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Sci-fi recommendations.


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Well, if those are the one's you like...then you definitely like the crunch factor 🙂

We never actually played Space Master, though at one point I owned most of the books.

Personally, my favorite is the Star Wars FFG RPG.

I'm assuming by your list you are looking for more big Space Faring sci fi setting.  As a lot of people will tell you, Gamma World is where its at 🙂

Hmm...if you don't mind a lil fantasy in your sci fi, the new Starfinder RPG from Paizo looks pretty cool.

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The new genesys ruleset is pretty good - built on FFG Star Wars system - will run anything pretty easily. Already a really nice aliens build for it floating around.

I’m also a fan of eclipse phase as well - decent system built well. 

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Starfinder has a very well done space ship tactical combat system. Simple and tactical, with options that make the whole party feel included.

Starfinder regarding character interaction is closer to a simplified Shadowrun. They tried a lot of new things with this game, and some work better than others. I love the ship combat system, but sometimes the person to person adventuring seems lacking.

It may be worth borrowing their ship combat system for use in another game, as they really did a very good job with ship-to-ship combat rules.

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Oh, you could try battletech. More of a tabletop than an RPG, but there's plenty of room to add a RPG campaign that takes place between missions and involves the pilots rather than the mechs. As I recall, they have a pretty expansive setting.

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Don't go with Space Master for playable.  Good crunch but unplayable.  Follows that SFB model of rules...  Way too much crunch and too many tables to play at a reasonable pace.

Firefly is solid. Traveller has more crunch but has some odd quirks (like who is going for captain to get you a ship?).

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Or you could go with a fantasy set game and just say the guns don't work for some reason....maybe good guys don't use guns, and have it be an NPC thing only....lol

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I never played and or ran it, but I always thought GURPS Space would be a great rules set.  Easy to pick up a few source books, mix and match some flavor books, and you could have some pretty awesome games I imagine.  Plus I've always had a soft spot for Steve Jackson games 🙂

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On 5/8/2018 at 2:31 PM, andozane said:

I never played and or ran it, but I always thought GURPS Space would be a great rules set.  Easy to pick up a few source books, mix and match some flavor books, and you could have some pretty awesome games I imagine.  Plus I've always had a soft spot for Steve Jackson games 🙂

GURPS will certainly do it, but unless you go with a prebuilt setting like Transhuman Space, Traveller, or Psi Wars, the GM is going to have a fair bit of groundwork to do before play begins. 

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On ‎5‎/‎10‎/‎2018 at 12:19 PM, jesselowe said:

GURPS will certainly do it, but unless you go with a prebuilt setting like Transhuman Space, Traveller, or Psi Wars, the GM is going to have a fair bit of groundwork to do before play begins. 

+1 this. GURPS is very demanding on the GM.

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2 hours ago, InfestedKerrigan said:

I thought the point of GURPS was that you could reskin it anyway you wanted.

It very much is! But that does mean making a lot of decisions ahead of time, especially about character creation and campaign assumptions. You can't really just pull a book off the shelf and get running in half an hour like you could with, say, WEG Star Wars. It's really become a toolkit for making your game rather than a game in and of itself. Which is why I love it, but I don't want someone picking it up expecting something plug and play and then being disappointed. 

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19 hours ago, InfestedKerrigan said:

I thought the point of GURPS was that you could reskin it anyway you wanted.

Oh, yes, you can really, really customize GURPS. The problem is in "not customizing" GURPS, which isn't really an option. The GM has to define more of the setting than they would in any other RPG. And they have to carefully approve the player character creation for the same reasons.

That said, the good news is that GURPS has been around long enough where there are many websites with other GM's posted worlds, so the GM doesn't need to wholly rely their own creations.

For example, if I wanted a D&D "Grey Ooze" I'd have to create it from scratch because it doesn't exist in GURPS. Or I could go here: http://gurpswiki.wikidot.com/m:ooze-gray

And, the heavy number crunching in the creation of worlds or creatures results in a rather bland creature, like the one above. Breathing life into the setting and creatures then requires a great narrative, of which GURPS doesn't really provide. They have rather generic settings and creatures, so making it into a good RPG is more demanding.

A newb or rather mediocre GM could make 5e D&D work since the game is simple and the setting already has life breathed into it. GURPS requires a higher quality GM to do the same thing. Not saying 5e D&D GMs are inherently low quality, just that it's easier to be a functional GM in 5e D&D than it is in GURPS.

 

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On 5/21/2018 at 12:07 PM, andozane said:

I mean...if you don't mind crunchy systems, Dark Heresy I thought was a great game.  Don't go crazy with the side books, and stick to the idea of an Inquisitorial Henchmen squad.  I had a lot of fun playing that one.

One of these days I'm going to run a GURPS Dark Heresy game.

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Star Frontiers is an old d6 TSR sci-fi game - from the 1980’s. 

Another game I’d mention is called “the void” which is another pdf set of rules that has a free trial version as well as a pretty cheap pay version. More dark sci-fi with a Cthulhu leaning. I’ve only done a one-off with it / but it was straight forward and fun.  It uses d6 dice pools  

I did mention Eclipse Phase before... also a free and pay version. Well thought out sci-fi game - with a horror leaning as well. But they have pretty good support with multiple supplements. ... it’s a d10 percentile base system. 

Both seem to be well fleshed out - and their free pdf versions allow you to try them out without worrying about wasted expense. 

-d

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