Help me pick a system for science fiction (GURPS vs Mythras/BRP vs Savage Worlds)

[Almenac]

TL;DR I need a system for science fiction campaign and I have trouble deciding.

I'm putting together a science fiction campaign and I'm trying to figure out what system to use. The previous campaign I ran was traditional fantasy with D&D 5E and this time I want to try something different.

The campaign takes place in my own homebrew science fiction setting. The characters are shipwrecked with a military vessel in an unknown planet with hostile elements. The main idea is that characters are trying to get out, but how they do it will be mostly up to them. The campaign will have sandbox elements with numerous adventure seeds dropped in. If the campaign is succesful, I'd like there to be an option to continue with the same group but with different focus (from the shipwreck scenario to becoming bounty hunters or space traders with their own ship).

My main candidates are Mythras/M-Space, GURPS and Savage Worlds. I own and I've read through most of the core books and some supplements of these, but haven't run or played them. My group doesn't have experience in the systems either, if we don't count original Runequest way back.

The main reason I'm asking is that I'm having a huge analysis paralysis and I'd like to get to writing the actual campaign material. Of these three I leaning towards Mythras/M-Space, but since I'm asking here, I'm of course willing to listen counter-arguments. I'd rather not have to buy any more books, but I'm open to suggestions. Any help and comments would be greatly appreciated.

My wishlist for the system is:

* Not integrated into some particular setting
* Preferably no classes or levels. Loose careers or templates are fine.
* Flat power curve. Characters should increase in power, but not in contemporary D&D superhero style.
* Ability to handle tactical combat with modern/futuristic weapons.
* Combat resolves quickly. I have six players and D&D 5E fights in higher level could easily take hours.
* Nonviolent problem and conflict resolution is viable, noncombat characters are fun to play.
* System has ongoing support

Here's my breakdown so far:

GURPS pros:

* Can model anything
* Modular, can be modified for various styles and genres
* Vast supplement catalog

GURPS cons:

* Putting together campaign is a lot of work for the GM
* Chargen takes a long time or leans heavily on templates (see gm work)
* The combat system has a reputation of being very slow
* Support has dwindled, the latest edition is 15 years old in 2019 and no plans for a new edition
* The need for multiple sourcebooks (at least Ultra-Tech in my case)


Mythras pros:

* Unrestrictive career system
* Cool and deadly combat system
* Organic character growth
* Decades worth of combatible material from d100 world

Mythras cons:

* No special abilities like powers, feats or edges. Could this be modeled with Gifts?
* Too deadly?
* Might be difficult to model scifi concepts like droids and AI

Savage Worlds pros:

* Can model anything action-oriented
* Resolves combat quickly
* Very well supported
* Low prep time

Savage Worlds cons:

* Pulpy, might not support more serious tones
* The game is designed around combat and action
* My players may dislike cards and bennies as metagamey and quirky

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Almenac

GURPS cons:

* Putting together campaign is a lot of work for the GM
* Chargen takes a long time or leans heavily on templates (see gm work)

Quite a bit comes pre-canned. For example, if you restrict characters to mundane advantages and disadvantages, which are tagged in the Basic Set, and only allow exotic ones via equipment, that takes the whole power design system out of scope, simplifying things.

* The combat system has a reputation of being very slow

For low-tech hand-to hand combat, it can be, until you learn how to use the tactics. High-tech combat, in contrast, is swift and deadly.

* Support has dwindled, the latest edition is 15 years old in 2019 and no plans for a new edition

There hasn't been a need for a new edition.

* The need for multiple sourcebooks (at least Ultra-Tech in my case)

Yes, you'll want Ultra-Tech, and maybe Spaceships. And if you want to emphasise the social aspects a lot, Social Engineering. But you'll be just fine with those.

[Almenac]

Originally Posted by johndallman

Quite a bit comes pre-canned. For example, if you restrict characters to mundane advantages and disadvantages, which are tagged in the Basic Set, and only allow exotic ones via equipment, that takes the whole power design system out of scope, simplifying things.

Thanks, that's solid advice! I think I'll list all the mundanes in the books and see how long the list is after that.

For low-tech hand-to hand combat, it can be, until you learn how to use the tactics. High-tech combat, in contrast, is swift and deadly.

If that's the case, I've been misinformed. Thanks!

Yes, you'll want Ultra-Tech, and maybe Spaceships. And if you want to emphasise the social aspects a lot, Social Engineering. But you'll be just fine with those.

