My group of three players and one GM (me) are looking for a moderately crunchy science fiction game. We've got a fun, ongoing Dresden Accelerated game, so the benchmarks are:
>Suitable for episodic play - think episodes of a weekly TV show rather than sequential chapters in a novel >WAY less crunchy than Shadowrun 5e, probably a little less crunchy than Eclipse Phase... >...but crunchier than Fate Core or Fate Accelerated. We're already doing one of those. >Either already in a Transhumanist setting, or easily adaptable to such a setting. We actually _like_ Eclipse Phase, but we've got one player allergic to d100 systems.
Nice to haves:
>One player wants to be a full-conversion/full-body cyborg; one player wants to be a talking motorcycle (we have all known this player); one player wants to be a DIY-er space redneck. I'm not judging them--just putting it out there. >Weird shit. Doesn't have to be cut-and-dry space marines and ambassadors.
We've considered Nova Praxis and Mindjammer (both discarded because they're Fate; no issues with their content) and The Sprawl (discarded because the players are tired of often doing groups that are characters taking illegal jobs for pay, and that game strongly assumes that premise; otherwise, PbtA games might be great for us).
Do any of the things we're considering sound plausible for what we want? Should I just commit to brushing up on my trigonometry and learning some edition of Traveller? Diving into GURPS/Transhuman Space? What about Degenesis, Fragged Empire, and--possibly to my eventual regret--a mashup that uses the Sixth World fan-written PbtA hack in the setting of Eclipse Phase, landing us at a system that's crunchier than FAE (but not _much_ crunchier) with a setting that hits all the relevant thematic buttons.
That last one might be a huge mess, but w/e.
Meanwhile, general sci-fi art thread.
Michael Butler
From my Eclipse Phase folder.
Jack Robinson
You don't need trigonometry for Traveller, that's silly. It's a modestly crunchy system. But while it's my favorite SF system, it doesn't sound appropriate for what you're looking for.
Maybe look at Savage Worlds with its sci-fi companion?
James White
Oh yeah, they do have Interface Zero (and like a million other books, so I'm sure I could find something suitable).
If you had to argue in favor of Traveller for what I'm looking after, what would you say? And, I suppose, what are the reasons you'd think it's not ideal?
Logan Scott
Hmm. There's a savage worlds version of Nova Praxis, which might be ideal.
A played a game of The Sprawl where the players were a section 9 like police group. A few moves around getting jobs needed to be changed, but otherwise it worked extremely well.
Ayden Howard
Well, in its favor it's got decent crunch, and supports a wide variety of different games, and has tons of stuff available for it from over the years, and it definitely does the episodic thing well, what with its basic focus on planet-of-the-week type adventures.
Set against it, though is the fact that it's never really gone in for transhumanism, and it sounds like your players not only have specific characters in mind (which goes against its random lifepath chargen and the "downtrodden everyman" protagonists it creates) but they're also angling for a level of SF crazy in their PCs that Traveller doesn't really handle all that well, mechanically.
Alexander Thompson
Thanks for giving me some more detail!
Man, I do like lifepath chargen, though. Hrm.
Easton Phillips
Yeah, it's a bit too low key and retro for the kind of thing they're after. In Traveller, people don't go in for cyborgs, because that shit is viewed as nightmarish, and with good reason. Pic related.
