DanotheSlender
First Post
Thanks Derren! I'd never remembered that on my own.
Game On!!
Game On!!
Tell us about your favourite space RPG and why?
oni no won
First Post
Mongoose Traveller- My first space rpg was Classic Traveller and the Mongoose version has been an excellent update to it while retaining the classic feel. You can just about do any kind of campaign with it and I love that Mongoose has used the system to explore other settings such as Judge Dredd.
Star Wars Saga ed- I believe this to be the best iteration of that property. All the previous versions suffered from Jedi "uber-ness". This iteration allows other classes to shine without having to weaken the Jedi class mechanically.
Danger Patrol- I love the Style and Role cards part of chargen. Setting up the episode is also very fun as well as putting your players through it.
Stars Without Numbers- I love that it retained old school feel to it yet has modern innovative subsystems built in.
Star Wars Saga ed- I believe this to be the best iteration of that property. All the previous versions suffered from Jedi "uber-ness". This iteration allows other classes to shine without having to weaken the Jedi class mechanically.
Danger Patrol- I love the Style and Role cards part of chargen. Setting up the episode is also very fun as well as putting your players through it.
Stars Without Numbers- I love that it retained old school feel to it yet has modern innovative subsystems built in.
All told, Traveller (especially "Classic") is my favorite, but here are some others I have enjoyed for particular reasons.
2300 AD had pretty nifty background of "harder" SF sort, with some really interesting planets.
Space Opera IMO perfectly captured its namesake genre, and had a ton of scenarios and star sectors and space ships as supplements. The space combat game was "Doc" Smith to a T.
2300 AD had pretty nifty background of "harder" SF sort, with some really interesting planets.
Space Opera IMO perfectly captured its namesake genre, and had a ton of scenarios and star sectors and space ships as supplements. The space combat game was "Doc" Smith to a T.
Sparx MacGyver
First Post
I've always been partial to Star Wars Saga Edition. I've given the WH40k RPG's a whirl, but they didn't quite fit my group, and can't say I rightly enjoyed it based off my experiences I did play some d20 Modern/Future, and that was a good one. But my favorite has always been SWSE. I've played all the versions of it, d6, RCR, and FFG, but to this day I still stand by my favorite of SWSE.
dracomilan
Explorer
I've tried Star Wars d6, Alternity, GURPS Vorkosigan and Dark Heresy. SWd6 was a messy ruleset, WH didn't fit my group, GURPS didn't allow my players to use their beautiful dice, so I would stick with Alternity. I'm pretty interested in the 4e version of Santiago, though.
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Fiddleback
First Post
Favorite Space RPG? That's a toughy. The problem is, when you say Space RPG, I don't think Star Wars / Star Trek / Serenity / etc.
When you play those, you aren't playing a Space RPG you are playing Star Wars or Star Trek or whatever. It's somebody else's universe with already established rules of behavior and what can or can't go on (and loads of canon to back them up). You aren't really playing a Space RPG so much as an RPG that happens to occur in space in your setting of choice.
When you say Space I tend to think of exploration and discovery and and exciting adventures on strange worlds that are free from things like Prime Directives and Jedi Orders and people with Magical Police boxes. There isn't anything wrong with those when you want to play in those universes, but it doesn't, to me, allow the level of freedom you get with things like D&D and Pathfinder and so on. You are constantly bumping up against the already established 'heroes' of those universes in one way or another directly or not.
Also, a good Space RPG means more to me than just being on a foreign planet. A Sci-Fi setting doesn't automatically make it Space. Sure, you can go to a new planet and spend lots of game time there and be perfectly happy, but the option has to exist for you and your crew/friends to completely pick up and go elsewhere just because you can. The latest edition of Gamma World, for instance (at least as far as I have been able to play it) isn't a Space RPG necessarily. You are, more or less, on Earth. You can hop about a bit between various versions of Earth, but it still doesn't seem like it qualifies as a Space RPG. (Although, yes, you can go to the moon, so maybe it qualifies just barely.)
