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View Full Version : DM Help Picking a System For a Sci-Fi Game



Trevortni
2015-01-26, 07:49 PM
I'm trying to pick a system for a sci-fi game where the players get hit by meteorites that turn them into a bunch of Mary Sues. On the offchance that my players happen to stumble into this post in the year or two before my son will be old enough for me to get back into gaming:

The game will start in the modern world, and then the players will be free (within the confines of roleplaying, obviously) to remake the world more or less as they see fit. They will eventually be expected (hopefully without being explicitly told, though I do have a backup plan where they will stumble across a derelict ship instead) to produce FTL travel, as well as whatever Tech Level advancements they can come up with, just in time for the Evil Galactic Empire (TM) to show up at their doorstep.

My question is, can anybody recommend what would be a good system to support this level/flavor of rampant Mary Sueing? There will be tweaking to make massive intelligence gains easy for the players, but I need a good system to support the actual tech advancements that I will expect the players to be coming up with, especially without knowing in advance what crazy ideas my players will come up with short of the obvious ones. I've looked at GURPS a little bit, but I'm not sure how supportive it will be of player-driven Tech-Level advances.

LibraryOgre
2015-01-27, 11:22 AM
I'd suggest something VERY freeform; I can't think of a system that would handle this particularly well, so I'd lean towards something like Risus... they make themselves, with usual creation rules, then you do the intro and BAM give them a few schticks related to their new abilities, at suitably high levels.

Jay R
2015-01-27, 12:43 PM
If basic arithmetic doesn't annoy them, the Hero System would work very well. The only drawback is already mentioned.

Trevortni
2015-01-27, 12:47 PM
I don't know, Risus looks a lot like Fate, which hasn't worked too well with my group. We tend to do better with more concrete, definite rules instead of a freeform system. I think I can make GURPS work if I have to, as it does have a lot of predefined techs, but I was wondering if there are any other alternatives that might have Research & Development more fully fleshed out (or if I might be overlooking the GURPS sourcebook that does flesh it out), so I don't have to make it up myself. Also, I think GURPS combat tends to be a bit more deadly than a lot of game systems, so I was wondering about any systems that might do better on that front as well.

slowplay
2015-01-27, 03:18 PM
abberant? it lacks the rules for things like MDC in rifts, so when I ran a sci-fi game I had classes of weapons and armor that counted as 10/100/1000 normal dice. worked okay.

slowplay
2015-01-27, 03:22 PM
necessary evil for savage worlds might fit too. there's rules for mad science.

Delwugor
2015-01-27, 04:38 PM
Mutants and Masterminds could work very well for high character power in a science fiction setting.

Algeh
2015-01-28, 07:37 PM
I think GURPS could work pretty well for this (of course, I'm biased - I use GURPS for most things that don't involve spells and have since middle school (GURPS has a magic system that only an engineering school dean could love - long prerequisite chains to learn any interesting spells, and very mechanistic/predictable in feel)). You'd need to develop a system for how the characters "earned" the right to buy a higher personal TL, but GURPS does at least have a clear set of tech levels and has gone to the trouble of separating out which skills need a refresher at each TL and which don't. I'd also develop some way to discount the cost of re-buying the TL-based skills at each new TL as you increased, which I didn't see rules for at a glance but might exist officially somewhere (I've never done a campaign that changed TL). Off the top of my head, I'd try making the new skill only cost half as many points as usual until you reach the value you had in the skill at the previous TL (example: if I had Machinist/TL8 at 17, and then increased my personal TL to 9, I could spend only half as many points as it normally would cost to learn Machinist/TL9 until I got to 17 in it, after which it would go back to regular cost).

