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View Full Version : Help choosing a starting place for an RPG I'm trying to make?



Captain_Shrug
2020-09-09, 05:32 AM
I beseech thee, o more skilled and knowledgeable nerds than I- please help keep me from madness.

Basically I've got an RPG setting almost made, and a laundry list of things I want to be able to do in the RPG itself. But I need help choosing a base system I can abuse into shape. The idea is a setting where players are a mercenary crew in a universe that's a sort of bastard child of Firefly, Schlock Mercenary and Mass Effect. As a result I need a system that can handle ranged combat relatively easily, and (because the people I'd be building this for have a bit of min-max to them) allows fine-tuning weapons, gear and armor a bit. I tried tossing a roll-x-dice-keep-the-hits system like Shadowrun at them, and got told no one's interested in that because it's "too complex." I looked at D20 modern, but I really don't like the way it handles classes- I'd hoped to make a system where players just build a character as they see fit, not follow a class.

Am I simply asking too much? I was hoping to find some OGL system that I could beat into shape, but the best candidate I can find (OpenD6) has utterly and completely baffled me when it comes to weapon damage, and looks like it might be pushing things a bit for my players.

John Out West
2020-09-09, 10:03 AM
I try not to self promote, but what you're describing sounds really close to a system i'm working on. Customizable characters, space-western, built for ranged / deadly combat. Its a sequel to a fantasy-western called Westbound. Its currently in beta, but if it helps it helps (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1QDtnDTAqqG9l8ATuQz3J_6Gnk3WOLHoC/view?usp=sharing). The setting and gameplay are pretty intertwined. Warning, it does use cards instead of dice.

Hope that helps!

Edit: Edge of the Empire was a pretty rad space-western that seemed to handle ranged combat well, although i never got into much space-ship combat in that.

sandmote
2020-09-09, 11:00 PM
As far as I'm aware, Starfinder and the Star Wars games are the biggest existing systems. Unfortunately, the Starfinder is heavily still a Pathfinder reskin, so you'd be looking at a lot of magic systems rather than tech flavored ones.

I'd pick one of the star wars ones and strip out the Jedi (primarily because those systems invariably have Jedi outclass everyone else, but also flavor). What you're left with is a bunch of the typical spacefarer tropes; aliens, ships, gunfights, and mercenary work with big areas of frontier.

Edit: I'd link my take (going from alpha to beta, I guess), but despite stripping out spell flavor from 5e D&D and bringing back vancian casting gadgets it is still heavily class based.