What do you like or don't like in sci-fi rpg

[Turanil]

Aaah! Thanks for your answers. (And keep telling me!)

So right now I begin to see some important points:

1) Character Classes : Varied and with strong flavor. Psy users are nice; Tech-users are also great but must have something special as a class. Well, for the latter I have been considering a concept where the Techie gets a small robot who acts for him as a familar acts for a wizard. My problem is to find why only the Techie class can have such a mechanical familiar and no other class (so the class has its own special feature).

2) Space-Opera vs Hard-scifi : To keep a "semi believable" physical rules may be a good thing, but it must not bog down the action and adventure.

3) A setting with plenty of adventuring options : That's easy to create. Actually, I am thinking that a humanoid-planetary confederacy (ala Star-Trek but much smaller) is collapsing due to internal strife between powerful organizations (big corporations, navigators' guild, etc.), and at the same time, alien horrors from beyond space (ala Cthulhu) are now beginning to corrupt humanity and destroying it from inside.

 

[Turanil]

By the way: one idea I have been considered, is a sci-fi dungeon delving-like adventure where the characters explore a great starship such as an Imperial Star Destroyer.

I imagined the characters kept in hibernation tanks (for whatever reason) and being transported in that starship. But then the starship was attacked and badly damaged. Most of its crew is dead, and in several parts the ship is in very bad shape (with no air and gravity generators functioning, etc.), but due to its great size, other parts are still functional. Of course the starship is slowly getting worse, and as time progresses, more and more area cease to function. The adventurers must make their way through it (going through rooms, corridors, traps, etc. as in a DnD dungeon), encountering monsters (like combat droids, etc.), so until they find a mean to escape.

A variant of this adventure, is that such a great starship was carrying something extremely important that must be retrieved at all costs. Unfortunately the starship crashed onto a liquid planet similar to Neptune. As time passes, the starship is sinking deeper, so pression outsides augment, with some bad effects etc. In some places the starship is flooded; where gravity generators are out, the gravity is actually much stronger! (due to the planet's size). Finally, there is a race of giant squids (based on krakens) with psionic abilities and who can project astral-bodies of themselves, who also have an interested in this ship which has intruded their homeworld.

You see the kind of stuff I was thinking about...

I think this would make a great scenario. (BTW if someone knows if on the net can be found a map of a SW Imperial Star Destroyer, ST Enterprise, or similar vessel, this would be great)

 

[johnsemlak]

To answer the question, what do you like in a Sci-Fi answer, I would answer that I like what I call "High science fiction", such as Star Frontiers.

I like games that do not contain Earth.
I like games that contain intersteller travel
I like games that include the standard sci-fi weapons and technology.
I like games that don't include star wars style 'magic'.

 

[ChrisWaller]

oh, and if you can throw in an excuse for why melee combat is still important (a la Star Wars or Dune), all the better.

I generally fall back on the concept of "eggshells with cannons" as far as starships are concerned. If a stray bullet has a chance of rupturing the hull, you want to minimize the number of stray bullets flying around.
Of course since most ships in sci-fi games can take more of a beating than an Abrams, it doesn't pan out in a rules-friendly sort of way. Fortunately, my players never seem to catch on to that nasty little piece of logic.

 

[Umbran]

1) If you play sci-fi rpg, what do you especially like in your sci-fi adventures?, but also what you don't like and would like to see changed.

I like sci-fi rpgs just fine. I like in them the same thign I like in my fantasy games - a good, stirring story with unique and interesting characters that are personally invested in what's going on. The "unique and interesting" is not in the mechanics sense, but in the personality sense, and is basically the players' problem, not the GM's.

The "personally invested" part is what many GMs miss, in both genres. For shorts and one-shots, I can deal with adventure for the sake of adventure. But in longer campaigns, I want the PCs to have solid, personal reasons for risking life and limb.

