little spaceships. Brainstorming, ideas needed.

[Imperialus]

Hopefully I don't get too verbose here but here goes.

One of the big things that has kept my group from playing any space based games is the fact that all the PC's are stuck on a ship together doing different and usually very specific tasks. This means that except during very specific circumstances someone is going to get left out of the action. The engineer isn't likely to have much fun in a space battle, and the gun bunny isn't going to have much to do when the engineer is frantically trying to get the engine running before they run out of life support. Then there is the problem of the captain. As soon as a superior officer is thrown into the mix either as a PC or an NPC the PC's loose a great deal of their autonomy.

The best solution I can come up with is to have each PC be their own captain. I just recently finished re-reading Foundation (and have been playing Space Ranger 2) and the idea of the independent trader/warrior/captain/pirate strikes me as a really good idea. Each PC would have their own ship, which requires 1 crewmember and is simple and robust enough that any given PC could perform routine maintenance on it. Sure if they got blasted by a battle cruiser they might need to get a professional engineer to patch it up but otherwise they should be able to keep it running themselves.

Unfortunately the starship rules focus on large ships with dozens if not hundreds of crewmembers and the various ship systems each require different skills to operate that no individual crewmember could possible manage.

Now I'm thinking the best solution may be a variant of the mecha rules. They have slots that could make individual ships highly customizable allowing PC's to vary the armour, engines, weapons ect. to their hearts (and bank accounts) content. Of course unless I want a bunch of flying robots I'll have to retool the slot descriptions but I think it could work. This is still in the brainstorming session but I'll post ideas here as I come up with them. Anyone else who has ideas or suggestions is welcome to pipe in.

Right off the bat, I'm entiarly-ignoring PL, at least for the moment. Now I'd probably start with 3 basic hull types Light (corrosponding to a huge mecha) Medium (gargantuan) and Heavy (collossal). This gives us 11, 17, and 25 equipment slots respectively. I may have to increase the number of slots since I’ll have to allow space for stuff that mech’s don’t require. I'll deal with how to divy them up later.

Now all of the superstructures would remain the same. Alumisteel to Megatanium. Armour would remain the same as well.

Equipment is where things get more interesting. Flight systems can be ditched but will have to be replaced by engines. Sensors would be easy enough to modify, just increase their range. The defensive systems could remain largely intact though the shields would have to be ditched and probably replaced by an energy shield (perhaps providing DR?)

The weapons could probably stay about the same (minus the HTH weapons) once again increasing the range to account for the distance of space battles.

Now as for divvying up the slots I’m honestly thinking of just making them interior or exterior (probably 75/25) respectively. This means that PC’s are pretty much free to envision their ship as they see fit. They could picture it as a futuristic fighter like an X-Wing, a flying saucer, or anything else they want.

Anyhow that’s all I have for now. I’m gonna keep working on it though. I’m not overly familiar with D20 future though so any comments or suggestions would be more than welcome.

 

[Aussiegamer]

I have already done a system that is slot based for vehicles, including space and planetside and mechs.

Includes all structure, armour, weapons, life support, computer, defensive systems, shields, communications, and heaps more

This allows you to build a 2m long, motorbike to 80km long planetiod craft.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I think the idea is nice, and it certainly adress some of of the major problems with space (combat).

Note though, that a Fast Hero will probably still have more fun in the space ship than a Charismatic Hero.
A further improvement requires to take into account how these classes can still contribute effectivly (might be easy, might be diffuclt, I don't know yet).

For combat:
Another problem might be that space usually doesn't offer that many tactical options - cover/concealment and specific combat maneuvers (trip, disarm, grapple) are usually unavailable in space. That can easily lead to boring combats.

 

[Michael Silverbane]

My suggestion would be to invent some gadgets that always grant you minimal success on certain checks, so that characters who have no skill in some area of spaceship operation can rely on those gadgets to get by, while those who are proficient in such skills can excel in those areas...

Also, since the smaller ships will be single character affairs, you could ignore some of the vehicle aspects of combat, and make it all work just like personell (character) scale combat.

Some properly applied handwavium could allow skills like Pilot (space fighter) and Tumble to be treated equivalently for certain effects, like... dogfighting maneuvers, or whatever... Anyway, I have really no idea, now that I think about it, how d20 modern handles vehicle combat (much less space combat) so these suggestions might not be worth much...

