Best Space Opera RPG System?

[Max_Killjoy]

I own SilCORE, and have played it a bit (specifically the Jovian chronicles setting). I think it works best if you're playing a more gritty/detail oriented game, so something closer to the expanse or firefly than Star Wars, as it goes really in depth on things like vehicle systems and has quite detailed damage states and stuff (generally a vehicle is one or more boxes of systems, and damage generally results in you losing systems, or if it's big guns shooting at you, entire boxes of systems),a s well as space-movement (like, your momentum actually matters).

I'd also like to note that Jovian Chronicles, despite being intended as a system to have gundam-like adventures is actually a pretty hard sci-fi setting, with fairly realistic tech across the board if we ignore the whole 'giant robots are a good weapon of war' thing. Though I suppose that is true for the better Gundam series as well.

Is there a good place to preview how the system works?

How similar is it to older editions of Heavy Gear, etc?

[DeTess]

Is there a good place to preview how the system works?

How similar is it to older editions of Heavy Gear, etc?

I'm not sure. The preview on drivethrurpg unfortunately only really shows the first page of the introduction and the table of contents, and I haven't played the older editions of heavy gear so I can't make the comparison myself.

[kitanas]

For FTL, just add "hyperspace" or some other form of "not in our reality" FTL. Time is still passing everywhere in our "universe" so you can't turn around and arrive at your origin point before you left, and you're not breaking relativity because you're not traveling faster than light as such. The only way it becomes "inherently time travel" or "inherently causality breaking" is if someone insists that the light from an event reaching a distant location is somehow special or privileged, and that you arriving with the information before the light gets there is "bad" but light arriving with the information before you get there is "good".

"FTL is time travel" has less to do with some light being "privileged" or "special" and more to do with the fact that there is no one order of events in the universe. To explain in a non-physicsy way:

:Different points of view experience events in different orders.

:Per relativity, all points of view are correct.

:Therefore, all orders of events are correct, even the contradictory ones

:as long as information is limited to light-speed, all events will agree with one another.

:However, with FTL communication, Information about an event can arrive before the event, potentially creating paradox.

As an example, supposed we were in separate deep-space stations, a half light-hour apart. we are also equipped with instant communication devices. at some point, you turn on a signal spotlight, while simultaneously informing me that you have done so with the FTL comm. However, from MY point of view, which is correct and true, you haven't turned on the spotlight, and won't for another half-hour. So if I send instructions to stop you from turning on your spotlight, I will send those instructions a half-hour into the past, from my (correct) point of view. That is why FTL is always time travel.

[Max_Killjoy]

"FTL is time travel" has less to do with some light being "privileged" or "special" and more to do with the fact that there is no one order of events in the universe. To explain in a non-physicsy way:

:Different points of view experience events in different orders.

:Per relativity, all points of view are correct.

:Therefore, all orders of events are correct, even the contradictory ones

:as long as information is limited to light-speed, all events will agree with one another.

:However, with FTL communication, Information about an event can arrive before the event, potentially creating paradox.

As an example, supposed we were in separate deep-space stations, a half light-hour apart. we are also equipped with instant communication devices. at some point, you turn on a signal spotlight, while simultaneously informing me that you have done so with the FTL comm. However, from MY point of view, which is correct and true, you haven't turned on the spotlight, and won't for another half-hour. So if I send instructions to stop you from turning on your spotlight, I will send those instructions a half-hour into the past, from my (correct) point of view. That is why FTL is always time travel.

From my point of view, do I receive the message "don't turn on the light" after or before I send you the message "I'm turning on the light?" while turning on the light?

If it's after I send the message and turn on the light, then there's no time travel. You get my message, reply, and half an hour later you see the light for come on for several seconds.

If it's before I send the message and turn on the light, then there is time travel.

E: And this is why I say "wait a minute" every time someone says "FTL is always time travel"... because the examples are really vague on the details that would actually make it time travel, and seem to using "time travel" as a term of art for anything that gets information somewhere before light would (and thus why they seem to be giving light a privileged frame of reference).

[The Glyphstone]

If the light hasn't been turned on yet, how do you know to ask it to be turned off? And once it is turned on, the light has been emitted. There is no time travel in that example, only a short burst of photons that will take half an hour to become visible, even if you know to the second when they will be.

[Max_Killjoy]

If the light hasn't been turned on yet, how do you know to ask it to be turned off? And once it is turned on, the light has been emitted. There is no time travel in that example, only a short burst of photons that will take half an hour to become visible, even if you know to the second when they will be.

