Space RPGs?

[Storm Raven]

I have a copy of this starmap, which I have laminated and use in gaming. It has about 224 stars on it, and while the distances between the stars are not apparent at a glance it is possible to discern which stars are near to a given location in a few moments. You glance at the dot that represents your current location and note the last of its co-ordinates. Then you glance at the nearby dots and check the last of their co-ordinates. If it is very different from the number you mentally noted you dismiss the star as not all that near. The same approach works using the Astrogator's Handbook, which divides space within 75 light-years into 63 sectors and represents each with a map like this.

Sure, it's not as easy as judging distance on a map of something flat. But that's because it is representing something that is intrinsically more complex. You can't suppress that complexity without losing the essence of Space.

When I first started playing Traveller years ago (using the little black books complete with the old map of the Spinward Marches) I was worried about the 2D nature of the map too. I made a system for representing 3D space pretty much like the one in the starmap you provide.

And I found it just didn't add much to game play. The 2D map isn't perfectly realistic, but it does what is needed for the game to work, and does it reasonably well. Adding the third dimension to the map is a lot of extra work, and it doesn't represent as well (people are good at judging distances by eye, but not so much by adding a mathematical calculation to the mix) and it doesn't add a whole lot to actual play, which is primarily concerned with what heppens in a system, and not so much with different systems (other than just jumping from one to the other).

 

[Agemegos]

When I first started playing Traveller years ago (using the little black books complete with the old map of the Spinward Marches) I was worried about the 2D nature of the map too. I made a system for representing 3D space pretty much like the one in the starmap you provide.

And I found it just didn't add much to game play. The 2D map isn't perfectly realistic, but it does what is needed for the game to work

By the same token a chessboard does what is needed for the game to work, and as an abstract game chess is a lot more successful than realistic wargames. Realistic terrain is fiddly to represent, and getting all the units in each army to move and fight at once, making the outcomes of fights depend on the strength of the units, and all that stuff is complicated. Hundreds of millions of chess players find that it doesn't add much to game-play. But wargamers find that chess is so unrealistic that it just doesn't represent a battle.

Your first Traveller game was set in the Spinward Marches, which is a fictional place. There can be no sense in the Spinward Marches that the astrography is just wrong. The first Traveller game I played in was set in Larry Niven's Known Space, which set in familiar space very near to Sol. Most of the action twenty years of play in my homebrew space setting has set in systems within 125 light-years of Sol, in imagined versions of real places. Those places aren't in a two-dimensional universe: they just aren't. On a clear night you can see Tau Ceti, Delta Pavonis, Zeta Tucanae, Lambda Aurigae, and you can point out the locations of CD -40° 898, BD -0° 2944, and the rest. (Well, not all on the same night, but you get the point.) You can see that they are set in a three-dimensional space.

Traveller's Solomani Rim is supposedly set in local space near Sol. But nearly all the familiar stars are missing, and Space is supposed to be flat, which I can see every night is just not true. You might as well ask me to play in a WWII RPG campaign in which the battles are fought on 8-by-8 square grids by knights and bishops and flying castles. Sure the gameplay is easier, but the suspension of disbelief is much, much harder.

 

[Agemegos]

I meant the latter, although I was purposely leaving it a bit vague. I'm interested to hear about all the space RPGs in general.

I would find it interesting and helpful to know what space opera you had lately read and enjoyed.

 

[Metus]

I would find it interesting and helpful to know what space opera you had lately read and enjoyed.

Well, it's not a space opera, actually, although it meets some of the criteria. I was reading Tuf Voyaging by George R.R. Martin. I really enjoyed it.

As an aside, I bought Mongoose Traveller and Burning Empires; I'm liking what I'm seeing of them thus far. The mechanics for Burning Empires seems really crazy, but possibly really cool as well.

 

[Shadowsmith]

My favorite space game is Space 1889. Victorian era ether flyers reach Mars and Venus. Interplanetary role-playing in a more civilized time.

 

[Agemegos]

Well, it's not a space opera, actually, although it meets some of the criteria. I was reading Tuf Voyaging by George R.R. Martin. I really enjoyed it.

Try H. Beam Piper's Federation, I think you'll like it.

 

[RFisher]

I collect Japanese pen & paper RPGs. I suppose I needed a way of being EVEN MORE GEEKY!

That’s something I’ve considered taking up. Any advice for someone just getting started?

 

[Punnuendo]

As an aside, I bought Mongoose Traveller and Burning Empires; I'm liking what I'm seeing of them thus far. The mechanics for Burning Empires seems really crazy, but possibly really cool as well.

Yeah, it's a slight disconnect from more traditional RPGs but I think it is a shining example of how sometimes mechanics do matter for the story you are telling.

 

[Psion]

Yeah, it's a slight disconnect from more traditional RPGs but I think it is a shining example of how sometimes mechanics do matter for the story you are telling.

Have you actually played it?

I lurve big rulesets, and I own this... but some of the subsystems seem a bit daunting to me. I couldn't see dragging my group into it.

 

[Punnuendo]

Have you actually played it?

I lurve big rulesets, and I own this... but some of the subsystems seem a bit daunting to me. I couldn't see dragging my group into it.

A little. With a group of DnD players and with a group of friends who either aren't gamers, or at least not RPers. The second group got the game a lot more. But yeah, it is a bit daunting sometimes.