Space Adventure RPGs

[AbdulAlhazred]

Traveller is pretty much built from the ground up (CT certainly) around the concept of a completely random sandboxed type of play. Ships are always potentially vulnerable to hijack or piracy, and space is LARGE, so being armed is a very good idea. However, most of the sorts of ships PCs are ever likely to possess are tiny and thus carry very limited weaponry. Also, small size does not grant one speed, not in any sense. Smaller ships actually tend to be on the slow end of the scale, as there's little justification to waste huge volumes of expensive hull on fuel tanks and such. However, even military vessels don't really gain 'speed' by being small. The most likely reason why there ARE very small very fast ships is simply because that level of speed is sub-optimal for most military uses, but its cheap enough to have a limited supply of fast scouts and interceptors, most 'book 5' warships can easily afford to carry a pretty hefty mix of small craft. They're worthless in any real battle, but quite handy if you just want to nab an enemy spy or something.

 

[aramis erak]

When I run space campaigns, I do not let the PCs have an armed ship. I really do not see why any government would allow armed vessels, and certainly no port or orbital controller system.

The UK and US did so for a long time... Even anti-shipping weapons were still allowed on private ships until nearly the end of the 19th C.
It's the Naval Limitations Treaties that ended most private armed vessels... but there still were civilian ships with guns into the 1960's under US registry. Whalers, to be specific, usually have a harpoon gun. Replace the 56kg harpoon with a 20kg HEAP round, and it's a passable anti-shipping weapon. Especially against non-warships and modern unarmored warships.

And that's ignoring small arms.

There is some discussion of whether or not the Somali Piracy is grounds for arming merchant shipping again. Most Merchant Marine Sailors I've known are ambivalent about it... one more thing to maintain, one more thing to keep current upon. There are a lot of current politics that could rapidly justify rearming almost all commercial shipping.

That Sci-Fi settings could include such situations? quite plausible.

 

[aramis erak]

I would guess the Federation is Star Trek is such a case, and I can't really see Federation freighters being armed. But that's a different genre than the Space Scoundrels on swashbuckling adventures.

In Ent: Fortunate Son, it is established that the Earth Gov't allows armed freighters. That's pre-Federation, but...

The designer of the Vulcan Shuttle for ST:TMP notes that there are greeblies for weapons.

 

[Jd Smith1]

The UK and US did so for a long time... Even anti-shipping weapons were still allowed on private ships until nearly the end of the 19th C.
It's the Naval Limitations Treaties that ended most private armed vessels... but there still were civilian ships with guns into the 1960's under US registry. Whalers, to be specific, usually have a harpoon gun. Replace the 56kg harpoon with a 20kg HEAP round, and it's a passable anti-shipping weapon. Especially against non-warships and modern unarmored warships.

And that's ignoring small arms.

There is some discussion of whether or not the Somali Piracy is grounds for arming merchant shipping again. Most Merchant Marine Sailors I've known are ambivalent about it... one more thing to maintain, one more thing to keep current upon. There are a lot of current politics that could rapidly justify rearming almost all commercial shipping.

That Sci-Fi settings could include such situations? quite plausible.

I don't think the historical precedents are valid. The ability of ship-to-shore weaponry was minimal back then, and the need for armaments quickly faded once governmental controls eliminated safe ports for pirates. The Golden Age of piracy in the Caribbean, for example, was actually quite short.

Examples like the Somali pirates do not carry over, IMO, because space lacks the choke points that the Somali pirates exploit.

I could see a ship have arms lockers and dead stick options to render piracy unattractive.

But the cost of mounting weapons and targeting systems, ECM/EW suites, and training/maintaining crews to military levels would seem to swiftly kill the profit margin of cargo ships.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I don't think the historical precedents are valid. The ability of ship-to-shore weaponry was minimal back then, and the need for armaments quickly faded once governmental controls eliminated safe ports for pirates. The Golden Age of piracy in the Caribbean, for example, was actually quite short.

Examples like the Somali pirates do not carry over, IMO, because space lacks the choke points that the Somali pirates exploit.

I could see a ship have arms lockers and dead stick options to render piracy unattractive.

But the cost of mounting weapons and targeting systems, ECM/EW suites, and training/maintaining crews to military levels would seem to swiftly kill the profit margin of cargo ships.

What modern shippers are REALLY afraid of is escalation. As it stands most 'piracy', such as the Somali stuff, is really just kidnapping. However, if the intended victims start shooting, then things could get bloody pretty fast. Shippers would rather pay a few ransoms vs the massive insurance rate increases that firefights and dead crews would entail.

 

[aramis erak]

Examples like the Somali pirates do not carry over, IMO, because space lacks the choke points that the Somali pirates exploit.

That is entirely dependent upon the FTL methods. For Star Trek, I would agree. For other settings? It varies by setting.

Many settings' FTL modes are reliant upon some particular point for FTL transitions...

