RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16
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Disclaimer: I don't own the current version of the Star Wars rules system, but I am curious as to how they deal with starship combat in an RPG.
Honestly, i think the old Star Frontiers had it right: there's a role-playing game, which takes place planetside or on board the corridors of a spaceship, and then there's a related but seperate ship-to-ship combat system.
Because, sometimes players lose combats. And if you're in the ship that loses a combat in interstellar space, there are explosions! There's unpleasant decompression! There's a TPK, and possibly the end of the campaign.
After all, Biggs Darklighter doesn't pick himself up off the Death Star hull, dust himself off, and go looking for a docking vent.
So, how do you folks deal with ship-to-ship combat. Do the PC's just win, by fiat? Do you rule that if they lose, their ships always get disabled and boarded / tractored into docking bays? Or do you run with the risk that the engines could overload and blow everybody up?
I have not run a Sci Fi game so I have no answer. I played in a Serenity game where most of the action took place planet side. Our ship did not have any weapons, so we most likely would have surrendered if someone fired on us.
This weekend I start in a MegaTraveller game. I will let you know if we all get blown to fleshy space particles.
Honestly, i think the old Star Frontiers had it right: there's a role-playing game, which takes place planetside or on board the corridors of a spaceship, and then there's a related but seperate ship-to-ship combat system.
The current version of the Star Wars RPG has chosen to go the other direction by making starship combat rules even more like those for ground combat. It substitutes some verisimilitude (a funny word to use in regards to a universe of lightsaber, blasters, the Force, etc.) for ease of play. No longer to players have to learn a separate set of rules in order to take off in their freighter, and no longer do characters not specialized in flight skills have to sit around with nothing to do until the landing ramp opens.
I enjoy this system. Its other advantage is that the player characters can use their own resources, such as Force points, to aid the ship overall, which definitely helps when one stray shot would otherwise wipe out the entire party.
I have played Star Frontiers, and have read Traveler rulebooks. But, I have never played in a Sci-Fi campaign that I can truly say, 'Wow - that was an amazing ride.' Yet...! (I want to.)
I think the biggest hindrance to Sci-Fi role-playing is the size of space itself. You almost have to be planet side for anything interesting to happen. The most you can do inside a ship is run around in the corridors, which is exactly like a dungeon crawl only with different scenery.
Instead of magic you have technology, but it might as well be magic. Because, no one really wants to sit down and role-play designing a quantum repulsion-torque photon resistor to increase the range of their phased coherent beam splitter.
I love ship-to-ship combat. But, to do it right using correct physics and tactics takes a Masters degree in sub-orbital Algebra Systems Management. I am finding ship-to-ship is either way over simplified, or nothing more than rolling tons of dice and looking up outcomes in a table while coloring in little circles with a pencil. Quite frankly, I would rather play a quite game of chess.
This why, even though I love sci-fi, all my attempts to role-play Sci-Fi quickly turn into a mythos adventure; with hidden doorways opening on the dark side of the moon, while Azathoth plays in my hot tub.
I'm looking for good advice too.
I've never played or read starwars, but many years ago did play a lot of traveller and 2300AD.
How we handled ship to ship combat really depended on what sort of game we were playing.
Our 2300AD game had almost none, the space ship action was all cocktails at the captains table or crawling around in the cargo hold.
Our Traveller games were quite different, the game was all about the ship and landing on world was often just a book keeping task of buying cargo.
The trick to space combat is just to make sure everyone has something to do. As long as players can roll a die or two they always seem to be happy.
In Traveller it was posible to roll 'ship destroyed' on the combat chart but it only happened once in my game. The PCs and their free trader had got into a shooting match and the enemy rolled the big one. I just told them that the ship is breaking up "What do you do?". The PCs had a dice roll to get off the ship with negatives if they wanted to do much more than run for the nearest airlock and then another roll to survive reentry down onto the adjacent planet.
The Gunner wanted one last shot at the enemy and died strapped to his gun, another died on the way down, but they just started again with two surviving passenger's.
So it was not a TPK but it was a campaign changer, space merchants to disaster movie. I pulled out the old GDW adventure Marooned and played that. No one ever did survive the trek back to civilization.
Mate thinking about that was such a great game.
