Did Anybody Ever Play "Space Opera?"

[Sepulchrave II]

Hmm.

A lot of people came close, it seems. I wonder if the mechanics of character creation were any more complicated than 3.5e, or whether they seemed that way compared to other games of the time. I never played it, but I vaguely recall it being touted as 'superior' to CT.

 

[CharlesRyan]

Add me to the chorus of people saying "almost." I had a close friend in college who kept threatening to run it; it became something of a running joke. But it never actually happened.

I think we might have used bits of it in a kit-bashed Star Wars campaign we played for years before the WEG game came out. Or maybe I'm thinking of Universe.

 

[Baron Opal]

I played it, a looooong time ago. Never ran a game.

Character creation was definately more involved than usual for that time. It was definately more "fantastic" than Traveller. I remember there being some alien psychic and some Star Trek level technology being passed around. I played a reptillian weapons officer aboard our ship. And I think there was some kind of proto-Lensman in the crew as well.

I changed groups soon there after, and ultimately played far more Traveller.

 

[Rodrigo Istalindir]

Played it a few times, but it was just too cumbersome, as I recall. We used Universe for SciFi, usually. Space Opera did have the coolest rules for spaceship design I've ever seen, though. And character design was always a fun way to kill a rainy afternoon.

 

[Crothian]

I still have a copy!! I read it and new it was too complex for anyone I knew to want to play. I should add it to my review pile.

 

[Plane Sailing]

I expect the answer to be 'no,' and this thread to die a quick death, but I'm curious. How does it measure up to Classic Traveller?

Unlike most people here, I have to say "Hell yes!"

In fact, my Space Opera campaign was the most famous and successful role playing campaign I've ever had and ever run.

The gaming group grew by word of mouth until at one point it was up to 14 (!) players every Friday evening.

Over half my adventures were lifted directly from Traveller 'Amber Zones' articles and then fleshed out by me on the fly. I ran it in a very fast and loose style; spaceships hardly ever came into it but there was loads and loads of cars, planes, international travel and interstellar travel.

In our game there was gallons of humour and a huge "Oh no, what now!" streak. Unlike Traveller which tried so hard to be scientific, Space Opera fully embraced, well, Space Opera. Star Wars was still absolutely fresh in our minds and it influenced out SO games a lot.

Even now, 28 years later I can remember incidents such as:

*PCs con their way into the crimelords tower by claiming to be agents of BRINT. By the time they arrive at the top there is a helicopter siege by agents of BOSS who have heard about a BRINT incursion. By the time they get down to the bottom again BRINT agents are arriving as a result of the BOSS helicopter assault.

*PC throws a pineapple down the street and cries out 'grenade' so all the criminals scatter for cover

*PC comes back to his motorbike parked in the snow on a planet where trees grow really quickly... and finds it 20ft up in the air

*Running combats along the twelve lane motorway with their van being chased by motorbike riding, blaster toting thugs - so they attempt a reckless U-turn on the motorway causing huge pile-ups.

*Something goes badly wrong on a pleasure world and everyone attempts to escape from local security forces in their own way - one person gets out through the sewers, another hijacks a taxi to the airport and hijacks a plane in order to parachute out elsewhere, another uses... well, just think about the Great Escape.

*hit location on %age dice. 27-40 was groin, and the player of the wookie got hit by blasters in the groin so often it became proverbial.

Heck, some of my players still reminisce about events from those days too!



I'm sure that if I dug out the rules they would seem very awkward and primitive compared to what we are used to today.

However, I had more fun running that SO campaign than any campaign before or since, and I've never had anything be more of a people magnet for an RPG session.




OK, I've just realised that I've not really answered your question directly (although perhaps I have indirectly).

Basically, SO screamed "you're in Star Wars!" while Traveller said "you're in Space 1999".

Classic Traveller improved (IMO) with various alien supplements (once they had got past the inevitable dog-men and cat-men stuff), and the FASA adventures produced by James and William Keith are some of the best adventures I've run for any system anywhere.

Happy to answer any other questions!

Cheers

 

[Tetsubo]

I own a copy. But I haven't read it since I bought it and I never played it at all.

 

[Khairn]

I ran the game for a couple of years, and still have the rules, the setting material, adventures and Seldons Compendium of Starship.

As has already been said, the system is classic FGU, with all the good and bad that entails. I really enjoyed the setting. From the Federation of Plannets to the Mercantile League, the IRSOL to the MekPurr, SO gathered every classic Sci Fi element and threw it all in a pot. And for 1 really liked the flavor of what they finally made.

Classic Traveller required less "tweaking" to make it work well, and remained at its core a simple system. But I always enjoyed SO's level of detail. Hell, the game taught you Pythagorean's Theory so that you could determine the number of Light Years you needed to travel in FTL from one star system to another. The layout of the books is atrocious, and it will take you some time and effort to understand it. But I recently played a short PBP SO game and had a blast, so I know it can be fun, even though you need to work at it.

What more do you want to know?

 

[Sepulchrave II]

Basically, SO screamed "you're in Star Wars!" while Traveller said "you're in Space 1999".

Ooh, that's nasty. Somehow, my Traveller games always seemed to end up like Star Wars anyway.

For Plane Sailing and Devyn, what do you remember about the starship creation process? Massively involved (say like Fire, Fusion and Steel)? Or more like High Guard in its level of detail?

Did you use 3d trig to calculate distances between stars?

I know it had zoomorphic PC races. Were they lame or cool?

 

[WayneLigon]

I played it. Ran a campaign of it, in fact. It didn't really have much that made it better than Classic Traveller at the time, so we went back to Traveller fairly quickly.