Space Opera Box set Ideas

[Refplace]

As an exercise lets see if we can come to a reasonable consensus on a possible Space Opera setting for a possible boxed set like the DFRPG.
Thread Objectives: The word count needs to be around the size of the DFRPG so it wont leave a lot of room for gear or setting details. Also it needs to be playable out of the box and have as wide an appeal as possible.
What I would like...

• Allow a variety of tropes but not overwhelming
• Template based charecters supporting Bug Hunts, Explorers, Traders, Fighter or space combat, most Action type tropes
• An alien list that allows for the Third Edition Aliens and updates such as Sparriels
• Compatible with the Space Atlas books would be a nice bonus
• Compatible with Space settings, actual or implied

[adm]

One of the reasons I suspect this would be better latter is that I think that with some care, this could be a multi book set after the first box.

In the box a fairly simple core set up, the Marines from Aliens, the Starship Interprize MDD 2812, or the Insurrection against the Galactic Imperator. After the first set, add the bits needed for the next set, say start with a Man to Man version of Aliens, or Starship Troopers, call it Bughunt. 1st supplement, Galactic explorers to find the Bugs, cribbed from First in. Second supplement, "What you thought the government was a benign and friendly set? " add in a government that needs over throwing. But wait, there's more! Now the neighbors are unhappy about the loss of trade, smugglers anyone? etc. etc. etc.

The scope of Space Opera is both a problem in setup, and an opportunity in future books. Fitting something like this together is not truly practicable until you have a better base from earlier box sets. DF is coming out, next, in whatever order is best, Monster Hunters, Steampunk, Supers, and After the End. If you setup After the End carefully enough, you can then drop Reign of Steel over the top of it as a test run for the Space Opera sets.

[tbone]

I made some posts elsewhere on potential directions for a Space Opera box. I'll drag them over here:

I imagine new boxed sets would want to follow [DFRPG's] lead [in removing "switches" and other GM options]. For Space Opera (a fine choice that, done right, could show off many GURPS strengths), that would mean not leaving the GM to make all sorts of choices about tech level, game world scale, nature of space travel, etc. The set would make as many decisions on these things as needed to present GMs with a ready-to-play setting.

That, to me, suggests less of a "Space Opera" box and more of a "Tales of the Galactic Exploration Agency"-like box. Something pretty specific – not only in presenting a setting (even if in broad strokes), but also in setting down a defined rules set, not tons of rules options.

and

Super-simplified settings may even work for other genres (to a degree, anyway). Space Opera? If the action is meant to center on bustling cities and spaceports, then remote planets could be lightly painted as generic "wilderness". Or if the idea is to explore wild planets in detail, with PCs spending almost all their time "Down There", then the spaceport might as well be set aside without detail as "town".

and

I was having the same sort of thoughts [re a Space Patrol that has to fill many roles]. A space frontier is huge and unknown. Imagine it's just not possible to properly cover the frontier with all sorts of proper organizations for exploration, research, policing, fighting, trade, and more. Rather, circumstances call for one very flexible Patrol (or Agency or whatever) that has to play all those roles to some degree.

It's naturally going to be stretched thin, too. So while there will be big colonization efforts here, and major military operations there, much of what goes on will have to make do with small teams. And the Patrol knows from experience that space is big and weird, and totally unpredictable, with backup and rescue typically far away. So teams have to be diverse: even if the mission is just exploring an interesting planetary feature, teams try to include a soldier, a biologist, a medic, a technician, a psi... all "just in case".

And yet, even that level of deployment isn't always possible. So the Patrol learns to work with others as needed: official Agents work alongside contracted experts, mercenaries, guides, corporate reps... even "free agents" (to place a "we'll-just-look-the-other-way" name on smugglers and other rogues). Teams sometimes contain more outside hires than Patrol members.

Needless to say, organizations other than the Patrol also have teams doing things here and there. The frontier also crawls with private "adventurer" teams beholden to no one at all. (Read: Pirates, bounty hunters, and "kill the bugs and take their stuff" explorers.)

That's all pretty basic Space Opera filling, but maybe it's the sort of framework that would support "adventurer teams in space" gaming without going too deeply into hard-wired setting. It could resemble fantasy gaming quite a bit, with a few key differences. (One key difference from DFRPG: Unless the setting is really out in nowhere, organizations will likely be important as employers, Patrons, etc. Which just creates a reason to include GURPS' new-ish, nifty, and simple rules for requesting aid from organizations (DF 17 Guilds, an awesome book)).

===

That's about all from me now, except to note one problem with the immediate above. I describe a Space Opera setting in which PCs might be an exploration team, or a multi-mission Patrol team, or maybe a private rogue-ish team, or many other possible teams. That sounds fun, and meets experienced gamers' expectations ("the PCs can be whatever the players want them to be!").

But FWIW, that's not the approach DFRPG takes. DFRPG sets out exactly what the PCs do: they raid dungeons. Period. Clear as a bell!

(Let me call that "occupation", as in "occupation: dungeon raider"; it's not the same as what DFRPG calls "profession".)

If – and that's if – a Space Opera game were to follow that lead, it would have to make a decision on what PCs' occupation is. It'd be a Space Opera game in which PCs are planetary explorers. Or bug hunters. Or free traders. Pick one occupation, like DFRPG, and build a game around that. (A darn tough choice, given so many possibilities...)

I don't know whether a Space Opera boxed set should or shouldn't take that path. If it did... adm's post is interesting, suggesting that the game could start with one PC occupation (like DFRPG's "dungeon raider"), giving new players an immediate focus. It could then use future supplements to offer more occupations, expanding play to all-new campaigns and types of teams.

That'd mark a departure from DFRPG's approach... but space is big...

[Refplace]

Originally Posted by adm

One of the reasons I suspect this would be better latter is that I think that with some care, this could be a multi book set after the first box.


