Galactic Encounters Role-Playing Game

[johndice]

Heya Chris,

Do you need any scifi maps for this project? Your more than welcome to use mine if you want

Cheerio!

[Solomoriah]

Very nice! A bit premature, though. Before we need adventure materials, we need working rules... got to get to work on this.

[Seven]

The basic game advantages melee over range, that's difficult to transpose into a Scifi setting without going with a post-apocalyptic setting infused with lost tech.
Who wants to bring a knife to a gun fight?

A futuristic war setting tend to focus more on vehicular combat.

Also, AI is obviously a bigger thing than the basic equivalent--which is what? Conjured demons? Divination?

Pilot can be a cool class, unless you let the ships pilot themselves.
Then it's a bit like being an Olympic javelin thrower. Cool, but not that useful.
Unless you can just jack-in. We're already awash in drones and self-driving cars.

Take armor for example.
In Star Trek, there's basically no armor.
In Star Wars, the troopers have really cool armor but it seems completely useless.

I remember in the days, TSR had a game called Gamma World.
I always imagined it was like D&D in a post-apocalyptic world.
Never played or touched the material.

I did play some Mechwarrior.
Basically, I was scared to fight outside the mech.

It's of course all fixable, depending on technological limitations.
Take Dune for example. Personal shields that negate projectile weapons.
AI are forbidden.

I think telepath is an obvious class.
It worked in Babylon 5.
Cyborg/augmented human also.
Then, maybe not soldier, but crewman. Someone who manages large public or private resources. Leadership instead of charisma.
I don't see the cleric equivalent. A doctor is more like an NPC.

[Solomoriah]

The basic game advantages melee over range, that's difficult to transpose into a Scifi setting without going with a post-apocalyptic setting infused with lost tech. Who wants to bring a knife to a gun fight?

The only real advantage of melee over ranged combat in BFRPG is the Strength bonus to damage. Players could and should use ranged combat more.

Realize here that we are not "transposing" BFRPG into the sci-fi realm, just making core mechanics with numerical compatibility so that I have some confidence they are balanced and so that stealing from other games is easy.

[Comrade87]

I don’t know if it been brought up, but for armor has anyone thought of using the HP and hardness set up like vehicles in Basic? Targets don’t take hit point damage unless armor is gone

Targets AC =11+dex

Item. Hardness/HP
Flak. 5/25
Cheap flak. 5/10
Heavy flak. 10/50 (no dex mod to AC though)
Powered. 10/250. (Requires power unit)

Firearms have ranged similar to bows as effective range but can shoot farther out at a -10 (most firefights happen well within 300 yards, and shooting under combat conditions is not like the movies, first hand knowledge, accuracy goes to crap)

Maybe mitigate the -10 with a sniper class?

Auto fire= roll 2 d20, choose the best, and if the lowest hits also the target gets hit twice. Trade off= all damage is done at a dice lower (ie instead of 2D10 per shot, only 2D8)

Maybe mitigate with a close quarters class.

Close combat relevance= bypass Armor HP and hardness I mentioned above and just do straight character HP damage, unless armored in enclosed power armor

[Solomoriah]

Still considering armor. Really picky about that kind of rule.

[CptClyde]

This is all very intriguing.
Here's an idea toss:
-Ship combat ranges are abstracted to being "melee", "short" and "long"
-"Melee" range would be dog fighting ranges, and for bigger ships: always at risk of being boarded
-"Short" may be something like surface to orbit (of orbit to surface bombardment!)
-"Long range" may represent something like the ability to attack across 1 orbital distance (attack
mars from Earth?)
-Ships could use the basic weapon/armour lists for outfitting.
-All weapons do damage to ships as listed
-All damages, costs are x100 when compared to human stats. (if a ship wishes to strafe ground troops
with it's "dagger cannons" they would take 1d4x100 damage if hit)
-Ships could be analogous of the character classes (thus allowing re-use of supplemental classes as well):
-HP is that of it's ship class such as Fighter, wizard, theif (x100 when compared to a human)
-Class abilities are somehow analogous of class:
-Fighters can mount any weapons, any armour
-Magician class ship is light and can only mount limited weapons, no armour, but has "high tech" gadgetry
allowing spell-like effects (just re-skin the spells)
-Thief class ships are able to use stealth, detection (pick-pockets? maybe analogous of forced boarding
maybe)
-The ship's 6 main attributes represent a required crew member's shipboard role:
-Str = ability with short range weaponry
-Con = hull toughness
-Dex = ability with long range weaponry
-Int = sensors and stealth maneuvering
-Wis = repair abilities?
-Cha = communications
-The Ship's class dictates the crewmember's attribute requirement to succesfully run the ship (ie: The fighter
ship requires a captain with a Shipboard STR Attribute of 9)
-Each PC rolls for their usual 6 personal attributes, and then again for their "Shipboard attributes"
which would dictate their potential crew role onboard the ship.
-The "Shipboard attributes" could be used for all related "skill" challenges so no need for a skill system


These none-sensical ideas are starting to really add up so will stop at that. Maybe you can use something from it. Either way, I would be VERY interested in having a simple Space game to run. I LOVE the idea of BSRPG.

[MyronRedden]

There is a world that is in the public domain. It was created by H. Beam Pipper. It has Humans as the dominant species but also has other species and some are sentient. He has many short stories and a few books that would be a good starting place.

[Seven]

It's H. Beam Piper.
And that was his real name.

I also like the world of Edmond Hamilton, especially once it's relocated out of the solar system like the anime did.

[Solomoriah]

The whole point of this game is not to attach ourselves to ANY published universe. When you stick to "galactic civilization" as a genre, you can. A true galactic civilization, one where humans have had a thousand or so years to spread out and occupy a lot of worlds orbiting a lot of stars, is really, really BIG.

I loved Vance's "Araminta Station" series; despite the majority of the action taking place on one world, Cadwal, the main characters spent a fair amount of time traveling to other worlds. But the galaxy presented is so huge that traveling to other stars in the "local" area is like us going from town to town, never leaving our state or province or what have you. And even the "Demon Princes" series, where the protagonist travels far and wide through the galaxy, still feels really large.