What're the best Scifi tabletop RPG's?
>>44637210
Depends on what you want.
>>44637210
Traveller. Stars Without Number. Shock if you like narrative stuff. Lasers and Feelings if you like micro-systems. Engine Heart if you like cute robots. Apocalypse World if you like character-driven drama.
>>44637210
Fate variants
Traveller
Edge of the Rebellion Force Empire Age Destiny
Eclipse Phase
Small games for playing specific situations (Lady Blackbird, Lasers & Feelings, etc.)
Kits for making your own (StarORE, ORE mecha, Fate Core)
Carnage 3:16 is probably one of my favourite for narrative based military scifi. Ghost Echo is also dope.
>>44637468
Is pmuch right though
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/puqo88hi0x9vs/TRAVELLER
Classic and Mongoose edition are excellent from my experience
>>44637210
Seconding Traveller, it's a pretty great sci-fi system.
and I've heard good things about Stars without number, although I have yet to play it myself
Silhouette system (Which runs Heavy Gear, Jovian Chronicles, and Core Command), Is a very good system for general sci-fi.
The Warhammer 40'000 RP system, Primarily Only War, has been a pretty good system for building other Sci-Fi RPGs off of in my experience.
Starship combat in Rogue trader is based around colossal battleships, so it doesn't really have good space ship combat rules for Star-Wars or Firefly levels of fighters and Freighters scale, but could work alright as a fleet commander style of game.
>>44637210
Traveller for space opera. Transhuman Space for hard sci fi and more cerebral games.
40k, Star Wars, Firefly, BattleTech, and Shadowrun are all good, but softer and IMO the settings are so iconic that you don't play them if what you're looking for is generic sci fi.
>>44637468
>>44638052
>>44638105
>>44639748
>>44641007
I've seen that /tg/ seems to mostly talk about mongoose traveller.
How does 5 stack up?
>>44638052
>Eclipse Phase
That's my nigga.
>>44638052
>fate variants
I don't have my smug anime folder on me so all I can say is that as far as generic systems for sci fi go savage worlds is king.
Otherwise good taste.
>>44641594
SV is in between chairs.
If I want player involvement and fast meta rules I go with Fate. If I want detailed crunch for the gritty stuff I use ORE. Savage worlds is neither, it's too structured and physical for meta mechanics and too random for deadly details.
I have no reason not to use it. It just doesn't help me much.
>>44638052
>>44641594
Interface Zero for Fate when
Diaspora is pretty good.
>>44641758
Agreed. Best ship combat.
>>44641386
>>44641386
I'm mostly into GURPS, but they dropped the Traveller license so it's Mongoose or gtfo. Excellent setting.
>>44641386
I prefer Classic to Mongoose, but they're similar enough you can use material for one in the other. (Though my #1 complaint with Mongoose is the poor quality of the non-core material)
T5 is still kind of a mess, though I hear it's improving.
>>44637210
My two favorites are the 40k series of RPGs and the Star Wars d6.
>>44638052
>Eclipse Phase
>>44641571
>>Eclipse Phase
As someone that has played Eclipse Phase since it came out:
No.
Setting is nice because it fills a niche.
System is garbage and beyond broken, and the nature of the setting makes this worse
>>44651856
There is a Fate mod.
>>44641667
>If I want player involvement and fast meta rules I go with Fate.
What, the fucking bennies aren't fast enough for you? FATE is meta as fuck, it's not even roleplaying, it's storytelling.
Which is fine, but OP asked for a ROLEPLAYING game so your suggestion of FATE is objectively invalid.
>>44651891
Anon, nobody wants to play FATE with you. Get over it.
>>44651856
Seconding this.
If you want transhumanism, play Transhuman Space instead. If you want cartoonish dystopian psi fi w/ a little of every gaming trope, play 40k RPG or shadowrun.
The only thing worse than EP are the players it tends to attract.
>>44637210
Carnage Amongst the Stars is fun if you like Starship Troopers. And highly mutable, if you like the rules you can change names and make it form Starship Troopers knock-off to Only War knock-off (also a fun one).
>>44656209
Also forgot about Star Wars Saga Ed.
Based on 3.5e and I DM for it when we get bored of 3.5
>>44637210
Doing a game in Alternity right now.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say Star Frontiers. Shit's legally free, for starters. The fact that it's pretty easy to pick up for newbies also helps with getting more players, and percentile dice instead of d20 stuff makes it easier to understand the odds of shit getting real. Knight Hawks is also really neat and crunchy, when I want to get into the nitty-gritty of building starships.
Stars Without Number is really underrated. Kevin Crawford isn't the god he's sometimes made out to be, but he IS an example of how to do OSR right. He's got a clear, unique vision, he expresses it well, and his products are solid, interesting and well-balanced. Compared to the vast majority of OSR products on the market (which are a million varieties on "copy and paste the AD&D first edition rulebook, but add a paragraph to the first page explaining why THIS ONE is better") it's a whole other world to read and play.
>>44655700
>Transhuman Space
Damn straight. THS is extremely well written - Eclipse Phase took so much from it that it really just comes off as a post-apocalypse campaign of THS where some guy just had to have spacemagic.