The scope of Space Opera is both a problem in setup, and an opportunity in future books. Fitting something like this together is not truly practicable until you have a better base from earlier box sets. DF is coming out, next, in whatever order is best, Monster Hunters, Steampunk, Supers, and After the End. If you setup After the End carefully enough, you can then drop Reign of Steel over the top of it as a test run for the Space Opera sets.

I agree that it is an opportunity for more books and consider that a feature.
Imagine something like Tbone and EricSmiths posts.
You can have enough occupational templates to cover the bulk of things.
Mission or Adventure books could include a prebuilt ship deigned for the adventure, possibly a couple of enemy ships.
Make hem compatible with the Spaceships line and note it in the material and the GM has an option for more books already in print if they want to expand in that direction.
Sparriels is already an Alien book ready to go. Include them as a race template in the set and players wanting more detail can get the book for it.
You could go in the Prime Directive direction for supplements, Race or empire books. Geography/setting books, etc.
Other boxed sets will not help this line other than publicity (which is good)so I disagree that another boxed set coming first will significantly help a Space Opera book.

As for Reign of Steel I agree it could bean add on to an ATE boxed set.

[SteamBub]

Originally Posted by tbone

If – and that's if – a Space Opera game were to follow that lead, it would have to make a decision on what PCs' occupation is. It'd be a Space Opera game in which PCs are planetary explorers. Or bug hunters. Or free traders. Pick one occupation, like DFRPG, and build a game around that. (A darn tough choice, given so many possibilities...)

Force Sword Swashbuckler? I can imagine a box revolving around a group of rag tag group of adventurers sailing the stars with chivalrous ideals. Or a group of heart of gold smugglers.

[lvalero]

I would pay for a developed Space-Opera Box based on the works of Psi-Wars of Mailanka. I am not a big fan of Star-Trek, Traveller, Transhuman or Hard Sci-Fi worlds but Star Wars/Psi Wars/W40K and simmilar worlds are very appealling to me.

The space is big, so a "space gameworld" could support all the genres but an approach like "this box is a neutral space gameworld and you can make any game you want just by creating it by yourself" is not a buy-driver for me.

In resume.

+1 vote to produce the Mailanka's Psi-Wars! :)

[whswhs]

I think that a space opera series should avoid having a detailed world design system. Such things are appealing to people like me who like to work out settings in detail, but they're likely to put off people who recoil at pushing a square root key or perhaps even plugging numbers into a formula. Instead, I would recommend doing world types, both physical world types and social world types, painted with a broad brush. It might be a good idea to have a secondary "world types" table for earthlike planets with one or another predominant environment: the desert planet, the grass planet, the arctic planet, the jungle planet (perhaps with a note that any planet has other environments in some areas).

[ericbsmith]

Originally Posted by whswhs

Instead, I would recommend doing world types, both physical world types and social world types, painted with a broad brush. It might be a good idea to have a secondary "world types" table for earthlike planets with one or another predominant environment: the desert planet, the grass planet, the arctic planet, the jungle planet (perhaps with a note that any planet has other environments in some areas).

Absolutely agreed. You want just enough information that someone reading world data from the box set or (hypothetical) expansions can understand the world data that was generated with a more complex system like the one in GURPS Space, and can even eyeball solar systems and worlds using that nomenclature, but you do *NOT* want to duplicate the actual design rules from GURPS Space. If a buyer wants all the minutia to create their own worlds using the more complex system simply direct them to GURPS Space.

Similarly with spaceships, I would highly recommend using GURPS Spaceships rules to design the spaceships and provide maybe a dozen various ships for use (Free Traders, Pirate Corsair, Patrol Frigate, Patrol Scout, etc), but the Space Opera box set should *NOT* include the spaceship design system. It ought to include the rules for using various ship systems and (a perhaps simplified) ship combat, but the only thing it ought to include regarding the design and creation of said ships is which design switches need to be turned on in the design system so that someone who is interested in designing their own ships can buy GURPS Spaceships to do so.

[ericbsmith]

Originally Posted by tbone

If – and that's if – a Space Opera game were to follow that lead, it would have to make a decision on what PCs' occupation is. It'd be a Space Opera game in which PCs are planetary explorers. Or bug hunters. Or free traders. Pick one occupation, like DFRPG, and build a game around that. (A darn tough choice, given so many possibilities...)

I don't know that I like the idea of it narrowing the focus to just one occupation like that. It would certainly need to narrow its focus some, and that's one of the reason I like the "Space Patrol of the Frontier" campaign backdrop, because it can support several specific focuses under one umbrella - you can have a campaign based around space cops, or space marines, or world exploration, or even bug hunting. And the leap from being a Space Patrol to Space Pirate is so slight that it could even be included as an option.

Further expansions could fill out each of those campaign scopes as well as add others (such as the Free Trader or Space Navy), but with Space Opera it seems more fitting to keep the initial options open.

[tbone]

Originally Posted by ericbsmith

...but with Space Opera it seems more fitting to keep the initial options open.

Sounds sensible to me – at least, if the working concept is simply "Space Opera". That label is analogous to, say, "Fantasy" – it's broad. Whereas the analogue to the narrow "Dungeon Fantasy" would be something narrow like "Bug Hunters" or "Alpha Sector Free Traders".

So I guess that's a big question to tackle: Should a space-operatic boxed set be a narrow "Very Specific Occupation/Activities Covered in Detail, Amid a Space Opera Background"? Or should it be a broad "Many Possible Occupations/Activities Covered in Broad Strokes, Amid a Space Opera Background"?

The former hews to DFRPG's precedent; the latter veers from it.

Maybe a middle ground: "A Handful of Select Occupations/Activities Covered in Reasonable Detail..." ?