Because the person who sent the message via the instantaneous communication said "I'm turning the light on now". The information that the light was turned on reaches the other station before the photons from the light.

[Laserlight]

This seems like saying "time travel is involved because I got a telegram from the next train station before the train got here."

But I am not a physicist, nor do I play one on TV.

[Max_Killjoy]

This seems like saying "time travel is involved because I got a telegram from the next train station before the train got here."

But I am not a physicist, nor do I play one on TV.

Yeah, that's kinda my reaction to most of the examples.

Or... yelling at someone that you're going to throw a ball at them, and then throwing the ball... somehow them knowing you're about to throw the ball is time travel? The examples don't seem to actually have any effects preceding causes, they just seem to make "getting information about an event faster than the light arrives" somehow a dire situation while maybe leaving several steps out... which is where the "giving light a privileged frame of reference" impression comes from.

I've seen examples elsewhere involving a third party on a spaceship that begin to make time travel / violating causality a risk.

[The Glyphstone]

Yeah, that's kinda my reaction to most of the examples.

Or... yelling at someone that you're going to throw a ball at them, and then throwing the ball... somehow them knowing you're about to throw the ball is time travel? The examples don't seem to actually have any effects preceding causes, they just seem to make "getting information about an event faster than the light arrives" somehow a dire situation while maybe leaving several steps out... which is where the "giving light a privileged frame of reference" impression comes from.

I've seen examples elsewhere involving a third party on a spaceship that begin to make time travel / violating causality a risk.

So I think we're actually in agreement here, because that is exactly what I was about to post. The spatial position of those photons is independent of the observer's knowledge of their existence, unless both space stations are staffed by infants who have not developed object permanence.

FTL isn't impossible because it shatters casuality, it's impossible because e=mc^2.

[Max_Killjoy]

So I think we're actually in agreement here, because that is exactly what I was about to post. The spatial position of those photons is independent of the observer's knowledge of their existence, unless both space stations are staffed by infants who have not developed object permanence.

FTL isn't impossible because it shatters casuality, it's impossible because e=mc^2.

There are conceptual ways to outrun light between two points, without running up against the infinite energy needed to actually travel as fast as a light... things like warping space. That's where the issues with spacetime come in, especially if you have an "ansible" too.

For my "science fiction" setting I get around it by having FTL be extra-dimensional, making ships in FTL unable to communicate with normal space, not having ansibles, and no one out there travel at high fractions of C (due to the aforementioned energy requirements). Any messages sent FTL have to be carried by ship, and the ships can't communicate with anything while traveling extra-dimensionally.

[The Glyphstone]

There are conceptual ways to outrun light between two points, without running up against the infinite energy needed to actually travel as fast as a light... things like warping space. That's where the issues with spacetime come in, especially if you have an "ansible" too.

For my "science fiction" setting I get around it by having FTL be extra-dimensional, making ships in FTL unable to communicate with normal space, not having ansibles, and no one out there travel at high fractions of C (due to the aforementioned energy requirements). Any messages sent FTL have to be carried by ship, and the ships can't communicate with anything while traveling extra-dimensionally.

Yeah, I should have remembered to addendum 'within einsteinian space'. Extradimensional reference frames are the easiest solution that doesnt require a physics degree to explain.

[Max_Killjoy]

Anyway, sorry for the slight derail... we can probably discuss FTL in another thread.

Still trying to find a good breakdown of the Silhouette CORE system, see how it actually works. My quixotic hunt for an RPG system that fits what I want continues.

[DeTess]

Anyway, sorry for the slight derail... we can probably discuss FTL in another thread.

Still trying to find a good breakdown of the Silhouette CORE system, see how it actually works. My quixotic hunt for an RPG system that fits what I want continues.

I can try giving you one, though I'm not exactly a veteran with this system :p

The resolution system
Silhouete's resolutions system is fairly simple. You roll a number of d6, keep the highest and then add an attribute and circumstantial bonuses. This is then compared to either a static threshhold or an opposed roll to determine if you succeeded.

Combat itself can be fairly deadly. Characters and vehicles have three 'damage thresholds' correspond g to light damage, heavy damage and instant death. Damage below the lowest theshhold does nothing, light damage inflicts a cummulative -1 penalty to characters, and a randomly rolled bit of system damage to a vehicle, while heavy damage inflicts a cummulative -2 penalty to a character, and inflicts worse system damage on a vehicle. Characters get knocked out and start dying after they take a certain amount of cumulative penalties, while a vehicle could keep going until all of its systems get knocked out if whoever is shooting at it can't manage to get enough damage for a kill-shot.

