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View Full Version : The Odds on a Starcraft RPG



CapnOfCapns
2015-04-08, 11:13 PM
What are the odds on a SC tabletop rpg? I've been wanting to play one for awhile now, and I saw that one came out a long time ago but it is short and waayyy too expensive. Had a friend (elitist scum) tell me that Starcraft is based off of Warhammer 40k. I'm willing to admit SC might be inspired by it, so I was wondering if there was a way to adapt Warhammer RPG into being Starcraft. Starcraft has plenty of units to be potential classes, and with the popularity I'm honestly surprised it's not an established thing already.

awa
2015-04-08, 11:40 PM
star craft might be based off 40K but only in the loosest fashion the two setting have very little in common. I honestly don't know how well they would mesh for one star craft space marines are basic grunts the default troop where as 40k space marines represent some of the best of the best most elite warriors in the imperium. It feels like it would require so much homebrew you would be better seeking out a more generic system and converting that.

Mr Beer
2015-04-08, 11:49 PM
I saw someone's homebrewed stats for a StarCraft setting in the GURPS system somewhere.

EDIT

Here...http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?t=20320&highlight=starcraft

CapnOfCapns
2015-04-09, 12:08 AM
I saw someone's homebrewed stats for a StarCraft setting in the GURPS system somewhere.

EDIT

Here...http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?t=20320&highlight=starcraft

Well, that is quite a lot of information. Time to learn GURPS now. Thank you.

Maglubiyet
2015-04-09, 08:12 AM
Games made to emulate a specific fictional world rarely stand up on their own. They mostly seemed to be cranked out as a marketing ploy to capitalize on the popularity of a book, videogame, TV show, or movie.

They tend to have shoddy mechanics and poorly thought out/play-tested rules. You're much better off with an adaptation to a solid game system, like d20, Fate Core, or GURPS.

Eisenheim
2015-04-09, 09:50 AM
In terms of the starcraft 40k connection, starcraft is what Blizzard made after GW refused to license them to do a 40k game, so 40k was definitely an original inspiration, but they went in their own direction.

MrStabby
2015-04-09, 10:36 AM
Hmm. I had always thought it had more of an "Aliens" theme.

I don't really know enough about the history of the genre to know how much of this kind of setup is Generic Sci-Fi setup and how much of it came from where. Humankind being armed and fighting aliens in space presumably owes as much to startrek as anything. Add in the Psionic stuff and you cross over into Star-Wars. Making the human empire a bit authoritarian and less than perfect seems to be drawing for from history than an alternative fictional setting.

Maglubiyet
2015-04-09, 11:34 AM
Hmm. I had always thought it had more of an "Aliens" theme.

I don't really know enough about the history of the genre to know how much of this kind of setup is Generic Sci-Fi setup and how much of it came from where. Humankind being armed and fighting aliens in space presumably owes as much to startrek as anything.

The Tyranids in 40k were based on the aliens in the Alien series. The Starcraft Zerg were based on the Tyranids.

H.G. Wells wrote War of the Worlds in 1898 and The First Men in the Moon in 1901 -- both had humans fighting aliens. A Trip to the Moon, a movie based on H.G. Wells' book, shows humans fighting the Selenites, insect-like aliens that live under the surface of the moon. Buck Rogers was exploring the universe and killing aliens back in the late 1920's and hit the screen in 1933.

CarpeGuitarrem
2015-04-09, 11:47 AM
Games made to emulate a specific fictional world rarely stand up on their own. They mostly seemed to be cranked out as a marketing ploy to capitalize on the popularity of a book, videogame, TV show, or movie.

They tend to have shoddy mechanics and poorly thought out/play-tested rules. You're much better off with an adaptation to a solid game system, like d20, Fate Core, or GURPS.
I'd beg to differ; Marvel Heroic, Leverage, Firefly, and Smallville are all very strong games...but that might be because the same company was behind all of them. Also, Atomic Robo was a licensed Fate game. :smallsmile:

The One Ring and Mouse Guard are masterful adaptations of fictional worlds, and sterling games in their own right.

And the Dragon Age RPG and the Song of Ice and Fire RPG aren't awful.

I doubt that RPGs do much to capitalize on a media's popularity, because they're already so niche. Licensed RPGs are typically by fans, for fans.

Moving back to a Starcraft RPG, you really have a few options based on what type of game you want. 3:16 Carnage Among the Stars would work well if you wanted a bit of a satirical 40K-esque take on it. If you own Torchbearer, there's An officially unofficial Aliens supplement (http://www.torchbearerrpg.com/?tag=colonial-marines) for the game that adapts it for that universe, and could easily be repurposed for a Terrans vs. Zerg game. If you're really up for some heavy hacking, the Leverage and Firefly RPGs have good examples of how to make a mission-oriented game, and you could use those as a base. There's also the option of repurposing West End Games' Star Wars d6 to do Starcraft, just leave out...well...a bunch of the things.

Broken Twin
2015-04-09, 11:58 AM
Probably wouldn't be all that difficult to build a Starcraft setting primer for Savage Worlds. Especially considering that Starcraft tech isn't really that far out from standard Scifi.

