Suggest a System?

[Lord Ruby34]

At some point in the next couple of years I'm looking to run a big campaign for my players. I intend for them to take possession of and crew an airship near the beginning, but I want them to be able to feel free to explore the world and fight both on and off the ship. So I'm looking for an RPG system that does airship combat as well as ranged and melee combat, magic, and hopefully has a system for upgrading and advancing both the ship and the characters. Any suggestions?

[frost890]

At some point in the next couple of years I'm looking to run a big campaign for my players. I intend for them to take possession of and crew an airship near the beginning, but I want them to be able to feel free to explore the world and fight both on and off the ship. So I'm looking for an RPG system that does airship combat as well as ranged and melee combat, magic, and hopefully has a system for upgrading and advancing both the ship and the characters. Any suggestions?

I know D&D 3.5 had some airships in Eberron and I think that Exalted had some airships as well.

[JAL_1138]

Someone will inevitably suggest FATE. There is probably a supplement or fan material out there with airship rules.

A game powered by an older version of FATE, called Spirit of the Century might have some airship stuff in it given its general theme, but I don't have any experience with it to comment on it.

Savage Worlds probably has airship rules in some setting/supplement or other; there's bound to be something steampunky or dieselpunky with stats for airships in it. It'd probably be my recommendation for a core system, but I can't comment on the quality of any steam/diesel settings or airship rules it might have.

Someone will inevitably suggest GURPS. If it can be imagined, GURPS probably has a supplement for it.

You could possibly homebrew something based on Starfinder, which is a sci-fi/space-opera game built off Pathfinder with ships that level up with the party and significant, different roles for ship crewmembers.

[Knaight]

Hollow Earth Expedition could work well here - character advancement is a bit more solid than airship advancement (though expansions might change that), but there's enough going on in terms of ancient artifacts and weird pulp science to give options for vehicle advancement as well, and it's a pulp game which has airships simply because the genre basically has to.

[Sparx MacGyver]

Savage Worlds probably has airship rules in some setting/supplement or other; there's bound to be something steampunky or dieselpunky with stats for airships in it. It'd probably be my recommendation for a core system, but I can't comment on the quality of any steam/diesel settings or airship rules it might have.

Well, to be fair, steampunk is a pretty good coat of paint over any WWI stuff. Weird Wars might work, but really, if you can find the older Toolkits, specifically the Pulp one, it's got zeppelins in it. And really, if you re-flavor the Hindenburg to be more of a Sailing ship with a big blimp/envelope to life it, then really, ti should work fine.

I've run just about every genre/type of game using it, so I'm pretty big on suggesting it when it's appropriate (some systems do some things better).

I suppose as an alternative, I would suggest GeneSys. It's made by FFG, same folks who made Edge of the Empire and it's derivatives and splat books. I liked EotE in general, and while the most annoying aspects is the special dice, but they do supply you with a chart for converting your regular dice for use, and you can print stickers of the symbols and stick them on dice for a cheaper alternative, which is what I did.

[JAL_1138]

Well, to be fair, steampunk is a pretty good coat of paint over any WWI stuff. Weird Wars might work, but really, if you can find the older Toolkits, specifically the Pulp one, it's got zeppelins in it. And really, if you re-flavor the Hindenburg to be more of a Sailing ship with a big blimp/envelope to life it, then really, ti should work fine.

I've run just about every genre/type of game using it, so I'm pretty big on suggesting it when it's appropriate (some systems do some things better).

I suppose as an alternative, I would suggest GeneSys. It's made by FFG, same folks who made Edge of the Empire and it's derivatives and splat books. I liked EotE in general, and while the most annoying aspects is the special dice, but they do supply you with a chart for converting your regular dice for use, and you can print stickers of the symbols and stick them on dice for a cheaper alternative, which is what I did.

Savage Worlds isn't perfect for everything, but it's at least reasonably-decent for a heck of a lot.

