Flavors of Science Fiction RPGs

 For 2023 I decided to try and be more engaged with the blog. My goal right now is two posts a week, but maybe I can get back to the old days of 3-5 posts a week, who knows! I don't bother looking at the metrics on who's reading usually (this, as always, is about me setting a writing goal for myself to keep from getting rusty), but if you are reading I love to see your comments.

I am also serious about taking a break from D&D this year. I can't escape it entirely, since I have an active campaign meeting tonight,* but I can try and see if I can steer that sucker to a close (ideally sooner than later). I feel like I really need a break to refresh my creative output; I can tell when I am on autopilot with running D&D, and boy howdy am I ever on autopilot these days.....that doesn't mean we're not having fun, but I can earnestly count the number of times I've recycled the plot currently in use. The main satisfaction I get out of the game is from the storytelling and world building but 5E...it's super duper OK when it comes to tactical combat, but never quite feels as fun or interesting as either its immediate competition (Pathfinder 2E, which excels at interesting combat albeit within a rigidly balanced ecosystem), or literally any prior edition of D&D (especially 3.5 and --for better or worse-- 4E, both of which felt like there were some stakes in the fight). 

So I am keen on proposing science fiction as a medium for a while. For the Wednesday group it needs to have a few useful traits: 

1. Goal oriented; I think it helps on a work night if everyone has a direction to go rather than be too freeform;

2. Familiar turf; everyone needs to be on the same page with the setting and its themes;

3. Roll20 friendly; because while we have tried meeting in a live space, the only live game right now is also a D&D campaign, and I don't know how often we can meet because everyone keeps catching flu/mono/strep/COVID.

So the SF RPGs I have to pick from include:

Traveller 2E - a sort of all purpose toolkit, I never really thought about just how much of a toolkit Traveller was until recently, when comparing it to Star Trek Adventures and Alien RPG. At it's core, Traveller is about grizzled space travelers with mixed luck plying a trade of some sort in an incredibly old and populated/explored universe (whether that is the Imperium or not, its still what the tables tend to generate). If I stick to focused scenarios I can meet goal 1, I think most players in this group are familiar with it (2), and it's got a functional character sheet on Roll20 which is all this system really needs.

Star Trek Adventures - the stark contrast between STA and Traveller became clear when I realized that Star Trek, license aside, is an SF game about exploring a young future universe filled with unknowns, and exploring the human condition through analogy and comparison. It is the opposite of the old, crusty universe one might find in Traveller (though with the caveat that Traveller's 2300AD can probably stand in here). STA is also easy to run, and has Roll20 character sheet support, which is all it really needs. I haven't tried it out to see if the challenge dice are emulated, though. STA can easily fulfill item 1 above, as you can readily design goal oriented adventures for the setting. #2 is the problem, though....I know one or two of my players are in to Star Trek, but from conversations I've had I know some of the others are not so familiar with it; that is not to say that they haven't watched it, but a huge red flag for gaming in the Star Trek universe is when someone says, "Yes, as long as I can ignore that stupid Prime Directive." That's sort of like saying you'll play Star Wars as long as we remove Jedi from the game.....sure, you can do it, but then why not just run Traveller?

Alien RPG - this one is an easy system and provides some good Roll20 support, so check marks there. It's upside is the Alien RPG's campaign mode can allow for lengthy campaigns within the grim and gritty universe of the setting, but players know sooner or later something hideous and xenomorphic will disrupt the party. If everyone is in to the universe this usually poses no issues. Directed play (1) is definitely possible here, and sticking to cinematic gameplay makes it even easier, but I have no idea if the rest of my group is really that in to the Alien Universe like I am, so I will have to discuss with them in more detail. The downside of Alien is that it's got a tight and well defined sort of feel and style to it; you don't have a lot of creative freedom to do "non Alien-like things" in this universe, which is fine if everyone's on board....but it means that more creativity will be easier with Star Trek Adventures or Traveller.

Cypher System Stars are Fire - I ran a short campaign for the Saturday group last year, and decided that the Cypher System, while robust in genre emulation, works much better when I run it as a smorgasbord kitchen sink kind of experience, and its style of play was just not jelling for me like it had in other campaigns. I think it is a better system at a live table, and not as satisfying (for lots of reasons I can go into) at the virtual table. So...I've ruled this out for now. Can it do it? Totally; it lets you mesh wild settings and wild characters easily. Do I feel like using it for either game night anymore? Not in Roll20, right now. It's just not quite fitting what I need at the moment.

Mothership - I am sort of waiting with baited breath for the Boxed Set release, but also I plan on suggesting this for Saturday soon. That said.....it might be a good choice for Wednesaday night, actually. The game is about space horror, as Alien RPG is, but with limitless possibilities on how you want to mech it together; Mothership is a universe in which Alien, The Thing, Event Horizon, Pandorum and Dead Space could all be happening at the same time. The system is also perfectly capable of doing other stuff that doesn't involved being killed by space horrors, and last year some of my campaign elements focused on weird crime and cyberpunk stuff. The downside to Mothership: only 0E has Roll20 support at the moment, but on the plus side I have plenty of 0E modules lying around. Running goal-oriented stuff in Mothership is easy, and the only question lies with #2: is the group willing to play in a space dominated by scifi horror themes?

