tim (10/28/82)
Most of us, I suspect, play more fantasy rpg's than sf rpg's. However, I'd be interested in hearing comments on the various sfrpg's, including Traveller, Star Frontiers, FutureWorld, Universe, and any others. I've only played Traveller (which I wasn't too impressed with: no experience, high mortality), and I'm totally unfamiliar with the others. I've heard that Star Frontiers was a good game before TSR's staff started chopping it. How do the various games compare? What are their strengths and weaknesses? This is meant to be a net discussion, so don't mail to me, please. Tim Maroney unc!tim
marks (10/28/82)
This is based on my experiences at the MIT game club and running a role playing mag (THE WILD HUNT.) The TRAVELLER rules are the best base for building up a reasonable society/game on. This is because they are clear, have clean, easily understood mechanics and terminology, and a tremendous number of additional material available. The "Standard TRAVELLER Universe" from GDW suffers from a number of problems, notably the idiot mechanical computers and extreme deadliness at high tech levels. Keep everything around TL9-11 and their's still a challange to it. One must also heavily suppress the "ecomomic" rules: randomly generated TR sectors sans cartels, regular trading routes, pirates, product liability laws, etc ALWAYS allow the rapid creation of PC billionairs. A more general statement of the problem is that TRAVELLER mechanics depend on merely a 2D6 random variation. Anyone with a skill level of 5 will almost always succeed. GDW ignores the non linear effects which wait just outside normal skill ranges: everything just keeps adding together and bottlenecks don't show up. At MIT the games tend to be relatively low tech level, with lower powered combat, economics fixed to make tramp trading along major trade routes uneconomic, tecnology juggled to force the PCs to land frequently, etc. Also initial skill levels are reduced but the PCs can improve in skill (slowly.) The Fantasy Games Unlimited SPACE OPERA has a far more believeable basic universe and technology. The mechanics are more complex though and harder to adjust to the future YOU want to run. Many TRAVELLER GMs use SPACE OPERA's world creation rules, as they are the best in any SFRPG. SPI's UNIVERSE was set up as a future overrun with men in gray flannel spacesuits. BORING. TSR's said to be uninterested in continuing it. SPACEQUEST is, fairly exactly, "D&D In Space". The first edition even had the same delightful rules clarity. At least it comes right out and provides a rationale for why the PCs can get away with anything: by definition they're the superpowered (spoiled) children of the filthy rich. Heard poor things about the coherance of the new TSR rules but haven't seen them. My experience is that a good SFRPG requires a GM with a firm grasp on the interesting future universe he wants to run. SF games lack the convenient dungeon-crawl scenario type, so more work is needed than in most AD&D campaigns. The TRAVELLER rules are easiest to adapt. If you wan't to run a straight campaign with minimum effort, the many TR scenario packs makes it easiest and the FASA and GDW ones tend to be very good. You'll have to counter-crock the perfect solutions available to merchants and hi-tech mercenaries. Also, characters get killed in TRAVELLER. If you keep setting up combat scenarios against opponents with any chance at all, the average PC will last maybe 4-10 fights. Mark Swanson decvax!grbolton!grkermit!marks 40 Bow St Arlington, MA 02174
CSvax:Physics:crl (10/31/82)
#R:unc:-416900:pur-phy:5400001:000:1258 pur-phy!crl Oct 30 12:56:00 1982 After playing both Traveller(TM) and Space Opera(TM), I would NEVER want to go back to Traveller. I feel the rules system in Space Opera is orders of magnitude better. Not only are the rules quite "realistic" (?) but also, it's far easier to identify with, since they are based on almost every popular science fiction world I can think of. You can see elements of Star Wars, Star Trek, Niven's Known Space, and Smith's Lensman series throughout it. This makes for some fun times speculating on how other ideas would blend in also. At first look, the combat system looks horribly complicated. So did we, until we tried it. You find that within a few runs combat goes about as smoothly as the 1d20 roll in D&D, and without most of the bogosities that the latter has. If you like a little fantasy mixed in, there are the psionics rules (ala Star Wars and Lensman, more or less). The system is unleveled, i.e., no experience points, which is a definitely a big plus. You learn skills by learning-- either through a teacher or a education tape for your minicomputer. This works very well--in fact, I'm thinking of designing my own fantasy system based on these rules. So the bottom line is: "SPACE OPERA IS GREAT!" Charles LaBrec pur-ee!physics:crl