Warframe on the Tabletop: What System?

[Archpaladin Zousha]

Having played far too much Warframe for the past few months, I recently got the idea to try and set a tabletop game in its universe, turning the focus away from the Tenno characters you play in the game itself and towards the relatively normal people allied with them, who do things like smuggle, raid and spy behind the scenes. With the diverse organizations and factions you encounter in the Origin System, there'd be plenty of options for character creation.

However, I'm not sure what TTRPG system would be the easiest fit for such a campaign. There's a number of generic systems that I have access to like Fate: Core, Genesys and Cypher, but the problem is I have very little actual gameplay experience with them. I'm also wondering about some other games that might work better or be easier to learn, like Modern AGE, Mutants and Masterminds (though admittedly, this one would be better suited for Tenno PCs) or the Forged in the Dark games.

Or would it be better to try and take an explicitly sci-fi-based game like Stars Without Number, the Star Wars RPGs or The Expanse Roleplaying Game and file off the setting-specific details to make way for more Warframe-specific ones.

I'm admittedly out of practice as a GM, so I don't know if trying to learn a non-d20-based game system AND adapting Warframe's setting to it AND writing up and running a campaign for it is too ambitious a project for someone of my skill-level. What do you fine folks think?

[Morphic tide]

From my limited awareness of systems, Shadowrun seems a sensible option, as the "Street Samurai" make for an excellent mechanical basis for Grineer, while the "rigger" archetype can be repurposed for a lot of Corpus stuff, and the system doesn't particularly assume the supernatural stuff despite a framework for it that very importantly does not overshadow the technological means, allowing its inclusion where relevant while having good guidelines for balancing it against the players without descending to just blunt refluffing of normal encounters. Such as bringing in a Tenno as a boss fight filled with confused screaming, or New Loka hitsquads doing their best to break your Heavy Gunner's Ferrite-based face with their fist.

[Grod_The_Giant]

Something like Star Wars: Saga Edition, maybe? That's a fairly solid sci-fi system that's close enough to your (I'm guessing) D&D roots to make for an easy transition.

[Mastikator]

I think a heavily modified D&D could probably work actually. The big modification being that your primary, secondary and melee weapon all level up in their on classes along side your Warframe (and when you pick up a new weapon it starts at level 1). I think the focus should be on combat, specifically making it as dynamic as possible, if I'm not capable of swapping between parkour-headshots and "spells" mid air then it's just not Warframe enough.

Edit- if you're willing to learn Swedish then Drakar Och Demoner actually does this excellently out of the box

[Wraith]

I think that Morphic Tide hit the nail on the head with Shadowrun. When you said "Warframe TTRPG" I immediately tried to think of a system that included guns, cybernetics and "magic" and this seems to fit the bill nicely. Maybe ignore the rules for being Burned Out (it inflicts penalties on a character if you try to use cybernetics and magic at the same time, broadly speaking) but yeah, you're pretty much most of the way there.

The other ideas that sprang to mind were the Warhammer games; Dark Heresy, Rogue Trader and maybe even Deathwatch.
The latter is pretty good for depicting Tenno because they're supposed to be a semi-unstoppable tank of a character that tears through lesser beings and so gets aimed at the truly terrifying stuff that ordinary soldiers can't handle, so the PCs being DH/RT characters in comparison feels about right.

[Drascin]

Yeah, if you want to do lore-style Warframes, you'd probably want at a minimum a superhero RPG. Warframes are ridiculous.

But for more normal people, it really depends on the specific theme of the campaign. For example, if you want to specifically play spies heisting things while the Tenno are making their ungodly ruckus, well, that sounds like a job for Scum&Villainy. So, what's going to be your campaign theme, here?

In general, though, if I wasn't sure, or wanted a campaign that touched on a bit of multiple things, I'd probably hack something with Genesys. All you'd really need to do is create some "races" (check out Shadow of the Beanstalk for a look at how that looks like in a Genesys system). Maybe open up the cybernetics options, because a LOT of people in the Origin system use various bits of cybernetics.

[Archpaladin Zousha]

Generally speaking my idea was a campaign about playing "the little people" that the Tenno depend on; such as members of the Relay syndicates, defectors from the enemy factions (though there's some overlap there), and other "lone Tenno operatives" who don't have crazy Void powers, but have gun and will travel. They'd be doing things like raiding while the Tenno distract the enemy a la Survival missions, smuggling supplies past Grineer blockades to the Relays and those last few independent colonies, and doing actual espionage with observations, disguises and cloak-and-dagger stuff, as opposed to the crude data burglary the Tenno engage in. Showing that even the ordinary people can make a difference in this war, you know?

[Anti-Eagle]

If it were about the Tenno, I'd hazard to say something like Exalted or Mutants and Masterminds.

But as you said the little people, something like Shadowrun would probably work for your purposes.

[Martin Greywolf]

FATE is probably your best bet.

All the other options you get for sci fi, and this is sci fi, will be pretty heavily based on what exact shade of applied phlebotinum is around. For a quick overview of just how much a single item like that can impact everything, look at eezo in Mass Effect.

That means that, while not impossible, you'd have to do a sizeable to tremendous amount of work to balance your system of choice around Warframe lore, depending on how deep you want to go - do you want to mess around with elemental combos and weaknesses? Ship to ship combat (I mean, only thing that makes Railjack sorta Tenno-exclusive is the void drive, and you don't need that for sub-c speeds)?

At that point, you may as well do it from start with a system built for it, hence FATE. Replace Drive skill with Pilot, add shields as another stress track that can be bought for cold, hard cash, and you'll have a functional system right then. Not a lot of mechanical depth for WF specific stuff, but you can add that as well, if that's your jam.

As for handling Warframes, well, they are more ridiculous than W40k space marines, a fully-modded Excalibur probably outstrips a Primarch in terms of power and speed. Just have them as "if you mess with this, you are dead" thing.