How about Space?

Actually I do have Spaceships 1 and 4. Unfortunately while I think the design system is alright, I really can't wrap my head around the combat system and the Delta-V calculations. If I were to use GURPS I'd probably have to come up with a simpler space combat system of my own and that's a pretty daunting project.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Almenac

How about Space?

Space is a book about how to design and flesh out SF settings. You said you have one of your own, so the need for it is reduced.

I really can't wrap my head around the combat system and the Delta-V calculations. If I were to use GURPS I'd probably have to come up with a simpler space combat system of my own and that's a pretty daunting project.

I've never tried to do that, because I've only played space games in GURPS, never run them. Somebody with relevant experience will likely be along soon.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Almenac

T

How about Space?

If your campaign is going to be set on one planet and end when your PCs get off it, then probably not. Spoace is very much a setting building book and if you already have most setting elements set in your head your past that step.

Space also has great complexity invested in random rolling planets and solar systems with realitic detail and it's a step I would skip past myself.

[Emerald Cat]

Originally Posted by Almenac

Unfortunately while I think the design system is alright, I really can't wrap my head around the [Spaceships] combat system and the Delta-V calculations.

If you're having trouble with the tactical space combat rules, I'd recommend using the basic rules. Especially since everyone is new to GURPS.

A potential issue you may run into is that weapons can easily destroy ships in a single round if they hit in the Spaceships combat system. This is compounded by missiles having high damage, decent accuracy, and ignoring range penalties. If you're using the basic space combat rules, their only drawback is that missile launchers only have limited ammo. Limited fuel and travel time is a check on their effectiveness in the full tactical system.

The Spaceships combat system works fine if your setting has an "egg shells armed with hammers" paradigm. But if your setting has a "spaceships exchanging broadsides" or "energy weapons are king" paradigm, you'll need to make house rules to reflect that.

If you're having trouble with the delta-v calculations, I'd recommend reactionless drives because they don't use delta-v. You'll still need to do math to figure out how long it gets to go somewhere, but that is simpler than micromanaging delta-v. You may want to impose a physical speed limit on the reactionless drives if you want to prevent ships from becoming weapons of mass destruction.

[Turhan's Bey Company]

Originally Posted by Almenac

* Support has dwindled, the latest edition is 15 years old in 2019 and no plans for a new edition

Quite the contrary; support is enormous. There's been a new GURPS supplement coming out more or less monthly (with a few interruptions) since 4e was published, and that's not counting Pyramid. And since there's no new edition, that means every single bit of it is compatible with the current edition and you can be confident that upcoming books will continue to be compatible. You've got a decade and a half of material to get lost in with more on the way; that's what support looks like.

That said, GURPS support has for some reason rather leaned towards low-tech fantasy and modern-ish gaming rather than star-faring sci-fi. You can to a lot with just Basic and Ultra-Tech, and as things develop you'll get some mileage out of the Spaceships series and potentially others, but for specialize material you may have to track down relevant articles in Pyramid and/or adapt 3rd edition Traveller books.

[Anaraxes]

I'm not much of a BRP fan, so dropping that one out would be easy for me. That also means I won't have much to say about it here.

I agree with you that Savage Worlds favors pulpy action and combat. It's good at that, and it's fun (not to mention "fast!" and "furious!" :)). The dice are a lot swingier than GURPS. That can be part of the fun, but that depends on your playstyle. Your group has to be willing for random bad things to happen, or even spectacularly destructive "good" things, and just to roll with that as part of the fun. If they're going to get mad that their carefully-worked out advance planning was destroyed by a couple of bad die rolls, or want the results to always be logical consequences that they deserve on the merits of their player choices, or to be firmly in control of their own story with nothing compromising their player agency, then trouble lies in wait. If the players are happy with part of their story being randomly generated and willing to improvise around that, then it's no problem.

Originally Posted by Almenac

GURPS cons:

* Putting together campaign is a lot of work for the GM

Mostly in whitting down all the possible choices for any type and style of campaign, I think. Good worldbuilding is hard with any system.

Subject to analysis paralysis when the GM thinks they can't play until they've made all the exactly optimal choices for every subsystem and optional rule to perfectly reflect their desired outcome. The easiest balm for that I think is to simply accept the fact that you don't have to have a perfect up-front design to have a fun, successful game, and that you'll tweak the rules as you discover things in play -- which isn't a sign of a bad GM.

