Space Adventure RPGs

[Mezuka]

Something that I feel being left unfortunately unclear is what kind of population scale the setting is supposed to have. The Coriolis Station is stated as having some 500,000 Zenithians living on it, 60 years after the original people split into two groups that stayed and went down to the planet respectively. How much is that of the total Zenithian population? Half of it? A tenth? A percent?
What about the Firstborn? Are they more or less common than Zenithians? Are there twice as many? Ten times as many? A hundred times as many?
Also, there are 36 system that are all have permanent populations, with 6 major inhabited planets. But there is still such population pressure that people are driven out to live as nomads on space ships?

Specific numbers don't matter, as no interstellar scale settings have them. But it seems really unclear what the population dynamics here are supposed to be.

The way I see the setting: It is a bit like the expansion to the West in the USA. There are frontier towns and settlements on all worlds (States) but the total population level of the Third Horizon is very low. The books and adventures don't add much info on population numbers. It is left to the GM to decide. For me the First Come are more numerous but their numbers are spread out. While the Zenithians are in lesser number but more concentrated around cities.

Nomads living on spaceship are idealists. They didn't move because of population pressure. They moved to flee a form of government they didn't like.

You will find more info on other systems in the Atlas Compendium and The Coriolis Community Atlas.

 

[Yora]

I was just talking with someone about similarities and differences between Corolis and Traveller, and now I really want to go back to the point earlier made in the thread that there is no well established sci-fi setting in the way that there is for fantasy.

At least in the space of RPGs, there absolutely is at least one!

Traveller, Coriolis, Stars Without Number, Scum and Villainy. These are all only slightly different takes on the same underlying framework. The framework of Dune. Which also massively influenced Star Wars, and of course there's been half a dozen Star Wars RPGs as well.

These six settings are at least as similar as Middle-Earth, Forgotten Realms, and Dragonlance. How many science fiction settings have telepathic and telekinetic powers? At least these six all do. Excuse my ignorance about Traveller, but Star Wars seems to be an outlier by not having a jumpgate system for travel between systems.

And even the Mass Effect series sits very close to this cluster of archetypes and conventions. (And doing a quck check, Fading Suns too.) Though in many ways, it's also sitting halfway to another cluster of videogame settings consisting of StarCraft, FreeSpace, and Halo. (And their raging lunatic progenitor Warhammer 40k.)

 

[Mezuka]

I was just talking with someone about similarities and differences between Corolis and Traveller, and now I really want to go back to the point earlier made in the thread that there is no well established sci-fi setting in the way that there is for fantasy.

At least in the space of RPGs, there absolutely is at least one!

Traveller, Coriolis, Stars Without Number, Scum and Villainy. These are all only slightly different takes on the same underlying framework. The framework of Dune. Which also massively influenced Star Wars, and of course there's been half a dozen Star Wars RPGs as well.

These six settings are at least as similar as Middle-Earth, Forgotten Realms, and Dragonlance. How many science fiction settings have telepathic and telekinetic powers? At least these six all do. Excuse my ignorance about Traveller, but Star Wars seems to be an outlier by not having a jumpgate system for travel between systems.

And even the Mass Effect series sits very close to this cluster of archetypes and conventions. (And doing a quck check, Fading Suns too.) Though in many ways, it's also sitting halfway to another cluster of videogame settings consisting of StarCraft, FreeSpace, and Halo. (And their raging lunatic progenitor Warhammer 40k.)

Dune is not very well detailed. We played Dune 2d20 and the GM came to the conclusion that even though the novels make a great narrative when it comes time to fish for details to create adventures the books are empty of answers. No one knows, for example, where the Fremen technology comes from.

 

[schneeland]

At least in the space of RPGs, there absolutely is at least one!
...

I feel the setting is maybe not as clearly defined as the fantasy equivalent, but there are definitely similarities (including that in many of these settings, you have a ship which serves as your mobile home base). For Traveller, though, I don't remember it having jump gates, at least not by default (I think it has jump drives).

 

[aramis erak]

I was just talking with someone about similarities and differences between Corolis and Traveller, and now I really want to go back to the point earlier made in the thread that there is no well established sci-fi setting in the way that there is for fantasy.

At least in the space of RPGs, there absolutely is at least one!

Traveller, Coriolis, Stars Without Number, Scum and Villainy. These are all only slightly different takes on the same underlying framework. The framework of Dune. Which also massively influenced Star Wars, and of course there's been half a dozen Star Wars RPGs as well.

Dune is a very weak influence in Traveller.

Dune's biggest element isn't the Empire nor its construction - it's the hydraulic despotism, a function which is utterly absent in Traveller and which isn't readily apparent in Coriolis. The Traveller Imperium explicitly owes a lot to the elements of Asimov's Foundation series, and Niven's Mote in God's Eye (part of the CoDo Verse series.

