Why Can't d20 Handle sci-fi?

[Cougar]

Perhaps that IS his campaign?

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

Jedi doing backflips: Works.

Uplifted dolphins: Works.

Cyperpunk deckers: Works.

Some guy in a telephone booth: Works.

Vulcan half-breed: Works.

Uplifted Jedi Vulcan / dolphin half-breed with cyberdeck implants (and doing backflips) travelling via telephone booth: Not quite.

How about:

- biological android who have been force-fed more knowledge about a specific subject at creation than most humans learn during a liftime,

- artificial intelligences,

- personality simulations of dead people,

- elder citizens aged 100+ years with really impressive stock portfolios whose bodies have been kept youthful thanks to advanced medical technologies, and who have a lifetime of experience to draw upon,

- and sapient octopuses?

All these are possible "starting characters" in Transhuman Space. Can an SF version of d20 simulate all these?

I dare anyone to try and convert Transhuman Space to d20!

 

[Balbinus]

mikeryan and SSquirrel get this right I think. In fantasy there are certain standard tropes common to most games. Most games have elves, magic, trolls, active gods and so on.

SF has no common ground. Traveller is not like Transhuman Space is not like Star Wars. It's not generic by it's nature.

So, any generic sf game will inevitably leave out certain SF sub-genres.

Still, there's no reason not to have a core pulp sf game or a core hard sf game, I'm just not sure there's demand though with Star Wars, Fading Suns and Traveller already covering most of these bases.

 

[Vaxalon]

- biological android who have been force-fed more knowledge about a specific subject at creation than most humans learn during a liftime,

- artificial intelligences,

- personality simulations of dead people,

- elder citizens aged 100+ years with really impressive stock portfolios whose bodies have been kept youthful thanks to advanced medical technologies, and who have a lifetime of experience to draw upon,

- and sapient octopuses?

All these are possible "starting characters" in Transhuman Space. Can an SF version of d20 simulate all these?

I dare anyone to try and convert Transhuman Space to d20!

You are describing one of the fundamental features of the GURPS system; that you can start the game at any power level you like.

This has a downside, and an upside.

On the one hand, it means that you can skip all the low-powered stuff that bores you (not me, btw) from levels 1-15 and get right to the buttkicking.

On the other hand, it means that "balanced" encounters that are appropriate to the party are hard to generate. GURPS also tends to create the kind of "one trick ponies" you describe here.

In short, I can create any of those characters, simply by allowing ECL 20 as the starting level, because GURPS doesn't have the same kind of focus on power progressions.

I've played GURPS, and for certain kinds of games it works fairly well.

 

[Desdichado]

Re: Off-topic

Joshua,

If the document's not ready, take the darn link out of your sig. All you're doing is "muddying the waters" - people who click once and get that aren't going to a) know when "a week" expires so they can click again and b) remember to visit unless they see your .sig again and overcome a).

- Ketjak

When it's done, I'll post an announcement on the main board. I'm actually considering reworking it in light of mechanics from d20 Modern.

Of course, that'll slow me up considerably, but overall I think it may be the right thing to do.

 

[Ketjak]

Re: Re: Off-topic

When it's done, I'll post an announcement on the main board. I'm actually considering reworking it in light of mechanics from d20 Modern.

Of course, that'll slow me up considerably, but overall I think it may be the right thing to do.

Good luck! I'm one of the people who will see your .sig and click on it periodically, anyway - I've never been deterred by muddy waters.

- Ketjak