* Chargen takes a long time or leans heavily on templates (see gm work)

You only do that once. And I find it doesn't take too long, as long as you start with a solid concept first. It does take forever if a player is just prowling through the books, trying to find loopholes to exploit and ways to stack things to break the system (*waves at D&D 3e*), with your only guiding light being optimax powergaming. But if you can describe what you want, in an English paragraph, then it's not hard just to skim through the Basic books and pull out the stuff that matches your concept, then throw away the least important or interesting bits until you're within your budget. Concept first, abilities second.

The pitfall for new players is overlooking something that they really need, but didn't know or forgot about -- which is one reason templates exist. (The other main reason is just to give some flavor to particular settings through demonstration. "This is the sort of characters expected to be typical in these kind of games.") It's also useful to have things like the GURPS Skill Categories PDF (free), or Kromm's list of "Everyman Adventurer Skills" just so you don't leave out something really important -- except on purpose, because that's what your concept calls for! Even with experienced players, I like to reserve about 5 character points at creation which can be spent later for the "ack! How did I forget VitallyImportantSkill3" moments.

* The combat system has a reputation of being very slow

True, though I don't think it's any slower than any of the other "slow combat" games that have a bunch of rounds and tactical choices, as opposed to the ones where you're just getting an outcome with a little randomization (like a GURPS Contest or Quick Contest).

I think there are two main reasons for slow combat: (1) player inexperience, which can only be rectified by study and preferably play; and (2) obsessive tacticians, unable to take their 1-second turn without fifteen minutes of scouring every book for every possible modifier for all their skills that might be pressed to their advantage, repeatedly counting out the movement points along the four different paths from hex A to hex B, in order to compare with running over to hex C instead, and so on.

The easiest fix for #2 is just to push them into making a quick decision (their characters only have a second, after all) and go with it. Do something, and try not to worry that it wasn't the absolute possible best thing you could have done on every turn to win the game in the shortest time possible with the fewest resources. If everybody's a tactician, then you can all have fun that way (and no one would be complaining about "slow combat", because they'd find it fascinating for its own sake). If not, then there are entertainment and narrative purposes for combat, and you can just get on with those.

The easiest fix for #1 is of course knowledge from the table (not just the GM), but the second easiest fix is just enough familiarity to invent a reasonable modifier on the spot and keep doing. The modifiers in GURPS are all pretty reasonable and intuitive, and if you know some of the key points for range, darkness, difficulty of a few typical things on the characters' major skills, then it's pretty easy to just pick a modifier that's going to be at most a couple of points' different than the one you'd find if you did take half an hour to look up the exact rules. An extra +/- one or two isn't going to break your game. Pick a modifier, and make a note to look up the rules on that topic later. Next time, you'll have learned that much more.

* Support has dwindled, the latest edition is 15 years old in 2019 and no plans for a new edition

Ironically, you make this point along with noting the "vast supplement catalog" in the "pro" list.

Support doesn't mean "reissue a new edition of the core books over and over every five years with minor changes". It might well mean "push into new styles and genres, expand the possibility of the core rules with more options, and provide more pre-made settings and systems" -- which doesn't require a new set of core books to happen, at least if the core is solid.

The "GURPS New Releases" page just shows the last fifteen releases, and it looks like those go back only to May 2018 rather than the full year. Warehouse 23 shows 326 items under "GURPS Fourth Edition", so 2018 wasn't far off that average of 21 items per year. I see maybe fifteen Mythras products of all types on their web page -- does poor support for a dwindling product also weigh against them in your evaluation, and if so, what RPG company sets the standard for good support? (WotC? Paizo?)

Reissuing the core a good way to milk money from the players, but not a good way to make progress with the game, instead of just retreading the game you already had.

If a game's so broken that it needs fixing on the level of major systems, then you need a new edition. But if the designers are so inept that they really need a new edition every five years and are still getting it wrong after five or six tries so that they're going to need yet another edition to fix it again, is that "good support" or just a bad game system?

* The need for multiple sourcebooks (at least Ultra-Tech in my case)

The counter-complaint that would appear with different packaging is of course being forced to spend money on something you didn't need. All those fantasy gamers don't want Ultra-Tech, will never use it, and will bitterly lament on forums about all the wasted space in their expensive books that should have been used for more fantasy stuff. Meanwhile the SF gamers are making exactly the opposite complaints about the useless magic rules and low-tech equipment that no one's going to use outside of that one contrived adventure to deprive them of their blasters and communicators just for the change of pace. With a system that covers multiple genres and settings, no one's going to be happy with a single giant book, even though you only have to buy one book.

