Scifi Explorative Homebrew - Fantasy Age

Hey there, folks. You guys seem to know a lot about the shit you're talking about, so I come with some questions.

I'm currently homebrewing a Scifi space-explorative setting based off a few media pieces, but trying to steer clear of already large and well-done titles like Star Wars and Mass Effect. I want the gameplay to reinforce that feeling of discovery, awe, and interest that we get when we are immersed into a well-done scifi universe, seeing alien lifeforms, hostile planets, complex technology, intense mercenaries, and etc.

So, the questions. Currently, I don't want a complex system to learn. I'm wanting to keep the combat light and flowy, as I tend to focus on RP more than anything else as a GM. That being said, I was thinking of using the Fantasy AGE system, taking some slices from Titansgrave, and molding it to be more about my space-stuff. Does that sound like a good idea, or is there a much better option?

Second question: Has anyone else here ran their own homebrew scifi setting? If so, any advice for creating and running such an expansive homebrew setting?

TL;DR: Is molding Fantasy AGE to Space-faring Scifi a good idea, and does anyone have advice on Space-faring scifi?

Ah, and also, if anyone has any Fantasy AGE pdfs sitting around, a link would be wonderful. I just have the basic core rulebook atm.

Bump

Traveller is a pretty good sci-fi system that you can shape and mold into most settings, it is more "hardcore" sci-fi though so if you aren't into that and want space magic or such then something else might be better for your needs.

Can't much help you with the systems talk. I'm a pleb that has approximately zero experience with anything beyond 3.5E.

But as far as settings go, are you aiming for hard sci-fi, or something along the lines of science fantasy?

Thanks for the advice, looking over it now. What do you mean by "Hardcore" though? I was planning on having Psionics be a thing in the setting, though more of a rare sorta thing.

Stars Without Number is your best bet. I'm using parts of it to build my setting in a FFG Star Wars Campaign.

If by hard Scifi, you both are meaning more of a "Scientific accuracy" sort of scifi, not exactly, no. I plan on giving general descriptions of how things work if asked, but being that I'm homebrewing an entire galaxy setting, I'm not going to be trying to learn about scientific details I currently don't know much about. So more science fantasy, I suppose. Even still, I want it to not be too heavy on the fantasy aspect. As I said, Psionics and such are going to be more rare and light, definitely not a focus.

Hardcore as in very routed in real science, with a few exceptions such as FTL and what not. There are rules for psionics, and even in the stalk/primary setting for Traveller they have psionics as a rare thing and illegal in some sectors. But yeah a good show to compare Traveller to is The Expanse but on a semi-galactic scale, realistic tech and science.

There's a Traveller thread going on right now if you want to look at some PDFs or if you want to join in on the discussion.

Checking that out rn as well, thanks for the advice.

Sounds pretty good. Traveller definitely sounds pretty spot on, surprised I haven't heard of it by now.

So, does anyone here have any advice on how to run this type of campaign? This is my first step into Scifi, and though I'm excited, it's a bit daunting.

It really depends on what sort of vibe/story you want to play out, and on your players of course. Do they want a Star Trek type of story where it's about exploration and discovering new life, Firefly with a rag tag crew trying to make a quick buck (which the show was inspired by Traveller), or a mix of several different types? I'd ask the player first what type of gameplay they'd be interested in or make an educated guess on the matter.

Really the best thing I can recommend is to read/watch/listen to everything and anything that could relate. I highly recommend Sci-Fi Anthologies, if you're avoiding big name stuff. The Year's best Science Fiction is good, as are most of Asimov's, but you can probably find anthologies, or podcasts that tell stories specifically about space exploration.

Honestly, I'd say halfway between the two. The players would be agents for a Federation that explores the galaxy and defends against emerging dire threats. So basically, I want the players to be a rag-tag crew trying to make their bucks by being paid for exploration, documentation of new things, and pushing the frontier.

Well the Traveller setting and system have implementations of getting paid by institutes for exploration and what not. The way classes work is that they are jobs, so each player has skills in accordance with their profession. So you can easily use the rules to have a crew being financed by a government or a corporation to explore and discover. It's quite good. I recommend Mongoose Traveller (mongoose being the people who published it) becuase it's a little more modern and the rules are simple yet hearken back to Classic Traveller so both versions are interchangeable with ease.

Gotcha. Mongoose is the one I'm checking out, and I definitely love that these ideas are inherent in the system. Is this system capable of me creating new alien races for the players to choose from for character creation? Along with that, how easy/hard is it to homebrew creatures and things of that nature in this system?

Well I haven't homebrewed many races yet but I have altered the stats of some species, like Uplifted Chimps and have found it to be quite simple. The stat system is really simple, with the only the Social Standing stat being strange. It's strange because it changes for each alien race depending on how their social interactions are like, they did this for the Traveller system to make aliens feel more "alien" in the mechanics and it works well. But as I said I think it could be easily homebrewed since the stats are simple, at least for Mongoose Traveller and Classic Traveller.

I'll have to look more into making some PC races, but overall the Social Standing stat sounds interesting. How exactly does it make them feel more alien?

Well for humans (imperial humans) the Social Standing perk is how some social interactions go down with other humans, mostly in the form of who is higher up in the rungs of society like if you're just a street urchin or a noble. Where as say a Vargr (wolf people) has a different mentality on social interactions due to them being former pack animals, thus they have Charisma instead of Social Standing. They are all about how well an individual leads and how much power they have within their clan/pack. So a Vargr might not care if the human is a noble if they are weak, or they might care if the human street urchin is a strong leader.

*stat not perk

Huh, that's really interesting. So the system makes the aliens look at eachother differently by having different stats for their social system entirely? Meaning you could have a race of smooth-talkers that don't have much of an effect on a race that only values your rank/wealth?

Exactly, of course some aliens can adapt to other alien's social interactions. One such species called the Hivers can interact with most species because they have been interacting with aliens for far longer than any other race, some also think that since they have more keen senses (such as being able to see in the infra-red) that they can read people/aliens pretty well in social interactions. Of course some aliens can just simply learn what is most advantageous with certain species, but those individuals are ones who interact with aliens on a regular basis.

That's really awesome. Already sounds like they made aliens actually feel "alien" pretty well.

The only part that gets a little confusing is ship stats, but it shouldn't be too difficult to convert a few things. I do not recommend homebrewing your own ship though, use the premade ships and change the fluff/lore for your setting. Already in some supplement books I have noticed that some stats for some ships are a little bit off, but not enough that it'll break the game.