What do you like or don't like in sci-fi rpg

[silburnl]

Another great sci-fi RPG (though sadly, it's been out-of-print for several years now ), was GDW's 2300AD, which was a cleaned-up, beefed-up Second Edition to Traveller: 2300 (which actually had absolutely no relation to the Traveller/MegaTraveller/Traveller: The New Era universe, but was instead set in the same universe as Twilight: 2000, only set 300 years later).

I wondered if anyone was going to mention 2300AD. It satisfies pretty much all of the items in the checklist from upthread - the Kafer War as a major plot element might fail on the not 'overly militaristic' criterion (but there was plenty of non-military stuff if you wanted it) and the presence of

Spoiler

could violate the 'no provable deities' (for certain values of deity) plus of course its not available on the shelf or off....

Having said all that, while there was a bunch of interesting ideas and plot elements the game line suffered a bit from kitchen-sink-syndrome (Earth/Cybertech I'm looking at you) and the quality of supplements was distinctly patchy and thin later in the run.

Regards
Luke

 

[scourger]

Also, remember that starship combat is fun for pilots only (& maybe gunners). Anyone else is probably sitting around waiting to see if the ship gets destroyed, which could kill the entire party and stop the camapign cold. I prefer a vehicle to be just a conveyance to the next adventure site unless each PC has their own vehicle and thus can master their own fate.

 

[Calico_Jack73]

My (hopefully) last statement on Clarke's law is this... I think everyone reads too much into it. Technology can/will get to a point where people don't wan't/care to understand it yet they will still use it. I saw this every day back when I was a simple computer technician in the Air Force. I'd go to people's offices every day to fix their computer problems and in almost every case they didn't want to know how I had fixed it, only that it was fixed and they could get back to work. This is a central theme in many Cyberpunk games where the average person is happy to use a device though they have no idea how it works. It might as well be magic... they don't really care what it is so long as it works. Some would say we are already at that point. I think as Nanotechnology gets more researched we'll see even more of that feeling.

My fave settings for Sci-Fi would be Firefly and if someone would do a d20 Mechwarrior/Battletech and a d20 Dune RPG.

 

[Morte]

Another great sci-fi RPG (though sadly, it's been out-of-print for several years now ), was GDW's 2300AD, [....]

Oh man, was that a cool game! It's unfortunate that GDW closed down in early-1996.

You may be pleased to know that a reworked D20 conversion of 2300 is in the works from QLI, who publish T20 Traveller. I think it's somewhere roundabout the "reviewing the first draft" stage, now. It's called 2320 and will use pretty much the same setting but opened up a little with mechanics adapted from T20.

Take a look here: http://www.travellerrpg.com/cgi-bin...bb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=30;t=000122;p=1#000004

 

[Goodsport]

You may be pleased to know that a reworked D20 conversion of 2300 is in the works from QLI, who publish T20 Traveller. I think it's somewhere roundabout the "reviewing the first draft" stage, now. It's called 2320 and will use pretty much the same setting but opened up a little with mechanics adapted from T20.

Take a look here: http://www.travellerrpg.com/cgi-bin...bb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=30;t=000122;p=1#000004

Awesome, Morte! Thanks for the info and the link!

Regarding 2300AD, I also need to add that there was a great starship combat boxed set for the game called Star Cruiser. 2300AD (though not Traveller: 2300, as Star Cruiser was released sometime between the game's two editions) even included rules for roleplay when playing Star Cruiser. It was a blast!


-G

 

[Gundark]

mecha...I like mecha....and space opera

Well, it has been some time now (and will be much more), that I have been preparing a sci-fi campaign for my players. Out of five players, two have said to be interested, and one don't want to play a sci-fi rpg at all (the fact it is d20 rules doesn't matter) despite he loves sci-fi movies and series.

What I would like to ask to you all here is:

1) If you play sci-fi rpg, what do you especially like in your sci-fi adventures?, but also what you don't like and would like to see changed.

2) If you much prefer Heroic-fantasy games, and don't want to play in a sci-fi rpg, what you especially don't like in a sci-fi universe?

3) Whether you play or don't play in sci-fi rpg, what would be a very cool feature to absolutely have in a sci-fi campaign?

Thanks

 

[Calico_Jack73]

You may be pleased to know that a reworked D20 conversion of 2300 is in the works from QLI, who publish T20 Traveller. I think it's somewhere roundabout the "reviewing the first draft" stage, now. It's called 2320 and will use pretty much the same setting but opened up a little with mechanics adapted from T20.

