I've run that one, too, and was an outside reader for one of his later designs... The Traveller influence on Space Opera is undeniable; Phil's even discussed that online a few times. Not worth the time investment IMO to get it to running, but with an app to speed up char gen and generate the base chances, it'd be reasonably within reach. S&S got campaigns, SO got several one-shots.
I think it is fair to say both them had relatively little impact on the genre. Traveller pretty much handles the hard(ish) SF space opera end of things. There's GURPS, but it doesn't seem all that influential these days. d6 Star Wars, the original Star Trek system, and of course Shadowrun covers 99% of the rest, though there are some oddballs like Jorune, and Paranoia, lol. I guess we could mention Star Frontiers, not that it really did anything notable, though they printed a lot of copies... Of course nowadays there's Other Worlds (the PbtA equivalent of Traveller). Eclipse Phase was popular for a bit, though not very innovative. Still, Traveller pretty much killed it, Marc got probably 80% of the SFRPG market for 40 years. That's pretty impressive.
Space Opera covered a wide range from Lensmen to classic imperial science fiction to Star Trek to Star Wars. It didn't do "hard" science fiction as well as Traveller I think. SO was designed to allow you to do a variety of styles and it had its own setting derived from the Space Marines miniature game. Character generation was lengthy, and was designed to allow you to do pretty much any character type. We tried it but Traveller stayed our go to science fiction RPG. SO was a bit... "clunky", it had a large number of sub systems. FASAs Star Trek game was fun but tied to that setting. SO was out before (? 1980) either the licensed Star Wars or Star Trek games (late and mid 80s respectively iirc), and was (prior to them) the go to for that style of game / setting. Quite a bit of nostalgia in this thread for me. Classic Traveller with the task resolution system developed by DGP is what I use now although the gear head side of me loves Mega Traveller. By the time you finished designing a star ship in MT you really felt like you built the thing
Traveller never has been intended to be "Hard SF" as a game. (Source: Marc Miller. multiple times over the years.)Space Opera covered a wide range from Lensmen to classic imperial science fiction to Star Trek to Star Wars. It didn't do "hard" science fiction as well as Traveller I think. SO was designed to allow you to do a variety of styles and it had its own setting derived from the Space Marines miniature game. Character generation was lengthy, and was designed to allow you to do pretty much any character type. We tried it but Traveller stayed our go to science fiction RPG. SO was a bit... "clunky", it had a large number of sub systems. FASAs Star Trek game was fun but tied to that setting. SO was out before (? 1980) either the licensed Star Wars or Star Trek games (late and mid 80s respectively iirc), and was (prior to them) the go to for that style of game / setting. Quite a bit of nostalgia in this thread for me. Classic Traveller with the task resolution system developed by DGP is what I use now although the gear head side of me loves Mega Traveller. By the time you finished designing a star ship in MT you really felt like you built the thing
I actually think anything near future that doesn't include transhumanism shouldn't be considered "hard". I think it's going to be very likely that we are going to be instilling AI human-analogs into hard drives and sending those out to space in some sort of diaspora (much like David Brin's Existence) instead of actually taking the effort to send a pile of meat long distances... And if we do send bodies into space, I have to imagine we'll bio- and gene-gineer those bodies in such a way that space will not be as much a hardship. At least the more successful programs will - earth-bound ethicists be danged. I mean, one of the most challenging parts of sending people to Mars is the radiation they will suffer. Bio-engineering humans to be able to withstand or even thrive in higher radiation environments seems like that would be a useful thing to develop...
I always had a big transhuman element in my Traveller games via augments.
OK. "Hardish". Satisfied?
As soon as you get to FTL travel you have left current science screaming in the background. And the game wasn't designed to deliver perfect scientific accuracy. It did present a tech tree that made sense, and was cohesive. You did need to accept some things as a given. Unless you're planning on a game kept inside our solar system or generation ships there are going to be multiple factors beyond our science / technology.
Nope. It's not even really at the harder end of space opera as a genre. Bujold's Vorkosigan Saga/Vorkosiverse is rollicking good space opera, but more consistent and more realistic on the whole. Sadly, the official RPG is GURPS based... Which very much won't encourage the feel of the novels with Miles' wild schemes. Also at the harder end: Niven's "Known Space." Especially The Integral Trees & The Smoke Ring. The official adaptation RPG of Ringworld is not Chaosium's best work, but it is workmanlike. And rare as adult hens' teeth.OK. "Hardish". Satisfied?
but those aren't one in the rules.... until T5.
Yeah, well, FGU never did understand how system related to tone very well. Pretty much all their offerings were overly mechanically complex and yet in some way missed the point. I think Aftermath might be the one that was closest to dead on, as all the elaborate subsystems really keyed into the whole survivalist 'gear junky' thing. Gangster was also quite good, though kind of an oddball in their titles.Space Opera covered a wide range from Lensmen to classic imperial science fiction to Star Trek to Star Wars. It didn't do "hard" science fiction as well as Traveller I think. SO was designed to allow you to do a variety of styles and it had its own setting derived from the Space Marines miniature game. Character generation was lengthy, and was designed to allow you to do pretty much any character type. We tried it but Traveller stayed our go to science fiction RPG. SO was a bit... "clunky", it had a large number of sub systems. FASAs Star Trek game was fun but tied to that setting. SO was out before (? 1980) either the licensed Star Wars or Star Trek games (late and mid 80s respectively iirc), and was (prior to them) the go to for that style of game / setting. Quite a bit of nostalgia in this thread for me. Classic Traveller with the task resolution system developed by DGP is what I use now although the gear head side of me loves Mega Traveller. By the time you finished designing a star ship in MT you really felt like you built the thing
Meh, I think Transhumanism is more religion than science. Not that every single thought transhumanists have ever had is without merit by any means, but I doubt there will be anything even remotely similar to what they envisage which comes to pass. Its like with all speculation, usually the world stays a lot more like it always was than the visionaries imagine.