Dune also doesn't look like a big influence in Coriolis - at least, not in its big strokes. Dune is, largely, dominated by the hydraulic despotism element - "he who can destroy a thing controls a thing." The Dune setting's Imperium is quite different, actually, from the OTU one. All of the tropes of it in Traveller are also in the Imperium of Niven's end of the CoDoVerse; Most of them also exist in Asimov's Foundation. And in a few others, as well.

Traveller's key tropes -

• an Imperium, ruled by an elected Emperor, who appoints all the nobles. (Not from Dune. That's Niven)
• No communication faster than ships. (Dune and the CoDo both have this)
• FTL travel takes significant time. (Foundation and Codo, but Not Dune)
• Merchant captain-owners plying the spacelanes in independently FTL capable ships (Not in Herbert until Chapterhouse, but is in Foundation, OS Card, CJ Cherryh)
• Main characters/PCs are in their second career or later (largely untrue for Dune, not really strong in the other works I've read of Herbert's, but very interestingly, part of Niven's, Heinlein's, and Doc Smith's main characters in a variety of their works).
• Prison Planets (Straight out of the CoDo)
• Local authority (Card's Enderverse, Foundation, CoDo Verse, weakly so in Dune)
• slughthrowers in space.

It is also worth noting - none of the exemplar major literary characters are from dune.

THE ANSWERS
Identifications of the heroes and villains given above are as follows-
1. Luke Skywalker, from Star Wars, by Gene Lucas.
2. James "Slippery Jim" di Griz, from The Stainless Steel Rat, by Harry Harrison.
3. Sargeant Major Calvin, from Sword and Sceptre, and The Mercenary, by Jerry Pournelle.
4. Senior Physician Conway, from the Sector General series, including Major Operation and Ambulance Ship, by James White.
5. Jame Retief, from the Retief series, including Galactic Diplomat and Retief's War, by Keith Laumer.
6. Lord Darth Vader, from Star Wars, by Gene Lucas.
7. Harry Mudd, from Star Trek.
8. Simok Artrap, from The Stars, Like Dust, by Isaac Asimov.
THE PREVIOUS ANSWERS
Traveller Supplement 1, 1001 Characters, contained nine characters from science-fiction, but did not carry identifications with the text. In fact. a corallary contest was run in the Journal of the Travellers' Aid Society asking for correct identifications.
The answers to those characters are-
1. John Carter of Mars, from Edgar Rice Burrough's John Carter of Mars series.
2. Kimball Kinnison, from the Lensman Series by E. E. "Doc" Smith.
3. Jason dinAlt, from the Deathworld Trilogy by Harry Harrison.
4. Earl Dumarest, from the Dumarest Saga, by E. C. Tubb.
5. Beowulf Shaeffer, from At the Core, and other stories of Known Space by Larry Niven.
6. Anthony Villiers, from Starwell, and The Thurb Revolution, by Alexei Panshin.
7. Dominic Flandry, from the Flandry Series by Poul Anderson.
8. Kirth Girsen, from the Killing Machine, one of five Demon Prince novels by Jack Vance.
9. Gully Foyle, from the Stan, My Destination, by Alfred Bester.

 

[Argyle King]

I would tend to agree that Star Wars is "space fantasy."

However, if you stick with Edge of the Empire (from Fantasy Flight Games) and focus more on the smuggling and such (as opposed to Jedi, Sith, and so-on,) it's a pretty good sci-fi game.

Maybe add in some Age of Rebellion if you want more rules for ships and space combat

 

[Yora]

Dune is not very well detailed. We played Dune 2d20 and the GM came to the conclusion that even though the novels make a great narrative when it comes time to fish for details to create adventures the books are empty of answers. No one knows, for example, where the Fremen technology comes from.

Neither are the SWN and Scum and Villainy settings. As are lots of elf-dwarf-orc-dragon settings.
The thesis is not that those setting are the same or have the same elements. But I think it probably wouldn't be too hard to make a list of ten or twelve items and every one of these settings will at least 80% of them.

• Hyperspace Jumps
• Humans only or Human-like aliens only (with very few exceptions)
• Interstellar Ruling Caste
• Single dominating galactic hegemony
• Hwgemonial "super"-soldier army (at least by reputation)
• Interstellar Industrial Corporations
• World War 2 style space navies
• Telepathic and telekinetic powers
• Swords
• Recovered from a past technological dark age
• Space pirates and smugglers

There is definitely a pattern there.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I was just talking with someone about similarities and differences between Corolis and Traveller, and now I really want to go back to the point earlier made in the thread that there is no well established sci-fi setting in the way that there is for fantasy.

At least in the space of RPGs, there absolutely is at least one!

Traveller, Coriolis, Stars Without Number, Scum and Villainy. These are all only slightly different takes on the same underlying framework. The framework of Dune. Which also massively influenced Star Wars, and of course there's been half a dozen Star Wars RPGs as well.

These six settings are at least as similar as Middle-Earth, Forgotten Realms, and Dragonlance. How many science fiction settings have telepathic and telekinetic powers? At least these six all do. Excuse my ignorance about Traveller, but Star Wars seems to be an outlier by not having a jumpgate system for travel between systems.

