Space Adventure RPGs

[Myrdin Potter]

Reign of Discordia 2nd Edition

Interstellar Adventure in the Ruins of Empire (for the 5E and White Star game systems). Funded in the first 12 hours!

kck.st

Reign of Discordia got taken down and then restarted as a new Kickstarter.

 

[Jd Smith1]

I started out in 1979 playing Traveller (black box).

I would say that since then only 50% of my campaigns have been fantasy; I dumped D&D around '82, tried 5e and found the same old problems, and dumped it again.

The problem for Sci-fi games is that Star Wars and Star Trek dominate the genre, but there are still very good settings out there.

A major problem is sci-fi settings are often a thinking man's game, and D&D and its tedious clones tend to be the gateway to our hobby, and encourage a mindset that does not make such games attractive to many gamers.

 

[Myrdin Potter]

I only started a few years after you did and early D&D was also a thinking person game. Highly lethal with XP for gold which rewarded avoiding combat.

The issue I have always had with SF campaigns is the limits of technology. The freedom of movement and access to information in SF is well beyond modern so it makes it much more difficult to make closed box puzzles. You tend to go into buildings, not ancient ruins and fantasy games have far more rules/materials to randomly generate adventure seeds and random encounters.

There is a lot of burden on the GM for a SF sandbox game than a fantasy one and hard to not have a sandbox, especially if trading between star systems is happening.

 

[payn]

I only started a few years after you did and early D&D was also a thinking person game. Highly lethal with XP for gold which rewarded avoiding combat.

The issue I have always had with SF campaigns is the limits of technology. The freedom of movement and access to information in SF is well beyond modern so it makes it much more difficult to make closed box puzzles. You tend to go into buildings, not ancient ruins and fantasy games have far more rules/materials to randomly generate adventure seeds and random encounters.

There is a lot of burden on the GM for a SF sandbox game than a fantasy one and hard to not have a sandbox, especially if trading between star systems is happening.

It helps if the SF setting has no high speed long distance communication and warp travel takes a week between light years. It makes SF a lot more like age of sail.

 

[aramis erak]

In system lightspeed comms... at closest approach, earth-mars is about 6 minutes round.
That's fast enough for an asynchronus "conversation" - very much like some of the faster threads here.

 

[aramis erak]

Alternity appears to be out of circulation, but if you can find anything for their Star*Drive setting, it is good for inspiration.
I found a single adventure module at my Public Library (no rulebooks, drat) and now have some plot ideas to drop into other campaigns.

Star*Drive is very much a parallel of the Traveller OTU, right down to the space travel modality. The duration's just a touch different, and the ship rules are different... but it's either a tribute, an unlicensed adaptation, or both...

Not to say it is bad; it's a decent read. But its parallels of GURPS Traveller and Traveller for Hero (both available legit on CD from FarFuture.net) are equally as good, as clear, and share the tropeset.

 

[Yora]

If the premise is adventures in space rather than science fiction, there's always the option of low-tech space travel. There were huge amounts of futuristic space stories in the mid 20th century that aimed at being fun for the common masses and they generally didn't bother with considering major revolutions in technology.
Retro-future is always an option. Though admittedly that's usually a style choice rather than as a solution to narrative obstacles the writers are running into.

I think even with 2020s technology, it's not that intrusive if your campaign is about adventures on the frontiers of known space rather than in major population centers with populations in the billions. There is no need for a galaxy wide subspace holonet that gives instant access to all the galaxy's recorded information even on some small rock hundreds of lightyears from the next major city. Every advanced security circumvention device can be countered with advanced security measures.
There are no I Win buttons just because the game is set in space.

 

[Dioltach]

A big advantage of adventuring in space is that it's so big. No matter how advanced and extensive the civilised areas are, in the infinity of space there are always going to be plenty of regions of lawlessness, low communications and general opportunity for adventure. And then you can easily switch back to civilisation for a quick urban heist.

And because space is so vast and hostile you don't need to bend over backwards trying to explain why the low-tech region hasn't been swallowed up by the League of Highly Advanced Planetary System or the Dictatorian Empire (unlike a planet-bound setting, where you'll often have Renaissance-level cultures and Dark Ages cultures separated by a river, or even just a border wall).

 

[aramis erak]

If the premise is adventures in space rather than science fiction, there's always the option of low-tech space travel. There were huge amounts of futuristic space stories in the mid 20th century that aimed at being fun for the common masses and they generally didn't bother with considering major revolutions in technology.

There are a number of older Sci-Fi (at least for the time) stories going back much further... Lucian of Samosata wrote A True History in the 2nd C (100-199) CE. It goes with the "sailing ship in space" motif. It's said to be a reaction/parody to/of Antonius Diogenes' Of the Wonderful Things Beyond Thule, also 2nd C. Unlike Lucian, Antonius' work is lost. We know of it from an synopsis from Photius.

SF goes way back.

 

[Yora]

The more I've been looking, the more I am under the impression that there are very few resources around that address setting up campaigns or creating settings for space games. Stars Without Number having tables for randomly rolled planet seems to be mostly it.

I guess the openness of "sci-fi setting" plays a part in that. Asking about advice on creating a sci-fi setting is too open to give any kind of answer to.