Future-Based Game Advice Needed

[MMORPGAddict]

This looked to be the best forum for this question. There are so many games out now, with tons of new systems and indies all around, that I've been unable to keep up with it all. We've been playing 4e for a year or so, and 3.5 before that for a long time.

Our Monday night gaming GM (i.e. me) has burned out on elves, fairies, and low tech, and I've decided to run a modern / future game. I have the initial story arc well in hand, but I'm having a Hell of a time finding a game system to use. Here are my requirements:

1. MUST have a good character builder available. And by good, I mean that my lazy players must be able to generate a character within 10 minutes from starting.
2. Character builder must run on a PC, and if a version of it will run on an Android tablet, that's an added bonus.
3. We're not looking for a miniatures simulation. D&D 4e was a bit too miniature-rules-heavy and roleplay-light for us. Combat between 6 people should not take 45 minutes to resolve. (I've heard about time shortcuts that folks use; they didn't work for our group.)
4. My personal preference would be for a game that supports multiple tech levels innately, so that I don't have to house rule every piece of alien tech.

I'm currently considering adapting Shadowrun, GURPS 4e Space (although I'm skeptical of the character builder and I could find no demo for it), or revisiting some version of Traveller. We tried some guy's home-built D20 modern adaptation for 4e, and hated the underlying D20 Modern rules it was built to mimic. I'd prefer nothing like D20 nor 4e.

Anyone have suggestions for us? Any input will be appreciated

Thanks!

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I could be wrong, but that first requirement may be your stumbling block. While I can think of lots of games in which it would be great to run a near future or full-on sci-fi game, I can't think of any associated with a dedicated character bullder program. (I could simply be unaware of them, of course.)

My list, thus, would be (in no particular orer):

HERO- Space HERO
GURPS- Space
Traveller
Alternity: Star*Drive
Space:1889

 

[Umbran]

Yes, that character builder's going to get in your way. Few games have the wherewithal to have software support at all, honestly.

If your players are really big on being fast - pitch them the game, find out what they want to be able to do, and you pregen the characters for them before the session. It isn't like they're going to be able to make astounding choices in any system they've known for less than 10 minutes.

 

[Stormonu]

Surprisingly, Alternity had an electronic character generator.

I couldn't find a link on WotC's site, but this seems to be legit/legal:

Li Po's Alternity Page

Most of the other sci-fi systems I'm aware of (Savage Worlds, Traveller) have supported modules in HeroLab.

Of course, Star Wars D6 is easy enough with its character templates, you don't need software to make PCs.

 

[Croesus]

Savage Worlds can support modern/futuristic era. Metacreator software has a Savage Worlds add-in that works well. It will take a bit of time to learn the software, but it's mostly intuitive, and SW is a great system.

BTW, I picked up both the rules and the software from Noble Knight games.

 

[Derren]

As mentioned, the character builder will be the deciding factor and the ease of character creation will also eliminate many otherwise very viable settings.

As you have the story already written it would be good to know if you are looking for a Space Opera or a (more or less) Hard SciFi game and what "features" you need in it (if you can talk about that here).

 

[edemaitre]

If your role-players are most comfortable with D20, there's D20 Modern: Future and Star Wars: Saga Edition, plus other D20/OGL science fiction games that you can mine for ideas -- Wars, Stargate, Farscape, Traveller/"T20," to name a few. I'm sure there are utilities online for them. I can understand, however, if you're burned out after playing/running D&D4e.

For the past year or so, I've been running a homebrew space opera campaign for three adventuring parties using FATE 3e Starblazer Adventures/Mindjammer and Bulldogs. The emphasis is on cinematic storytelling, and character creation is a collaborative process. I'd definitely recommend Bulldogs if you're looking for a lean, flexible rules set.

If you want a "harder-SF" feel with FATE, there's Diaspora and Strands of FATE, which is a bit like FATE + GURPS. I've run my "Vortex" setting with GURPS 3e Space, but I'm less familiar with the fourth edition of that game.

Other indie games I'd recommend include StarCluster 3, retro-clone Stars Without Number, and the transhuman Eclipse Phase. Ashen Stars uses the Gumshoe system. As another respondent noted, your group's preferred style or subgenre can guide its rules choice.

Alternatively, if you prefer crunch, there must be online aids for Star Hero. SFRPG fans often swear by Traveller, and the Mongoose version is decent, despite some editing problems. Happy gaming!

 

[MMORPGAddict]

Thanks for all of the good information

I tried a FATE variant earlier, and even mixed in some FATE with 4e. I liked it, but it got zero traction on the players. Many of us are game developers, and work some long hours. They're resistant to collaborative storytelling, or anything involving them doing *any* work outside of Monday nights. Therefore, I do 99% of the work.

There were several good suggestions above, and on my Google+ query (someone mentioned a Call of Cthulhu variant there). I'll check them out, and find something that keeps me from having to do all of their character creation / maintenance

We were using MapTool for 4e, with a campaign addon that allowed us to parse stat blocks, and used the standard DDI character generator. It was ideal, but we just want something different at this point. I was hoping that something like PCGen existed for a different game system, and someone was going to hand me a magic bullet

The campaign is a near-future story, where the players were on a seed ship during a Diaspora. When they woke, it was many years later, the ship was in distress / under attack, and they'd reached ... Earth. Somehow, they had been recalled, and were witnessing Earth and the surrounding systems suffering a harsh beat-down by some aliens. The shock troops seemed to be bioengineered (somewhat reminiscent of Yuuzhan Vong), with the backstory a bit resembling Falling Skies (but with more tech and more options).

 

[Krensky]

Well, depending on how much work you want to avoid, Mekton Z might work for you. It's primarily aimed for at the giant robot genre, but MTS cover all sorts of stuff. It's relatively light weight, there's actually three different combat systems depending on the level of speed and abstraction you want, character creation is pretty quick and there's a lot of stuff already made you could make use of from the various source books just by filing the serial numbers off.

Eclipse Phase might work too, as long as you stick with the archetypes or modifying them. Building a character from the ground up can be daunting if you've never done it before. Past that you've got horror, you've got all sorts of level of science available, and it's got a pretty slick system and mechanics. I find I can run it with just the GM screen at the table and I've only ran three or four sessions of it.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

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