-
NOW LIVE! Into the Woods--new character species, eerie monsters, and haunting villains to populate the woodlands of your D&D games.
Can anyone recommend a Sci-Fi/Future game?
- Thread starter Thyrkill
- Start date
My personal recommendations (in no particular order):
1) Traveller- regardless of system, one of the best SF games ever made. Essentially the D&D of SF RPGs.
2) RIFTS. Not the game, the campaign world. Use the flavor & settings and run it in a RPG system you like.
3) HERO or M&M. Good Supers games like these are damn flexible. You could run almost anything in either one- excellent news if you have a campaign idea bouncing around your head that you haven't found a good system for. HERO has a sci-fi setting called Star-Hero. I'm currently designing a War of the Worlds campaign to be run in either one, but leaning more towards M&M- Illithids & Beholders make great aliens, and the conversion from D&D to M&M would be easier than one to HERO.
(GURPS is also flexible enough and capable of doing much of the above, but I don't care for its mechanics and inconsistencies- which I understand have been improved in the latest edition. It has more than one SF setting, including a version of Traveller.)
4) Space: 1889. Like RIFTS, a game with an excellent setting with mechanics that some feel could be done better. No game- not even much newer ones like Etherscope- has captured the feel and flavor of HG Wells & Jules Verne so well.
5) Alternity. Like Traveller, its a good game all around.
6) Spaceship Zero. Like #4 above, this game does a good job of capturing the feel of a certain subset of sci-fi, in this case the Flash Gordon/Commando Cody type stuff.
7) MechWarrior or Mekton. The former is the RPG companion to BattleTech, and is grittier than the latter. Both good for playing guys & gals who fly big robots with lots of weapons.
8) Cyberpunk or ShadowRun. Like #4 & #6, great for simulating a particular genre.
9) Star Wars & Star Trek games. If you want to play Luke Skywalker or Captain Kirk, you should probably pick up one of these. Both franchises have multiple RPGs- I personally own Star Wars D20 and Prime Directive (original).
Other Sci-fi franchises have their own games as well- Bab-5, Firefly, Jericho and others are all out there.
1) Traveller- regardless of system, one of the best SF games ever made. Essentially the D&D of SF RPGs.
2) RIFTS. Not the game, the campaign world. Use the flavor & settings and run it in a RPG system you like.
3) HERO or M&M. Good Supers games like these are damn flexible. You could run almost anything in either one- excellent news if you have a campaign idea bouncing around your head that you haven't found a good system for. HERO has a sci-fi setting called Star-Hero. I'm currently designing a War of the Worlds campaign to be run in either one, but leaning more towards M&M- Illithids & Beholders make great aliens, and the conversion from D&D to M&M would be easier than one to HERO.
(GURPS is also flexible enough and capable of doing much of the above, but I don't care for its mechanics and inconsistencies- which I understand have been improved in the latest edition. It has more than one SF setting, including a version of Traveller.)
4) Space: 1889. Like RIFTS, a game with an excellent setting with mechanics that some feel could be done better. No game- not even much newer ones like Etherscope- has captured the feel and flavor of HG Wells & Jules Verne so well.
5) Alternity. Like Traveller, its a good game all around.
6) Spaceship Zero. Like #4 above, this game does a good job of capturing the feel of a certain subset of sci-fi, in this case the Flash Gordon/Commando Cody type stuff.
7) MechWarrior or Mekton. The former is the RPG companion to BattleTech, and is grittier than the latter. Both good for playing guys & gals who fly big robots with lots of weapons.
8) Cyberpunk or ShadowRun. Like #4 & #6, great for simulating a particular genre.
9) Star Wars & Star Trek games. If you want to play Luke Skywalker or Captain Kirk, you should probably pick up one of these. Both franchises have multiple RPGs- I personally own Star Wars D20 and Prime Directive (original).
Other Sci-fi franchises have their own games as well- Bab-5, Firefly, Jericho and others are all out there.
Another vote for Traveller, with reasons why and discussion in this thread.
I'm waiting on a few new releases before deciding on a Sci-Fi game. Spacemaster: Privateers is going to be reprinted with the errata fixed (I can't stand a game that needs to reference errata, and there was a lot needed in the old printing).
HARP SF is in Beta testing, and is only available in PDF, so I'll wait for the print release. And SpaceQuest (using RuneQuest rules) is starting development.
