Starship Bridge Battles

I like Gradine's idea of having all the players take their turn at the same time. It means less dead time for each player, and lets them plan easier.

As to games you could look at, battlestations is one, or maybe FTL.

I thought about doing starship battle rules, and my first plan was to kind of copy FTL. Keep the focus on the crew and just have the ship as a dynamic battlefield rather then a complete character. (Like in one of my ideas the ship didn't have HP, but damage to the ship would often lead to damage to the PCs.) One thing you could do to help every player be involved is give every player the ability to use every part of the ship? Like everyone can shoot the big guns, everyone can fix the hull breach. Not at the same time, but make it flexible so if one player's job isn't needed then they can move onto job that is.

If your job in a game is simply to adjust the speed or turn the ship or scan the bad guys, you're going to be bored.

Realistically, sharing one ship between a bunch of people is hard to make work. Give them a ship each, and they actually feel like they have some agency. Give them control of the sickbay, then not so much.

The problem is giving each position something to do which feels active and useful. Look at the 'standard' roles a 6-player party might have to fill.

• Helmsman: Steers the ship, takes evasive action, tries to outmaneuver the enemy. A good role, will likely keep the player entertained.
• Tactical officer: Fires the guns. Hard to go wrong here - good, solid fun, contributing to the encounter's outcome.
• Captain: Well, it sounds good, but in an RPG, you're basically just telling fellow players who probably already have a good handle on what's happening "do this", and hoping they'll go with it. Iffy, but might work well for the group's mouth if there's some bantering to do.
• Science Officer: Mans the sensors, provides up-to-date tactical analysis. Another works-in-theory role - at best you're rolling the equivalent of Perception checks each round, at worst you're the GM's mouthpiece to describe the action. Highly situational.
• Comms Officer: Talking of mouthpieces - you're not actually going to be doing the talking most of the time, that's the Captain's job, so at best you're a sentient answerphone, and at worst the opposition don't have anything to say anyway. Dull.
• Engineering officer: Roll to see if the shields recharge. A useful position, but very unglamorous. If you're lucky you'll keep the ship together, and if you're really lucky somebody will notice.

Livening up these roles is tricky, and I haven't yet seen a system that does so effectively. Ultimately, you need to do one of two things. Either find a way to make the secondary positions' actions more important and interesting (without it being an obviously artificial attempt to make things more interesting), or else don't run a combat as purely just a ship-to-ship engagement. If it's simultaneously a ship battle and a boarding action, or a ship battle and a quarantine breach, then you stand a chance of having enough interesting stuff going on to keep everyone busy.

Yup. That's been my solution. The starship combat is a background element to the 'hunt the saboteur' drama on the ship.

Morrus said:

If your job in a game is simply to adjust the speed or turn the ship or scan the bad guys, you're going to be bored.

Realistically, sharing one ship between a bunch of people is hard to make work. Give them a ship each, and they actually feel like they have some agency.

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There's got to an alternative. Storywise, giving all the players their own ship is not very feasible and quite costly to expect every PC to purchase a ship each. A separate ship each is almost like splitting the party, how can you guarantee the entire party ends up at the same planet for the next prepared session of play?

Morrus said:

Give them control of the sickbay, then not so much.

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That almost sounds like saying, "You shouldn't play a cleric, because healing injured party members is not fun." While there is some truth in that, it is the reason most people play clerics in their standard D&D type game.

Much of starship operations could be relegated to "autopilot" most of the time, not requiring player participation for the bulk of interstellar travel. Take-off and landing, orbital operations, extra-vehicular activity, unexpected encounters/hazards in space, and ship combat situations would be when players need to engage as active crew members. Having to do jobs for active instances (to engage in encounters), but not all of the time, would certainly seem to be potentially enjoyable.

To me, operating the ship's guns is no different, nor less fun, than being a normal archer in combat, at least for the player running the gunnery officer. Being the pilot has got to be a fun activity - its even why I homebrewed a starship pilot class for my planned PF sci-fi game.

Have you ever looked at FGG Fire As She Bears ship rules for Razor Coast? Most ship combat systems seem to go a GM versus one player resolving combat, with the rest of players waiting around bored. FASB has crew positions: gunnery, operating the sails, steering the ship, and more in any naval engagement, so that all players have some required activity to resolve ship's combat - all party members have something to do. Why does such necessitate the absence of fun?

gamerprinter said:

There's got to an alternative. Storywise, giving all the players their own ship is not very feasible and quite costly to expect every PC to purchase a ship each. A separate ship each is almost like splitting the party, how can you guarantee the entire party ends up at the same planet for the next prepared session of play?

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Eh? Only if giving each player their own character is splitting the party.

That almost sounds like saying, "You shouldn't play a cleric, because healing injured party members is not fun." While there is some truth in that, it is the reason most people play clerics in their standard D&D type game.

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Clerics get to move and stuff, too.

Hey, if you disagree, I can't wait to see your system. I don't think anybody's managed it yet. I'm working hard on it for N.E.W. in the hope that I'll crack it. But if you don't think those experiences are valid concerns, that's cool.

Have you ever looked at FGG Fire As She Bears ship rules for Razor Coast?