I'd develop something with campaign-based flavor to it to "earn" the personal TL increases rather than hunt for a general mechanic. If the best way to get more awesome fancy stuff is to do a thing, players will probably do that thing a LOT, so it would be a good way to steer them in the direction you want them to go story-wise. Maybe something like "the meteorites imbued you with a Magical Research Aura" - you can now buy up your personal TL a level at a time by spending x points spread among y set of skills at your current TL, plus z points in research/TL and the 5 points/level to be a higher TL (which seems stupidly low to me, but that's what Basic Set says - I'm amazed I'm not overruling players who want to play characters from the future all the time unless I'm overlooking something else - it has just never come up). You might even have them have ways to get a few specific devices "ahead" of the general TL, which I vaguely remember reading rules for somewhere in 3rd-ish edition. Maybe in Ultra Tech? Or Space? I could try to check later - I think I still have both books around here somewhere and the new edition, unlike with D&D, didn't really make all of the old stuff totally unusable.

Sith_Happens
2015-01-28, 08:28 PM
Mutants and Masterminds could work very well for high character power in a science fiction setting.

I'll second this. M&M already has a simple mechanic for determining how hard it is to design and build a new device, and you can use increased power level caps on such inventions over time as a quick and dirty way to represent their increased potency as technology advances overall. The only major downside is that the aforementioned difficulty determination is a straight function of the device's character point value and therefore doesn't necessarily correlate with its technological sophistication; in particular, FTL is by far one of the easiest things to invent without fiating or houseruling some sort of secondary gating mechanism.

Trevortni
2015-01-29, 02:37 PM
I guess the obvious corollary to this question is how to get the players interested in inventing. Making it super easy only goes so far, after all; any ideas how to lead them in that direction? Or should I ask this in a separate thread?

Rakaydos
2015-01-29, 05:23 PM
Its nor usually considered scifi, but have you looked as Exalted yet? If nothing else, it'll have DM advice for running that sort of game, as it is the default Solar Exalted assumption.

Ts_
2015-01-29, 05:51 PM
Hey,

I don't think GURPS is the right place to go for crafting. You have large shopping cataloges sorted by Tech Level (but where's the creativity in that?) and not much else that would tell you how to create stuff. (There are about 5 pages of rules about Inventions, but they seem bland ...)

There's half a page saying that it takes a lot of resources and 2 years to raise tech level by one step locally and everything else is up to the game master. So not much help there either. Minecraft it ain't ...

You could probably stat a lot of things out in GURPS, but equipment is not described in more than 20 words usually and you really don't want to stat out the parameters of your cyborg-tended lettuce farm ...

So I would support a more freeform engine, if you even want an engine.

But I'm curious about your vision of the game, independent of the rules. What should the actual gaming be like? Is it montages of short scenes building up a planet? Heaps of blueprints that your players bring to the game? Big shopping sprees in the Planetary Defenses catalog? ("Is one Borg cube at each pole enough or should we produce more?") Fighting over economic control of Tiberium?

Regards
Ts

Trevortni
2015-01-29, 06:13 PM
But I'm curious about your vision of the game, independent of the rules. What should the actual gaming be like? Is it montages of short scenes building up a planet? Heaps of blueprints that your players bring to the game? Big shopping sprees in the Planetary Defenses catalog? ("Is one Borg cube at each pole enough or should we produce more?") Fighting over economic control of Tiberium?

I suppose, from the perspective of the characters (hopefully not the players!) that it could be equated to war, with "months of boredom punctuated by moments of terror". There is a definite progression to the enemies they will be fighting, but between the days where the gang/suits/covert invaders/spaceships force them to act, they will be able to live their lives as they see fit, with months to learn/research/invent/waste time doing nothing.

There won't be any in-game impetus pushing them to reveal their super-genius to the world, but if they want people to man their spaceships against the Evil Galactic Empire at the end, it would probably be smart for them to "come out" at that point. Until they do, though, they are free to use their inventions however they see fit, for selfish or selfless purposes, to market or exploit or give freely, whatever they want to do with them.

And I do want them to be creative in the gadgets they come up with. Maybe some other progression of gadgets will make sense than what GURPS or any other system offers, and I want to be able to support their crazy dreams, within reason.

Also, flying cars should definitely come much sooner than GURPS says, because they are just that cool.

Sith_Happens
2015-01-29, 08:29 PM
Wait a second... DUH, how did no one think of this until now? >.<

Genius: The Transgression is literally an entire game about being a mad scientist. Cut out the rule where normal people can't touch your stuff without breaking it and it's exactly what you're looking for.