• Each point connects to one and only one destination:
  • Larry Niven/Jerry Pournelle/SM Stirling's CoDoVerse - drive interacts with weakpoint in space to transition to counterpart point.
  • Bujld's Vorkosiverse - drive enables travelling the wormholes that are normally intransversible. They can be artificially and/or naturally closed.
  • Steve Cole, David Webber, and Ian White's Starfire universe - no specific drive needed, fly into it, and transit the wormhole.
• Each point leads to a pair (or more) of points
  • Jimmy Doohan & SM Stirling's Flight Engineer - superstring webs, with FTL drives allowing transition between the string and a node in system - but the nodes are fixed points. You can fly past, and if your jump drive isn't working, you cannot exit...
  • Stargate - The gates themselves are able to connect almost any node to any node - but there needs to be a gate at the other end to go anywhere. This setting also has hyperspace drives.
• Point is a function of FTL drive operation
  • Steve Gallacci's Albedo setting - one must travel on a line tangent between source star and destination star... or not arrive.
  • GURPS Traveller: Interstellar Wars - side nearest sourceworld, at precisely100 diameters...
  • Battletech Universe - zenith or nadir vs the eccliptic.

It's worth noting that those last two are game-settings first... and GTIW is different than the rest of Traveller for Jump Exit; GTIW requires hitting the 100 diameter limit, while other Traveller flavors only mandate no closer than it.
Starfire also starts as a game setting, by Steve Cole, developed further by Webber, novelised by Webber and White, and now White and someone else writing the novels, and the original game universe abandoned by the holder of the game name...

 

[Bluenose]

A point would be that large warships are not used for patrolling; in space, as now, patrol vessels would be fast, small, and well-equipped with advanced sensors, as well as stand-off weaponry.

[/QUOTE]
That will of course depend on the technology assumptions of the SF setting in question.
One thing that clearly won't be the case when compared to modern sea patrols is that there's no distinction between sea and air movement; which means no aircraft manoeuvring at speeds a large ship can't match. To use Traveller as an example, Dreadnoughts aren't inferior in acceleration to Destroyers unless you build them that way.
And from a purely technological point of view, a large ship has more area for it's distributed sensor arrays to be spread across, so it's likely the best sensor platforms will be large Or they'll be "throw-away" drones, and again a larger ship will have space to store more.

When I run space campaigns, I do not let the PCs have an armed ship. I really do not see why any government would allow armed vessels, and certainly no port or orbital controller system.

As has already been mentioned, the disarming of civilian vessels is a very modern effect, and in some areas where piracy is a problem ships are regaining the right to carry weapons. Note that the weapons in question tend to be machine guns or grenade launchers, possibly even just small arms, which fall well short of the type of weapons that are useful against warships. though in the past, plenty of merchant ships would have had guns comparable to small warships - some ships from the East India Company in the 18th/19th century were the size of frigates and mounted the same 12pdr cannon (though fewer of them). In some periods the distinction between a merchant ship and a warship could be uncertain - galleons spent most of their time carrying cargo, but were mobilised for war and among the most effective vessels in a military fleet.

 

[Yora]

Worldbuilding where small details follow naturally from the interactions of established elements is always really nice.
But in the end, all interstellar science fiction is pure fantasy (I even hesitatemto call spce opera sci-fi) and the big picture and overall themes come first, with justifications and plausibility following later.

 

[Jd Smith1]

Worldbuilding where small details follow naturally from the interactions of established elements is always really nice.
But in the end, all interstellar science fiction is pure fantasy (I even hesitatemto call spce opera sci-fi) and the big picture and overall themes come first, with justifications and plausibility following later.

I believe the exact opposite. Even in fantasy campaigns, but especially in sci-fi.

 

[aramis erak]

Worldbuilding where small details follow naturally from the interactions of established elements is always really nice.

I'd go with "usually," not "always."

But in the end, all interstellar science fiction is pure fantasy

Disagree. Most, yes. Far from all. There are several which are lacking elements unsupported by physics. Niven's Integral Trees/Smoke Ring duology, for example...

(I even hesitatemto call spce opera sci-fi)

As do I...

and the big picture and overall themes come first, with justifications and plausibility following later.

Not how I approach it as a GM, not how Lois Bujold handles it as an author. Nor how a number of designers have approached it.
Bujold's discussed her process for certain novels... Ethan of Athos is a well grounded "what if?" So is Falling Free.

Niven's Smoke Ring setting is one of the most well grounded "start with the physics, then add a story" novels.

Most SF games are bad SF. Most SF GMs are bad at SF. Most people don't distinguish between space fantasy, space opera, space horror, and science fiction.

I don't run real Science Fiction much. I have - Mars 2100 (BTRC) being the hardest SF game I've encountered... but I prefer to run Space Opera and Space Fantasy. (Alien as Space Opera is great...) I'm at least self-honest about that. But I prefer to read harder SF as much as Space Opera.