Looking for a deep space rpg

[Desdichado]

Are you looking for a "setting inclusive" game, or are you essentially wanting to play Mass Effect the RPG?

If all you want is rules, I'll throw out d20 Future as a pretty good alternative. It comes with the old Star*Drive setting pretty heavily interwoven into the assumptions, but that's a pretty generic system in terms of space opera. You could easily use the rules to run a Traveller conversion, or pretty much any space opera.

I've always been a fan of Traveller too, and I like using their sector mapping tools from my old copy of MegaTraveller, with the hexadecimal system descriptions and whatnot. I've got a homebrewed sector all ready to go, but I've never run it. It's fairly system neutral, so I tend to gravitate towards more neutral systems.

GURPS, if you like it, has both the Traveller setting and their GURPS Space setting, which is really very similar.

 

[Matrix Sorcica]

their GURPS Space setting, which is really very similar.

What setting is that? Is it included in GURPS Space 4th Edition? And is it just Traveller with the serials filed off?

 

[Calico_Jack73]

Depends on what you want. Do you want hard sci-fi with rules on trading commodities by making interplanetary runs or something more like Star Wars where space ship combat is for some unknown reason run like World War 2 dogfights?

For hard sci-fi I'd run with Traveller T20. Character creation can be a bit hairy since it melds the traditional GDW character creation from games such as Twilight:2000 and Traveller New Era with d20. You aren't intended to start at 1st level. In fact, the intent is that the PCs can be of different levels. The combat system has been changed up to make it equally deadly to PCs of all levels. Armor doesn't just make it harder to hit you but it also absorbs damage. The starship combat system gives all of the players something to do. I won't go into the details but I really like T20.

For space opera I'd probably use Gurps Space or d20 Future. Both provide a bunch of ideas that you can use or discard as they pertain to your campaign. Hard Sci-Fi rules out the idea of traveling faster than light but both books give a bunch of options for getting around it or you can just decide that in your campaign world that it is possible.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I would not recommend the d20 version of Traveller. It had the nice feature of interesting rules for trade, but otherwise, I don't see it as a "working" system.
Alone the different starting levels for PCs just don't work well in a d20/3.x based system. If you're interested in game balance and hope for/expect some combat, the game will fail. If not, I didn't get the feeling that the system itself supported much teamplay. The trading stuff could be mastered by a single character. But other peoples taste might differ. It definitely didn't make "click" with me.

 

[Calico_Jack73]

I would not recommend the d20 version of Traveller. It had the nice feature of interesting rules for trade, but otherwise, I don't see it as a "working" system.
Alone the different starting levels for PCs just don't work well in a d20/3.x based system. If you're interested in game balance and hope for/expect some combat, the game will fail. If not, I didn't get the feeling that the system itself supported much teamplay. The trading stuff could be mastered by a single character. But other peoples taste might differ. It definitely didn't make "click" with me.

Actually from personal in game experience I find that the T20 system works fine with the d20 rule set. With the reworking of the combat system character survivability has very little to do with level. They allow for the Obi-Wan and Luke variety of experience levels that you normally can't get in most games.

 

[Nikosandros]

What setting is that? Is it included in GURPS Space 4th Edition? And is it just Traveller with the serials filed off?

There is no setting in GURPS Space. It is a genre book.

Personally, I think very highly of GURPS, so it gets a vote from me.

 

[Calico_Jack73]

There is no setting in GURPS Space. It is a genre book.

Personally, I think very highly of GURPS, so it gets a vote from me.

I'd suggest GURPS Space even if only to raid for ideas to incorporate into other systems.

 

[Brutorz Bill]

You can't go wrong with Lightspeed: www.lightspeed-rpg.com
All and every sci-fi thingie you can think of thrown together into one (sort of) coherent setting.

Also, the Traveller underways from Mongoose will be available on the net as a SRD. You can check out the rules already on their site.

I hadn't seen or heard about Lightspeed before! Looks pretty cool!
I see that it's Fuzion based, not familiar with that system. Like the snippets of background I found on the site. They do include a little bit of everything in there. Waay cool!

 

[Ebon Shar]

Ah, this thread has gotten me all soft and nostalgic thinking back to my glorious Star Frontiers days. There was nothing quite like slicing the pseudopods off a Sathar with my vibrosword! Good times.

Oh, Dralasites rule.

 

[Matrix Sorcica]

There is no setting in GURPS Space. It is a genre book.

Hobo wrote that there is GURPS Traveller and a GURPS Space setting. So I'm asking about that. Is it the old Space Atlas setting?

Regarding Lightspeed. You can download the Fuzion rules for free. try www.tranzfuzion.com. IIRC, it's not the latest version of the rules that is the best. I may be wrong. But check it out.