Star Frontiers was the first RPG I ever GM'd so I'll give it a nostalgia vote and also say thank you for the above links. It's been a long time since I've done anything with SF and I appreciate getting to look at it again.
It interests me that no one has mentioned Spelljammer. I've not played it, but I have heard stories. Are they true? Is it horrible?
The best Space adventure I ever played in was run off the Big Eyes, Small Mouth system. I can honestly say more fun was had doing that than any other Sci-Fi/Space game I've played to date. It was a lovely game system that allowed you to do almost anything you wanted in terms of both genre and character. As long as you had a good story in mind you could build any set of characters, powers, and equipment you liked to go with it and take it any direction you liked.
Traveller I've read but never played. Couldn't convince the group to go for it, much to my everlasting chagrin. It looks like the kind of thing I could go for, but it just never came together for me.
Ditto Space 1889. Always wanted to play, never got the chance. Someone still makes it, do they not?
When you play those, you aren't playing a Space RPG you are playing Star Wars or Star Trek or whatever. It's somebody else's universe with already established rules of behavior and what can or can't go on (and loads of canon to back them up). You aren't really playing a Space RPG so much as an RPG that happens to occur in space in your setting of choice.
When you say Space I tend to think of exploration and discovery and and exciting adventures on strange worlds that are free from things like Prime Directives and Jedi Orders and people with Magical Police boxes. There isn't anything wrong with those when you want to play in those universes, but it doesn't, to me, allow the level of freedom you get with things like D&D and Pathfinder and so on. You are constantly bumping up against the already established 'heroes' of those universes in one way or another directly or not.
Also, a good Space RPG means more to me than just being on a foreign planet. A Sci-Fi setting doesn't automatically make it Space. Sure, you can go to a new planet and spend lots of game time there and be perfectly happy, but the option has to exist for you and your crew/friends to completely pick up and go elsewhere just because you can. The latest edition of Gamma World, for instance (at least as far as I have been able to play it) isn't a Space RPG necessarily. You are, more or less, on Earth. You can hop about a bit between various versions of Earth, but it still doesn't seem like it qualifies as a Space RPG. (Although, yes, you can go to the moon, so maybe it qualifies just barely.)
Star Frontiers was the first RPG I ever GM'd so I'll give it a nostalgia vote and also say thank you for the above links. It's been a long time since I've done anything with SF and I appreciate getting to look at it again.
It interests me that no one has mentioned Spelljammer. I've not played it, but I have heard stories. Are they true? Is it horrible?
The best Space adventure I ever played in was run off the Big Eyes, Small Mouth system. I can honestly say more fun was had doing that than any other Sci-Fi/Space game I've played to date. It was a lovely game system that allowed you to do almost anything you wanted in terms of both genre and character. As long as you had a good story in mind you could build any set of characters, powers, and equipment you liked to go with it and take it any direction you liked.
Traveller I've read but never played. Couldn't convince the group to go for it, much to my everlasting chagrin. It looks like the kind of thing I could go for, but it just never came together for me.
Ditto Space 1889. Always wanted to play, never got the chance. Someone still makes it, do they not?
Michael Silverbane
Adventurer
Not necessarily... When I long-ago used the d6 Starwars game, we were really playing in a generic space opera setting somewhat inspired by the Star Wars movie trilogy. More Recently, I've used (a somewhat modified) Star Wars Saga to run a game inspired by the Firefly tv show, a game very reminiscent of the types of games played with Traveller rpg, and a RIFTs-style game.
Fiddleback
First Post
And if the question had been what the best rules set was, I'd be right there with you. For that matter, you can strip the theme off of nearly any set of rules you enjoy and re-theme it for Space or any other genre. That might even be the best overall idea for satisfying a personal preference if you can get your group to go along with it.
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