01-09-2022, 09:00 AM | #31 | |
Join Date: Sep 2008
Location: near London, UK
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Re: What RPG has the best spaceship design system?
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The ancestor-in-spirit of the Traveller 2300/2300AD one…
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01-09-2022, 09:53 AM | #32 |
Join Date: Apr 2012
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Re: What RPG has the best spaceship design system?
Another combat system is Star Fleet Battles. Has provisions for energy weapons(phasers, photon torps, disruptors), missiles(drones and plasma torps), shuttles and fighters. Don't think Amarillo Design ever published a formal ship design guide but they may have after my gaming group had quit playing SFB. SFB wasn't meant as a RPG but instead as a Star Trek combat simulator. There were RPG elements added at a later date.
One real world problem with writing a space combat book is we don't have any real world experience with space combat. The only 'deep space' ship humans have flown is the Apollo capsule from the 60's. This makes everything a guess. Also the writers have to find a balance between detail and book size limits. The paperwork for the Apollo capsule was measured in tons. Due to publishing limits and player carrying capacity, a lot of detail has to be omitted from the books that are full of guesses on space ship design, weapons and how it all would work in combat. My advice is don't worry too much about real world realism. Find a design system that you and your players can easily use to make ships and a combat system that plays well without turning into a day long ordeal. SFB does a good job of handling space combat but if you use the full rules set, a game can last all day. Probably more time the most RPG players want to invest. |
01-09-2022, 10:12 AM | #33 |
Join Date: May 2010
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Re: What RPG has the best spaceship design system?
IMHO sweeping detail under the rug is fine, but I'd really like a system that acknowledges reality at all when it comes to kinetic weapons. GURPS Spaceships at least makes an effort in this area, it just gets all messed up when you consider that a 4-ton missile is as vulnerable to point-defense as a 135 lb. one.
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01-09-2022, 10:14 AM | #34 | |
Join Date: May 2010
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Re: What RPG has the best spaceship design system?
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01-09-2022, 10:35 AM | #35 | ||
Join Date: Jan 2006
Location: Central Europe
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Re: What RPG has the best spaceship design system?
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"It is easier to banish a habit of thought than a piece of knowledge." H. Beam Piper This forum got less aggravating when I started using the ignore feature Last edited by Polydamas; 01-09-2022 at 11:02 AM. |
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01-09-2022, 11:09 AM | #36 |
Join Date: Jan 2006
Location: Central Europe
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Re: What RPG has the best spaceship design system?
Another thing which occurs to me is that very many space RPGs are inspired by things like Battlestar Galactica, Star Wars, Star Trek, and Andromeda. Saying that realistic space combat would be boring and depressing ("*rolls* *frowns* *rolls* due to damage to your radiators, you slowly cook to death in the days following the battle- I want each of you to give me a five-minute scene of your character writing their will before we end the campaign") is beside the point. Its an expected trope, like lockpicking as contest of wits or intricate criminal plots run by geniuses and not people too impulsive and violent to make it in business, too marginalized to have good options, or too young and stupid to realize that being a hit-man is a terrible career. And saying that players and GMs are wrong to want games with chases and gunfights between starships is not helpful.
Real WW II air and naval combat was pretty miserable ("they sunk us with one pair of depth charges? those flying boats are over-powered! killer GM!" "wait, he snuck up underneath us and blew us to pieces with cannons from a blind spot in our turret coverage? don't we get a saving throw?"), but the cinematic and comic-book version is something people enjoy hearing and telling stories about. In the type of games Agemegos has in mind, good spaceship rules might be inspired by the Lair rules in GURPS which focus on what resources to solve plot problems the ship gives.
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"It is easier to banish a habit of thought than a piece of knowledge." H. Beam Piper This forum got less aggravating when I started using the ignore feature Last edited by Polydamas; 01-09-2022 at 11:15 AM. |
01-09-2022, 11:55 AM | #37 | |
Join Date: Jul 2007
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Re: What RPG has the best spaceship design system?
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(An ad for which in Analog is what got me into gaming, so blame goes there.)
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01-09-2022, 08:17 PM | #38 |
Join Date: May 2010
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Re: What RPG has the best spaceship design system?
A major example: GURPS Classic: Vehicles can't decide what exactly HP and damage are supposed to scale with, and is much worse about this than 4e is with its confusion over square-root vs. cube-root damage. The worse part is probably the laser rules, where damage is linear with energy under 1,000 kJ; based on the square root of energy between 1,000 kJ and 1,000,000 kJ, and based on the cube root above that. The laser problem is made particularly bad by 3e's rule that you add all hits from a laser attack together for purposes of overcoming DR (armor).
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01-09-2022, 08:22 PM | #39 | |
Join Date: Jan 2006
Location: Central Europe
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Re: What RPG has the best spaceship design system?
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One of the basic dilemmas GURPS faces is that the editors in their wisdom don't believe that their audience will accept pointers from claims to evidence. So its a model build up over time with bits leaning on other bits, and when something changes only a system expert can say which other parts will be affected. It also causes fans to get confused about which parts are based on a lot of thought about how the world works, and which are inherited from early GURPS or are just 'fun to game with'. I don't know if the economics of RPG publishing will support anything more scholarly.
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"It is easier to banish a habit of thought than a piece of knowledge." H. Beam Piper This forum got less aggravating when I started using the ignore feature Last edited by Polydamas; 01-09-2022 at 10:02 PM. |
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01-10-2022, 01:51 PM | #40 | |
Join Date: May 2010
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Re: What RPG has the best spaceship design system?
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