Scifi rpgs

[Zweischneid's Wrath]

Do not give me "you can add this book for what you want or that lose this part of the book". Show me a complete futuristic world that has the same impact like Forgotten Realms or Earthdawn.

Well, for one I do not quite get your point, since the examples you offered (Earthdawn and especially Forgotten Realms) are quite heavily build in a modular "take-it-or-leave-it" fashion.

As you mention Earthdawn, Shadowrun should have appeared to you which essentially is a quite entertaining pulp-rpg-collection of many sci-fi rpg clichees and steretypes -- not unlike Forgotten Realms / Earthdawn that draw from many different sources aswell.

Cyberpunk (though no longer published) might be considered one of the more "pure" sources that lacks the diversity of Shadowrun but stays closer to the fictional origins. (if Shadowrun equates to Forgotten Realms, Cyberpunkt might be the MERP or Stormbringer RPG of Sci-Fi)


A bit more futuristic would be the Trinity Game from White Wolf which does a nice job of drawing a complete and detailed vision of the world in the (not-so) near future.

They do have Space Ships, but as someone already mentioned.. that alone doesn't really qualify for a Space Opera IMO.

Some of the games that have been mentioned that area space opera still consider space opera to me which means a poteintal to use space ships.

Damn, I mean Vampire plays at the end of the 20th and beginning of the 21st Century, and therefore includes the potential to use space ships.
Does that qualify as a Space Opera?



Some "Alternate Earth" setting that might interest you are "Tribe 8" and possibly "Rifts". Due to the heavy "Science & Sorcery" flavor those games use, I personally see them more in the space-opera-catigory than.. lets say Aliens the RPG or Transhuman Space.

A matter of Taste I suppose.

Besides, if you don't plan on interstellar travel, I see no problem with picking a Space Opera like Fading Suns or Star Wars and drop em off a planet with no access to spaceships.

 

[BiggusGeekus]

Besides, if you don't plan on interstellar travel, I see no problem with picking a Space Opera like Fading Suns or Star Wars and drop em off a planet with no access to spaceships.

This works especially well with Fading Suns. Few people understand technology and there is a lot of political intriuge.

 

[ColonelHardisson]

I'm also unsure of why many of these games can't be used simply by dropping the spaceship rules. But, I'll toss in a couple games:

Empire of the Petal Throne - set something like 90,000 years in the future, on a planet that has been shunted off into a pocket dimension. No spaceships. Generally a fantasy world, but the planet was only partially terraformed, so there are the indigenous lifeforms, plus a plethora of lifeforms from throughout the star empire the planet used to belong to.

Blue Planet - mentioned above, but still worth mentioning again. Set on a planet that can be travelled to from Earth via a wormhole. There is space travel, but not really anything usable by player characters.

Twilight: 2000 and Merc: 2000 - both are set in the future (the games were written back in the 80s, originally. T:2000 is set on Earth, in which World War III has just ground down to a halt due to everyone being nuked. M:2000 is set on Earth, also, but is more about the world as we know it, just a few years in the future.

Dark Conspiracy - a horror game set on Earth, a few years in the future. Aliens and demons have invaded, but in an X-Files-ish, behind-the-scenes way.

Book of the New Sun, for GURPS - set on Earth far in the future. Space travel is possible (but so improbable, for the most part, as to not seem possible) but not by player characters. The Earth (or Urth) is a vastly different place, the differences far too numerous to even begin to mention.

 

[Desdichado]

What, the thread the other OGL and d20 Games forum wasn't getting you the answers you wanted?

I'll tell you here the same thing I said there; first of all, you apparently don't want a game, you want a setting.

Second, the fact that you can easily simply not go into space makes your request kinda silly. You discount any answer that has "a spaceship" as space opera (apparently you're unfamiliar with the term space opera) and brush it off, and then complain that nobody is marketting a product specifically for you.

I've got a tip for you; nobody markets campaigns specifically to me either; I have to build every campaign I've ever run for any real length of time from scratch, because nobody makes a setting that is exactly to my taste.

 

[ColonelHardisson]

I forgot to mention Skyrealms of Jorune. This is another fanatsy planet with a scifi origin.

Ringworld - good luck in finding a copy of this game. It's set in Larry Niven's Ringworld, a band of metal that encircles its sun in the same orbit as Earth, and terraformed to be Earth-like. I think it had the surface area of millions of Earths, and even included full-scale "maps" of all the planets in our Solar System in one of its oceans. Truly enormous. Inhabited by descendants of Australopithecus (IIRC) that had evolved into countless forms to fill all ecological niches.

I have to agree with Joshua; discounting games simply because they include the possibility of space travel really limits the choices. Most of the ones I've mentioned include at least the possibility, even if it's slim.

 

[afreed]

Some "Alternate Earth" setting that might interest you are "Tribe 8" and possibly "Rifts". Due to the heavy "Science & Sorcery" flavor those games use, I personally see them more in the space-opera-catigory than.. lets say Aliens the RPG or Transhuman Space.

I want to dispute this a little; I love Tribe 8 (and did some writing for the upcoming second edition), but I don't think you can call it science-fiction at all, let alone space opera. It's post-apocalyptic fantasy; the setting (by default, anyway) has no technology beyond that of the modern day, and the nature of the apocalypse is purely magical. It's no more science-fiction than, say, Urban Arcana or Vampire, except for the fact that it takes place in the future.
Good game, though. Go take a look when the new edition comes out!

While we're off-topic, what <i>are</i> the space opera games currently (or soon-to-be) on the market and supported? All I can think of offhand are: Fading Suns, Traveller, Trinity (kind of), and Star Wars. Is there a current Star Trek game?

 

[Desdichado]

Dragonstar qualifies, I think. Traveller is (dubiously space opera, but there you have it) supported in I think three systems right now. There's a Decipher Star Trek game I believe that uses the CODA system (also used in Lord of the Rings.)

Of course this discussion is a bit confused, because the original post has a very spurious definition of space opera that he insists is correct.

 

[Piratecat]

In addition, note that d20 Future is coming out next year.

 

[WayneLigon]

Do not give me "you can add this book for what you want or that lose this part of the book". Show me a complete futuristic world that has the same impact like Forgotten Realms or Earthdawn.

I don't think there is one. Compared to fantasy, SciFi is the poor stepchild of the gaming world (but then, so is everything else) so there really haven't been a glut of 'complete' products like the FR. Actually, I can't think of a single one. However, both FR and Earthdawn are, as has been mentioned above, pretty modular.

If you want a completely developed alien world to use, look at Blue Planet or the Hard Gear line. Or look at the GURPS Traveller books for single worlds. Traveller itself is perhaps the most 'modular' with regard to spacecraft. Many worlds of the Imperium don't see a ship that often, so there are rules for a wide variety of tech levels.

 

[tecnowraith]

Heavy Gear and amost games with mechs dose not bold well with my group, I personally, like em but since I am wanting to run a game, I have to think about what my wants to play.