Damage itself is determined through an opposed role between attacker and defender, and if the attacker wins, the margin of success is multiplied by the weapons damage. This means that a good roll against a bad roll can end up being lethal very quickly. For example: in a recent game I played , the PC's had instant death threshold around 50-75 depending on the character. A fairly standard pistol has a damage multiplier of x15, meaning that a margin of success of 4 could kill many of them, while a sniper rifle has a damage multiplier of x40 meaning that a difference of 2 would already spell a lot of trouble.

Characters
Character sheets record 3 different things. These are your attributes, skills and perks/flaws. The base system has 10 attributes, but provides suggestions for pairing these down to 6, 5 or 3 if you want to decrease complexity and granularity there. Attributes generally have a value between -3 and +3, with the boring 0 considered the human average.

Skills represent what skills your character has training in and covers just about all topics you'd expect your character to have to roll for at one point or another. Skills generally have two separate values, the skill's level and the skill's complexity (but if you want to simplify things, complexity can be cut). The skill's level (goes from 1-10, but it's rare to have above about 5) tells you how many d6 you're allowed to roll when using the skill, while complexity(goes from 1-5) provides a bonus or penalty by comparing the skill's complexity to the complexity of the task.

For example: Joe works at a large factory, and is trained in first aid. Over the year's he's helped out with a lot of minor accidents and ahs become quite good at treating burns , bruises and setting the occasional broken bone. in the medicine skill, he'd have a skill level of 5, but only a complexity rating of 1. On the other hand, we've got kim, who is fresh out of university and is now officially a doctor. She knows how to do complex procedures, but hasn't had much practice yet. Her skill level for medicine would only about 2 or 3, but she'd have a complexity rating of 3. If both Joe and kim would be called in to set a bone (a complexity 1 task), Joe would roll more dice increasing the chance for a good roll, but Kim would get a +2 bonus because she has been trained extensively in all kinds of best practices, rather than just yearly first-aid refresher courses. If both of them would be called on to deal with a collapsed lung (which I, as non-doctor assume si rather more complicated than setting a broken bone) Joe would still roll more dice tan Kim, but he'd take a penalty because he doesn't really know what he's doing here, while Kim wouldn't take that penalty.

Lastly, perks and flaws are little modifiers you can buy for your character that either improve or hamper you in some way. Example perks would be that you've got better hearing than normal, or that you're friends with someone important (or are someone important yourself), while flaws could be that you're suffering from some kind of chronic illness that hampers you a bit, or that you owe someone a lot of money or other stuff that might get you in trouble.

Vehicles
Silhouette is a system designed to work with vehicles first and foremost, and the base system provides a large and rather complex set of rules for designing your own vehicles. I won't go into detail explaining them here, and you can get around the requirement of designing vehicles using this system by using one of the games official settings, which generally come with a couple of catalogs full of pre-build vehicles. The system itself is free-form, however. You're not stuck with a set of pre-build guns to stick on pre-build hulls or whatever. If you want to mount a gun that's equivalent to a battleship's main gun on a vehicle the size of a motorcycle, you can. This leads to most of the system's complexity though, as it provides a rather involved formula that allows you to determine the power of each system so you can (roughly) determine the balance point of your vehicles.

Vehicles themselves can be considered boxes of systems. The box itself has a size, armor and movement modes and speeds (as well as miscellaneous stuff like operational range and random quirks), while everything else is represented by systems. Systems can be everything from a cargo bay to a communication link to an e-war suite to a big gun.


Anyway, this is a very rough overview, and I probably missed a lot of stuff. If you've got more specific questions, I'll try to answer them though.

[Mutazoia]

I can try giving you one, though I'm not exactly a veteran with this system :p
.

If I remember correctly, that's the old "Jovian Chronicles" system.

[Max_Killjoy]

I can try giving you one, though I'm not exactly a veteran with this system :p

The resolution system
Silhouete's resolutions system is fairly simple. You roll a number of d6, keep the highest and then add an attribute and circumstantial bonuses. This is then compared to either a static threshhold or an opposed roll to determine if you succeeded.

Combat itself can be fairly deadly. Characters and vehicles have three 'damage thresholds' correspond g to light damage, heavy damage and instant death. Damage below the lowest theshhold does nothing, light damage inflicts a cummulative -1 penalty to characters, and a randomly rolled bit of system damage to a vehicle, while heavy damage inflicts a cummulative -2 penalty to a character, and inflicts worse system damage on a vehicle. Characters get knocked out and start dying after they take a certain amount of cumulative penalties, while a vehicle could keep going until all of its systems get knocked out if whoever is shooting at it can't manage to get enough damage for a kill-shot.

