Sci-fi likes/dislikes

[glass]

Firefly would make a good setting as would any of Joss' worlds. I want to check out the Buffy and Angel games. Off topic but has anyone played them?

I've run Buffy. It seemed pretty good, but it was only for a single session while a couple of players were away, so I couldn't really comment in detail.


glass.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I'd say, Star Wars is a fantasy setting, full stop.

AFAIAC, no science=no sci-fi.

Heh- glass, might I invite you to join this thread, already in progress:

SF/F defined

Some would disagree with your assessment that there is no science in Star Wars, George Lucas and myself included.

 

[Tinner]

I like less space opera, and more gritty, near future SF.
Cyberpunk has always been my favorite genre, and I have to say like the SF/Fantasy of The X-Files/Dark Conspiracy/Dark*Matter style game as well.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

I confess to having missed Transhuman Space. It sounds like a game I could get along with.

I wrote a lengthy review of it some time ago. You can find it here.

 

[DragonLancer]

Firefly would make a good setting as would any of Joss' worlds. I want to check out the Buffy and Angel games. Off topic but has anyone played them?

Firefly would make for an interesting game/setting, I must agree.

I played through a campaign and a half of Buffy (about 35 sessions) and its a good game. The combat system really matches the action of the show IMO. Character creation follows the usual Unisystem thats found in all of Eden Studio's game with a few small changes for the setting.

EDIT: If you are interested, I still have my copy of the Buffy rulebook sitting on a shelf gathering dust and I'd be willing to sell it for the cost of postage plus a couple dollars/pounds.

 

[SWBaxter]

Firefly would make a good setting as would any of Joss' worlds.

Firefly is so close to a standard Traveller game that a fair number of people on rpg.net and COTI (kind of the Traveller equivalent of the ENBoards) wonder whether Joss Whedon played the game.

I want to check out the Buffy and Angel games. Off topic but has anyone played them?

They're mechanically decent, but IMHO very overpriced. Buffy and Angel are pretty straightforward settings, if you've got any modernish rules set you can probably do a decent adaptation with little work.

What type of sci-fi do you like to play as an RPG? What kind of stuff relay makes you mad when you play a sci-fi game? What stuff do you relay like?

Nowadays, I like hard sci-fi in Newtonian terms, and fairly wild stuff beyond that. For example, Babylon 5 - where the Earth ships have to use rockets to accelerate and spin habitats to produce the equivalent of gravity, but FTL travel means going through this weird alternate dimension where bizarre creatures may live - has the kind of mix I like.

I also like to reimagine classic settings into those sorts of terms. The same way that Galactica was updated for the 21st century, keeping many of the classic themes but rejigging them so they make a bit more sense and speak to current issues. I have a campaign I'd like to run that's actually based on Star Trek, but with most tech within sight of what we have today and all the aliens being genetically modified humans (descendents of colonists sent out by sleeper ship). Partly I'd like to do this because I think it'd be cool to try a harder sci-fi version of Star Trek, and partly it's because I'd like to see the look on my players' faces when they realize "Hey, those Centauri colonists... they're Klingons! And that means my character is a Vulcan..."

 

[radferth]

All I ask is that it be self-consistant. This means that if you want me to use a one-hand gun other than a machine pistol, it must be better than a machine pistol.

 

[BiggusGeekus]

I recently picked up d20 Future and I stumbled accross a pet peeve: spaceships.

Spaceships are very expensive. Fine. But everyone in the group wants one. Fine. The thing is that many sci-fi RPGs try to include ways to get the group to start out with a spaceship. The problem is that its sort of blackmailing the PCs. You have to have one guy rig his character so he starts with a ship. And if nobody does that the early adventures tend to start with getting a ship.

What I'd like to see is a dirt cheap way to start with a ship and then make them expensive afterwards.

You can do this with the feat system.

Feat: Captian
You have a spaceship.
Benefit: you start with a spaceship worth X credits/dollars/gp/quatloos/whatever. When on board that ship you gain a +2 bonus to your Diplomacy and Intimidate checks.

Is that so hard? Of all of these bazillion sci-fi games I've read, why do they make it so difficult to start with something you absolutely need?

 

[Ferret]

Not specifically from a game but I seriously dislike when the story is finished by the science, the doctor gets out the photon syringe, the enginier re-polarised the di-fusion reactor to escape or when it isn't used because it would ruin the story, 'too much interference to teleport!".

This has been an anti-startrek rant. Thnak you.

 

[Arnwyn]

What type of sci-fi do you like to play as an RPG? What kind of stuff relay makes you mad when you play a sci-fi game? What stuff do you relay like?

I like futuristic anime-based sci-fi games - a mixed amalgamation of Macross/Cowboy Bebop/Dirty Pair/Ghost in the Shell campaign universe is optimal (and is what we play - not d20, though).

I'm not keen on aliens, at all.