Choosing the best system for a homebrew space opera campaign

[Tyler Do'Urden]

Hey, I've been thinking of starting a homebrew space-opera campaign, inspired by a mix of many influences, but primarily:

-the old Starflight computer games
-"A Fire Upon the Deep" by Vernor Vinge
-The Golden Age Trilogy by John C. Wright
-"Ventus" by Karl Schroeder
-the Race for the Galaxy card game

In other words, I see a game including the following:
-exploring the ruins of a fallen galactic empire in the distant future, after a dark age in which humanity's origins were forgotten (the PCs are from a planet in which civilization has just been rebuilt thousands of years in the future)
-probably no aliens (in fact, ancient extinct alien races are part of the plotline, but no "contemporary aliens")- but many transhuman/uplift races, divergent into numerous forms after a hundred thousand years of genetic engineering and divergent evolution
-probably no FTL- physical immortality and suspension technologies make the time gaps less relevant, however
-emerging psychic powers as the true nature of the cosmos is revealed and trans-human intelligence reaches the point at which reality can be manipulated

So, given these elements, what RPG system would be the best? What I don't want:
-GURPS- never been a fan of the system
-d20 Modern/Future; again, the system didn't do much for me

Possibilities:
-modifying the d20 Star Wars system. However, I thought the way this system handed science and technology was very, very weak at best, and too Jedi-centric.
-modifying the d20 Fading Suns system. But I'd have to strip out a lot of stuff that doesn't fit the system (when I say the galaxy has gone through a "dark age", I don't mean anything resembling Europe's "dark ages". I love Fading Suns, but this isn't what I have in mind.)
-Alternity. I liked the system, and I could drag it out again... but most of my players aren't very familiar with it.
-Traveller d20. Never really looked at it, but it might be a good fit for what I've got in mind.

Any other ideas?

 

[garrowolf]

Nexus D20 would be good for your game

My Nexus d20 system may be a good fit. It was designed around being a sort of universal system taking elements from Gurps, T20 Traveller, and Saga edition Star Wars. All you have to do is pick the Fusion Age as your tech level for your setting. It uses rotating sections and no gravitic drives. You would have sleeper ships with AIs taking care of people or have the crew experience the trip as VR but with the time altered in the VR so that they feel like they are experiencing a slow trip fast but the time goes to normal once they encounter things.
You could decide if you want to allow cyborgs or whatever into the game. Decide what power level you want to set the starting characters at. You could do street level (5th) for starting characters or heroic (10th) for officers. Set it as a low mana setting.
Once you have more worked out I would like to add your setting to my setting list.
Email me if you need any help with it.
garrowolf@gmail.com

Nexus D20 - Nexus D20 Wiki for the nexus rules.

 

[TreChriron]

True20! Familiar system, yet lighter, customizable, and there is support for sci-fi in the book. Also a fancy Wiki with ideas as well.

Also, Eclipse Phase has many of the transhuman elements, hard science, and other ideas you are looking for. It is similar to Basic Roleplaying (Call of Cthulu) with merits/flaws. I have an alternative character sheet on my site (see sig - downloads). There is a fanzine available as well.

I am planning on creating a True20 conversion for Eclipse Phase. :-D

 

[TreChriron]

My Nexus d20 system may be a good fit. ...
Nexus D20 - Nexus D20 Wiki for the nexus rules.

Wow! This is actually done quite well. I am intrigued and will explore more further.

 

[garrowolf]

Thanks! I am proud of the system.

Eclipse Phase is an interesting setting but I hate the system.

 

[The Human Target]

I second True 20.

It looks like what you want.

 

[Shades of Green]

Stars Without Number is a rules-light space-opera game inspired by Traveller and by old-school D&D (while not being a direct clone of either); you might want to check it out as its PDF is free for download and its print edition is quite reasonably priced (circa $25 for a hardcover).

 

[smetzger]

I havn't looked closely at Traveller d20, but I know the original Traveller could be used for what you have in mind.

 

[jedavis]

Of Traveller d20, True20, and Mongoose Traveller, my group has so far enjoyed Mongoose the most. Traveller d20 was problematic because in d20, levels are everything, so characters who get lucky during character creation completely outclass unlucky characters by dint of having more levels (especially with military careers, where they can earn thousands of extra XP by winning battle honors). The de-implementation of dead levels was rather clunky and easily disrupted by multiclassing, and the starship and vehicle design rules were also painful (Wait, I need to allocate extra reactor space for headlights? Back to square 1...). Finally, their armor as pseudo-DR rules, while interesting from a mathematical standpoint, slowed down combat significantly. True20 was pretty good, but the characters got to the point where only optimized spellcasters could threaten them, and I couldn't justify the existence of a sufficient number of such spellcasters within the game world to reliably produce credible threats (never mind the build time on said casters for me).

MongTrav so far seems a solid system. Much lighter rules-wise than either True20 or Trav20, core mechanic is 2d6+mods vs DC 8, and only need the one core book to play or run the game. Characters are reasonably competent, but still within the bounds of human believability even at high numbers of terms (I think we have one character who did 7 terms of prior history). Current party makeup is an ex-marine, a doctor who dabbles in engineering, a psion, and a hacker / assassin (ex-corporate intel).

As far as GMing goes, I've been running sessions mostly by the seat of my pants... NPC stat blocks are so stripped down compared to d20 that very little mechanical prep is needed, leaving me free to think of interesting things to have happen. Similarly, combat is pretty fast, but not terribly lethal; generally people go unconscious without dying, and to guarantee death you have to take an extra turn of shooting after that. Even the non-combat characters (the doctor and the psion) are useful in combat (whereas in Trav20, many of the noncombat classes got 1/4 BaB, making them useless when the shooting started); the doctor is a decent shot, and even though the psion isn't trained in Gun Combat, he's got an upgrade to his weapon that lets him add his Psi bonus (though he's still more effective at killing people with his brain than with bullets).

As for your thematic requirements:
So far, the game I've run has consisted almost entirely of exploring Ancient ruins in a setting where the only aliens known to exist have been extinct since before humanity achieved interstellar flight. You could drop FTL pretty easily, though it would take a little design work to hack the pre-built ships in the book; you'd need a lot more reactor fuel, but no jump drive. It might also affect some of the core assumptions of the trade rules, but if you're looking to explore rather than trade, probably not a problem. The psionics so far are pretty reasonable; our psion is a teleportation specialist with Teleport 4 (skill ranks: 0 is trained, 1 is competent, every point after that is about 4 years of experience with that skill. So 4 is mastery, more or less), and it's still expensive and dangerous to use.

Conclusion: unless you're really set on d20, I recommend Mongoose Traveller. It's a pretty good system, and doesn't require much modification for what you want to use it for.

 

[Leif]

You DON'T LIKE GURPS Space / GURPS Traveller? For shame!