>>44662466
>>44655700
>>44651856
I don't understand what are you talking about. System seems nice and simple, please elaborate exactly how it is broken, and the setting, y'know, can be altered (which I did), and the shittiness of playes isn't a system flaw - I, for one, have a very nice long-term group, and we do have fun.
I'll look at THS, though. Even though I can't stand gurps.
>>44663028
I hate Gurps. I find it deeply autistic and usually in the way of a fun game. But the splats are good. I use them for research. They offer countless angles on the genre discussed and give you a good pool of ideas as a baseline. But you have to pick out the cherries, if you use it all you end up with an overladen story that tries to be everything and ends up being nothing.
>>44663079
>But you have to pick out the cherries, if you use it all you end up with an overladen story that tries to be everything and ends up being nothing.
That's how you're supposed to GURPS.
>>44663094
I don't supposed to anything. I'm just using the books for other games and reporting on my experiences.
Don't be that gurps guy.
>>44663154
I thought you might have been one of those idiots who tries to use all the rules from all the sourcebooks, then complains that the game is rules-heavy.
No love for d6 Space?
Not surprised, not many people heard of it. D6 is the old WEG D6 Star Wars turned into a generic system. It's all free OGC now.
https://ogc.rpglibrary.org/index.php?title=OpenD6
>>44663753
It was great, way back in the 90s.
But today there's faster, less awkward mechanisms. I still love it. But I'm an oldfag.
http://d6holocron.com/
>>44663812
>But today there's faster, less awkward mechanisms.
Like Mini Six, the liter version of D6.
>>44663028
>I don't understand what are you talking about. System seems nice and simple, please elaborate exactly how it is broken
Not sure where to start, there's a LOT wrong with the system. I'll try to break things down off the top of my head categorically, but mind you I could write a pretty lengthy essay on everything wrong with EP's system.
>Combat
Probably the worst offender.
1)Weapon/options balance is broken outright, and if you mention this fanboys will say "it's intentional". There's no reason to use anything but kinetic, energy has no purpose except plasma so you just end up dumping everything into kinetic then when you've got the dosh you need to dump into energy. Throwing weapons are only useful since smuggling one is a bit easier than smuggling seekers that makes throwing obsolete, but you only get a few in and it's a rare occasion. Spray can be useful sometimes but I don't see why it's even a separate skill. WHY THE FUCK ARE BLADES AND CLUBS SEPARATE SKILLS WHEN THEY'RE THE ONLY TWO MELEE OPTIONS IN A WORLD OF GUNS.
2)Playing a Jammer breaks the game outright harder than it does Shadowrun. You can dump everything into pilot then remote but to discourage this they impose a mere -10 penalty on other actions which is stupid easy to negate or just ignore by using other actions outside of remote. They know this is an issue but don't care.
3)YOU ROLL TO FUCKING DODGE LASERS
I'm not even joking. Sure you only take half the Fray skill against ranged weapons but what the fuck it should be melee only. It's really not hard to min-max fray and stack bonuses. WHY THE FUCK when there were so many other options for defense-roll mechanics.
4)Initiative is ungraceful as any 90's RPG, and extra passes are so stupid overpowered and easy to get it feeds into the character generation/development problem.
>>44663028
>>44664073
>Character Growth
The WORST OF ANY SYSTEM I'VE EVER PLAYED. You could play this for a year and your character would not be markedly different from making a new one fresh out of character generation. It's 40% equipment, 60% networking, and 0.01% actual character growth. The char gen extra cost of skills over 60, and the skill cap at 80 are completely ineffective especially with the bonus stacking.
Only benefit is that this is good for one-shot games.
Hidden downside is this wastes the settings potential as half the fucking theme is a world with immortality.
Worst is that there are a lot of useless skills so you start to see people's chargen's converge into the same fucking characters.
>Skill/stat mech
1) Distribution of governing stats is wonky at best but worse is that they're singular per skill on top of many useless skills creating a few mostly useless stats.
2) Min-max governing skill bonus is insane, and COG in particular is ridiculous.
3) Values over 100 are not hard to get, and this is a d% system so there's effectively a fixed DC you can far exceed aside from DM imposed penalties.
>Setting specific
The psionics stuff is neat but unfortunately the mechanics for psychology are... lacking. It's archaic as hell.
Hacking and all the tech stuff is boring as it is in real life unfortunately, but can be hollywood levels of overpowered even moreso than the async stuff which renders all the special psionic stuff kind of lame.
tl;dr
>combat is broke as shit and devs don't care
>your character is a walking phonebook of contacts and that's all that matters about them
>it handles like someone in the late 80's / early 90's decided to use d%, fucking Twilight 2000 box set was a more graceful system
What I find really fucking funny is Eclipse Phase's system is so bad it made me less critical of Hvt Dracones or whatever that lolcow system was when I went to skim that. It was both novel and had some really good ideas. Eclipse phase is/has neither
>>44651917
It's hilarious that you posted a picture that mostly describes your own post.
