I had a copy of Space Opera, now long lost. I bought it because someone had used it to create an alien race, complete with their space navy, for a contest in Space Gamer magazine. I was so impressed, I rushed out and bought the boxed set.

My first impression was the wretched art. The box art was even more amatuerish than the interior art, and that's hard to do. The second, on opening the box, was the smell. The ink they used had a strong chemical smell, which made reading the book physically repulsive.

I can't remember much about character creation or combat, except that the rules seemed unusually complex for the light tone they seemed to want. The best part for me was the starship rules. IIRC, they had different size classes of ships, with standard measurements for each class. Star Frontiers did something similar. 1 ton was 3 cubic meters, which gave smaller ships than Traveller's 14 cubic meters. They had more varied and fanciful weapons than Traveller, like the previosly mentioned Nova Guns. If you can find the ship supplements, they were amazing. I remember drooling over those in the game store, but being too broke to buy them. Lots of cool designs.

By the way, here are some links to Star Frontiers stuff, which does the same things as SO, but is free to download!

www.starfrontiers.com/

www.starfrontiers.org/

www.starfrontiersman.com/

Hope they help!

Quote from: Pierce InverarityThat's closest to what I want--a 1950s Star Wars that isn't Star Wars. So, none of the "Luke I'm your father" or force/religion stuff. Pulp look and feel, yes, but jaws slightly less square than in Lensmen. And aliens should be more than bugs, so not Starship Troopers.

Which is slightly humorous because one of the psionic disciplines in Space Opera is called "The Force".

If you can find a copy, seek out Space Patrol by Lou Zocchi Games. It's a clunky old-school 70's RPG that is so 50's Space Opera-y it hurts.

Quote from: Leo KnightMy first impression was the wretched art. The box art was even more amatuerish than the interior art, and that's hard to do.

My first thought was, that's odd, because the box cover art was pretty well done for its time and IMHO looks OK even today... but then it occurred to me: Could you have encountered the dreaded (but by now valuable) first edition? Light blue cover?

http://www.waynesbooks.net/?page=shop/flypage&product_id=347661&keyword=SPACE+OPERA&searchby=title&offset=0&fs=1&CLSN_1310=120913595413100892b1310500e40111

On a general note, if this thread is representative it seems that nowadays, when people hear "space opera," they think: Star Wars. And when they hear "space opera before Star Wars," they think: Pulp. In 2008, everything in between the two has kind of faded from the purview.

I'm not the guy to bring it back into focus myself here and now because I'm just beginning to read the Golden Age stuff for the first time. But it's worth it. Today, Asimov is supposed to be the epitome of l4me, but Foundation is actually pretty good as a text, and very gameable as a source.

Quote from: David JohansenAnyhow, Star Cluster and Light Speed both are right up your alley as well.

Huh! I wouldn't recommend either for this. My StarCluster is too "Hard*" and sciency, being heavily influenced by Cherryh, Niven, and Brin; and the excellent Lightspeed is too modern a Space Opera game, being heavily influenced by Star Wars and Star Trek.

I thought of suggesting Cold Space, but CS is Heinlein, VanVoght, and Anderson run through a modern filter, so that you have atomic spaceships in the fifties flown by the Rocket Corps, but it's decidedly gritty, with no psi or quasi-magic, and even "Harder*" than StarCluster.

-clash

*"Hard"-ness in SF being relative, and changing with time. SC takes it's science seriously indeed, but would be considered no more than "firm" nowadays, and CS would be moderately "hard", somewhat less so than THS.

Quote from: Pierce InverarityToday, Asimov is supposed to be the epitome of l4me, but Foundation is actually pretty good as a text, and very gameable as a source.

Lame?!  Pffft.  Other day I saw Foundation get out of its car and punch a biker in the ass for not signaling at a 4-way.

And the biker apologized.

Clash, as we're talking about the feel and focus of the setting I thought both were fairly appropriate.  I didn't think the original poster was looking for tinfoil and cardboard spaceships and black and white photography (though I may just have to do that some day)

Just a more free wheeling, space adventure that isn't overly dominated by existing plots and characters where psi is more like psi and less like the force.

Actually, Mechanoid Invasion Book III might fit though the over arching plot of the Mechanoid's genocidal war is pretty dominant.  I loves me some Mechanoid Invasion.  I should run a Spacemaster campaign with mechanoids.

I tried to insert them into Starwars d6 but my players turfed me as GM after the first session.  Apparently meeting an imperial command ship that's drifting and half destroyed and having the surviving commanding officer begging for help before "they" came back was too scary.

In a weird coincidence, my wife and I were cleaning up our many hundreds of books yesterday and I found a boxed set of Star Frontiers from TSR. The box itself is in shoddy condition but the books (and maps with cardboard tokens) are pristine. Hell, there are even 2 d10's in there that haven't been crayoned with the white crayon ready to be used.

The strange thing is I can't remember where I picked it up from, must've bulk bought it at a garage sale or second hand book store for me not to remember it. It is a bit like my other books are just quietly teleporting others in, I also found a BattleTech Solaris and ElfQuest boxed set of rpgs, also have no idea where they come from.

Getting back to the point, has anyone played Star Frontiers? Would it be good for some pulp sci-fi as Pierce Inverarity suggested in an earlier post?

I'll probably sit down tonight and give the rules a once over, but I figured someone here could tell me more about it.

