Currently running Mongoose Traveller, just recently wrappedc up a SW SAGA game, and I too have Starblazer and considering giving it a try. My problem is how similar FATE mechanics are to Traveller, so thinking of just adapting it to Traveller.
I'm currently running a Sufficiently Advanced campaign. Very hard SF, set in a post humanist setting, several thousand years in the future.
Best of all, it's 100% free.
Fantastic system and a very cool setting too.
You can download it (legally and aboveboard) here
I'm totally loving it.
Cool! Our "Thursday Irregulars Group" has been running various systems for about 6 week periods for a couple of years now, glad to see other people doing the same, on Maptools as well!
Would you count Rifts or Shadowrun as a generic sci fi?.
I think Sci Fi's big problem is it doesn't have a "standard" race mix like fantasy does, or a staple set of creatures that's generic enough. At this point and time, every science fiction universe is pretty unique; a common world hasn't yet been created that has unified sci fi, much like Tolkien's works did..
Very hard SF, set in a post humanist setting, several thousand years in the future.
I think Sci-Fi's problem is actually pretty much the opposite of 'shared past, variable future'. As some have stated, I think that explains nothing.
The real problem with Sci-Fi is complexity. Regressing into the past allows us to strip off various modern conventions to produce a quite simple world which is nonetheless believable. It doesn't matter if the real world was never as simple as our game world, or if it is missing some feature that the past di have because most of us aren't familiar enough with the past to notice (or if noticing care).
However, we do know the present. And unless we go post-apocalyptic, then we expect the future to have at least all the attributes of the present plus whatever additional features we wish to add to the setting. The further into the future we go, the more layers we add to the onion as one tech level is made to sit on top of another.
This presents a hideous problem to anyone wanting to create a believable sci-fi world. It's just simply too huge and sprawling to document. In a fantasy game world, the 'local neighbor' can amount to a few hundred square miles. In a sci-fi game world, we should count ourselves fortunate if the 'local neighborhood' amounts only to an entire solar system. Every 'local neighbor' of a sci-fi universe is potentially as complex and as varied as an entire fantasy multiverse. You just can't sandbox in that sort of situation very easily, and yet at the same time, once they have a spaceship the players have much more freedom to sandbox if they want to.
Space is just incredibly vast, and a space faring civilization is just mindbogglingly complex. No sci-fi novel even begins to try to cope with the vast number of potentially complex factors that could interplay together. Usually, a sci-fi novel introduces just one theme - biological engineering, cybernetics, AI, nanotechnology, cloning, VR, aliens or whatever - and explores just that one thing as its major theme.
My experience with sci-fi games (well, just Star Wars) is that they tend to use the trope of representing the entire planet with a single tiny location, and entire races with a single individual.
The scope is just too big. The culture is just too complex. Sci-fi games die because they are overwhelming. We expect to much of them and when we get it, we don't know what to do with it.
I think Sci-Fi's problem is actually pretty much the opposite of 'shared past, variable future'. As some have stated, I think that explains nothing.
However, we do know the present.
Usually, a sci-fi novel introduces just one theme - biological engineering, cybernetics, AI, nanotechnology, cloning, VR, aliens or whatever - and explores just that one thing as its major theme.
The real problem with Sci-Fi is complexity.
We also know the past.
The concept of 'shared past, variable future' is not only a valid perspective and one noted by fans and game designers for years and years but it also relates directly to what you're saying.
If you are correct in the statement that...
...and I agree that you are, isn't this because each author is showing us their individual interpretation of one possible future?
Another author may agree or may say, "Never mind the changes in humanity in a future with bio-engineering nanites. None of that will matter once the technologically superior aliens arrive."
That said d20 Modern (Future) is SRD-ed and well supported. I think the future rules are fantastic and you can do just about anything.
Since the topic is on Sci-fi type games, does anyone have any info on Alpha Omega by Mindstorm ? (who happen to be a sponsor here). Somehow this slipped off my radar, and sounds interesting, but as always, I'd curious if anyone has first hand experience.
I bought the entire line at RPGNow, but had completely forgotten about it until I read your post.![]()