Suggest me a system?

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.

From my Eclipse Phase folder.

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?

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?

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.

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.

Thanks for giving me some more detail!

Man, I do like lifepath chargen, though. Hrm.

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.

>TANKMAN
>SQUATMAN
>THE GRINNER

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>Suitable for episodic play - think episodes of a weekly TV show rather than sequential chapters in a novel
dnd
>WAY less crunchy than Shadowrun 5e, probably a little less crunchy than Eclipse Phase...
dnd
>...but crunchier than Fate Core or Fate Accelerated. We're already doing one of those.
dnd
>Either already in a Transhumanist setting, or easily adaptable to such a setting.
it'll take some homebrew butt........dnd.
>We actually _like_ Eclipse Phase, but we've got one player allergic to d100 systems.
then tell him to suck it up or get out, EP is awesome.

You're kind of a yutz, but I appreciate your passion.

Traveller

Mongoose 1st edition or Classic.

with enough homebrewing, D&D can be used for anything.

We're using 3.5e for a 40K campaign - playing a planetary defense force on an agri-world, during the prelim of a tyranid invasion. Mostly dealing with genestealer cults and mutants. Last session we fought a genestealer... it was terrifying. Minimal homebrewing from the DM too... just some minor armor and weapons alterations.

Any thoughts on Stars Without Number or Savage Worlds?

Is playing Eclipse Phase with the official Fate conversion guide out of the question?

It's an option to consider, sure, but we're already playing a Fate game, and we'd like to use a different system.

Mindjammer for Traveller:

mega.NZ

/#!5sllVTJY!ChekGOfsN0NMDV3CgvIG74xyiOUBovRiaR0xXuTnpCM

Thanks for the link!

Someone elsewhere has suggested Coriolis. Anyone played it?

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Yo you could play Stars Without Numbers. It's somewhat similar to Traveller, but trimmed down.

Stars Without Number is a pretty by-the-books OSR game. It's 2d6 target number for skill tests, d20 for combat. The math is pretty minimal and the amount of "crunch" is limited (for instance: classes each have only one class ability, the rest being handled by class-based saves, BAB, and HD, class-specific XP requirements to level, and a pretty exhaustive skill list).

SWN also has most of the stuff the OP wants right out of the box. There is support for AIs in fully-synthetic and customizable armatures, so the OP's party's dreams of a full-body cyborg or a brain in a motorcycle are largely mechanically supported and would require only minor tweaking.

The DIY space redneck is probably doable in any setting, but it's worth mentioning that SWN does have rules for repairing stuff and player-repair is possible. If you want to get *really* into it you can get the companion system by the same company, "Other Dust", which is a fully-compatible game set in SWN's setting on a post-apocalyptic earth and does contain specific crafting, repairing, and scavenging rules.

Transhumanist elements (SWN calls them "cyberware") are, again, included in the core rules, and you've got your standards like fingernail claws and direct connection ports. There's also a cyberpunk splatbook, "Polychrome", for more of that.

Considering that OP also specifically mentioned episodic play, I feel it's worth bringing up that some of the supplement books ("Starvation Cheap", "Darkness Visible", and "Skyward Steel") also specifically outline an episodic style of play, wherein at the end of each session the characters essentially determine what they want to try to do the following one, giving the DM a framework to prepare adventures based on.

This is extraordinarily helpful. Thank you so much!

>but we've got one player allergic to d100 systems

I'm curious, why does he have against them?

Dude just doesn't like how swingy they can be. He might be a little traumatized by Rogue Trader. I know EP doesn't have a straight pass/fail mechanic, but it was one of his big issues with it.

Not gonna lie op, it sounds like he is LEETLE BABY.

It's a shame to miss out on EP thanks to a misconception from one of your players though, it's such s goat system.

That said I guess the ffg 40ks could probably scare me off d100 too

>Dude just doesn't like how swingy they can be.

Maybe stay away from Savage Worlds/Interface Zero then.

Exploding dice can instakill a PC with no save or destroy your entire boss encounter in one roll if they keep rolling well.

It's statistically unlikely, yes, but I've seen it happen enough times to dislike the system.

>with enough homebrewing, D&D can be used for anything
And with enough welding, a loaf of bread can be a car

I'm not that guy and I won't say no to a d100 game if everyone wanted to play one but I have a weird prejudice to them. It's hard to put my finger on why but I haven't met a d100 system I really enjoyed and for some reason the choice of d100 feels to me like the designers saying "eh, like I give a fuck, it's not like system matters much". How stupid am I being right now?

I get what you're saying. For me, a plain d100 system rubs against the rough edge of statistical advantage versus dramatic advantage. I know that d20s work the same way, but it feels like when I have a roll-under skill of 85% and flub the check, I'm wondering why my skilled character failed just as hard as someone who had a 4% chance and also failed, even though I know that in the *long run*, I'll get a lot more hits than 4% guy.

Actually, typing that out, it's a high-drama thing. My character, if the game is going well, is going to be rolling that skill in important, dramatic moments. Potentially not making that many rolls, but making them when dire shit is going down. Statistical advantage that manifests over hundreds of rolls doesn't feel as good as knowing that when you pick up the dice five times in a five hour session, you're going to get the hit about 50% of the time, fail about 50% of the time, and either critically succeed once or absolutely eat shit once.

It's a poor experiential substitute to get devoured by space aliens, but to have your character's last thoughs be that, really, this only represents 15% of your potential experiences (as your collarbones are eaten by space voles).

So basically: flat probability bad, bell-curve probability good?
I can get behind that sentiment. 2d6 master race and all that

Maybe more like flat probability bad for humans who experience time as spikes in interest/attention/narrative complexity, even if it's mathematically more realistic in the long run.

Maybe partial-success good?

For all these reasons, I play gurps
And for many other reasons, why I tend to use gurps for all ganes

>Not gonna lie op, it sounds like he is LEETLE BABY.

I would play a d100 system if everyone else wanted to, but one of the other players also doesn't want to play EP for reasons I can't actually remember

>So basically: flat probability bad, bell-curve probability good?
>I can get behind that sentiment. 2d6 master race and all that

Yes
and Yes

Hey panda buddy

Other Player's issues with EP (just checked) surround chargen; doing it from scratch seemed complex for the sake of complexity, and the lifepath system lead him to places that were at odds with the character he wanted to make.

You know you can also just pick and chose when using the lifepath book, right? You don't have to roll all the time.

>From my Eclipse Phase folder.
user, those images and bad puns are at least half from my folder that I put up for /epg/'s use. You're welcome.

Thanks for uploading it!

I mean, they're on my computer now, so it's "the folder full of EP pics that I possess", but sure, I'm happy to acknowledge that you anonymously uploaded it for public use.

How's your EP game going?

>How's your EP game going?
Haven't run one in a few months, actually. The group decided we wanted to do fantasy stuff for a bit as a change of pace. We'll probably go back to it after a while. Last couple games were "Security officers in an orbital hab stumble onto Jovian intelligence shenangians" and "Mercenaries on Mars fighting zone monsters and proxy wars for city-states", both of which wrapped up fairly well.

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