Quote from: telliusGetting back to the point, has anyone played Star Frontiers? Would it be good for some pulp sci-fi as Pierce Inverarity suggested in an earlier post?

Not sure about pulp as defined by Pierce, but SF together with it's Knight Hawks supplement seemed very Buck Rogers/Flash Gordon pulpy to me....way better than the Buck Rogers game TSR published some time ago....

Regards,
David R

Quote from: Pierce InverarityMy first thought was, that's odd, because the box cover art was pretty well done for its time and IMHO looks OK even today... but then it occurred to me: Could you have encountered the dreaded (but by now valuable) first edition? Light blue cover?

http://www.waynesbooks.net/?page=shop/flypage&product_id=347661&keyword=SPACE+OPERA&searchby=title&offset=0&fs=1&CLSN_1310=120913595413100892b1310500e40111

Hoo-boy! That's it!

Valuable? It figures I would lose mine!

I'm going to sing the praises of Mechanoid Invasion Book III some more since this thread got me thinking about it and it is the best thing Kevin Siembiada ever did.

Imagine Palladium's game system stripped to the bare essentials:  Maybe five  pages of rules, two pages with a dozen condensed OCCs, the neatest set of races you'll ever see in a space opera rpg (each with a two page spread), lots of pages of guns and space ships, the evil insect like dioni, and of course the mechanoids themselves.

The layout is loaded with drawings and diagrams, often with game stats penciled in right there on the drawing.  It's very visual and organic with limited blocks of text getting in the way of the artistic vision.

The races are the game's real strong point.

The Nigellians are slightly hairier humans with larger canines and beter physical prowess.  They share their star system with the Ostrac a race of monsterous amphibians who don't look anything like frogs and the gendo, a race of winged reptiles that resemble small dragons.  There's lots of neat tidbits like the Nigellians world being a port of call for scavengers and pirates, Ostrac females being larger, stronger, and more violent than the males, and Gendo females being wingless but more technologically oriented than the males.

Then there's the Borellians a race of mangy dog people with a vague to Taco Bell's mascot on crack.  They're an advanced race that has burned through their world's resources and environment and is desperately seeking new supplies.

The Cybermen, a Mechanoid slave race of cyborgs in advanced armoured bodies.

And the Phi Warpers, Mechanoid slaves who were originally psychic dolphins and are now little more than twisted blobs of flesh optimized to produce psychic space warps.  Yes that's right you can play a deformed dolphin in a wheel chair who's also a powerful psychic warp drive.  Sometimes I really wonder if Kevin was really a time travelling GURPS player.

The Cybermen and Phi Warpers have been awarded custody of the Mechanoid's abandoned home world which has become something of a gold rush for criminals, archeologists, and scientists.

Allied with the Mechanoids, we have the Dioni, an insect alliance with flies, wasps, and beetles rising up to quench their undying hatred of humanity with blood.

The Mechanoids themselves are a race of cybernetic psychic killing machines, living in genetically modified sybiosis with their armoured shells.  Their mother ships are the size of planets and powered by the strip mined hearts of stars.  And they hate humanity with all the passion of an abandoned and abused child.  After all the Mechanoids were originally human.  Having withdrawn from their genocidal war they now congregate around a new mothership three times the size of Jupiter and nobody knows when the other shoe will drop.

I know this is an old thread but I just discovered this site when i was remembering how much fun i had running Space Opera.

As a space opera fan and a GM for the game back in the day I have to say I really did enjoy the game a LOT.  But it isn't a game where you can watch a few cheesy buck rogers episodes and pick it up and run with it.  To do Space Opera  proud.  To engross your players in the genre that is the magic of the space opera you have to do a little bit of homework.  

Might i suggest a few great books to get the feel?

E.E. Doc Smith's "Lensmen" series, Robert Hienliens "Starship Troopers", Issac Asimov's "Lucky Star" series, (believe it or not) Edgar Rice Burrough's "John Carter of Mars" series.  

These will give you a decent starting point to get the feel for the genre.  Some (John Carter) aren't space so much as just the pulp sci fi feel that is the space Opera Magic.

As for the Armsman and the Astronaut.  Let me tell you  once the GM understands the genre .. the rules make sense ..  once you understand the rules? the armsman the astronaut and the othjer classes really become a lot of fun .... and psi?? once you read lensmen? it all makes COMPLETE sense and absolutely rocks.  I loved the game personally and so did the group of players that started as 2 players and became so large i had to work out a rotation in the game to get all the players in ... 8 players one "book" (series of adventures) and 6 different players in that 8 the next and rotate from there.  i had a total of 28 players from MANY genre that LOVED the game.  

Sadly I was USAF at the time and as is [part of life people got stationed else where .. i got stationed elsewhere ... got married ... and well .... the rest is a sad sad story LOLOL but i swear if i had a chance to get going on that game again i would do it in a red hot SECOND.

You have to ask yourself the questions:
1_ What is a space opera?
2_ What makes me really love this genre
3_ can i give it the right feel?


if you do that as you write your stories  (after doing your homework) and run the game ... you'll have them eating out of your hand.

nuff said

"May the stone speak"

Welcome Staarkad!  I promise to read your post at length after dinner.

Man, talk about memories. I always wanted to get Space Opera but for whatever reason I never got around to it. Maybe a cheap copy will find its way to me.