One of the GURPS publishing principles seems to be "avoid making people buy things they don't need". That's one reason they limit reprinting of rules in every place they might be convenient for a single-book reference, and also shows in things like the Dungeon Fantasy line, where you get nineteen $8 books instead of two $95 books or four $60 ones.

I do find PDFs quite useful for searching. With the electronic versions, it matters little where the file boundaries are, so whether it's one big book or twelve little books doesn't make a difference. If you want to find something in 326 items (or even just the mere 96 I actually have), you're not going to do it by hand.

I have to say that "too many sourcebooks" is also an ironic complaint when coupled with "no support".

[Apollonian]

Originally Posted by Almenac

Savage Worlds pros:

* Can model anything action-oriented
* Resolves combat quickly
* Very well supported
* Low prep time

Savage Worlds cons:

* Pulpy, might not support more serious tones
* The game is designed around combat and action
* My players may dislike cards and bennies as metagamey and quirky

Since everyone else will cover GURPS in great detail, I'll put my two cents in on Savage Worlds:

It has a science fiction handbook, which is handy. I think the pulpy tone is reasonably manageable, especially if you drop bennies - that makes things a bit riskier for PCs, so they'll take fewer of those pulpy actions. The cards are suuuuper handy for initiative and IMO no more gamey than rolling for initiative or using a baseline stat. It does tend toward combat, but I think that's going to be more feature than bug depending on your playstyle. You may need to tack on some house rules if you want non-combat stuff to be handled mechanically as well as through roleplaying.

edit: However, I have always disliked the flat curve and exploding dice mechanic. If you tinker with that, especially the exploding dice, you may get a more "realistic" result. If that's what you want.

[Refplace]

Originally Posted by Almenac

The campaign takes place in my own homebrew science fiction setting. The characters are shipwrecked with a military vessel in an unknown planet with hostile elements. The main idea is that characters are trying to get out, but how they do it will be mostly up to them. The campaign will have sandbox elements with numerous adventure seeds dropped in. If the campaign is succesful, I'd like there to be an option to continue with the same group but with different focus (from the shipwreck scenario to becoming bounty hunters or space traders with their own ship).



My wishlist for the system is:

* Not integrated into some particular setting
* Preferably no classes or levels. Loose careers or templates are fine.
* Flat power curve. Characters should increase in power, but not in contemporary D&D superhero style.
* Ability to handle tactical combat with modern/futuristic weapons.
* Combat resolves quickly. I have six players and D&D 5E fights in higher level could easily take hours.
* Nonviolent problem and conflict resolution is viable, noncombat characters are fun to play.
* System has ongoing support

I cant speak to Mythras, never having read it.
GURPS covers everything on your wishlist.
For the campaign you describe Survival skills, Scrounging (to salvage and reuse parts from the ship), and various engineering (design), Electronic/Mechanic(Repair) skills could be handy for the shipwreck part and handy later as crew.
Putting together a campaign or supplement can be real fast and simple or very time consuming. That depends, not so much on GURPS rules as it does on how much detail the GM puts into the setting and background.
For character development get and print out a copy or two of the free Skill categories PDF and GURPS Lite to pass around the table.
Watch out for extremely high dodge scores if you want combat to be fast and deadly.

Originally Posted by Almenac

GURPS cons:

* Putting together campaign is a lot of work for the GM
* Chargen takes a long time or leans heavily on templates (see gm work)
* The combat system has a reputation of being very slow
* Support has dwindled, the latest edition is 15 years old in 2019 and no plans for a new edition
* The need for multiple sourcebooks (at least Ultra-Tech in my case)

Steve Jackson Games has this (unfortunately) unusual idea that its not good to make a new edition every handful of years. The current edition has had optional rule changes published and talked about but is considered to be stable enough so as not to need a new edition. Instead supplements expand on certain details or offer new options. But the core is solid, so why make people to buy a new edition? Especially if that means replacing supplements too.
This is possible because of the modular nature.
New magicsystems for different roles and tastes have been published. However Powers, Social Engineering series, and even equipment books mostly just expand on rather than replace whats in the Basic set. Anything new is of course modular so can be added or not, But a lot is just clarifications, worked examples and sometimes a fresh perspective on previous material.
GURPS builds on itself rather than reinventing itself.

Finally these forums are a great resource for help when you or your players need it.