So, I unabashedly want to rip off the feel of the Homeworld games in my next campaign - confine the PCs on a single ship, have the manage the last colony ship - people, resources, etc - and try to make it to a destination.
What's the best system I have to do this at the table?
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A system that's great at forcing hard choices and resource management. Boardgames might be a good inspiration for such a system.
You'll want to choose that system carefully, because a central focus like resource management isn't something to be tacked on to a system only good at a few things, or focused on something else. You don't want to hack 3.PF for something like this.
As for such a system I'm afraid my own library of game systems is a little lacking. But I'm sure there's one that works, even if you have to boardgame it.
Without knowing anything whatsoever about it, I believe there is a Battlestar Galactica RPG.
Seems like a decent starting point, maybe?
The resource management side is just numbers, it's not like you need any kind of special system to know you have X amount of Y.
For a life-in-spaceships kind of game maybe adapting one of the many Star Wars RPGs could work, they almost all have detailed spaceship combat rules and space exploration.
I'll admit - I'm pretty scrubby. I'll check out the Star Wars system, but Traveller was a bit too much for me. Is it a bit more interesting?
Traveller is a lot more "open" for variety than Star Wars. It's practically a generic sci-fi RPG system with how much you can do with and customize it.
That said, it's a LOT less streamlined than most any of the Star Wars games.
No other recs?
>>No other recs?
I concur. There is a BSG board game as mentioned upthread. Have not played it, but the series ignored resource constraints so I assume the board game does as well.
Also have not played Homeworrld, but know of it. No Star Wars game will work for this as they ignore logistics. Heck, most of them ignore ammo
Traveler is the second- best suggestion in this thread, but a free trader doing merchant runs is not the same as a refugee fleet struggling to survive.
is right. You need to look at board games.
Look for a torrent of the Last Unicorn Games trek games and the Spacedock books online. They've got okay rules and I'm still kind of sad LUG went under before Dune was finished.
Check out Rogue Trader.
Spaceships have 30000+ crew, tons of customization options to create a self-sufficient ship, has books about commerce and exploration, and it's a pretty decent system.
If you want hard sci-fi, Albedo 2nd ed, if you don't have a complete phobia of furry.
I advise against FFG's star wars, nut WEG had a campaing called Darkstryder that had the PCs on a exploration corvette. Detailled ships modules and crew roles, it's excellent.
If you want the Homeworld feel, you take those surviving last colonists and make them zealous space fighter pilots.
If you want the BSG feel, you have them sit around and whine and ruin everything with their bullshit drama.
Homeworld also features stealing everything not nailed down. If it is nailed down, you just take whatever it's nailed down to as well.
Salvette-chan is best girl after all
Heavily modified REIGN
I never got into homeworld, seems pretty neat though.
Are all those factions at the bottom enemies you encounter throughout the game? Is the story generic aliens vs humies or something better?
Thanks for map bro.
As far as I can tell, all the aliens in Homeworld are humans too.
Civilizations are so old in that setting that they really don't know where everyone came from. There is also a precursor race who may not even be from that galaxy that everyone is apparently descended from but it was so long ago no one knows what caused their civilization to break up. There's dyson sphere/ringworld sized shit floating around out there that's thousands or possibly millions of years old. No one fucking remembers
Stars Without Number.
It's aimed at sandbox-style campaigns so it might not suit your "make it to a destination" idea.
It seems to be pretty cool, any quirks to it?
No interest in running BSG or its ilk, and I want to use the logistics only as a way of making the tension of roleplay greater. I pretty firmly want to run a tabletop game and not a board game.
Lots of systems to check out though from this - thanks! Time to start reading ...
Resource management is such a non-issue in the games I don't see why it should be translated in a tabletop form. You either get tons of resources, are able to steal easily practically everything, or a combination of the two.
Never heard of this - what's it like?
It's an OSR game based on D&D Basic and similar. Psionics is a big part of the game. The three classes are Warrior, Expert, and Psychic. There's a skill system but it's fairly simple.
There's a free version:
drivethrurpg.com
The paid version has additional rules for mechs, robots, and generating planetary societies.