Damage itself is determined through an opposed role between attacker and defender, and if the attacker wins, the margin of success is multiplied by the weapons damage. This means that a good roll against a bad roll can end up being lethal very quickly. For example: in a recent game I played , the PC's had instant death threshold around 50-75 depending on the character. A fairly standard pistol has a damage multiplier of x15, meaning that a margin of success of 4 could kill any of them, while a sniper rifle has a damage multiplier of x40 meaning that a difference of 2 would already spell a lot of trouble.

Characters
Character sheets record 3 attributes. These are your attributes, skills and perks/flaws. The base system has 10 attributes, but provides suggestions for pairing these down to 6, 5 or 3 if you want to decrease complexity and granularity there. Attributes generally have a value between -3 and +3, with the boring 0 considered the human average.

Skills represent what skills your character has training in and covers just about all topics you'd expect your character to have to roll for at one point or another. Skills generally have two separate values, the skill's level and the skill's complexity (but if you want to simplify things, complexity can be cut). The skill's level (goes from 1-10, but it's rare to have above about 5) tells you how many d6 you're allowed to roll when using the skill, while complexity(goes from 1-5) provides a bonus or penalty by comparing the skill's complexity to the complexity of the task.

For example: Joe works at a large factory, and is trained in first aid. Over the year's he's helped out with a lot of minor accidents and ahs become quite good at treating burns , bruises and setting the occasional broken bone. in the medicine skill, he'd have a skill level of 5, but only a complexity rating of 1. On the other hand, we've got kim, who is fresh out of university and is now officially a doctor. She knows how to do complex procedures, but hasn't had much practice yet. Her skill level for medicine would only about 2 or 3, but she'd have a complexity rating of 3. If both Joe and kim would be called in to set a bone (a complexity 1 task), Joe would roll more dice increasing the chance for a good roll, but Kim would get a +2 bonus because she has been trained extensively in all kinds of best practices, rather than just yearly first-aid refresher courses. If both of them would be called on to deal with a collapsed lung (which I, as non-doctor assume si rather more complicated than setting a broken bone) Joe would still roll more dice tan Kim, but he'd take a penalty because he doesn't really know what he's doing here, while Kim wouldn't take that penalty.

Lastly, perks and flaws are little modifiers you can buy for your character that either improve or hamper you in some way. Example perks would be that you've got better hearing than normal, or that you're friends with someone important (or are someone important yourself), while flaws could be that you're suffering from some kind of chronic illness that hampers you a bit, or that you owe someone a lot of money or other stuff that might get you in trouble.

Vehicles
Silhouette is a system designed to work with vehicles first and foremost, and the base system provides a large and rather complex set of rules for designing your own vehicles. I won't go into detail explaining them here, and you can get around the requirement of designing vehicles using this system by using one of the games official settings, which generally come with a couple of catalogs full of pre-build vehicles. The system itself is free-form, however. You're not stuck with a set of pre-build guns to stick on pre-build hulls or whatever. If you want to mount a gun that's equivalent to a battleship's main gun on a vehicle the size of a motorcycle, you can. This leads to most of the system's complexity though, as it provides a rather involved formula that allows you to determine the power of each system so you can (roughly) determine the balance point of your vehicles.

Vehicles themselves can be considered boxes of systems. The box itself has a size, armor and movement modes and speeds (as well as miscellaneous stuff like operational range and random quirks), while everything else is represented by systems. Systems can be everything from a cargo bay to a communication link to an e-war suite to a big gun.


Anyway, this is a very rough overview, and I probably missed a lot of stuff. If you've got more specific questions, I'll try to answer them though.

Thank you.

[DeTess]

If I remember correctly, that's the old "Jovian Chronicles" system.

To be specific, Jovian chronicles is a setting for this system :P

[Mutazoia]

To be specific, Jovian chronicles is a setting for this system :P

Toe-May-toe, Toe-Mah-toe

[Alcore]

Holy cow, I can't believe Traveler is still being published. Impressive!

It's being published so much some think the fanbase will soon be so fractured that companies won't be able to sell new editions without appealing to fresh people.


Anyways...

I hate the catchphrase "space opera" as the best definition i can think of is "fantasy in space!". Traveller is rules heavy but i still think it is a good pick. If you do go that way i recommend Mongoose Traveller 2e which is a polished version of 1e (still somehow taking a step back here and there) and 1e attempts to be a spiritual successor to the original traveller rules. Best part is that they are (generally) backwards and forwards compatible.

