Are there any systems where the players take the part of a crew controlling some kind of machine? Like the crew of a tank or a submarine or a spaceship?
I'm wondering because I'd like to do something like that, but I'm not sure how to do it.
I played a fucking SICK D&D 3.5 campaign based off whatever that ship based splatbook was (stormwind? IDK). It should be pretty easy to adapt something like that to a future setting.
We were mostly traders and privateers, most of the campaign was vehicular to vehicular combat with our characters fighting on top of the ships. Our downtime was maintaining the ship, trading from port to port, buying upgrades, and funding and helping the giant war we were helping to fight for our country.
We had to make some house rules to make it functional (fire spells got fucking TURBONERFED) but it worked pretty damn well. Only lost our ship twice.
>>47934633
Did the splatbook come with rules for working the ship and stuff?
>>47934526
Spelljammer.
>>47934526
The book Skyward Steel for Stars Without Number has a pretty good system of letting the whole table do Cool Shit™ on a spaceship. Each player can be a department head and has a big pile of actions they can do to influence the outcome of combat. If nothing else, might be ideas to cram into another system.
>>47934526
Go spelljammer, or a 40k OW or RT campaign geared around it.
Hell you could mash the rules together and play 40K BFGRPG if you want, from one small fighter to each player has a ship in the fleet, depending on preferance
bonus points
When appropriate, be brutal. Make one player sacrifice their ship to spare another, more valuable one.
And whenever they are getting too powerful ram them into a waaaargh/hive fleet/black crusade/inquisitor.
Or even a space hulk.
Damn now i want to run one
The vehicle combat in GUPRS works like that; you've got a variety of actions you can take each round ranging from "directing/inspiring/micromanaging your officers" to "ATTAAAAACK" to "put out the fire and plug the hole" to a whole lot more. You can also try to multitask if you don't have enough dudes on board, but that's tough to do.
Did a Rifts campaign with the party as the crew of a very large Tank. Was quite fun for awhile.
>>47934526
Skyward Steel, a supplement for Stars Without Number, aims to do this. It's designed to take Stars Without Number (a hex-based sci-fi exploration game with relatively brief ship-to-ship combat rules) and beef it the fuck up, allowing for campaigns designed around players as the crew of a ship. It still uses the default SWN ship-to-ship combat, but adds a subsystem for PCs being in charge of vital parts of the ship.
Pic related is an example of what I'm talking about. The roles are Captain, Pilot, Comm Officer, Boatswain, Gunnery Chief, and Chief Engineer (which means it can accommodate up to 6 PCs). Each one dips into a communal pool of "Crew Points" during combat that represent how much manpower is available on the ship. A savvy Captain can decrease Crew Point costs in other departments or set traps for enemy ships. A Gunnery Chief can decrease an enemy ship's effective armor before firing or set up re-rolls for future attacks by ranging in on the bad guys. Stuff like that.
The system also includes a ton of fiddly bits for ships, so players can get ahold of spacecraft ranging from tiny shuttles to cruisers and battleships, then pimp them out with shit like drop pods, ablative armor, auto-targetting, and ridiculous sci-fi weaponry (example names: Spinal Beam Cannon, Torpedo Launcher, Singularity Gun).
>>47938730
This could make for a really fun space naval campaign.
One could even have each player have two characters, one a Ship's Officer, and one a Marine, for use in case of boarding or planet-side actions. Or not, if you want a more star trek-y experience
