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Old 10-25-2017, 11:22 AM   #21
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Default Re: Fantasy Games Unlimted: Space Opera

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Originally Posted by sir_pudding View Post
1d210? How does that work? 1d2 for the hundreds place and 1d10 for the tens and ones? With some method to discriminate between 200 and 210?
I think, because I read the game used percentile dice rolls, that 1d210 was a typo. I remember FGU having plenty of those.
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Old 10-25-2017, 04:05 PM   #22
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Default Re: Fantasy Games Unlimted: Space Opera

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I think, because I read the game used percentile dice rolls, that 1d210 was a typo. I remember FGU having plenty of those.
Wait that was from the game and not just something Rupert suggested as a rules hack?
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Old 10-25-2017, 04:57 PM   #23
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Default Re: Fantasy Games Unlimted: Space Opera

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I love the mash-up setting of Space Opera, but I fully agree that the rules are a hot mess. If only someone could get permission to do the setting in a different game system...
The problem is that the setting is likewise a hot mess which no new rules will fix.

The charm of Space Opera was, I think, that it was an unlimited well of possibility. Everything you could think of, or at least everything I could think of as a teenage gamer who hadn't yet become aware of the recent invention of cyberpunk, was in there. Every individual choice I would find attractive was somewhere in those books (I had a fairly complete collection: the two-volume set, most of the atlases, several adventures, the spaceship compendia, etc.). I hadn't yet taken a step back to see how poorly it held together, either as a rules system or a setting.

Oh, and the starship guides were really good. Nice, clean floor plans for a wide range of spacecraft. Probably still valuable today.
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Old 10-25-2017, 08:43 PM   #24
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Default Re: Fantasy Games Unlimted: Space Opera

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Originally Posted by Rupert View Post
There was an optional rule that let you start at Psi-19 if you were a Human, Transhuman, or Feline Avatar and had rolled '100' for Psi to start. So it didn't quite need a house rule, just almost.

Of course the game dates from a time when if you wanted to play a game about high-level psions (or anything else non-default) you were expected to hack the rules to fit (e.g. "Roll 95+1d210 for psionics, rather than 1d100.").
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Originally Posted by sir_pudding View Post
Wait that was from the game and not just something Rupert suggested as a rules hack?
It's possible that it was from the game, but certainly not by my copy. I'm not sure which printing it was since I lost the box a long while ago but the books are both ©1980, with a cover by Jeff Dee for Vol.1 and a Gene Day cover for Vol. 2.

A fuller explanation of character creation is as follows:

Select one of 6 character classes: Armsman; Tech; Scientist: Research; Scientist: Medical; Scientist: Engineering; or Astronaut.

Receive DM (dice modifiers) according to your character class to apply to the 1d100 rolls for specified Personal Characteristics, i.e. if the DM doesn't list a particular characteristic for your character class, you can't use the DM to raise that roll. E.G., an Armsman gets +40 DM to apply between Physique; Strength; Constitution; Agility; Bravery and Leadership.

Roll 1d100 for each of your Personal Characteristics: Physique; Strength; Constitution; Agility; Dexterity; Empathy; Intelligence; Psionics; Intuition; Bravery; Leadership; GTA (General Technical Aptitude); MechA (Mechanical Aptitude); and ElecA (Electronics Aptitude).

Convert your d100 roll (plus any DM) into a PC Score ranging from 01-19 by consulting the chart (Vol.1, p.7).

Roll 1d20 three times to determine: Planetary Gravity Field; Planetary Atmosphere; and Planetary Climate for your Planet of Birth.

Select your character race (species). You must meet the minimum PC Scores of that race and your Planet of Birth has to be an allowed type of home planet for your race. E.G., to play a feline you must have the following PC Scores: Strength 11+; Constitution 11+; Agility 16+; Dexterity 13+; and Intelligence 11+, and your home world must be of Types 1-14. If you also have one of GTA 13+; MechA 13+; or ElecA 13+, you are a MekPurr; otherwise, you are an Avatar.

As an optional rule, to make psionics more prominent in a campaign, if the psionics roll was 96-100, Humans, Feline Avatars and Transhumans could apply up to 15 points from their DM to Psionics (giving a PC score of 19 if your roll was 100), other races could apply up to 10 points from their DM to Psionics (giving a PC score of 18). As a side note, when converting the 1d100 roll to a PC score, if the roll required for a score exceeded 100, it was an absolute number and not a range. For example, to have a PC score of 17 required a roll of 105, 18 required 110, and 19 required 115 in Psionics. Using 10 points from your DM to raise your roll of 96 to 106, gets you a PC score of 17, not 18 because it isn't a range, so spending more than 9 points in this case is pointless, use it to help a roll where it'll do some good.