Hard science fiction is difficult to do consistently well unless you yourself are a science buff. And even then - a sci-fi novelist has to do a lot of research to make sure the details of the Big Ideas are solid and cling together. Many GMs don't have the wherewithal to pull it off. Anyone who can do fantasy can do Space Opera, though

3) Whether you play or don't play in sci-fi rpg, what would be a very cool feature to absolutely have in a sci-fi campaign?

You want cool features? Go to your public library. Go to the Sci-fi section. Pull out a book at random. You're likley to find a cool feature. There are more cool features in wsci-fi than one can shake a stick at.

 

[James Heard]

I enjoy my science fiction games fairly hard science, for instance in the 'near science fiction' gaming I've done I've always been completely bored and annoyed with games like Shadowrun and enamored of games like Cyberpunk. I don't really think there's a big deal about trying to keep your science at least with the "I'm not magic" sign very conspicuously present at all times. Heck, I've even played and ran Mekton games where the science was trying very earnestly to be solid on the surface.

Like other people have said though, you have troubles when you start dishing out 'powers' in your hard sci. Not because of any particular hard science genre rule, but because it tends to separate players into the haves and have nots. I like science fiction because people are really more comfortable with technology these days than they are with really understanding why all those inns in the villages don't have indoor plumbing, and it's not as hard slapping real world concepts and movie plots onto a science fiction game as it is trying to figure out who gets to play the elves when you're adopting James Bond movies and what a nuke might be in D&D. That's the advantage of going for a hard science ideal rather than a strict space opera feel, epic things happen in real life all the time without going overboard in idealizing the setting and simplifying it. It's not very hard to make up NPCs that act like real people, sort of harder to take some nutjob like Captain Kirk and figure out what society sends out space captains to wench their way across the galaxy losing men at every stop to monsters. Anyways, that's my .02.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

I like it when the social and cultural implications of technological advances are considered when creating the setting. Remember, while human innovation is boundless, so is human perversity.

The best example of this among RPG settings is probably Transhuman Space - not only is it a very well thought out setting, it also makes you seriously consider how the future of our own world might be...

 

[Calim]

here is some deck plans

http://startrek.johnny-o.net/startrek/vessels/defiant_deck.html

 

[Turanil]

The best example of this among RPG settings is probably Transhuman Space - not only is it a very well thought out setting, it also makes you seriously consider how the future of our own world might be...

Effectively, this TS looks really interesting! I got a look at it on the net, and I think it will be among my next rpg purchases.

Now I see much better the difference between Space-opera and Hard sci-fi. My idea for the sci-fi campaign is in between these two extremes (i.e.: Tranhuman Space and Star-Wars).

And thanks for the ST deck-plan URL!

 

[Psion]

Traveller (and its first refinement, MegaTraveller) had most of what interested me in a SFRPG:

• Realistic solar system generation
• Spacecraft operate per newton in real space. I'm okay with psuedo reactionless drives (Robert Forward has an interesting justification for such a mechanism), but I gnash my teeth everytime I see a game with starship statistics that include a "max speed" in real space.
• FTL travel. No super-efficient FTL comms. No usable time travel. (Yes, I know FTL implies time travel, but prefer there be a reason, however contrived, that this "doesn't really work." No easily available instant teleportation (as a means of FTL transit, okay. As a ship to surface ferry, ug)
• Player-ownable starships.
• History
• Earth is somewhere in that history, even if distant. (I really dislike games like Star Frontiers that spontaneously create a new universe with no mention of earth.)
• Influence of a variety of SF authors, not just one.
• Ancient precursor races (departing from Traveller, I wouldn't mind an approach where the ancient races are still active...)
• Weaponry that sounds like an extrapolation of current physics, not just some technical terms thrown together space opera style, and don't assume the easily portable energy weapons are just a little more difficult than firearms. Firearms will be around for a while, folks.
• Alien species that don't shatter disbelief (i.e., no races that supposedly evolved separately from us, yet have females that look sexy for humans and they can crossbreed with us.)
• Both teeming planets and rugged frontiers. Space should feel HUGE.

What I didn't dig about Traveller

• 2d starmaps
• Humanocentricism. I think I would dig some more delicate political situations with alien races like B5.