Veeky Forums My long time group is looking to form a side game, a space theme game

Veeky Forums My long time group is looking to form a side game, a space theme game.
they don't want Rogue trader, looking for a Firefly style. Small ship, small crew, a job, and the will to keep flying.
Star wars is out, we have a female player who will not do that.
what is the best Space opera game? Traveller if so which edition?

Stars Without Number is an option. Was only able to play 2 sessions of it, but it did what you describe well.

Stars Without Number maybe?

Lady Blackbird is Firefly inspired.

Try Cepheus Engine, ist basically the Mongoose version of classic traveller but with better editing.

Most people who have some experience with traveller will recommend classic traveller or Mongoose Traveller 1e since those are true and tested.

Gurps people will say Gurps traveller is best

then there is a small faction of Mega traveller, but the later two are not as wide spread.

And then there is Mongoose traveller second edition, which seems to be popular with newcomers and people who only have D&D experience... since it feels alot like space DnD. Claims to fix some of the problems from 1e but, while doing that, tears open new ones.

Megatraveller is basically a complilation of all the core content from Classic, with a unified resolution mechanic. It...has some editing issues, but apparently not as bad as Mongoose's.

>OP pic.

Remember, Book is actually a retired cop.

Also, ignore the "Assassinated Emperor" storyline. It does not end well.

What he said. You sir, want to play Traveller. Cepheus is a great starting point (and it's free).

As a GURPS guy, it's not the best Traveller, but it has some good bits to mine.

People have called Firefly a Traveller knock-off. That's how good a fit it is.

My only concern is you threw around Space Opera - Traveller's pretty hard as far as Sci-Fi goes (there's some magic tech, but only where it's important to get to space opera, most people are still shooting bullets for example)

What features do you want from the game? (For example, Speculative Trading?, /k/ level gun pron?, Star Trek style monologuing?, Tactical Starship and Ground combat?, Faster than Light Communication?, Transporters?)

Any game discussed can do those things - depending on what you want, some will require more work than others.

I'd also be remiss if I failed to mention Diaspora, which is a Fate based game, inspired by Traveller - so if you're a story-game guy, it could be what you want.

I don't agree there - while not everyone would want to play in a succession war, I really enjoy the timeline (stable empire, succession crisis, dark age, rebuilding society). It's what empires do. T4-CT-MT-TNE presents a good cycle giving space to tell any story.

Yet another for traveller, particularly Cepheus Engine. There's one really good thing about traveller: there's really fairly minor differences overall between the editions (they're pretty big from edition to edition, but not as big as the differences between the various editions of D&D, where each is basically an entirely different game).
You also don't have to play in the OTU, with its massive Imperium. If you do throw it out and go for pocket empires, replace SOC with CHA for most interpersonal purposes and leave SOC for the PCs home empires, with penalties in other areas based on how friendly they are. Human CHA and Vargr CHA is still different though (vargr use it for pack dynamics)

GURPS with supplements