10-21-2017, 01:51 PM | #1 |
Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: West Virginia
|
Fantasy Games Unlimted: Space Opera
Was it merely clunky, or did it have a few twisted charms of its own?
Please tell me. What where the Transhumans like?
__________________
Per Ardua Per Astra! Ancora Imparo |
10-21-2017, 02:03 PM | #2 |
Night Watchman
Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: Cambridge, UK
|
Re: Fantasy Games Unlimted: Space Opera
A friend wanted to run the first edition, long ago, but bogged down in confusing and missing rules. There was half a column on passing items to each other at the run, but we couldn't find out how to roll to hit someone, at range or in melee.
__________________
The Path of Cunning. Indexes: DFRPG Characters, Advantage of the Week, Disadvantage of the Week, Skill of the Week, Techniques. |
10-21-2017, 02:20 PM | #3 |
Untitled
Join Date: Oct 2007
Location: between keyboard and chair
|
Re: Fantasy Games Unlimted: Space Opera
Were transhumans a "thing" when FGU published Space Opera?
__________________
Rob Kelk “Every man has a right to his own opinion, but no man has a right to be wrong in his facts.” – Bernard Baruch, Deming (New Mexico) Headlight, 6 January 1950 No longer reading these forums regularly. |
10-21-2017, 02:56 PM | #4 |
Join Date: Sep 2008
Location: near London, UK
|
Re: Fantasy Games Unlimted: Space Opera
There's essentially no transhumanism in the game; bear in mind it was published in 1980, before cyberpunk and the popularisation of nanotech. The smallest sentient computer weighs 15 tons, and isn't suitable as a PC.
ETA: its "transhuman" race is basically a "more evolved" (spit) human, with higher psionic aptitude and higher stats in general.
__________________
Podcast: Improvised Radio Theatre - With Dice Gaming stuff here: Tekeli-li! Blog; Webcomic Laager and Limehouse Buy things by me on Warehouse 23 Last edited by RogerBW; 10-21-2017 at 03:05 PM. |
10-21-2017, 04:14 PM | #5 |
Join Date: Aug 2004
|
Re: Fantasy Games Unlimted: Space Opera
Transhumans were Star Trek Vulcans or space elves, possibly ST Kahn like supermen.
As to combat I just adapted the hand to hand rules to cover even ranged combat - it worked. |
10-21-2017, 05:19 PM | #6 | |
Aluminated
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: East of the moon, west of the stars, close to buses and shopping
|
Re: Fantasy Games Unlimted: Space Opera
Quote:
Fortunately, when I picked it up early in high school I wasn't approaching it from a rational point of view. It was a glorious bricolage of every pre-cyberpunk outer space sci-fi trope you can imagine (Star Wars, Star Trek, Starship Troopers, space cops, space spies, cat-aliens, dog-aliens, space merchants, all the major player of WWII and the Cold War in space, etc.), with something for everybody as long as you didn't pay attention to how the individual bits and pieces made no sense when you put them all together. It's what I played for years until switching to GURPS. I still have my collection of Space Opera books in the proverbial box up in the attic. I'll have to look over it again some time and see what useful things I might pull out of it.
__________________
I've been making pointlessly shiny things, and I've got some gaming-related stuff as well as 3d printing designs. Buy my Warehouse 23 stuff, dammit! |
|
10-21-2017, 05:30 PM | #7 |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: traveller
|
Re: Fantasy Games Unlimted: Space Opera
Seconded. It was much more useful as a source of ideas for other, more prosaic games. It's still sitting on my shelf where I can consult it at need.
Besides, who needs Transhumans when you can play a Lensman, complete with lens ("PK crystal")? |
10-21-2017, 06:26 PM | #8 | |
Join Date: Aug 2007
|
Re: Fantasy Games Unlimted: Space Opera
Quote:
I will agree with TBC and thrash. It was an absolute mess and I say that as someone who was introduced to RP'ing by FGU's Chivalry&Sorcery. However, I managed to run several campaigns with it anyway. It was interesting compared to LBB Traveller as it had much, much more stuff in it. Also as stated "TransHumans" were ST Vulcan's or the people with 2 belly-buttons from Roddenberry's Genesis II. Superior humans by almost any measure. The rest of the non-humans tended towards the furry and if playing a TransHuman was fun playing an Ursoid Space Marine had its' charms as well. Also by its' time period's standards it had an elaborate system for psionics and if you ever managed to get a Psi-19 (this needed House Rules) rating you could eventually become a TranshHuman.
__________________
Fred Brackin |
|
10-21-2017, 08:49 PM | #9 | |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Wellington, NZ
|
Re: Fantasy Games Unlimted: Space Opera
Quote:
I recently re-read the star atlases, which are wonderful 80s cold-war stuff. Commies bad, but (maybe) not as bad as Space-Nazis. Yellow peril in space. Neo-Roman Liberterians. Great stuff. Psionics ranged from next-to-useless (low Psionics stat, psi talents that did very little) to Jedi/low-end Lensmen (complete with lenses). It had a wonderful range of weapons (it never occurred to us that maybe you were expected to trim out those that didn't fit your setting, so if you were playing 'Star Trek' everyone would be using energy disruptors, but when playing 'star Wars' they'd have blasters), most of which were actually game mechanically very similar. Lots of cool equipment, too. For some reason skill with a ranged weapon made little difference to your hit chance as long as you had any skill at all (something like +2% to hit per level of skill, ranging from 1-10). This didn't stop us from jeering at any player whose wee man had less than skill-10 in their chosen implement of death (we were teenagers - that's my excuse, and I'm sticking to it). I'd never consider playing a game using Space Opera as a rules set today, but you might find value in mining it for ideas and inspiration. The psionics stuff isn't awful, and if you want a detailed set of equipment/spaceship breakdown rules its are worth looting, for example. As for the setting - the Star Atlases are, IMO, worth a read, if only for ideas. They are also a good example of how to do such a thing - they have a history of the region, then world writeups that give the game system info and then a short description of the world, including anything that might be interesting game fodder, but leave things undefined enough that there's lots of room for a GM to move in. Worlds tended to be 'world of X' types, but that's in keeping with the genre.
__________________
Rupert Boleyn "A pessimist is an optimist with a sense of history." |
|
10-21-2017, 08:51 PM | #10 | |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Wellington, NZ
|
Re: Fantasy Games Unlimted: Space Opera
Quote:
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.").
__________________
Rupert Boleyn "A pessimist is an optimist with a sense of history." Last edited by Rupert; 10-21-2017 at 08:57 PM. |
|
Thread Tools | |
Display Modes | |
|
|