The Troll
I'm looking for good advice too.
You could always try the free download, Warships (The first one past the "navigation paragraph.") It is for Alternity, so if you aren't using that system you might need a shoehorn and sledgehammer... But it has three "levels" of space combat. Basic - fairly abstract but easy, Advanced - a good mix of abstract and accurate, and The Cold Hard Facts - where it discuses the 'realities' of space flight/combat.
For the price, it might be worth a shot.
Now I certainly don't expect anyone else to do this, but I used to play Gurps Space. We used Star fleet battles to resolve ship to ship combat. I owned the whole system.
We were hard core players of both systems and worked out rules for effect of ship combat on PCs.
How does this aspect of the SAGA system compare to the original D6 version?
Disclaimer: I don't own the current version of the Star Wars rules system, but I am curious as to how they deal with starship combat in an RPG.
Honestly, i think the old Star Frontiers had it right: there's a role-playing game, which takes place planetside or on board the corridors of a spaceship, and then there's a related but seperate ship-to-ship combat system.
Because, sometimes players lose combats. And if you're in the ship that loses a combat in interstellar space, there are explosions! There's unpleasant decompression! There's a TPK, and possibly the end of the campaign.
After all, Biggs Darklighter doesn't pick himself up off the Death Star hull, dust himself off, and go looking for a docking vent.
So, how do you folks deal with ship-to-ship combat. Do the PC's just win, by fiat? Do you rule that if they lose, their ships always get disabled and boarded / tractored into docking bays? Or do you run with the risk that the engines could overload and blow everybody up?
First off, I recommend picking up SWSE if you're interested in a space opera game. It's the best one I've seen yet, and I've seen a lot of them. (Not a hard-SF game, mind you.)
It handles vehicle (and spaceship) combat as more-or-less a subset of character combat. Attack runs are like charging; dogfighting is like grappling; etc. It works. :)
As for the mortality problem, there are a variety of ways of handling it. First off, most ships become "disabled" long before they're "destroyed" ... leaving them powerless hulks floating in space but not blown to bits. This allows for capture via tractor beam, or rescue via lifeboat, depending on the desires of the GM.
Second, I forget the exact rule, but there's something along the lines of an Acrobatics check as a reaction when a ship is actually destroyed to eject and/or get to an escape pod before it goes blooey. And even if you blow that, heroic characters can spend a Force point to avoid death, which would probably be read as "getting to the escape pod in just the nick of time." Thus, even in a big space battle, it's fairly difficult (but not impossible) to actually kill heroic characters.
(Of course, if you really wanted to stick it to 'em, you could have sadistic villains taking potshots at the escape pod...)
-The Gneech
How does this aspect of the SAGA system compare to the original D6 version?
Depends on which original D6 version you mean. ;) If you mean the "maneuverability and fire codes +2D" version in the original rulebook, SWSE is much more detailed and tactical, simply by virtue of using the same mechanics of character combat. If you mean compared to Star Warriors, SWSE is much simpler and faster, and doesn't require any conversion of character and ship stats. :)
Oh, I should mention here, they made a big push to give everybody in the party something to do, even in the dreaded "all the PCs in the freighter, being chased by TIEs" scenario that used to translate into "the pilot and gunner do everything, while the other players watch".
-The Gneech
How does this aspect of the SAGA system compare to the original D6 version?Depends on which original D6 version you mean. ;) If you mean the "maneuverability and fire codes +2D" version in the original rulebook, SWSE is much more detailed and tactical, simply by virtue of using the same mechanics of character combat. If you mean compared to Star Warriors, SWSE is much simpler and faster, and doesn't require any conversion of character and ship stats. :)
Oh, I should mention here, they made a big push to give everybody in the party something to do, even in the dreaded "all the PCs in the freighter, being chased by TIEs" scenario that used to translate into "the pilot and gunner do everything, while the other players watch".
-The Gneech
Hmmm. Interesting. Still prefer my D6, however. :-) But seriously, my old SW GM used to give crew bonuses to the gunnery and manuvering checks depending on the size of the crew and the type of ship, I think for the vast majority of the freighters we were in it was a +1D to those checks until you meet the maximum crew size for the vessel or something like that.