is a little more maneuverable because of the better computer power.

Now if you want to house-rule fighters to be more effective in certain situations, that's fine. Plus at certain (lower) tech levels, they can be somewhat effective. However, in most cases, you're better off with a bigger Battlerider as opposed to a small craft Fighter.

You are looking at the wrong books. I use Mongoose's edition, as mentioned earlier, because it avoids much of the silliness of later traveller editions while being slightly more streamlined than classic traveller (though there are individually bad source books). With Mongoose High Guard it's perfectly possible for a fighter to get up to 16Gs. Putting them on top when it comes to evasive maneuvers, interception, and the like. A single fighter, well designed for its role, is slightly cheaper than a hundred dton ship and far tougher while packing as much punch. A small flight of fighters is perfectly capable of mopping up the more common varieties of pocket warship up to 800 or a 1000 dtons, much cheaper. As for cracking fortified positions, that was a comment from experience, not from any specific rule. Ship scale weapons let them punch through most heavy armor, ship scale armor plus that high maneuverability let them shrug off most enemy fire in return, and mounting a few personal scale weapons with high auto and damage lets them clear out infantry like nobody's business. Yes, most things they can't handle have to be Meson'd by Ortillery, but that falls under WMDs...

[Rakaydos]

I'll put Myriad Song (http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/118669/MYRIAD-SONG---Role-Play-Adventure-of-Ten-Thousand-Worlds?term=myriad) in the running for it's strong Skill + Feat mechanic- however, the game designers conciusly moved away from starship combat.
"if you lose a fight in ground vehicals, you can just bail out and go to ground. If you lose a fight in space... what then? instant TPK?"

And the combat system is swingy enough that loss can happen (though you almost always can see it coming in time to run away) so making failure not be the end of the game is important to the system.

[skyth]

You are looking at the wrong books. I use Mongoose's edition

That's the problem with discussing Traveler...You have to specific which version you are talking about ;)

[shadow_archmagi]

Even in space, Fighters are unloved by many :smallamused:

[Rakaydos]

Even in space, Fighters are unloved by many :smallamused:

Sure, the cold mathamatics of war may decree that 12 1-man fighters are an acceptable loss to defeat a hundred man starship.... but I sure as heck dont want to be one of the ones piloting those fighters...

[The Cat Goddess]

I'll throw my vote in for GURPS. My group sticks with 3e, and there's a bunch of GURPS - Traveler sourcebooks available if you like that setting.

Character customization is a big thing in GURPS, especially if you're playing at 150-200 character points & using Bio-Tech, Psionics and/or Cyberpunk.

[hamlet]

Alternity is, I think, the best, though sometimes D20Modern/Future is just as good in different ways.

Still, Alternity is what to go for if you can lay your hands on it.

[CombatOwl]

Hi fellas,

So after nearly 8 years of sword & sorcery, my appetite for new horizons has finally come full swing. Anybody know of any good Sci-Fi Tabletop RPGs out there? I've played a buttload of d20 Modern/Future, but I'm eager to expand past the d20 motif and want some new systems to delve into.

What sort of sci-fi are you looking for? It's a very broad genre. You can run just about any sort of sci-fi you want with Fate or GURPS. Fate is better for narrative-focused games, GURPS does a better job for simulationist stuff (and the gun rules are fantastic).


What I'm really looking for is something with fun ship customization (I'm a Trekkie fan) and something for my fellow Trekkies to droll over and have fun tinkering their ship.

IIRC, there is a star trek game, but the only one I've ever toyed with is the Starfleet Battles one (Prime Directive, if I recall), which is a different continuity than the later TV series. To be honest, I would actually suggest Fate for a Star Trek game, since it better handles the sort of conventions found in TV shows like Star Trek ("I'm a Vulcan, therefore I'm good at doing Vulcan things" or the ubiquitous solo boss fight between the captain and the gorn...) than strictly simulations systems like GURPS.


But also something for the "character optimizers" or should I say "the people who like to leave the ship with their laser carbine in tow and go all D&D combat on folks."

Meh.


I've looked at Cortex and I really love it though my players like to look at gigantic feat tables and be like "Ooooh! What do I want now??" In other words, they like options AKA "hard" rules (not the "kind of make it up" kind).

Ideas?

Well, if they hate having to make up their own "feats", then they would absolutely loathe FATE. Sounds like you want GURPS.

[Garimeth]

Wow, 24 posts in and nobody has mentioned RIFTS?

For my old gaming group RIFTS was our standard sci-fi system. Balance can be atrocious though, and there are a ton of sourcebooks. Recommending heavy regulation of which books you are using. Rifts is a kind of post-apocalyptic magic/sci-fi hybrid. Sci-fi, but not so much with spaceships and stuff. Except for phase world stuff.

[Zavoniki]

Wow, 24 posts in and nobody has mentioned RIFTS?


There is a reason for that.

[Garimeth]

There is a reason for that.

Ok...I'll bite. What reason is that?

[Delwugor]

For hard SciFi I would heartily recommend Diaspora which is based on Fate. Another great Fate SciFi game is Bulldogs! for when you really want your SciFi to Kick A**!.
In fact check out the Fate SF blog (http://fatesf.blogspot.com/) for all of the great SciFi stuff you can do with Fate.


