PDA

View Full Version : Good Vehicle Based RPG System?



NRSASD
2016-01-31, 04:13 PM
Hey Everyone!
Recently I've been enthralled by Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak and have been thinking about trying to run a campaign in that setting. Only problem is, my experience is entirely within the D&D sphere.

The basic premise is that the desert planet of Kharak is becoming more and more inhospitable, and within several generations civilization will collapse due to expanding deserts. The nations of the north pole have recently discovered vast metal and energy signatures hidden deep within the equatorial deserts, and have launched an expedition to investigate. Due to hostile clans of desert raiders and hellish conditions (median daily temperature at the equator: 100+ C), the expedition is extremely dependent upon their vehicles for survival. These vehicles range from dune buggies to aircraft carrier sized production yards.

I was curious if anyone knows of any good vehicle-heavy game systems I could take a look at for inspiration. I'd prefer a simpler system to an elaborate one, but I'd also like one that models extremely large vehicles decently. Given the size of the vehicles in question, good ship or spaceship game systems would also be appreciated.

As always, thanks for your help!

Knaight
2016-01-31, 04:22 PM
Fudge can actually do a really good job with this, as it handles variation in size very well. Beyond that, it might be worth looking into mecha games and seeing how much is actually tied specifically to mechas and how much can be brought to vehicles as a whole.

Grod_The_Giant
2016-01-31, 05:50 PM
I wrote some spaceship rules (https://www.dropbox.com/s/f4ohc0hialntf7g/Fate%20Starships%20rules.docx?dl=0) for Fate (though they'd probably work with Fudge) that worked decently well. Broadly speaking, the idea was to represent the ship as a character, with refresh roughly correlating to size. But you'd also lay your ship out on a grid, and designate what systems were in what different compartments. When you got damaged, you'd roll to see what compartments got hit, and anything in them would be knocked off-line. Characters would have to use their actions to get stuff done, so you'd have the pilot driving and maneuvering, gunners firing missiles, an engineer or two running around trying to fix damaged compartments, an electronic warfare specialist running defenses, and so on. It was pretty fun, and got the whole party involved nicely without requiring anyone to invest too many skills into "ship stuff."

(The rules are based on the Dresden Files RPG version of Fate, not the current Fate Core, so they might need some tweaking)