Tuesday, September 11, 2012

Tell Me About Your SciFi games!

My friend Greg is having fun with Traveller and Star Frontiers and I am jealous.
I have been reading White Dwarf now for a while and all I can remember is how much I had with Traveller.

So I have been itching to find a good SciFi game.

This is the part where you tell me how great your game is...

So please tell me.  I want to know.  Plus I am not sure what all the SciFi games out there are.
I know all about Starships & Spacemen and I am looking forward to the newest edition.


11 comments:

Porky said...

Humanspace Empires is a characterful old school system and Rogue Space is ultra rules light with a lot of free supporting material. I've had a lot of fun with both and they have a fair amount of fan-made material online. You might also want to have a look at Swords & Stitchery for a mix of systems and ideas and a wild energy, and Hereticwerks have all kinds of outstanding genre crossover.

http://ixians.blogspot.com/
http://roguespacerpg.blogspot.com/
http://swordsandstitchery.blogspot.com/
http://hereticwerks.blogspot.com/

Digital Orc said...

I've been playing Dark Heresy for three years now. The level of background information and high-quality books makes this one fun.

The crunch gets me down sometimes, though.

Rhonin84 said...

Dark Heresy is a great genre but really you need to know a lot to get into it. I also tend to think of it more as Dark Horror, not that there is anything wrong with that!

The Star Frontiers game that I am involved with online is a blast right now and more about story than anything else.

Traveller is a great generic set of rules that you can do a lot with BUT it does have some issues.

Stars Without Numbers is a great little sci-fi system and one that I have run a couple of times and usually the reaction is very good.

Tony Bro001 said...

Hi Tim,

I've run a few Sci-Fi games over the years but a couple of favourites were:

A Justifiers scenario in which the PCs were all beta-sheep who had been captured after their daring raid went titsup. They woke up in a field of real sheep and gradually as the effects of the brain washing interrogation wore off, they recovered their skills and knowledge.

A Forgotten Futures scenario which had the PCs as passengers aboard the Titanic on its maiden voyage when it is boarded by Malay Pirates in mini hull piercing submersibles. In the course of the scenario the PCs discover that the Pirates are in the employ of the evil mastermind Fu Man Chu and that he is after a particular piece of the ships cargo, uranium ore...

My go-to system for Sci-Fi these days is Starblazer Adventures, it uses the FATE system and lends itself to a more "storytelling" style rather than hard rules. I've used it several times to do big space opera type games with PCs zipping half way across the galaxy to save the princess/thwart the evil overlord and it works quite well. Do not be intimidated by the size of the rulebook (630pp) it's mostly skill descriptions and lots of background detail.

Unknown said...

Portas Aurora: Arrival is a science fiction role playing game set in the distant galaxy of Luxvatio.

Portas Aurora: Arrival is the blending of EV: Nova's Story, Master of Origin 2's Combat, and Final Fantasy Tactics Character System.

Check out our Kickstarter Project at: http://kck.st/PBGcQK

Rhonin84 said...

I was looking for the Rogue Space rules but could not find them...any help is duly appreciated!

Dave said...

I'm playing classic Traveller, but not in the standard setting. Been posting information for my players at starclans.blogspot.com.

Unknown said...

Fading Suns with 1st edition rules book only. Two long campaigns and it is awesome! I can literally put everything there I want to without loosing the essence of Fading Suns.

Strange races and mutants? Check.
Laser cannons and medieval weaponry? Check.
Mystic powers and technology? Check.
Priests and feodal orders? Check.
Unknown territories and exploration? Check.
Big advanced cities and low-tech countrysides? Check.
Space pirates and space sheriffs? Check.
Star Trek and Star Wars? Check.

Porky said...

@ Rhonin84 - All the official material is available through Fenway's blog, which is here:

http://roguespacerpg.blogspot.com/

The free downloads are via the top graphic, and the key file is 'RS Sample Rules'.

http://www.4shared.com/folder/JGVnrFoZ/ROGUE_SPACE.html

There's also a fuller ruleset available through Lulu, via the second and third graphics:

http://www.lulu.com/shop/christopher-brandon/rogue-space-pdf-v2/ebook/product-20146499.html
http://www.lulu.com/shop/christopher-brandon/rogue-space-the-dark-frontier/paperback/product-18948122.html

There's fan-made material in the free download RTRAN#1, and #2 is on the way.

These links also have a good mix of material:

http://hereticwerks.blogspot.com/search/label/Rogue%20Space
http://thefairlyunkempt.blogspot.com/search/label/rogue%20space
http://swordsandstitchery.blogspot.com/search/label/Rogue%20Space
http://miksminis.blogspot.com/search/label/Rogue%20Space

Timothy S. Brannan said...

Thanks all!

Rhonin84 said...

To all I have been looking at Rogue Space and I can see where that one would be a lot of fun to play with as well!

I'm not sure about the Starships sections I have found but I will continue to dig through that.