Did Anybody Ever Play "Space Opera?"

[coyote6]

Hmm.

A lot of people came close, it seems. I wonder if the mechanics of character creation were any more complicated than 3.5e, or whether they seemed that way compared to other games of the time. I never played it, but I vaguely recall it being touted as 'superior' to CT.

FWIW, I own the game, never played it, but did make up a few characters -- I played Champions at around the same time, and I thought Champions' character creation was easier. I think 3.5e would be way simpler than Space Opera; IIRC, the first step in SO is to figure out the details of your character's home planet. The only way d20 would even get rise to that neighborhood might be if you have every single D&D and d20 book, and have to consult them all; or are making epic level characters, again with a crate full of sourcebooks.

I can see how some might view it as preferable to Traveller -- it depends on your taste in games and SF. For example, Trav's tech was heavy on the slugthrowers for most people, while I recall SO had plenty of blastery weapons, with cool technobabble to back them up. Mechanically, I dunno -- if you like details, it would probably be better than CT.

And if you like character advancement and characters not dying until after character generation, of course.

 

[Zelligars Apprentice]

For those who are interested, here are a few websites that relate to Space Opera:

The FGU's Space Opera home page
This appears to be the only acutal SO fan site out there (aside from a few Yahoo groups dedicated to specific campaigns). Some good stuff here.

Fantasy Games Unlimited home page (Mirror)
NOTE: This is a mirror of the FGU website. The original site appears to be dead. It is interesting that as late as 2002 you could order new copies of SO from FGU. I don't know if that is still the case.

Phalanx Games Design
The website of SO designer Phil McGregor. Nothing about SO, but you may be interested in his current game project.

Enjoy!

 

[Heckler]

I played SO way back in high school.

And by "played" I mean "rolled up a character."

 

[Plane Sailing]

Ooh, that's nasty. Somehow, my Traveller games always seemed to end up like Star Wars anyway.

For Plane Sailing and Devyn, what do you remember about the starship creation process? Massively involved (say like Fire, Fusion and Steel)? Or more like High Guard in its level of detail?

Did you use 3d trig to calculate distances between stars?

I know it had zoomorphic PC races. Were they lame or cool?

Actually, to be fairer to Traveller it was more like playing Firefly (in fact, it was *exactly* like playing Firefly... they could almost have called it "spaceships and sixshooters"! I was so sad that series got cancelled)

Starships never figured into my campaign for some reason - I think they were basically out of reach financially, and they just got used as 'locations' and 'plot devices'. Certainly nobody ever commissioned their own ships.

As a result, spaceship construction rules never got a workout.

I used my own 'universe' rather than any SO specific one, and I don't think I bothered working out precise distances with 3d trig (although it wouldn't have been a hardship, I don't think it ever came up).

The zoomorphic races were only loosely defined in my original rules, and I just used them as-is. The didn't have the social diversity in the races which Traveller eventually had with its excellent 'aliens' guidebooks - those were textbooks on how to make alien races more than 'humans in funny makeup' IMO. I remember that the Transhumans became a backward and religiously repressed race in my campaign, laden with all kinds of hangups which made them refreshing character choices and not mere ubermensch PCs Later books may have fleshed out SO zoomorphic races, but I never came across them, so I can't really comment.

Cheers

 

[The Green Adam]

Cosmic Rhapsody and Ragnarok in G Minor

We played a lot of Space Opera in the early to mid eighties - a lot of Space Opera. The background was bitten from a dozen classic SF books and films, the system was complex to the point of ridiculousness and every drawback mentioned here is true tenfold. And we loved it! Largely we liked it because we simplified it, built our own universe and generally focused on having fun rather then focusing on the games many failings.

Our two campaigns, Cosmic Rhapsody and Ragnarok in G Minor, each lasted 6-8 months playing every Saturday (and Sundays occaisionally), featured a GM and 5-6 players and took place in the same milieu of our own design.

The premise of the first campaign was that the players were freelance explorers/pirates trying to locate a fabled, lost civilization. The quest to locate this galactic Atlantis eventually started a mad dash by various governments and mysterious organizations to find the anicent homeworld of the civilization first. In the end, the galaxy erupted into war to obtain the secrets of the lost people and the planet of these super-science/mystic aliens was destroyed to prevent it from falling into the wrong hands.

The second campaign took place 5 years later in game time and dealt with a team of top secret government operatives (the PCs) searching for a super weapon that escaped the destruction of the alien world in the previous game. Tying the story into a Villians & Vigilantes campaign we played inbetween, the super weapon was a sentient crystal that was the source of vast, unknowable powers (exposure to it had created the most powerful hero in the V&V campaign). The players found it just as an evil empire attempted to acquire it and they were transformed into superpowered beings. The campaign then changed to a sort of secret agent-Legion of Super Heroes game with the PCs fighting crazed criminal masterminds, space pirates and the like. Ragnarok (from the campaign's title) was a planet oribiting a slightly smaller then normal G-type star where the crystal's evil counterpart was located. This crystal was eventually found by the group's arch-nemesis.

Ahh, to be young and gaming...

AD

 

[Mark]

I played it, a looooong time ago. Never ran a game.

Played it a few times, but it was just too cumbersome, as I recall.

Basically, SO screamed "you're in Star Wars!" while Traveller said "you're in Space 1999".

Triple ditto.

As for complexity? Anyone who can't handle math shouldn't be a part of space travel.

True enough for actual space travel, however, I'd counter that anyone wanting to play a game, generally would like the game to be less complex than actual space travel.

 

[rvalle]

Oh my... the flash backs!

Yes, played it while I was in High School on an army base in Europe. I had GREAT fun with that game and remember it very fondly.

I had an Avian scientist with something like a 3 str and a 18 Int. Somewhere along the character creation process the starting cash was influenced by your Int so I was weak but loaded with money.

He was very vain about his plumage. Walked around in shorts to show it off to good advantage and had to have a 'bird bath' every night.

Had some wild crazy fights with a Dark Force using dude. Ahh, the memories.

I'd play it again though not sure I would like it as much now as I did back then.

rv

 

[Dark Mistress]

I didn't read the whole thread, just FYI

But yes i remember playing it way back in the day. All I recall is that it was a fairly complicated game but fun and that starship combat was worse than trying to do trig homework.

We only played it for a few months and then moved onto Spacemaster by ICE.

 

[Camris]

I did for a while

During the early 80's sometime, I got the boxed set and we made characters for a couple of weeks. Was sluggish to make characters and play, so we eventually switched to the GURPS rules and just kept the universe setting.
I still have the main booklets, Starsector Atlases and the Seldon's compendium of Starships 1 and 2. Probably lost the loose sheets that came in the box though.

 

[FATDRAGONGAMES]

I had it (and liked it a lot) but was unable to interest the rest of our group in it. They were split pretty evenly between Traveller and Star Frontiers, and between switching between those two games nobody wanted to add a third sci-fi selection to the mix.