Rupert may simply misremember the RAW, but he did say he felt the rules invited hacking, so it might be a house rule on his part. In either case, what I've just paraphrased are the rules as they appear in the copy of the printing of the books right in front of me.

Last edited by Curmudgeon; 10-25-2017 at 08:47 PM.
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Old 10-25-2017, 09:07 PM   #25
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Default Re: Fantasy Games Unlimted: Space Opera

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Originally Posted by Curmudgeon View Post
Convert your d100 roll (plus any DM) into a PC Score ranging from 01-19 by consulting the chart (Vol.1, p.7).

Roll 1d20 three times to determine: Planetary Gravity Field; Planetary Atmosphere; and Planetary Climate for your Planet of Birth.

As an optional rule, to make psionics more prominent in a campaign, if the psionics roll was 96-100, Humans, Feline Avatars and Transhumans could apply up to 15 points from their DM to Psionics (giving a PC score of 19 if your roll was 100), .
Just as a note, the chart was not a universal chart but an individualized chart for each pair of Attributes (i.e. Desterity and Agility used one chart while strength and Con used another one and so on). Also, they weren't all paired. You had three "Tech" Attributes which used their the last chart on the table.

The apparently not intuitive scale of 1-19 was so you could roll Attribute Rolls on 2D10.

There was a special exception to this. If you had that 19 in PSI you could practice a special discipline called "Telergy" which allowed you to raise your stats. When you had done the full 10 levels of Telergy was when you transformed into a TransHuman. You couldn't raise any attribute above 19 except for Intelligence which you could raise as high as 29.

The game is just full of weird and eccentric things like this.

That optional rule for achieving PSI-19 looks like what I remember from my second copy but I would swear that it wasn't in the first. We had to come up with a House Rule.
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Old 10-25-2017, 10:28 PM   #26
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Default Re: Fantasy Games Unlimted: Space Opera

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Originally Posted by sir_pudding View Post
Wait that was from the game and not just something Rupert suggested as a rules hack?
It was a typo in my rules hack, which should have said "95+1d20".
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Old 10-25-2017, 10:40 PM   #27
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Default Re: Fantasy Games Unlimted: Space Opera

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There was a special exception to this. If you had that 19 in PSI you could practice a special discipline called "Telergy" which allowed you to raise your stats. When you had done the full 10 levels of Telergy was when you transformed into a TransHuman. You couldn't raise any attribute above 19 except for Intelligence which you could raise as high as 29.
Becoming a Transhuman, rather than a human with very good stats was important, because a number of derived stats (hit points, stamina, and carrying capacity) used formulas that involved stats, possibly body weight, and a racial multiplier, and Transhumans had much better racials than Humans. Those multipliers had some really bothersome effects, because bigger species tended to also get better multipliers as well, compounding their higher hit points and carrying capacity. For some reason this happened to some extent with stamina as well, with the result that Ursoids (huge bear-like creatures, supposedly evolved from (non-Terran) bears) could run longer than Humans and Canines. So could Pithecines (evolved apes). Because that makes sense.
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Old 10-26-2017, 06:29 AM   #28
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Default Re: Fantasy Games Unlimted: Space Opera

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The problem is that the setting is likewise a hot mess which no new rules will fix.
Eh, if I wanted to rules hack, I could probably make Mekton Zeta do the trick with relative ease.

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Originally Posted by Turhan's Bey Company View Post
The charm of Space Opera was, I think, that it was an unlimited well of possibility. Everything you could think of, or at least everything I could think of as a teenage gamer who hadn't yet become aware of the recent invention of cyberpunk, was in there. Every individual choice I would find attractive was somewhere in those books (I had a fairly complete collection: the two-volume set, most of the atlases, several adventures, the spaceship compendia, etc.). I hadn't yet taken a step back to see how poorly it held together, either as a rules system or a setting.

Oh, and the starship guides were really good. Nice, clean floor plans for a wide range of spacecraft. Probably still valuable today.
IIRC, I read a designers notes-type article which said that the "kitchen sink" aspect was an intentional design decision - the idea of a given game campaign using everything was not considered.
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Old 10-26-2017, 09:20 PM   #29
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Default Re: Fantasy Games Unlimted: Space Opera

The game claimed that it was modular and you could just leave the stuff out that you didn't want (Stamina/Wind, etc.). A friend of mine redid the way you determined skills in favour of something like "pick X skills, and have them at 4+1d6, pick Y skills and have them at 1d10, pick Z skills and have them at 1d6".
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Old 10-26-2017, 11:51 PM   #30
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Default Re: Fantasy Games Unlimted: Space Opera

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IIRC, I read a designers notes-type article which said that the "kitchen sink" aspect was an intentional design decision - the idea of a given game campaign using everything was not considered.
What setting are you talking about being salvagable then?
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