CarlZog
Explorer
Fading Suns is a really intriguing setting, but I wouldn't lump it together with the likes of Traveller -- or any other "generic"-type space opera. It seems like a totally different vibe.
Carl
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Space RPGs?
- Thread starter Metus
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Fading Suns is a really intriguing setting, but I wouldn't lump it together with the likes of Traveller -- or any other "generic"-type space opera. It seems like a totally different vibe.
Carl
Jürgen Hubert
First Post
It does have its own unique vibe - but that's not a bad thing in this case. And the OP hasn't explicitly stated that he wants a generic space RPG - just that he's not looking for the themes of Star Wars and Star Trek.
Ranger REG
Explorer
Is it possible to forget the themed setting the RPG comes with and focus simply on the rules to salvage? I know I did that with my OA book so I don't have to play Rokugan d20. I just use it for my own psuedo-Asian setting.
Some have even use Star Wars Saga rules to make a Firefly/Serenity-type game despite the published version.
Universe is now available as a free download.
What do you mean by "space opera"? In one sense, it is used to mean "sci-fi consisting of a thin veneer of spaceships and rayguns over stock characters, stock situations, and stock plots". In another it is used to mean "interstellar sci-fi more concerned with spaceships than planets, in which the scope is wide and the scale large (tending to 'grandiose' on both those dimensions)".
GURPS 4th edition provides a very impressive SF RPG toolkit. GURPS Space has the best starsystem generation and world generation rules I have ever seen, and very good rules for generating aliens too--though they come out in GURPS terms (not quite so generic as the planets). GURPS Ultra-Tech and GURPS Bio-Tech are unrivalled as lists of SF equipment and technologies: consider converting the stats to your favourite game if youdon't like GURPS. GURPS Spaceships is elegant, simple, and realistic (though it is possible you might want more crunchy detail in your spaceships.
Star Hero has superior material on the genre itself and its sub-genres and guidance on how to set up and run an SF campaign.
I notice that a lot of people have recommended Traveller, but the Traveller universe has problems, most of which are legacies of its '70s design.
- Traveller was designed in 1977, based on SF that was aging even then. Its 1950s and 1960s SF tropes are sadly dated, and it no longer looks futuristic. It has become retro-futuristic, like Space 1889.
- The original designers half intended Traveller as a generic game, and a lot of the canon for their universe was laid down by deliberately-vague statements about a semi-generic 'Imperium'. The fundamentals of how the universe works were never designed and, in important ways have never been settled. Important facts about how the Imperium works are either unstated or contradictory.
- Most of the published detail of Traveller consists of hundreds of planets that were randomly generated with Traveller's lame late-70s random world generation system. Connections between a planet's size, atmosphere, population, tech level, and starport are not quite absent, but are far too weak, and many of teh results are absurd.
- For "convenience", in Traveller space is two-dimensional.
In short, I could only recommend Traveller to a Traveller fan. If you're unfamiliar, and worse if you and your players are SF fans, you will find it laughable.
Of different versions of Traveller, the one I would come closest to recommending would be GURPS Traveller: Interstellar Wars. This a very well put-together product: well-organised, well-written, and with very good coverage. It is set during the last century of the First Imperiium, so it avoids a lot of the problems of the Third Imperium. It covers only a few sub-sectors, and is lucky enough to avoid most of the absurd astrography. PCs get to come from Earth c. AD2100, so it is possible to have a good handle on their backgrounds. Unfortunately, Space is still 2-D.
Transhuman Space (powered by GURPS) is excellent science fiction worldbuilding, but probably not suitable for space opera. On one hand it is set entirely within this solar system (no interstellar travel), and on the other it allows new technology to change things so much that stock characters and stok situations are incompatible.
I'm not familiar with Dream Pod 9's Jovian Chronicles, but some of the people involved are very cluey, and the knowledge and attention to detail in what I have seen of the spaceships are very impressive. There is no FTL in Jovian Chronicles either, but I didn't get the impression that the technology had changed what it is to be a person the way it has in Transhuman Space.
I bought and downloaded Thousand Suns a little while ago, which certainly sets out to be the sort of thing you want. But I haven't been able to form an opinion of it yet because (1) it is too long, and the type is too small, for me to be comfortable reading it on the screen, and (2) bizarre choice of layout and paper size (pages side-by-side on 6" by 9" pages, laid out like two-page spreads) makes it unsuitable to be printed out and bound in sensible format on any paper I can get.
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This is a matter of taste, of course. I simply loathed Fading Suns, which in my opinion was not SF at all. It was fantasy, and very clichéd fantasy at that, in amateurish fancy dress. A fantasia of late mediaeval decadence with sci-fi trappings as convincing as painted cardboard.
Punnuendo
First Post
Burning Empires, using the Burning Wheel system is a lot of fun. It is based off the Iron Empires graphic novels. You play out the invasion of a planet by these alien parasites. Really set up well for storytelling and you get to create the planet together with the players.
Or you could run Savage Worlds with the Sci-Fi pdfs. SW is a generic rules system that lives up to it's claim of being "fast, fun, and furious." Definitely worth a look I think.
Or you could run Savage Worlds with the Sci-Fi pdfs. SW is a generic rules system that lives up to it's claim of being "fast, fun, and furious." Definitely worth a look I think.
Silver Moon
Adventurer
What? No post from Diaglo yet telling you to try Gamma World?
Seriously though, I've run three Sci-fi games thus far. One was a one-nighter that had D&D playing characters who had crossed over into a sci-fi setting so I just used the D&D rules. The second game had a sci-fi superhero flavor to it and I used Mutants and Masterminds, which worked very well. The third was a ENWorld Gameday earlier this year, where I used D20 Future, and it also worked rather well due to the players familiarity with D20Modern.
Seriously though, I've run three Sci-fi games thus far. One was a one-nighter that had D&D playing characters who had crossed over into a sci-fi setting so I just used the D&D rules. The second game had a sci-fi superhero flavor to it and I used Mutants and Masterminds, which worked very well. The third was a ENWorld Gameday earlier this year, where I used D20 Future, and it also worked rather well due to the players familiarity with D20Modern.
Jürgen Hubert
First Post
Personally, I always thought that Fading Suns was one of the best games centering on occultism. Not occultism as in "mystical powers" as it is so commonly used in RPGs, but using the word in its more original meaning - with the PCs as "seekers after hidden knowledge". There is an enormous amount of secrets and lost knowledge in the setting, and knowledge of them is power.
And no, Fading Suns isn't any more science fiction than Star Trek or Star Wars are. It uses science as a source of jargon and technobabble, and is quite open and unashamed about this. But this fits the setting perfectly well - the underlying assumption is that science doesn't have all the answers. Science and technology tried to create an utopia - the Second Republic - and failed because they couldn't cater to the spiritual needs of humanity. But now religion and faith have become corrupted as well, so it is up to the player characters to find a new way towards salvation.
Say what you will, but Fading Suns holds a place of honor among my gaming collection for a reason.
Amphimir Míriel
Explorer
I second this. I have been thinking of running a Sci-Fi game, using the SW-Saga rules, without Force and Jedi, to play in the Wormhole nexus (setting of the Vorkosigan books by Louis McMaster Bujold)
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