And even the Mass Effect series sits very close to this cluster of archetypes and conventions. (And doing a quck check, Fading Suns too.) Though in many ways, it's also sitting halfway to another cluster of videogame settings consisting of StarCraft, FreeSpace, and Halo. (And their raging lunatic progenitor Warhammer 40k.)

Traveller is CLEARLY intended to spin off of the Galactic Empire as presented by Isaac Asimov in the stories that were collected as the Foundation Trilogy. Its not EXACTLY the same, jump technology is more limited and the history of the Empire is quite different, but VERY clearly Marc Miller read Foundation and Foundation and Empire, and then wrote Traveller's core rules! He did go a little harder into the 'Age of Sail' concept than Asimov did, who's milieu feels a bit more like a space version of Roman Empire.

I'd note that there are a couple of well-regarded PbtA's out there, including one that is well-supported and does a fairly Traveller-esque Space Opera thing, Uncharted Worlds. There are also a LOT of other PbtAs that have various degrees of SF to them, some harder than others.

 

[aramis erak]

Traveller is CLEARLY intended to spin off of the Galactic Empire as presented by Isaac Asimov in the stories that were collected as the Foundation Trilogy. Its not EXACTLY the same, jump technology is more limited and the history of the Empire is quite different, but VERY clearly Marc Miller read Foundation and Foundation and Empire, and then wrote Traveller's core rules! He did go a little harder into the 'Age of Sail' concept than Asimov did, who's milieu feels a bit more like a space version of Roman Empire.

I'd note that there are a couple of well-regarded PbtA's out there, including one that is well-supported and does a fairly Traveller-esque Space Opera thing, Uncharted Worlds. There are also a LOT of other PbtAs that have various degrees of SF to them, some harder than others.

Neither are the SWN and Scum and Villainy settings. As are lots of elf-dwarf-orc-dragon settings.
The thesis is not that those setting are the same or have the same elements. But I think it probably wouldn't be too hard to make a list of ten or twelve items and every one of these settings will at least 80% of them.

• Hyperspace Jumps
• Humans only or Human-like aliens only (with very few exceptions)
• Interstellar Ruling Caste
• Single dominating galactic hegemony
• Hwgemonial "super"-soldier army (at least by reputation)
• Interstellar Industrial Corporations
• World War 2 style space navies
• Telepathic and telekinetic powers
• Swords
• Recovered from a past technological dark age
• Space pirates and smugglers

There is definitely a pattern there.

half of those are absent in Traveller.

Traveller has as a line a large number of Aliens. None in the CT core, but by 1981, several were published humaniform but clearly not human.
There is no single dominationg galactic power. official maps of the Imperium are about 320×512 parsecs, the imperium itself is about 220×200 Pc. The Aslan hierate is 224×120 (triangular). The Zhodani Consulate is 120×120, roughly rectangular. The Hiver Federation and "Two Thousand Worlds (K'kree).
Traveller has no supersoldiers.
The Navies are age of sail, in core, and WW I in Bk5/Sup5/Adv5/Sup9, not WW II. Battleships dominate, not carriers.
There is no dark age of lost tech. There is a dark age of no/very low trade, but that's not the same. Even the Ancients still, technically, exist at TL 22+...
There's no established caste system; it's borrowed the Imperial Russian mode of increased social titles as rewards for service.

You're seeing connections that simply don't exist to the strength you claim, overgeneralizing. Quite likely by lack of reference to the original breadth of inspirations. Hell, I've only read half the list of inspirations. I do recommend a read of Lensman...

Marc's been very open about his sources. Dune's one I've not heard mentioned by Marc. (I have from one of the other GDW alumni.) It's possible he read the serialized version of Dune... but if he did, it didn't resonate with him the way the CoDo and Foundation settings did.

The CoDo influence is unmistakeable in Book 4: Mercenary, and explicit in Sup4's list. SgtMaj Calvin is from the CoDo verse. Early end thereof. Mote in God's Eye is the explicit inspiration for the black globe and white globe in Bk 5; it's the later end of the CoDo verse. (but if one wasn't aware of the conjunction, the Motie end (late end) of the CoDo can look very different from the Falconberg end (early end). The middle wasn't well developed.

 

[aramis erak]

I forgot to mention: It's very easy to add Dune influences into Traveller - Herbert, Asimov, Heinlein, Niven, and Pournelle all were very actively influencing each other. But what one adds from Dune potentially breaks heavily the mechanical limits of the game. Dune's Faufreluches caste system is very rigid, and upward movement across the various breakpoints requires marriage or adoption. THe Bene Gesserit have very limited psionics, and not a good mesh with Traveller's. The Navigators do not fold space; they feel the needed path out to safely have the heighliner's Holtzman field. The face dancers would be another.

It's also worth noting that, Traveller, as a collection of games, gets more broad and yet more focused every edition until MGT1. Which tried (and failed) to establish a pure mechanical system divorced of the OTU. The OTU tropes are baked into the character gen, including the promotion of social status into the nobility (thus avoiding being a caste system.)