I have GURPS, but I prefer that for modern games. The SF stuff (space ships in particular) in 4th edition is a little sparse. I still need to buy Ultratech before I can use it for Shadowrun type games (I have Shadowrun 2nd and 3rd but I prefer GURPS).
Star Frontiers is a great game, but the group I play with won't play it because they can't (or won't) get ahold of copies of the game because it's out of print.
Star Drive (Alternity) is cool, but it's out of print, and on top of that, it's hard to teach to new players (for me). It's a great setting, though.
Star Wars is only good if you want to run a Star Wars game. I don't mind playing, but it's not my preferred setting to run.
D20 Future is a good toolkit, but it's not a complete game. D20 Future Tech makes it a little easier, but it's still a little too much work for me. D20 stat blocks are a major pain. At least with GURPS, I only have to stat up major NPCs and can use a simple template for minor goons.
I'm not familiar with any other SF games. Burning Empires looks interesting, but I'm not sure about the system.
HARP SF is in Beta testing, and is only available in PDF, so I'll wait for the print release. And SpaceQuest (using RuneQuest rules) is starting development.
I have GURPS, but I prefer that for modern games. The SF stuff (space ships in particular) in 4th edition is a little sparse. I still need to buy Ultratech before I can use it for Shadowrun type games (I have Shadowrun 2nd and 3rd but I prefer GURPS).
Star Frontiers is a great game, but the group I play with won't play it because they can't (or won't) get ahold of copies of the game because it's out of print.
Star Drive (Alternity) is cool, but it's out of print, and on top of that, it's hard to teach to new players (for me). It's a great setting, though.
Star Wars is only good if you want to run a Star Wars game. I don't mind playing, but it's not my preferred setting to run.
D20 Future is a good toolkit, but it's not a complete game. D20 Future Tech makes it a little easier, but it's still a little too much work for me. D20 stat blocks are a major pain. At least with GURPS, I only have to stat up major NPCs and can use a simple template for minor goons.
I'm not familiar with any other SF games. Burning Empires looks interesting, but I'm not sure about the system.
Johnny Angel
Explorer
Star*Drive is out of print, but it's easy and relatively cheap to get one of its many supplements, so that if you got one per month it'd be like a year and a half of a really amazingly well-supported product.
Wraith Form
Explorer
First, I apologize ahead of time if this comes across as thread-jackish. If it is, I'll create my own thread.
So, is there any pre-written adventure support for these games?
I'm a busy guy. I'm also a creative, but not necessarily storytelling-minded, guy. When running D&D, I rely heavily on Dungeon and pre-published adventures and add subtle tweaks thereafter.
Of the systems listed above (many of which I own, from Last Unicorn Start Trek to T20 to Alternity) the one weakness seems to be in adventures--with the exception of Traveller and Star*Drive. I'm crummy at converting non-D20 rules into d20, so I pretty much require d20-based stuff.
Any adventures out there?
So, is there any pre-written adventure support for these games?
I'm a busy guy. I'm also a creative, but not necessarily storytelling-minded, guy. When running D&D, I rely heavily on Dungeon and pre-published adventures and add subtle tweaks thereafter.
Of the systems listed above (many of which I own, from Last Unicorn Start Trek to T20 to Alternity) the one weakness seems to be in adventures--with the exception of Traveller and Star*Drive. I'm crummy at converting non-D20 rules into d20, so I pretty much require d20-based stuff.
Any adventures out there?
kingpaul
First Post
For RPG Objects' Blood and Space 2 (an expansion on Future)Wraith Form said:
Powderkeg #1
Powderkeg #2
Powderkeg #3
For Dawning Star there is an introductory adventure in the main book, there are two free adventures on their website, on short adventure in the Terraformer, and a published adventure.
http://www.dawningstar.com/pdf/The_Edge_of_Shadow_Web.pdf
http://www.dawningstar.com/pdf/SR_01_Web.pdf
http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?products_id=6454&SRC=DSProdPage
http://www.dawningstar.com/shadowfalling.htm
Salcor
http://www.dawningstar.com/pdf/The_Edge_of_Shadow_Web.pdf
http://www.dawningstar.com/pdf/SR_01_Web.pdf
http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?products_id=6454&SRC=DSProdPage
http://www.dawningstar.com/shadowfalling.htm
Salcor