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Yup. Same setup as FASA in the 80s.

Seriously man, if you think that stuff works, go for it! It doesn't for me, but you only have to please yourself. I'm not trying to convince you that manning the guns or the sails isn't fun. I'm just saying it's not fun for me. If you enjoy it - awesome!

Morrus said:

If your job in a game is simply to adjust the speed or turn the ship or scan the bad guys, you're going to be bored.

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In a turn-based, tabletop RPG, yes, probably.

Put on a real time pressure, then things get more interesting. Or, at least more stressful, and sometimes that's interesting.

As an example...

I played in a live-action RPG once, in which I was playing a mechanic and engineer (named Cody) from a post-apocalyptic world, the kind of guy who can keep an engine running in a Dustbowl of radioactive glass...

In the first part of the day, the GMs gave me a partially assembled model of an engine, and told me to assemble the rest, without instructions. Thankfully, I know a small amount about engines - I couldn't have done it with a real engine, but a model, I could manage.

Later in the day, I was told a car was being taken out into a combat scenario (the game used airsoft pellet guns for combat in some scenes). They had some foam house-sheathing, and told me to use it and duct tape to armor up the vehicle.

These were both entertaining tasks, even if mundane, because I was using my real hands and brain to do them.

Then, as they were taking the car out to the combat scene, they said, "Okay, Cody, grab your toolbox and get in."

"What?" I replied. "I'm not in the fight scene. I don't do airsoft combat. I was supposed to hang out in the Cantina for the next block of time."
"We know. But grab your goggles, your toolbox, and get in!"
"Okay..."

They drove the car out to the site of the combat, with me squeezed in the middle of the back seat, surrounded by all the game's combat monkeys. I rarely got to play with these gents, as they were always in the heavy combat scenes, and I was always in the engineering scenes. The GM then stopped the car, pulled out the engine I mentioned earlier, and put it on the dashboard. She then pulled out her airsoft gun, reversed it, and *wham!* *wham!*, she slammed the butt of it into the model five or six times, breaking bits and having them drop all over....

"Cody, we seem to have driven over a mine. The engine's damaged, and is now your problem. Everyone else, get ready, as the raiders who planted the mine are coming down the hill..." So now it was a race against time - can I repair the engine before the gunbunnies run out of ammunition? The combat monkeys were now fully dependent on one of the non-combat characters of the game, which was a real switch for them, too.

Doing a seemingly mundane job can become thrilling, if it actually matters, under the right circumstances.

Well, yeah, but we're talking about tabletop RPGs, not video games or real life starship battles!

MarkB said:

The problem is giving each position something to do which feels active and useful. Look at the 'standard' roles a 6-player party might have to fill.

• Helmsman: Steers the ship, takes evasive action, tries to outmaneuver the enemy. A good role, will likely keep the player entertained.
• Tactical officer: Fires the guns. Hard to go wrong here - good, solid fun, contributing to the encounter's outcome.
• Captain: Well, it sounds good, but in an RPG, you're basically just telling fellow players who probably already have a good handle on what's happening "do this", and hoping they'll go with it. Iffy, but might work well for the group's mouth if there's some bantering to do.
• Science Officer: Mans the sensors, provides up-to-date tactical analysis. Another works-in-theory role - at best you're rolling the equivalent of Perception checks each round, at worst you're the GM's mouthpiece to describe the action. Highly situational.
• Comms Officer: Talking of mouthpieces - you're not actually going to be doing the talking most of the time, that's the Captain's job, so at best you're a sentient answerphone, and at worst the opposition don't have anything to say anyway. Dull.
• Engineering officer: Roll to see if the shields recharge. A useful position, but very unglamorous. If you're lucky you'll keep the ship together, and if you're really lucky somebody will notice.

Livening up these roles is tricky, and I haven't yet seen a system that does so effectively. Ultimately, you need to do one of two things. Either find a way to make the secondary positions' actions more important and interesting (without it being an obviously artificial attempt to make things more interesting), or else don't run a combat as purely just a ship-to-ship engagement. If it's simultaneously a ship battle and a boarding action, or a ship battle and a quarantine breach, then you stand a chance of having enough interesting stuff going on to keep everyone busy.

Click to expand...

Maybe base the roles off of roles that we already know are fun. Something like science or coms officer could play more like a mage with different buffs and debuffs they can throw out. Captain like a bard or maybe cleric (though not including a captain at all is a good choice.) Engineering could be like an artificer or cleric rigging not just the shields, but other stations to do new and better functions.

Adding boarding and other elements is a good idea. One of the reasons I suggested FTL is because the game is very micro focused and every attack will directly or indirectly impact the crew. Like boarders will jump over, a weapon will start a fire in the ship, or breach the hull. (You could basically take any wizard spell slap it on a torpedo and have a new weapon.) Involve the PCs more then just the ship.

Boarding adds an excellent additional dimension, yep.

If you're all doing a little part of ship flying, and a large part of repelling boarders/hunting saboteurs then it can work. The ship flying is just a backdrop to the main action. But you have to come up with a lot of ideas as to what that main action can be while engaged in starship combat!