Slight caution to the OP, the Pulp supplement was written for an older version of the ruleset and might not match up perfectly with the current "Deluxe Explorer's Edition" of Savage Worlds (which itself isn't completely current, at least in print versions; Shaken recovery has had a major change/errata since then too). While I haven't read through it myself, it's almost certainly close enough to easily use the bits you want with the current edition, if you kinda watch out for some of the rule changes and rebalancing since then.

(Savage Worlds edition changes can have major impact in how particular rules work, but are typically short enough to fit on a couple pages of errata. E.g., removal of the Guts skill except in certain settings, changing extra damage on a raise from +2 to +1d6, changes to Wounds, changes to Chase rules, adding gear, etc. A lot of stuff has stayed exactly the same. Nothing like the changes between editions of D&D.)

[Rhedyn]

At some point in the next couple of years I'm looking to run a big campaign for my players. I intend for them to take possession of and crew an airship near the beginning, but I want them to be able to feel free to explore the world and fight both on and off the ship. So I'm looking for an RPG system that does airship combat as well as ranged and melee combat, magic, and hopefully has a system for upgrading and advancing both the ship and the characters. Any suggestions?

I would also suggest Savage Worlds with the Sci-fi, horror, and fantasy companions.

Magic doesn't do good damage next to high end Sci-fi weapons, but it's still useful and if you don't drown your players in money and power armor, your magic characters may stay focused on magic.

I would highly warn against letting players enchant Sci-fi gear using the fantasy companion magic item rules (magic item crafting rules don't exist since they would be setting specific, but there is rules for magic item creation and prices for everything).

If you do make crafting rules, I recommend against letting players make artifacts.

I'm running this campaign currently. It does work well, but there is some things that I have learned.

[kyoryu]

Someone will inevitably suggest FATE. There is probably a supplement or fan material out there with airship rules.

Kriegszeppelin Valkyrie, in the first Fate Worlds.

http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/...Worlds-on-Fire

[Nifft]

At some point in the next couple of years I'm looking to run a big campaign for my players. I intend for them to take possession of and crew an airship near the beginning, but I want them to be able to feel free to explore the world and fight both on and off the ship. So I'm looking for an RPG system that does airship combat as well as ranged and melee combat, magic, and hopefully has a system for upgrading and advancing both the ship and the characters. Any suggestions?

1) I see three kinds of combat in your request. Do you want tactical combat? If you want tactical combat, then FATE is not going to meet your needs.

2) I see airship / ranged / melee combat. Do you want these to mix well? Like, could an airship combat begin with ship-vs-ship combat, then they close in and you get PC-scale ranged combat (possibly including the enemy vehicle as a target), and then one of the PCs leaps onto the other ship and you get PC-scale melee combat against the enemy vehicle and enemy NPCs?

3) How do you envision "crew an airship" working, particularly in combat? Will the airship run as a single unit by player consensus, or will there be separate PC-specific jobs which own discrete functions of the ship in combat? If you look at Rogue Trader, there have been some good discussions about how to divvy up power & responsibilities across the ship for a team of PCs, which can allow many PCs to engage in combat using a single unit.


Depending on the specific scale of operation you need, you might be able to find a good system -- but you may also need to write significant portions yourself.

[kyoryu]

1) I see three kinds of combat in your request. Do you want tactical combat? If you want tactical combat, then FATE is not going to meet your needs.

Eh, I'd say Fate can be tactical, but it's not going to be tactical in the same way that somehting like GURPS or D&D is. You're never going to be counting exact ranges and stuff like that.

If you really want the minutiae of a squares-and-moves type system you are exactly correct.

[Nifft]

Eh, I'd say Fate can be tactical, but it's not going to be tactical in the same way that somehting like GURPS or D&D is. You're never going to be counting exact ranges and stuff like that.

If you really want the minutiae of a squares-and-moves type system you are exactly correct.

It's not about exact ranges or counting squares.

