>GURPS Ultra Tech is apparently bad>People say to not reskin 5e (e.g. Ultramodern 5)>Stars Without Number is just OSR grog slopWhat systems are actually good for running sci fi games then?
>>97839664>GURPS Ultra Tech is apparently badMostly the weapons, and even that only because it becomes rocket tag if you don't curate the weapon list
Anything wrong with Traveler?
>>97839704Is it generic enough? I heard the vehicle and ship rules are pretty setting dependent.
>>97839724All I know of Traveler is that it is one of the more popular TTRPGs. Possibly the most popular sci-fi based one, but I'll leave it another anon who actually plays it to give you his opinion.
>>97839731Okay. But Traveller also feels different due to the dice used.
>>97839704I heard you can die during character creation.
>>97839664>Stars Without Number is just OSR grog slopNot really.Have you looked at M-Space?
>>97839731It's also one of the oldest TTRPG's to be something that's more of its own thing mechanically instead of following D&D's formula.>but I'll leave it another anon who actually plays it to give you his opinion.SameI know it was considered very setting agnostic early on, but that's only a fun fact because they started adding game specific lore due to people asking for it so it probably is setting dependent.
Gurps Space is still a good tool for sf/space opera.Stars Without Numbers is great for generating a sandbox campaign. I have a soft spot for the Dead Names extension.
Are Space Marines cooler than Space Fascist Deathtroopers?
>>97839664Depends on the sci fi
>GURPS Ultra Tech is apparently badIs it? I want to put together something like a not-infinity one shot to have high-to-ultra tech firefights against aliens and dastardly intelligence agents. Is the book not good enough?
>>97839940Yeah there really isn't an accepted sci-fi "blueprint" like fantasy, things can go all the way from cyberpunk to space opera.That said, it's Dune. Dune is to sci-fi what Lord of the Rings is to fantasy. It has its fingerprints everywhere but so do others, but they're like the Conans and Elrics and so on.
>>97839803So you agree, there is nothing wrong with it then?
>>97839968Yeah bro, I love wasting my time.
>>97839724Where did you hear that? The only major quirk I can think of is that FTL involves week long jumps of 1-6 parsecs, with no FTL signals. I guess the fuel consumption also restricts the kind of ships you can make.There's a lot of setting specific stuff, but you don't have to use it, and IMTU (In My Traveller Universe) is common enough in the community to suggest that a lot of peopel don't.
>>97840009I read it on forums for traveller gamers. That might have been an older edition. I downloaded the quick start rules that are free, and it seems like a system that wouldn’t need much tweaking to work.
>>97839664I am running one with Savage Worlds and the science fiction companion. This one is just starting but I have ran others with it.
>>97839803Only in the original. That's not something that can happen in the mongoose versions
>>97839724Try Cepheus Engine if you want to separate the setting from the game completely, it’s essentially genericized Mongoose Traveller 1E. Other than that, you can just tweak or ignore whatever piece of setting lore you don’t like, and leave the big picture stuff as background info that’s irrelevant to most of the campaign.>>97839803That’s only the default in Classic Traveller, they introduced an alternative rule where you get ejected from the career following a mishap or injury, and later editions use that as the default.
>>97839664Warhammer 40k: Rogue Trader --i.e. 1e. It is actually a skirmish wargame-rpg hybrid and requires a GM.If you're looking for a military sf type of game, it comes with a cool setting, and cool tables which is the sweet spot between strict setting and GM homebrew.
>>97839955Nah it works fine for Infinity styleBut you do have to tell your players what equipment they are allowed
>>97840865I can live with that.
>>97839664Dark heresy and the star wars one are both pretty good. Nothing paizo makes is good but starfinder exists. Any of them can be generic if you file the serial numbers off.
>>97841029>starfinderHow is it actually? I don't imagine the formula translating well to scifi, but that might be me.
>>97840915The catch is that there's a *lot* of equipment
>>97841137Seeing as it's supposed to be a oneshot, I can partly pregen character equipment to keep things in line. If they like the premise and want to play it again I can always brief them about the tech level I guess.
>>97841172You can limit to TL9-10 pretty safely if it's not-InfinityBut IIRC most infinity guns are more TL9
>>97841080never played it. everything i hear about it has been >"its just like that thing you hated in PF2e but even shittier"so im not particularly excited. for reference my critique of PF2e is that its a rigid system of archetypes pretending to be "deep customization". If you want to be good at any given thing there are exactly three incremental feats the devs basically force to take for it, and you have to fish them out of a sea of 500+ shit feats that do nothing. Your class only ever does one thing but takes an eight step process across 12 feats to actually make it happen. you only ever want to do maybe two things, but you need to juggle 20+ exploration and combat actions to just "walk forward either searching or going fast". there's a full suite of down-time and itemcrafting rules, but they're universally not worth doing.everything i hear about starfinder is just this, but worse
>>97839664Systems that aren't just fantasy but with future space lasers would be a good place to start.
>>97839664Genesys system was borne from FFG’s Star Wars RPG and thus has its roots in cinematic sci-fi, and it still holds strong there.Clunky though it is, Modiphius does have a Star Trek RPG that’s pretty good as well. And after the Artemis II launch, perhaps a bit of trekking feels right.
>>97841346Ah, just like 3.5/pathfinder then