Really though, if you want to bring a setting to the table top, your best bet is to determine the core themes of the setting, and make sure the system and/or mechanics you use support and reinforce that theme. Personally, I think that SW would work well with a few minor tweaks, but it all depends on what draws you to the setting.

Knaight
2015-04-09, 12:04 PM
I'd beg to differ; Marvel Heroic, Leverage, Firefly, and Smallville are all very strong games...but that might be because the same company was behind all of them. Also, Atomic Robo was a licensed Fate game. :smallsmile:

The One Ring and Mouse Guard are masterful adaptations of fictional worlds, and sterling games in their own right.

And the Dragon Age RPG and the Song of Ice and Fire RPG aren't awful.


On the other hand, five of these examples are direct adaptations of a generic system, and Mouse Guard and The One Ring are basically Burning Wheel and one of the something-master games hacks. Seven out of the nine are based on existing tabletop games, and while the other two are new mechanically and pretty solid, that's still telling.

For Starcraft in particular, GURPS is actually a pretty solid option. Another obvious choice is Fudge - one of the core mechanics it has is a logarithmic numerical scale (size) which works beautifully to handle a wide range of sizes, such as when you have everything from a tiny zergling to a massive reaver on the same battlefield.

CapnOfCapns
2015-04-09, 06:38 PM
So much input, this is beautiful. Or it would be if I knew what anyone was saying.

New thread topic! I play on roll20 and only have some experience in 3.5 and 5e D&D.
1. What's the easiest system to learn that could be adapted to Starcraft without being clunky?
2. What would be the most accurate system, regardless of difficulty to pick up?

Bonus round: Do you think Blizzard will ever license another tabletop game for Starcraft?

Maglubiyet
2015-04-09, 08:09 PM
So much input, this is beautiful. Or it would be if I knew what anyone was saying.

New thread topic! I play on roll20 and only have some experience in 3.5 and 5e D&D.
1. What's the easiest system to learn that could be adapted to Starcraft without being clunky?
2. What would be the most accurate system, regardless of difficulty to pick up?

Bonus round: Do you think Blizzard will ever license another tabletop game for Starcraft?

If you've got some experience with 3.5/d20 why not go with d20 Future? Personally I think GURPS gives you the most options to match anything and everything, but not everyone likes the system.

Mr Beer
2015-04-09, 08:43 PM
So much input, this is beautiful. Or it would be if I knew what anyone was saying.

New thread topic! I play on roll20 and only have some experience in 3.5 and 5e D&D.
1. What's the easiest system to learn that could be adapted to Starcraft without being clunky?
2. What would be the most accurate system, regardless of difficulty to pick up?

Bonus round: Do you think Blizzard will ever license another tabletop game for Starcraft?

1. Easiest to learn will be a d20 system.

2. GURPS is great, has a learning curve though. The forum I linked to earlier has a bunch of excellent posters in it, it's a good resource for GURPS queries.

3. nfi

CapnOfCapns
2015-04-09, 08:45 PM
d20 Future? Oh my.

Totema
2015-04-09, 09:03 PM
I know that Warcraft has been ported to d20 at least once. Maybe you can start your search there?

Knaight
2015-04-09, 11:07 PM
I'd avoid d20 Future. Yeah, you can learn it easily, but that comes at the downside of it being a total mess of a system. Even the easy learning is a smaller advantage than you might think, given the preponderance of lighter systems out there that would do a vastly better job.

With that said - Savage Worlds is really easy to learn from a D&D background. There are a lot of the same basic game structure assumptions, and it's simpler.

Milodiah
2015-04-11, 11:35 AM
Starcraft may be based on WH40k, but then Games Workshop started taking notes on the Zerg to make the Tyranids more interesting, because in the earlier years they'd always been a bit...lacking. It's funny, really, first SC rips off WH, then does it a mite better, then WH rips of SC.

Anyway, there's a sci-fi system called Traveller whose intent was to make a generic sci-fi/space opera system in which one could play Star Wars, Star Trek, Star ____, whatever, decades before we had the influx of actual official RPGs for all of them. It would take a lot of fine-tuning, though, although I think the Terrans could be covered rather nicely and the Eldar Tau Protheans why am I having such a brainfart, what the hell are they called again Protoss could be chalked up as having something better than Jump tech.

Although now that I think about it, the Protoss do look a bit like the Tau and Eldar mixed together. And their deal with gateways is really reminiscent of the Eldar...


Anyway, as I was saying...use Mongoose Traveller, it's the best of the line. Also made by a third party. Which is kinda sad, really. Incredibly simple system, ya roll 2d6.

galan
2015-04-11, 06:26 PM
if you really want d&d 3.5, there is homebrew of kerrigan-like class, and you could simulate most of the npcs with existing material (i'm quite a noob about starcraft1 and broodwar lore, so might be wrong there). Now im not sure what youre trying to do - controling armys is not really easy in tabletop games, but just playing in the setting wouldnt seem to me like you need a special system for it - the difference between fighting zerg and fighting generic monsters isnt that big.