It's about whether crouching behind cover does anything in particular, or whether darkness & smoke inhibit targeting, or whether wind makes archery a poor choice, or whether taking the trouble to flank an opponent is meaningful.

In the FATE games I've seen, taking cover is just one excuse you can use when you spend a Fate Point to get a +2 -- and it's not any better or worse than any other excuse, including purely internal things like personal determination.


FATE can be interesting as a narrative layer, and I highly recommend some FATE books, but honestly it's a dead fish if you want tactical choices to matter.

[kyoryu]

In the FATE games I've seen, taking cover is just one excuse you can use when you spend a Fate Point to get a +2 -- and it's not any better or worse than any other excuse, including purely internal things like personal determination.

That's not how I play it.

That's not how most people I know (who are fairly big in the Fate community and close to Evil Hat) play it.

That's not what the Fate Antagonist Toolkit suggests either.

We can take this off-thread, but I'll just say while that may be true (and is a fairly common naive interpretation of the rules), I don't think that's really the intent, and is certainly not the only style supported by the rules.

(My favorite way of handling cover is that it provides passive opposition, and you can choose the better of your passive or active opposition - in other words, cover provides a floor to your defense).

(Also, for what it's worth, I'm not denigrating square counting, etc. It's a totally valid way to play).

[Nifft]

That's not how I play it.

That's not how most people I know (who are fairly big in the Fate community and close to Evil Hat) play it.

That's not what the Fate Antagonist Toolkit suggests either.

We can take this off-thread, but I'll just say while that may be true (and is a fairly common naive interpretation of the rules), I don't think that's really the intent, and is certainly not the only style supported by the rules.

(My favorite way of handling cover is that it provides passive opposition, and you can choose the better of your passive or active opposition - in other words, cover provides a floor to your defense).

(Also, for what it's worth, I'm not denigrating square counting, etc. It's a totally valid way to play).

Sounds as if I'd like your experience more than I've liked my own experience.

Could you recommend some specific FATE games? That'll be on-topic for this thread, and also I can look into them to re-inform my own opinion.

[Rynjin]

I'd like to third Savage Worlds. It's probably my favorite system out there. You can incorporate and refluff a lot of setting material to fit whatever you're doing as well (The monster grafts from Rippers can be easily refuffe to cybernetic implants, for example, and the ghost rock weird science tech from Deadlands works just as well in a Steampunk setting if you rmeove the "powered by the souls of the damned or whatever" fluff).

[Nifft]

I'd like to third Savage Worlds. It's probably my favorite system out there. You can incorporate and refluff a lot of setting material to fit whatever you're doing as well (The monster grafts from Rippers can be easily refuffe to cybernetic implants, for example, and the ghost rock weird science tech from Deadlands works just as well in a Steampunk setting if you rmeove the "powered by the souls of the damned or whatever" fluff).

My impression of Savage World is that it's an excellent gateway drug to get mini-addicted wargammers into RPGs, but otherwise it's mostly just a standard feats-and-skills "rules medium" RPG.

My only experience with playing in a Savage Worlds game was that (a) you can build a heck of a lot of cool stuff if you're open to re-flavoring, but (b) the supplements are all over the place in terms of quality, and don't have any sort of consensus for scale.

IIRC we found two separate Rocketeer adaptations (for a PC who was basically the Rocketeer) but the base speeds on the jetpack -- which was the character-defining feature -- ranged from ~80 MPH to ~4 MPH. That might be an isolated example, since I'm not an expert on the system, but I'd recommend giving each sourcebook a long hard look in terms of making sure their implied scale of action is congruent with your game.


That said, it was fun to play.

[Mutazoia]

You could always use Open D6. It's pretty fast and easy to learn, and has rules for upgrading everything from personal weapons, to vehicles. You could mix the modern/space/fantasy elements to get just the right mix you want. And it has the bonus of not being GURPS.

[JAL_1138]

My impression of Savage World is that it's an excellent gateway drug to get mini-addicted wargammers into RPGs, but otherwise it's mostly just a standard feats-and-skills "rules medium" RPG.