Ok...I'll bite. What reason is that?
Because RIFTS is a horrible system that is not worth playing let alone recommending. :smallyuk:

[Zavoniki]

Because RIFTS is a horrible system that is not worth playing let alone recommending. :smallyuk:

I will let the crew of RPPR explain further: http://slangdesign.com/rppr/2012/12/podcast-episode/rppr-episode81-mega-damaged/

In summary though the main points:

Complete lack of game balance
Outdated and overly complex game mechanics that still don't cover even common situations.
Requires a lot of house ruling.
A lot of rules that simply don't make sense

It does have decent fluff though.

[Grinner]

*snip*

If I may join the Rifts-bashing... (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=301182)

[Garimeth]

LOL!

Ok, well most of those points are pretty well made.

Its been a while since I played it, but I guess we had fun in SPITE of the system, not because of the system. Rose tinted glasses and all that.

[Zavoniki]

LOL!

Ok, well most of those points are pretty well made.

Its been a while since I played it, but I guess we had fun in SPITE of the system, not because of the system. Rose tinted glasses and all that.

I think the best way to summarize the problems with RIFTS is to acknowledge that when it first came out it was on the cutting edge of roleplaying technology, but hasn't advanced at all since that point. Its like throwing a Napoleonic War Ship of the Line against the HMS Dreadnought.

[Mutazoia]

Ok I'll chip in a few ideas:


Star Wars (personally I prefer the D6 version myself)
Star Trek (A few different versions of this as well)
Star Frontiers (already mentioned)
Traveller (already Mentioned)
Ring World RPG (little known but a fun system)
Albedo (Furries in Space)
Cthonian Stars (Cthulhu in space)
the Dune RPG (looks interesting, haven't found a group to try it)
Teenagers from Outter Space (totally silly game)
Robotech (uses Rifts rules (but not as bad as regular rifts)
Serenity (Firefly RPG)
Gamma World (a few versions of this as well)
Cyberpunk (no explanation necessary)
Shadowrun (Cyberpunk with elves!)
GURPS (Already mentioned..can handle any setting you throw at it)
Eclipse Phase (already mentioned)
Dr. Who RPG (several versions of this one as well)
Aliens! RPG (Join the Colonial Marines and get your very own facehugger!)
Buck Rodgers in the 25th Century (based on the comic book hero...more so than the old TV show).



I think the best way to summarize the problems with RIFTS is to acknowledge that when it first came out it was on the cutting edge of roleplaying technology, but hasn't advanced at all since that point. Its like throwing a Napoleonic War Ship of the Line against the HMS Dreadnought.

The real problem with RIFTS was that Palladium felt that each new book had to one-up the last one with no thought to game balance what-so-ever. It wasn't long before you could create your own Demi-God and your eyelashes did MDC....

[Zavoniki]

The real problem with RIFTS was that Palladium felt that each new book had to one-up the last one with no thought to game balance what-so-ever. It wasn't long before you could create your own Demi-God and your eyelashes did MDC....

If RIFTS had a usable core system that would be true, but it really doesn't. At least not by the standards of today. Making each source book better than the previous one just made the problem worse.

[skyth]

If RIFTS had a usable core system that would be true, but it really doesn't. At least not by the standards of today. Making each source book better than the previous one just made the problem worse.

Granted, I played/have Robotech, not Rifts, but the biggest game balance thing in it in my experience was if you had auto-dodge, you were golden. If you didn't, you were mediocre.

(Plus High PP made you godlike. Especially in Robotech where it works on Ranged weapon to hits in 'Mechs).

[Telok]

Rifts isn't a bad system at it's absolute base. But it is thirty years old and hasn't had a makeover in that time. So it runs like a 30 year old truck carrying hundreds of pounds of splatbooks, you expect it to have some hiccups and issues.

Also, auto-dodge was totally hax. I played Robotech, Rifts, ahhh... the mutant furry one... and some sort of supers takeoff of it. I'm not sure that last one was totally legit, it may have been a homebrew mix of different systems but the base stats were the same as Palladium/Rifts.

My real issue with it, in the end, was that your skills were pretty set and increased every level without regard to anything. If you took two Coalition soldiers with the same stats and gave them the stealth and electronic equipment use skills they had the same skills at every level. It didn't matter if one sat at a radar station ten hours a day and ate donuts while the other went on commando raids and stealth spying missions against monsters. Thier skills were the same after ten levels of divergent lives.

I think that if I were going to run Rifts today I'd steal the setting and use something like the most recent version of Call of Cthulhu (going light on the SAN checks).

[Fnordius]

Let me add my voice in support of GURPS, especially GURPS Traveller as a good starting point. I find thew GURPS rules get out of the way when they are supposed to, and can be scaled to use whatever level of detail that you want. Using the Traveller setting lets you avoid a lot of the heavy lifting and use a bunch of readily available resources, so there is that as well.

Classic Traveller is also good, but it had one weakness in the older versions that I don't know if it's been plugged properly in the 5e version: character development. There were no experience points, no way to let adventures drive character development.

My other recommendation for a fun SF RPG system is no longer published, though you might find copies of it somewhere: the West End Games' version of Star Wars. The rules were designed to capture a fast pace akin to a movie action scene, and it paid to have a CD player with the soundtrack CD's handy for atmosphere.