Space Travel: a Sketch

[Bill Zebub]

For what it's worth, even in Star Wars, we have multiple examples of characters getting hit by lightsabers without them being cut through. The most obvious example I can recall off the top of my head is Luke hitting Vader in the shoulder during their Cloud City fight, right before he loses.

Two reactions:
1. Yes, the system we are envisioning allows for that.
2. It drives me crazy that they PG-13'd the sequels by turning lightsabers into baseball bats. E.g. Luke hitting bad guys with his lightsaber and knocking them into the maw of the sarlacc pit, instead of their two halves falling into the Sarlacc.

 

[Laurefindel]

Looks like you're off to a good start.

I have a Twilight Imperium RPG that I made based on the system of The One Ring 1e a few years back, before FFG published their own TTRPG based on their Genesis engine. (Twilight Imperium is originally a 4X board game with a rich space opera setting, now in its 4th edition).

FTL travel is calculated in months, and space travel is based on the Journeying rules of The One Ring. This game assumes that the PCs are the commanding crew aboard their ship. In short:

• Player must divvy up roles among the PC aboard voyaging ships between that of Captain (or CO), Navigator, Security Officer, and Chief Engineer. There are other roles (Doctor, Quartermaster, Steward, etc) but they map with the four basic roles for the purpose of triggering hazards.
• There is a preliminary navigation roll that may make further rolls easier.
• Players must make spacefaring tests for each leg of their interstellar voyage (each role tests a different skill), accumulating fatigue when they fail.
• Special results trigger hazard episodes from a table. Hazards usually challenge all passengers, but sometimes single out a specific role.
• Some hazards test to avoid a negative outcome, some to trigger a positive one.
• The condition of the ship and perks purchased by players modify the accumulated fatigue and mitigate/worsen outcomes.

Similar to that, my Star Wars RPG (also based on The One Ring RPG, but 2e this time) has an Opening Crawl minigame where players "act out" the introductory text at the beginning of each new chapter, determining their conditions and dispositions as the game starts in media res. This one is more about making an introduction than space travel per se, but it generally also imply hyperspace travel.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Looks like you're off to a good start.

I have a Twilight Imperium RPG that I made based on the system of The One Ring 1e a few years back, before FFG published their own TTRPG based on their Genesis engine. (Twilight Imperium is originally a 4X board game with a rich space opera setting, now in its 4th edition).

FTL travel is calculated in months, and space travel is based on the Journeying rules of The One Ring. This game assumes that the PCs are the commanding crew aboard their ship. In short:

• Player must divvy up roles among the PC aboard voyaging ships between that of Captain (or CO), Navigator, Security Officer, and Chief Engineer. There are other roles (Doctor, Quartermaster, Steward, etc) but they map with the four basic roles for the purpose of triggering hazards.
• There is a preliminary navigation roll that may make further rolls easier.
• Players must make spacefaring tests for each leg of their interstellar voyage (each role tests a different skill), accumulating fatigue when they fail.
• Special results trigger hazard episodes from a table. Hazards usually challenge all passengers, but sometimes single out a specific role.
• Some hazards test to avoid a negative outcome, some to trigger a positive one.
• The condition of the ship and perks purchased by players modify the accumulated fatigue and mitigate/worsen outcomes.

Similar to that, my Star Wars RPG (also based on The One Ring RPG, but 2e this time) has an Opening Crawl minigame where players "act out" the introductory text at the beginning of each new chapter, determining their conditions and dispositions as the game starts in media res. This one is more about making an introduction than space travel per se, but it generally also imply hyperspace travel.

I was really into TOR (1st edition) and also thought about porting it to other genres/settings (including Conan).

But the TOR journey rules are a good example of what, now, I don't want: most of the dice rolling in TOR journeys (definitely true in 1st edition; I'm less familiar with 2nd edition) is not triggered by player decisions; rather they are mandated by the rule system. E.g., "Oh, you failed a Travel roll, so now...let's see (rolls)...ok I need the Look-out to make an Awareness check, and if you fail then everybody takes 1 Endurance." Literally the only decision-making is whether to spend Hope on any of the rolls. Other than that the players could literally all go raid the fridge while the GM rolls out the dice for the entire Journey, and fills them in on what happened when they return to the table.

Now, in some cases the "Hazards" are fleshed out and actually take some interaction and problem-solving, and some of the adventures come with a couple of example Hazards to include, instead of the default dice-rolling in the rule book. A TOR supplement I always wanted was a big fat book of those kinds of hazards, for every role (Look-out, Guide, Hunter, etc.), for different regions. And maybe that would be an alternate way of handling Space Travel, too. "Oh, look, you failed a roll: when you come out of hyperspace, you find the planet is missing and instead there's a massive asteroid field, plus a moon. Wait, that's weird, this planet didn't have a moon..."