My only experience with playing in a Savage Worlds game was that (a) you can build a heck of a lot of cool stuff if you're open to re-flavoring, but (b) the supplements are all over the place in terms of quality, and don't have any sort of consensus for scale.

IIRC we found two separate Rocketeer adaptations (for a PC who was basically the Rocketeer) but the base speeds on the jetpack -- which was the character-defining feature -- ranged from ~80 MPH to ~4 MPH. That might be an isolated example, since I'm not an expert on the system, but I'd recommend giving each sourcebook a long hard look in terms of making sure their implied scale of action is congruent with your game.


That said, it was fun to play.

Savage Worlds is a rules-medium feats-and-skills RPG, yeah. Its advantages are high adaptability, a boatload of genre/setting supplements, and that it's really fast and simple as far as rules-medium goes while still allowirng for some depth of crunch, character customization, and combat tactics. Most opponents in combat are Extras, and are either "Up, Down, or Off The Table"--meaning they can either act normally, are shaken, or are out of the fight entirely, because there's no HP to track. (Tougher, significant opponents are generally Wild Cards and do have to track Wounds).

It's not a perfect system by any means (for instance the default gear tables in core and fantasy are a particular pet peeve of mine, as a bit of a weapons geek IRL—there's a lot about them that's just flat-out inaccurate in terms of representing RL weapons, such as misunderstandings about gun calibers or—no, I need to not get into it, or I won't finish typing this reply until after sunup tomorrow). It's just workable for a ton of genres and settings, fast-paced, has some tactical depth without slowing things down, and makes things generally easy on the GM.

As s general rule, the setting/genre supplements are not meant to be fully cross-compatible with each other. Occasionally you'll get one that references another (East Texas University makes a reference here and there to the Horror supplement, for instance), but there are rules in most of them that are expressly different from core and from other supplements. To cross them over would need a good bit of work to ensure everything functions, and in some cases it just wouldn't (you'd likely need to just pick one and convert the other to it). There's also third-party stuff out for it, with all the caveats that come with third-party products for any system.

Spoiler: rocketeering reply

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I'm unaware of any actual Rocketeer adaptations from Pinnacle and don't turn one up on a google search, but then I'm not familiar with the entire product line. Third-party stuff, of which there's a lot, is always going to be more variable in quality, and I do know there's at least one third-party supplement out there for early-20th-century-pulp type adventures, but haven't ever looked through it.

For official material, the Superheroes companion has two sets of jetpack rules--the rocket packs you can just purchase as gear are slow when translated to RL terms (although Pace 24 covers a huge distance on a battlemat of 1" squares), but if you're looking for a jetpack that's core to the character concept, you'd take the Flight power and give it the "jetpack" trapping mentioned as a potential source in the Flight power's description. Depending on what you invest in it and the "power scale" of the game, you could have "near-lightspeed" as the speed of it. In the Supers companion, anything core to the character's concept should be expressed as a power or edge, rather than bought off the gear list.

You could always use Open D6. It's pretty fast and easy to learn, and has rules for upgrading everything from personal weapons, to vehicles. You could mix the modern/space/fantasy elements to get just the right mix you want. And it has the bonus of not being GURPS.

WEG D6 was pretty dang solid for Star Wars back in the day, although it had its quirks and foibles too. If it's the same/similar system, it'd be another really good option. Although the big selling point for me was less the mechanics and more how outstandingly well-developed the worldbuilding was--they practically invented most of what would go on to become the Expanded Universe (back when it was still canon, anyhow).

("Not being GURPS" is also how I describe Savage Worlds. It's for people who like the idea of GURPS, but don't like the actual system.)

[Rynjin]

My impression of Savage World is that it's an excellent gateway drug to get mini-addicted wargammers into RPGs, but otherwise it's mostly just a standard feats-and-skills "rules medium" RPG.

