Looking for a New Sci-Fi System

[Daemonhawk]

Hello, GitP!
I am currently looking for a sci-fi system, and I'm familiar with quite a few.
However, I am running into an issue: All of them seem to favor fairly low-power, intrigue campaigns over high-power, action campaigns.
It's somewhat troublesome, and I've really looked for other systems, but across the board combat seems to be quite deadly.
Considering this is going to be in an at-school campaign that runs one hour once a week, I don't really want my players dying.
So, GitP, what are my options for high-power sci-fi systems?

[Knaight]

Bulldogs should work well. It's not a super lethal system, it favors action, and it's comparatively lightweight and thus well suited to shorter game sessions. Other than that, I recommend the generics. Savage Worlds could work pretty well. Fudge does work - I'm actually currently GMing a game that fits pretty closely within your parameters (minus the one hour a week thing).

[bigerxman]

Depends on what you call high power, o personally like the EclipsePhase system for its specific rules for balancing stuff and death. It took a bit for me to understand it properly but I lkke all of the customization options it has as well as the given settig.

[Nagash]

i like true 20 for this sort of thing. Its fast, easy and you can adjust how lethal combat is just by houseruling increasing or decreasing toughness bonuses, although do so very slowly because a small change can make a huge difference.

[hifidelity2]

Spacemaster does hi tech sci-fi and thanks to the critical tables (and maybe a bit of fudging) you can be as lethal or not as you want

[hamlet]

What systems have you tried (a small sampling of them) and what was wrong with them?

What exactly are you trying to do with the system?

[The Grue]

You could be forgiven for lumping Eclipse Phase in with low power intrigue given the flavour of its default campaign, but I can assure you that even the most subtle of EP adventures will rapidly spiral into insanity.

[Shyftir]

You can always file the numbers off Starwars Saga. Just don't have any Jedi or force-users and its pretty solid high adventure space opera.

[LibraryOgre]

Hello, GitP!
I am currently looking for a sci-fi system, and I'm familiar with quite a few.
However, I am running into an issue: All of them seem to favor fairly low-power, intrigue campaigns over high-power, action campaigns.
It's somewhat troublesome, and I've really looked for other systems, but across the board combat seems to be quite deadly.
Considering this is going to be in an at-school campaign that runs one hour once a week, I don't really want my players dying.
So, GitP, what are my options for high-power sci-fi systems?

Well, might I suggest Mass Effect Savage Worlds that some brilliant individual made up?

[Blackhawk748]

You can always file the numbers off Starwars Saga. Just don't have any Jedi or force-users and its pretty solid high adventure space opera.

Im gonna second this, run around shoot stuff, pilot cool space ships, save the universe. Its Pulp Fiction, IN SPAAAAAAACE!!

[gom jabbarwocky]

D6 Space is a pretty good generic sci-fi/space fantasy system, easy to understand and with a decent pedigree. Healing between battles is a bit of a chore, but there's nothing that says you can't speed that up with a houserule or two.

[golentan]

You could go full on science fantasy (with very little emphasis on the science) and go for one of the more high powered 40k games like Deathwatch, or grab Exalted with Shards of the Exalted Dream and play the Sci Fi Space Opera setting. There's also Deadlands: Hell On Earth or Lost Colony.

I like traveller, but it does tend toward the lower end of the personal power scale and high lethality so I can't recommend it in good faith. Though I will be thirding Star Wars.

[Bob of Mage]

I only really know of D20 Modern's Future setting as an option. Maybe tweak the massive damage threshold and leave gun fights till later. It uses the same base system as 3.x D&D so you and your players will likely know something about the system. Also there would be tons of stuff you could burrow to flesh things out.

The D20 Future book also gives a handful of rules for a large number of settings so you can customize things for how you want your game to run. Robots and mutants in a near future setting. Got rules for it. FTL shipships crossing the void of space to find whats on the other side. Again there are some rules for that. The PCs piloting 60ft tall mechas to battle a lich mounted on a zombie dragon. Yes it is doable and man would it be epic to see.

Just my two cents worth I hope it helpped.

[Rakaydos]

You can always file the numbers off Starwars Saga. Just don't have any Jedi or force-users and its pretty solid high adventure space opera.

Or better, file the numbers off Edge of Empire. There's less numbers to fire off anyway- you could practically play Firefly using Edge out of the book.

[Metahuman1]

Mutants and Masterminds can be adapted to near anything, and is only lethal if you wish it to be.

[Milodiah]

Classic Traveler is one of my favorites, personally. Also, Rifts can get ridiculously powerful in hilarious ways, you may take a peek at that if you have the patience to figure it out.

[Kiero]

Well, might I suggest Mass Effect Savage Worlds that some brilliant individual made up?

In a similar vein (same setting, different system - it's nWoD), my group are having a lot of fun with Mass: the Effecting, which we'll be returning to soon. Currently in its third draft with 20 sessions of playtesting under it's belt, there'll be a few updates before we resume (mostly to XP).

[SouthpawSoldier]

To quote myself from this thread that was asking a similar question;

[Milodiah]

I love the pathway to D&D 4e.