Space Opera RPG

[aramis erak]

Last week, I discovered the existence of the 80’s Space Opera RPG from Fantasy Unlimited - the makers of another game I knew well, Villains & Vigilantes.

Curious about it, I picked up a copy for cheap and have been (unsuccessfully) trying to muddle my way through it. It is a quirky, early game to be sure. Has anyone else here had experience with this game? Apparently, it was one of the ”big three” SF games at the time, between itself, Traveller and Star Frontiers. I’m somewhat surprised I’d never heard of it before, but apparently there are quite a few sourcebooks that go along with the game.

I've run several one-shots, but never a campaign.
It's a Traveller knockoff in many ways. The scope of the rules is much the same, the nature of Char Gen, the world generation, the kinds of setting... but it tweaks a bunch of things, and is, flatly, not to my tastes, not even in my most munchkin. The fluff in the ship and sector books is decent for the era, but the rules are way too convoluted.

 

[R_Chance]

I've run several one-shots, but never a campaign.
It's a Traveller knockoff in many ways. The scope of the rules is much the same, the nature of Char Gen, the world generation, the kinds of setting... but it tweaks a bunch of things, and is, flatly, not to my tastes, not even in my most munchkin. The fluff in the ship and sector books is decent for the era, but the rules are way too convoluted.

Like a homebrew Traveller with dice besides the d6.

 

[aramis erak]

Like a homebrew Traveller with dice besides the d6.

Phil has implied that that is precisely what it is...
albeit with a reversion to 3d6 stats instead of Traveller's 2d6. And like RQ, using percentile rolls for resolving many things.
Most of the skill.

 

[Thomas Shey]

It suffered pretty badly from having no consistently to how skill rolls were resolved, and there's always the aforementioned character generation woes.

 

[aramis erak]

It suffered pretty badly from having no consistently to how skill rolls were resolved, and there's always the aforementioned character generation woes.

That first element is also like Classic Traveller... each non-weapon skill in CT is a rule unto itself, with a variety of special case rolls.

 

[Thomas Shey]

That first element is also like Classic Traveller... each non-weapon skill in CT is a rule unto itself, with a variety of special case rolls.

To a degree, but at least there it was likely to always be a 2D6 roll and the skill was liable to add its bonus directly to that. SO wasn't even that consistent.

 

[R_Chance]

That first element is also like Classic Traveller... each non-weapon skill in CT is a rule unto itself, with a variety of special case rolls.

Until DGP developed their task system for skills. Late in CT, but still before MT.

 

[aramis erak]

To a degree, but at least there it was likely to always be a 2D6 roll and the skill was liable to add its bonus directly to that. SO wasn't even that consistent.

Not really - a couple of the adventures are 3 or 4 dice for attribute or less.

Plus, many are no roll at all. Such as putting on Battle Dress. Navigation through Jump Space. Doing the paperwork to get extra passengers. Many of the skills in CT would be d20 feats.

Most GMs ran it as 2d6+skill for everything, but that's not what's in the rulebook.

 

[dragoner]

A character often only had 3-4 skills (before expanded chargen books) so it was like a pbta playbook or something, pre-indie games, not that difficult to keep track of. Bringing this back around to SO, we did kitchen sink the game with Traveller and Gamma World, it wasn't chargen that turned us off as much as space combat where one only had star-torps, and nova guns.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Not really - a couple of the adventures are 3 or 4 dice for attribute or less.

Plus, many are no roll at all. Such as putting on Battle Dress. Navigation through Jump Space. Doing the paperwork to get extra passengers. Many of the skills in CT would be d20 feats.

Most GMs ran it as 2d6+skill for everything, but that's not what's in the rulebook.

Neither are what are in the adventures. It wouldn't be the only game to have skills that aren't routinely actually rolled for anything; Alternity had armor skills that mostly served as offsetting various problems at various ranks.