Ummm.... Farscape?

Re: Re: Ummm...Farscape?

Voneth said:

According to the RPG.net review, “Each power has a control cost, averaging 6-10, and if you use a power without sufficent control, it costs you wounds. Run out of Wounds this way, and you not only pass out, but lose 2 wounds permanently.”

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Interesting. I found the section (page 204 for those playing along at home), and that is correct. The confusion arises from the use of the term "permanent wounds," which says to me, "a wound which cannot be healed through normal means." Just a perception thing....

Perhaps my friend and you would disagree on what consists of “cool” starship rules. Then again, I don’t think he has 2nd ed. Star Wars, so the only starship rules he’s seen for d20 so far are 1st ed Star Wars, which left many people wanting.

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Haven't even seen those. But, to me, when a section is titled "Ship Construction Rules," they damn well better have rules for building a ship. I found rules for "upgrading" the ships presented, and I've been running games long enough to reverse-engineer the stats, but I would have really rather had a more indepth set of rules. Actually, what I really wanted was a "take a ship from the show and build it from the ground up" system. What is presented may work well enough for most DMs.

Virtualpkc, you don’t sound too thrilled with the product.

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Overall, the book is acceptable to me. I'm used to tweaking rules sets. However, I was much more impressed during my first skim of the material. When I got down to the details, I found gaps.

That, combined with the suprising lack of fanfare from AEG, has put a damper on my enthusiasm a bit. I and my group will still have a kick-ass game, but that will spawn from our knowledge and love of the show.

If you are comfortable with the d20 system, and are a fan of the show, I wouldn't hesitate to recommend the book. If you're only one or the other, I might steer you to another product.

Paul

a little science in you sci'fi'

I think there should be some role for resonable science in "sci"fi. It doesn't make sense to me to make science fiction that has no basis in science. I think that's what Gallow' was saying. What's the point of making science fiction if you are going to just throw out any obstacle the universe puts in your path with the laws of physics ? Lets see..we can't afford a shuttle model, so we'll just make our guys fly through space with some futuristic beaming device...

Look at contact... a great story about characters and mysteries and deep science. There's alot of thought proking work there around the notion of creating a worm hole to overcome the enourmous gulf of space -- made for a much better story than just saying 'aw the hek with relativity...what did that Einstein guy know anyway.' (Carl Sagan consulted with Kip Thorn when writing the novel to check if his ideas were made impossible by physics.)

The real universe IS fantastic. Mixing real science with fantasy is what makes good sci'fi. IM[not so]HO.



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Lol Goth...

As you can imagine, I agree. I think the best sci fi stories are the ones that I think, maybe, some day, *could* happen.

"People like to look at the stars, and dream of outer space.." The Right Stuff

Well there are many different flavors of SciFi. There is Hard SciFi where it follows the laws of sciences as we know them to the letter, then there is SciFi where they use those laws as a jumping off point, but are willing to play around with them, there is SciFantasy where science is kind of there, but fantastic elements are more important and then there is Space Opera where action is paramount and the SciFi stuff is just a back drop. I'm personally not a huge fan of Hard SciFi. No real point to this other than for me to ramble.

Psychotic Dreamer said:

Well there are many different flavors of SciFi. There is Hard SciFi where it follows the laws of sciences as we know them to the letter, then there is SciFi where they use those laws as a jumping off point, but are willing to play around with them, there is SciFantasy where science is kind of there, but fantastic elements are more important and then there is Space Opera where action is paramount and the SciFi stuff is just a back drop. I'm personally not a huge fan of Hard SciFi. No real point to this other than for me to ramble.

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Welcome to one of the oldest SF arguements, "soft" SF vs."hard" SF. Of couse the real irony to the arugument is the author that insipired the most famous hard SF movie of all time (Space Odyssey 2001, by Arthur Clarke). Was also the fellow who articulated one of the maxiums of SF. "Any technology that is vastly superior to the observer point of view is indistiguishable from magic." Energy transmission or "teleportion" of people has been explored in hard SF as well as soft SF. I remember a few of those stories in Anlaog, Science Fiction, Science Fact.

Essentialy it comes down to personal taste.

Well, I think totally 100% "hard" sci-fi would be boring. In Prometheus Rising, what we tried to do was to carefully choose when and where we deviated from known scientific fact.

Some of the choices we made were fanciful, some dead-on science. It isn't always an easy place to draw the line

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release date update

i emailed the folks at AEG about when i could find the book outside of gencon. here's the response i got:

THANK YOU for being interested in Farscape. We think our Farscape RPG is
one of the best looking books we have ever done.

Farscape will be releasing to the public on Friday, August 30, 2002.

It should be available on our website by Wednesday of this week.

THANK YOU, again, for being interested. I hope you thoroughly enjoy your
copy when you receive it.

If there is anything else I can do for you, please do not hesitate to ask.

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Anyone contacted AEG yet?

Unlike their infamous rep for keeping people updated on upcoming releases, AEG is fairly good at putting out erratra when needed. My suggestion is that the faster comments get to AEG, the sooner we get answers.

Me, I have to wait until after Aug. 30 and I have a book in my hands to verify what my friend tells me:

Dargo and Sun have a mystery feat called Combat Acrobatics that is not listed in the feat section.

Scopry is listed as Scientist 13, but seems to have a list of feats and such that would make his career path seem more like Rogue, Diplomat, Scientist.

He's also worried that he got a funky copy that seems to be missing chapters.

On a side note, my buddy considered the template method of ship modification to be the construction rules. Which for me personaly can fly sometimes in a rpg.

But if I am doing a SF wargame, I side more with Virtualpkc and I want a from the ground up construction system.

Re: Anyone contacted AEG yet?

Voneth said:

Me, I have to wait until after Aug. 30 and I have a book in my hands to verify what my friend tells me:

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Never fear, I've got my book near!

Dargo and Sun have a mystery feat called Combat Acrobatics that is not listed in the feat section.

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I couldn't find this feat, not on any character, not in the feat listing, not in the index.

Scopry is listed as Scientist 13, but seems to have a list of feats and such that would make his career path seem more like Rogue, Diplomat, Scientist.

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Scorpius has 5 feats at 13th level (that's normal, right?), and although I'm not going to go through his 30 odd skills, I will point out that one of the special abilities of the Scientist class is the abilty to add a skill to his list of class skills.

He's also worried that he got a funky copy that seems to be missing chapters.

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Can't he tell from the page numbers?

On a side note, my buddy considered the template method of ship modification to be the construction rules. Which for me personaly can fly sometimes in a rpg.

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Ok, I'll buy that. I was just expecting something a bit more, detailed, I guess.

Paul