I like it because it marries the best of both worlds in a lot of ways between my first two loves (Pathfinder and Mutants and Masterminds) and the rules light games I've never found at all interesting to play. "Rules medium" is a nice phrase there, I think I'll keep it. =)

My only experience with playing in a Savage Worlds game was that (a) you can build a heck of a lot of cool stuff if you're open to re-flavoring, but (b) the supplements are all over the place in terms of quality, and don't have any sort of consensus for scale.

I think, though don't quote me on this, that most of the supplements are written by different teams, since the major ones at least are settings books in their own right, and several started in different systems entirely (like Deadlands).

That aside, I challenge you to find any company whose supplements AREN'T hit or miss...it's kinda standard in the RPG industry.

[1337 b4k4]

You could re-skin Stars Without Number Revised Edition for this. Planets become countries and continents, psions become wizards, starships become airships. Has good ship to ship combat that involves all the players without being overly cumbersome, and the foci and class special abilities allow people to be competent and effective characters despite the otherwise frailty of the low hp and old style d&d ethos. Just scale the tech levels down and drop any tech that can’t be made into ye olde majick device

[JellyPooga]

If you're not afraid of delving into a very rules-y game that's tied intrinsically to its setting, Earthdawn may be right up your alley. It's got magic (three kinds, more if your definition is a bit looser), airships (one of the core character "Classes" is basically a Sky Pirate), a way to imbue all kinds of things with magic as you progress (from weaponry to household utilities), a rich and vibrant world to explore (with lots of hooks), horror (oh so much horror, if you want it...), multiple avenues of character development (from "grafts" and gear to skills and spells). It's a wonderful game, but...it does require pretty heavy buy-in from everyone at the table; it ain't a "beer and pretzels" system by any stretch of the imagination, either from a rules or a setting perspective.

[Nifft]

I like it because it marries the best of both worlds in a lot of ways between my first two loves (Pathfinder and Mutants and Masterminds) and the rules light games I've never found at all interesting to play. "Rules medium" is a nice phrase there, I think I'll keep it. =)

Please feel welcome to the term. It's basically intended as a statement that "rules-medium" games aren't really rules-light, but they are lighter than some of the more rules-heavy games.

Savage Worlds did seem to have some design issues -- like they use a merits & flaws system which has all the usual systemic problems, including how some flaws give you more mechanical points in trade for role-playing debt. (It really ought to be well known in the industry that you can't balance mechanics via role-play.) But maybe they've fixed that stuff in the time since I played it.

I think, though don't quote me on this, that most of the supplements are written by different teams, since the major ones at least are settings books in their own right, and several started in different systems entirely (like Deadlands).

That aside, I challenge you to find any company whose supplements AREN'T hit or miss...it's kinda standard in the RPG industry.

I'm sure you're right. I remember the same archetype appearing in two books, so at least one (and probably both) was from a 3rd party.

That wasn't my character, so I don't recall the details of the sourcebooks, but if there's a distinct quality gap then I guess my experience boils down to:

• You should stay as 1st party as you can until you know enough about the system to judge new content.

[Rynjin]

Please feel welcome to the term. It's basically intended as a statement that "rules-medium" games aren't really rules-light, but they are lighter than some of the more rules-heavy games.

Savage Worlds did seem to have some design issues -- like they use a merits & flaws system which has all the usual systemic problems, including how some flaws give you more mechanical points in trade for role-playing debt. (It really ought to be well known in the industry that you can't balance mechanics via role-play.) But maybe they've fixed that stuff in the time since I played it.

Well, most Hindrances give mechanical drawbacks rather than roleplay ones. The ones that are are usually Minor Hindrances like Habit, and the system is designed with the thought that everybody will have two Minor Hindrances and one Major.

The Major Hindrances that apply RP limits are usually pretty hefty (like Death Wish and Curious) and do a good job of informing character. And if someone doesn't play to their Hindrances very well...well it doesn't really matter because the benefits are relatively slight anyway, and are uniform across the board.