I've got other systems on consideration. The include les SF focused and more Cyberpunk experiences (Blade Runner, Cyberpunk Red), Esper Genesis (will feel better about running this if they ever release the third book; but my dwindling interest in 5E may also stifle interest here), GURPS Space (I'd love to do this but man, you need the right group to enjoy the right level of complexity for this particular brand of GURPS which really dives deep into a harder SF feel with lots of technical bits), Savage Worlds SF (will totally happen one day if they update the old SciFi Companion), and Coriolis (which I am still waiting for copies of, but looks promising).

Will broach the subject with the group tonight! I suspect Traveller will be the shoe-in, but who knows, I could be surprised. I might think about ways to run Traveller mechanically but use the aesthetic exploration/discovery/human condition focus of Star Trek as the theme. We'll see.  

*Which was a very fun campaign tonight, and I greatly enjoyed, so who knows when it will end LOL

The Deathbat Reading List for May (so far): Ryuutama, Pathfinder for Savage Worlds, Star Trek Adventures Tricorder Collector's Edition

This month I've had the opportunity to dive deep into some newer games which I have found myself quite intrigued with, and indeed, dare I say it, even creatively motivated, which is all I as a GM can really ask for! Here's some of the cool stuff I've been exploring:

Ryuutama

This fantastic little Japanese RPG has been translated into English and has a fine premise: you play the average folk of a town or village who find themelves on a grand adventure. Its distinct anime/manga style art is evocative of the genre and it really leans in to an organic tabletop rendering of certain kinds of JRPGs, the kind where you play more ordinary folk who become great explorers and adventurers in their time (or even just well regarded but ordinary folk). It's loaded with everything you need to have fun, relaxing adventures with less emphasis on grimdark and more emphasis on exploration, discovery and personality. I hesitate to call this a fun game for kids because its also a very fun game for adults who might enjoy exploring elements of the fantasy genre that aren't all about sticking swords in things all the time (although that can happen in Ryuutama as well).

Pathfinder for Savage Worlds

This long delayed Kickstarter finally arrived at my doorstep and it was well worth the wait. Using assets and style guides from the 1st edition of Pathfinder, this adaptation to Savage Worlds is a complete game by itself, customizing the Savage World Adventure Edition (SWADE) for Pathfinder gaming. The underlying assumption is you can use it with Golarion, but the rules are 100% suitable for any type of D&Desque/Pathfinderish fantasy setting you want to use it for. The core rules and Bestiary are all you need to do your own thing, but the Companion has a nice guide to Golarion as well as useful artifacts in the back, and there's a GM screen and module as well as a metric ton of cards, tokens, templates and other stuff. The entire Rise of the Runelords series was also ported over, though I did not get that since I tend to rarely use published modules.....that said, the Hollow's Last Hope module included with the GM screen is organized and presented more nicely than the original, so I may take a look at Rise of the Runelords for Savage Pathfinder to see if it's revision/restructuring fits with my own style for modules better.

Either way, Savage Pathfinder has the distinct appeal of capturing the style and variety of content and monsters I like in a D&D/PF game, but using the Savage Worlds rules, which I think might just be that thing I need to really revitalize my interest in the D&D-like genre. We shall see!

Star Trek Adventures Tricorder Edition

Sapping all of my time and energy away from my other SF campaign plans, the Star Trek Adventures Tricorder collector's set has been my accidental gateway drug back into the deep dive of Star Trek lore and fan madness. It may not be evident, but for many, many years I was a pretty big fan of Star Trek. I would not qualify myself as a Trekkie, as I don't go to conventions, argue about the canon and non canon lore of Trek online, cosplay or anything like that. But I am the kind of Trek fan who watched every episode of each series (and recently subbed to Paramount+ to catch up on current shows), and I ran a lot of Star Trek back in the day when it was still with Last Unicorn Games. The 2D20 edition of the system from Modiphius is a generally more accessible edition, and the digest edition of the rules that comes with the Tricorder Set is an easy read, with a nice reframing of the rules entirely from the perspective of The Original Series in terms of its assumed setting and appearance. The fact that it comes with a mini campaign, lots of TOS character and ship cards, dice, and counters all packaged in case that looks (and pops open) like a classic era tricorder is just a huge bonus. It even has a shoulder strap! 

If I carry this around like an actual tricorder does that count as cosplay? Hmmm.

Either way, I am extremely keen on trying out some Star Trek Adventures soon, most likely set in the Original Series timeline, maybe in the intervening years following Kirk's five year voyage but before the V'Ger incident so I can take advantage of those lost years as a framework for adventures. I may or may not try to extrapolate from the weird mess that is Discovery (still plowing through that) but the new series, Strange New Worlds, looks extremely promising.

For those wondering, the Digest Rulebook is complete, and has some small but welcome changes mechanically. It's not a shrunken typefont, either, so perfectly readable. The book is its own thing, apart from the bigger rulebook, but is a full set of rules....just highly tailored to the 2265-2269 era, although some of the story and lore bits throughout the book address things from Enterprise, time travel episodes or episodes of later series which introduced retroactive material or the first six movies (ex: Breen were not a thing in TOS, but were retroactively identified as having been around for a long time in TNG and DS9), and so forth. It also alludes to some bits of the craziness in Discovery in spots, but mainly focuses on content as relates to TOS.

Anyway.....yeah, so Star Trek is apparently back on my obsession menu after a really long absence.