Take a look here: http://www.travellerrpg.com/cgi-bin...bb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=30;t=000122;p=1#000004

Now if only I could get a d20 version of Twilight:2000 published I'd be all set.

 

[Goodsport]

I wondered if anyone was going to mention 2300AD. It satisfies pretty much all of the items in the checklist from upthread - the Kafer War as a major plot element might fail on the not 'overly militaristic' criterion (but there was plenty of non-military stuff if you wanted it) and the presence of

Spoiler

could violate the 'no provable deities' (for certain values of deity) plus of course its not available on the shelf or off....

Having said all that, while there was a bunch of interesting ideas and plot elements the game line suffered a bit from kitchen-sink-syndrome (Earth/Cybertech I'm looking at you) and the quality of supplements was distinctly patchy and thin later in the run.

Regards
Luke

Spoiler

I agree that 2300AD pretty much satisfied all the criterion listed here. There was pretty much something for everyone, like military-like action (whether you were in the military or not) against the Kafers; fighting against pirates and smugglers; simple exploration and (in some cases) first contact with aliens; cyberpunk-type action if you stayed in the big cities of Earth or Alpha Centauri, etc. And there were plenty of organizations who could hire you for any number of missions.

The kitchen-sink-syndrome started happening when the Cyberpunk genre in RPG's really began to take off around 1989/1990 (which was when the Earth/Cybertech Sourcebook was released), and that's pretty much what dominated the last third of the game's run (the first third was themed on exploration and first contacts, while the second third concentrated heavily on the Kafer War). In 1991, horror became the new RPG genre de jour, and while horror didn't make it's way into 2300AD, it shifted GDW's focus toward its new (at the time) sci-fi/horror game Dark Conspiracy (as well as a horror module for Twilight: 2000).

Two main reasons for the thinner support near the end of the game's run, though, were that several key staff had left the company by that point, as well as the GDW/TSR lawsuit. More info on those can be read here.


-G

 

[Morte]

Now if only I could get a d20 version of Twilight:2000 published I'd be all set.

Twilight 2020 is at roughly the same stage.

http://www.travellerrpg.com/cgi-bin/Trav/CotI/Discuss/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=forum;f=29

 

[two]

On topic:

Off Topic:

If you think science is getting at the truth of the way the world works, I'll have myself a personal laugh and maybe someone else will. Just because you can describe how it seems to work and put that to use, doesn't mean you possess anything beyond a description. Science is just another language-system aimed at describing in a particular manner the way in which the world appears to function, and then people put those descriptions to work. Huzzah. Magic from a magic-users point of view does the same thing that technology does from a technology-users point of view.

Now that I've hopefully riled up a group of people to come at this with a vengeance, I shall depart with a laugh at myself.

Oh yeah, almost forgot, dictionary definitions in a debate like this are worth about as much salt as you get on your McDonald's french-fries.

You are right; this is a very tired "extreme" position which posits, as you put it, that "just because you can describe how it seems to work..." does not imply anything beyond that. Kuhn taken to an extreme, as it were: this position is beloved by lit-crit types who, in general, stand to gain a lot if everything is just a "narrative" and a "language system."

It's also just a silly academic touchstone, typically beleived by precisely those people with little or not scientific experience/training. Because, as anyone with 10th grade (or lower) science education knows, one very good indication of a "valid" hypothesis is not simply "describing" how something works, but predicting it. With science, you can often predict outcomes before seeing them, to a very high degree of accuracy.

Oten these "extreme" positions ignore very real and basic contributions of science to our understanding of the world. When you hit a rock with a spoon, does that "cause" a sound, or is it a magical beast that screams in pain? Take that spoon and hit a tree; the sound is different; is this a different beast screaming? Take the spoon, hit glass; yet another type of sound. Continue. Either "science" has told us something "real" about harmonics, vibrations, sound, etc. or it's just another narrative, one that curiously has strong predictive and replicative capabilities.

Sorry. The world is simply more complicated than you assert. Not all narrative systems have the same value. Try again.

Oh, and please, next time you get sick, don't take yourself to the "science narrative" which constitutes the local hospital ok? Instead, just stay in bed and make one up. It's equally valid, eh? It is no farther from to "the truth" than the doctors at the hospital, so, save yourself a trip.

Another interesting thing posited by this extreme position is the "unilateral" truth assertion. No scientist I ever met belevies in this; that science "gets at the fundamental truth of something." But they all think it gets closer to it than, say, another system like French Deconstruction. This is an obvious point (not knowing exactly how something works does not mean you don't know anything about how it works). But one philosphers enjoy forgetting, in this most absurd of debates.