What's the equivalent of a an FTL/Mass Effect/Star Trek/KOTOR kind of game? Just a crew doing their business and trying not to get rekt along the way. The only system I know (but have never played) is Star Wars d6. TRAVELER intrigues me, and so does Eclipse Phase (but I know very little about that one). Usually I run 5e for my group, so anything not too dense is welcome, but I'll take a look at it anyway if you bring it up.
Old and new systems welcome!
>FTL/Mass Effect/Star Trek/KOTOR kind of game? Just a crew doing their business and trying not to get rekt along the way
This doesn't seem to fit. But whatever, Traveller can be that, Edge of Empire can be that, you can probably run most SciFi games with spaceships being on a suitable scale like that.
I'd say rouge trader, but you said nothing too dense.
Traveller is a good bet, just be aware that it is a lethal system and it takes some getting used to the rules.
Eclipse Phase definitely doesn't fit, its not really focused at all on the spaceship part since people can just beam their consciousness wherever they want to go if they have to. I'd recommend Stars Without Number, its pretty good for the chill crew fucking about in space.
i am currently playing ALOT of space station 13, its the kind of game you are describing exept is very old (2003), its multiplayer only, and you are not commanding the crew, you are one of the crewmembers.
Stars Without Number is pretty good for sandbox space opera. It is kinda lethal tho, but has a lot of good tools for creating a sandbox world and is easy to use house rules with.
also, have I mentioned that space station 13 has two tg servers?
>2003
>very old
user, 2003 was 14 years ago.
14 years isn't very old particularly in tabletop terms.
I've been stewing over a "ST Voyager done right" style game this past while, with a bit of FTL, Battlestar Galactica and Mass Effect thrown in to taste too.
The setup being that a Not!Federation peacekeeping vessel is space-magic teleported to an ancient listening post on the edge of intergalactic space. After investigating, the crew finds out that the post has picked up *something* moving toward the Milky Way, and that the station's builders were very, very worried about this eventuality.
The meat of the game would probably be the crew trying to get back to known space to warn the Not!Federation, while dealing with local empires and polities and trying to get them to evacuate in the face of the encroaching big bad evil stuff. Probably also throw in the standard ancient ruins to shed more light on how to fight said big bad evil stuff.
There'd also be a focus on upgrading the ship with local tech, and also building a fleet out of the evacuees and all the politicking that comes with that.
I'm sure by the time I actually run something I'll have dropped this idea for another one, but still, I think it'd be pretty neat in theory
and I forgot the most important part: keeping track of the proton torpedoes
But seriously, I'd probably go with a survivalish vibe, at least toward the start of the campaign. Make every loss count, that sort of thing.
I was even considering using a random name generator or something and printing off a big list of names for the crew, and crossing them off as the redshirts die
Stars Without Number has been mentioned a few times but what hasn't been said is that I guess the revised edition bieng Kickstarted right now has new rules for giving people more things to do during ship combat. Which is pretty neat.
Eclipse Phase is a poor choice because ships play very little role in it. Sure there's a piloting skill and ships have a few stats but the book outright states that they're not a focus.
Traveller is pretty awesome, had some fun in a campaign for that once. We defeated pirates by almost exploding our reactor!
Honestly you could probably adapt 5e.
Replace arcana with engineering, forget the classes and refluff the races to fit your needs, and just wander.
Have all or most of the combat be based in your ship if you're going for FTL, and give different ship weapons different damage dice and round/turn-based recharge times.
It'd be a bit of work, but I think it's very doable.
Yes, what a fantastic idea.
Why not adapt Runequest, Mouseguard, Call of Cthulhu or Vampire? Just use your system of choice and run everything with it even if it fail horribly!
If you're going to throw away most of the system you might as well just play a different system.
Remember, this is the board that thought using Dark Heresy for running NGE was a fantastic idea.
NGE?
Neon Genesis Evangelion.
That says less about the board and more about the anime fans.
Traveller or Transhuman Space.
Or something softer like star wars or Firefly, but I thÃnk Traveller does those better. I've only done GURPS but I hear the mongoose rules are good too. If you do GURPS, do 4th edition.