Later
silver

 

[Stormborn]

I too have considered the problem with running a starship based game and come up w/ some possible solutions:

1) Ensemble Play - each player has 3-4 PCs, all of whom do something in each type of play, preferablly with each player having a "leader" in each type. Thats a lot of PCs to keep up with and I don;t think it would work well for my group, but mechanically would work best with the RAW

2) Radical ships. Simply drop everything from Star Trek and other settings and focus on a more transhuman age space exploration. The PCs become autonomous living components of the ship. Each with a role to play in all aspects of the ships life. In combat one controls navigation, one offense (or sub system), one defense (or subsystem), one electronic or special warfare systems, and so on. In exploration one is social sciences, one biological sciences, etc. The ship is self repairing, and quasisentient. No captain, all actions made within mission parameters by consensus - with each PC given a Merit ranking that determines numbers of votes given the situation. The social sciences expert gets the most influence when deciding a course of action involving contact with an alien culture, and so forth. Mechanically this would be difficult to pull off, but maybe not as hard as we might think. Hi-level gestalt characters, PL9+, lots of free and standard cybernetics and genetic engineering. The Merit system wouldn't be too hard to figure out. Exploration missions would be standard, physical conflict would be with ancient tech, alien gods, and enemies with a lower level of tech but superior numbers, moral and societal issues would be the center of role play. Play would revolve around group cooperation and identity, with challanges revolving less around "What can we do" and more on "What should we do". Could be fun.

3) Going with the OPs idea, you might want to look into BESM d20's mecha creations system. It treats all vehicles the same. You might even have the PCs be a "flight" of semi-independant agents who explore for a large corporation who carry their ships from one system to the next and then service them in exchange for the information they gleen.

 

[Imperialus]

Well in terms of how the society would function I would plan on using Asamov's Foundation Traders as a base. Less focus on them being the biggest badass's around though, I'd keep the fallen empire motif however but have them working more along the lines of intersteller Shadowrunners trying to make a living off the anarchy that consumes the galaxy after the fall. This means that if there is a Foundation it would be distant and semi mythical much like it was percived by the rest of the galaxy in the books. There would be the post apocolyptic aspect of trying to scrounge functioning parts, weapons and fuel but less radioactive.

@Ausiegamer: I don't suppose you have a link directly to the rules you came up with? I tried wandering through your site but it was a little too big.

@Mustrum_Ridcully: I think you can make space combat more interesting by implementing a few different combat manuvers, like slingshoting around a sun or even use some special weapons to hurl either asteroids or smaller peices of debris at enemy ships.

@Michael Silverbane: Those are good ideas. The idea of the ship being the PC about half the time is sorta what I was hoping to accomplish. Creating/modifying some feats/skills that would give bonus' to dogfights and the like is a cool idea.

@Stormborn: I've heard good things about BESM. Kinda avoided it because I'm not a big anime fan but it might be worth looking at.

 

[Aussiegamer]

use the contact me on my site and I'll send you the more up to date rules.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I haven't run such a campaign, but a guy named Marlin in Austin ran a successful campaign in a space setting.

Everyone was a crewmember on a particular starship with a carrier-type setup, so each PC was also a pilot with some kind of mecha. That allowed him to have adventures with your typical sci-fi missions (everybody repel boarders, everybody go to the planet, etc.) but also to leave the ship and do personal missions.

The amalgam of styles played quite nicely.

My young engineering prodigy had just enough piloting skill to launch successfully, perform a mission without shooting too many holes in her allies, and not kill a bunch of people when she crashlanded into the hangar. Her "antics" made her more of a support (read: last ditch) PC in space missions.

However, on the more standard shipbound or planetary adventures, she really kicked boo-tay! Need something fixed, modified, or otherwise "scienced"- she was the girl.

 

[Stormborn]

@Stormborn: I've heard good things about BESM. Kinda avoided it because I'm not a big anime fan but it might be worth looking at.

No need to buy anything, the Mecha rules are found on their very own SRD.

 

[TheNovaLord]

In my homebrew d20 sci-fi i have never found this to be a problem in practise. I think cos when i started writng it one premise was...i want to do lots of things while in a spaceship, therefore have rules where everyone can have a use on board even in a situation where u thought they wouldnt.
The party are a
Humanoid Diplomat (who mans the comms)
Human Merc Fighter (who has pilot feats and fires fixed guns)
Cyborg Sci-Tech (specialist inn starships and armour, who does sensors, engineering stuff, can sit in a turret if needed)
Android Privateer (rogue type who can pilot a bit, can sit in a turret if needed, can do bits n pieces of engineering and computers)

The ship they have they stole and i guess i contrived for the ship to be ideally suited to the party. Even in a space combat the diplomat type has +12-+16 in bluff, diplomacey, intimidate etc so can merrily annoy opponents by talking to them to distract them. If the opponents turn / filter there comms then at least its a morale victory.

It the same as being down a dungeon. if u r in a trick and trap filled lair the paladin often dont do a lot except offer a kind and supportive word

JohnD