Either way also try to pick up High Guard. If you are going on a ship focused game get the supplement that focuses on ships.

[Rhedyn]

FTL isn't impossible because it shatters casuality, it's impossible because e=mc^2.

This is dumb.

FTL is impossible in what we perceive as "reality" with gravity, temporal relations, space, magnetism, light, etc. This all requires context given by particle fields. Outside of what you might call "reality" e=mc^2 does not hold and we have seen evidence of things crossing between that barrier of space-time to else-where.

[Relonious]

There is also Starfinder. You could call it Pathfinder in space. It has a good blend of magic and science, races to boot and a consistent setting.

[Rakaydos]

If FTL is possible in a relativistic frame of reference, the way relativity works out is that you can build up a relativistic velocity so time passes slowly for you, which you see as if you were traveling at velocities faster than C (taking a relativistically slowed day to travel a lightyear) , then measure the speed of light in YOUR referecnce frame (always C, by definition), then FTL FASTER than the speed you measured light at. This mathematical "Double FTL" is equivalent to time travel.

[Mutazoia]

If FTL is possible in a relativistic frame of reference, the way relativity works out is that you can build up a relativistic velocity so time passes slowly for you, which you see as if you were traveling at velocities faster than C (taking a relativistically slowed day to travel a lightyear) , then measure the speed of light in YOUR referecnce frame (always C, by definition), then FTL FASTER than the speed you measured light at. This mathematical "Double FTL" is equivalent to time travel.

[Lord Torath]

Anyway, sorry for the slight derail... we can probably discuss FTL in another thread.

This is our most recent FTL and Violating Causality thread. It's closed now, but we could start a new one if anyone wants to continue the conversation.

On topic, has anyone suggested Palladium's Robotech? Admittedly, it lacks a lot of the things the OP wants, and everyone seems to hate the MDC vs SDC bits. And it's not really very customizable. No system for tinkering with your ships. So maybe it's understandable no one's recommending it. Hey, I didn't want my post to be entirely off topic. ;)

[Telok]

On topic, has anyone suggested Palladium's Robotech? Admittedly, it lacks a lot of the things the OP wants, and everyone seems to hate the MDC vs SDC bits. And it's not really very customizable. No system for tinkering with your ships. So maybe it's understandable no one's recommending it. Hey, I didn't want my post to be entirely off topic. ;)

The megadamage/structural damage split actually works fine on the main battle tank versus people with small arms scale. The issues come when that split is ignored and there are bunches of people running around with 50 MDC body armor and 2d6 MD pistols or knives. Of course the main books start with that stuff in the equipment lists.

The Palladium stuff works better if you treat it more like a Gurps style toolbox and cut out what you don't want.

[Mutazoia]

This is our most recent FTL and Violating Causality thread. It's closed now, but we could start a new one if anyone wants to continue the conversation.

On topic, has anyone suggested Palladium's Robotech? Admittedly, it lacks a lot of the things the OP wants, and everyone seems to hate the MDC vs SDC bits. And it's not really very customizable. No system for tinkering with your ships. So maybe it's understandable no one's recommending it. Hey, I didn't want my post to be entirely off-topic. ;)

Nobody's recommending it because it's Palladium. The system where even your skill prereqs have prereqs. Want to fly your space ship? You need to have a computer use, and to have THAT you need TYPING of all things...

Palladium: The game system designed by accountants.

[Knaight]

Palladium: The game system designed by accountants.

That's just unfair - accountants can be expected to get the math done well, if plainly. Palladium's math is a massive mess. Plus, for all the negatives you can say about Palladium (and there's a whole bunch of them) their games certainly don't lack for imagination. Restraint, yes, but not imagination - there's all sorts of imaginative setting elements, there's even a fair amount of imagination in the mechanics. The latter doesn't amount to much because the imagination seems paired with a concerning degree of ignorance as to prior design options.

[Mutazoia]

That's just unfair - accountants can be expected to get the math done well, if plainly. Palladium's math is a massive mess. Plus, for all the negatives you can say about Palladium (and there's a whole bunch of them) their games certainly don't lack for imagination. Restraint, yes, but no imagination - there are all sorts of imaginative setting elements, there's even a fair amount of imagination in the mechanics. The latter doesn't amount to much because the imagination seems paired with a concerning degree of ignorance as to prior design options.

Fine.

Palladium: They system designed by Tax Attorneys.

[Knaight]

Fine.

Palladium: They system designed by Tax Attorneys.

I like it. If we're assuming private tax attorneys for the wealthy there's a great deal of creativity involved in the job, a lot of imagination, and definitely some dodgy numbers.