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