Transhuman space, one oif the most thoughtful and inteligent SFRPGs, plus it's about the hardest science wise.

Traveller, most versions. It really helped start SFRPGing and remains despite all it's flaws.

2300: another hard science game, should never have been billed as traveller, tho. The Kafer were great aliens.

Star frontiers, fur the simple nostalgia factor.

Ringworld, because it was so close to the source material.

I haven't really played much SF, so this is based more on reading than playing.

1. Universe (SPI). I've recently heard a lot of bad things about this game. Not sure if it's the system or the setting; if the former really is all that bad, then I'd probably substitute something generic like GURPS or JAGS. What really attracts me about the setting is that it's basically classic science fiction which projects a near-future notion of UN one-worldism into space, without necessarily being a utopia. This leaves room for scientific exploration, criminal activity, and political/corporate intrigue. (Much of the setting is adumbrated in sources outside the RPG per se, in other games and in comics from Ares magazine.) The feel reminds me of Outland (the Sean Connery film), Aliens, and Pirx the Pilot.

2. Traveller LBB. Why isn't it first place? I think Universe is just a tad more "human-scaled", I'm not crazy about a political Imperium, and the humanoid aliens take away a bit of my excitement. Also, I prefer the Universe-type hyperjump ships (I think stolen from Dune in part, with ESP-gifted navigators who need "spice" to work their magic) to Traveller's jump drive...though that may be based on a spotty understanding of the latter and/or a difference in scale. I.e., the Universe setting feels smaller, relative to the length of a hyperjump, than Traveller's does.

3. Jovian Chronicles. I snagged a near-complete set off of eBay and I've been looking it over. Excellent illustrations. Mecha are the main bit of unreality, otherwise it's pretty hard SF, so the campaign is confined to the Solar System. I like mecha.

MegaTraveller basically CT, mostly backwards compatible enough to use all the adventures, with much better and more self consistent systems.

Traveller D20 - A very complete game in one book system with lots of details. A few notions are a bit dated, and it can be complex, but it handles many things better than its predescessors. Including, I maintain, the best starship combat system for an RPG ever.

Classic Traveller - the one that started it all.

Star Wars d20 Revised - D6 was a disappointment to me. I found the RCR to be a nice, workable take on the SW saga.

Burning Empires - Still a freshman, but lots of inspiration and neat new ideas.

Honorable mention to Alternity.

I have to say that I'm not the biggest fan of SF RPGs. The only one I really out-and-out enjoy and want to play over and over is Star Frontiers. Mostly because it's got a very simple system and the setting is fun and pulpy. I own Blue Planet but I've never played it and I find that I'm not too terribly interested.

Oh, how about Aeon/Trinity? I very much like that setting and I'd love to run it or play in a game. Mostly because of the rich background, and how it ties neatly with Aberrant and Adventure!

I also love Gamma World (all editions, even the dreaded d20 one) but I like sticking that in the Post Apoc genre.

Fading Suns... why? Cause somehow, god bless 'em, they managed to shoehorn in all the wacky tropes of sci-fi from the last fifety years and make it GOOD. You got a might space emperor, nobles, energy swords, sheilds, aliens that used to be human, aliens that might as well be human, and ALIENS... I dare you to play a Ascorbite bloodsucking bug as a human in a funny suit, I dares ya! You got psychic powers, cybernetics, nano-tech, lost secrets of the ages, really lost secrets of before the ages...  You can play Dune, Star Wars, Traveller... and do it all in the setting as written if you want.  With the right source books (the Dune books and movies... etc) you can play the rules as written and play out the damn stories!

Battlelords of the 23rd century: C'mon, who doesn't want to play a beautiful synthetic Human with a fugly wife, a fusion cannon that can punch holes in planets, and a drinking buddy who has a melon head and godlike powers? You know you want to...

Star Wars D20: for getting the d20 rules to work with guns and such. I'd rather use the SWD20 for modern games than D20 modern... which makes my head itch, but there you have it.  

Warhammer 40k... okay, I know it's not out yet. I know the release schedule was written on the flayed skin of babies with ink made from the milk of virgins mixed with the mother's blood, and signed with blowjobs from demons... what can I say, gimmee a bolter motherfucker! The Emperor will PWN your ass!

?: My own pet project. Leave me to my self love and I'll leave you to yours. Deal? If not, see the entry for 40K above.

Quote from: Caesar SlaadHonorable mention to Alternity.

I was begining to wonder why nobody mentioned it before, I really don't have a lot of experience whith the game, but one thing is for sure, I did enjoy the brief time I spend playing it.

In no particular order.

Blue Planet -  I like the idea that SF can be set in a specific place. The fact that said specific place is a watery world of mystery is just icing on the cake.

Fading Suns - Hard edge (it could be ) space opera.

Cyberpunk 2020 - Common guys, it's a fun SF game esp some of the supplements.

Star Wars - d6 version. I learn't a hell of a lot about gming from this game...don't know if that's a good thing

Star Frontiers (Night Hawks (?) supplement) - This is probably the most fun SF game I ever played. I still use the system - although now, I admit I replaced the dralasites(sp) and Yassarians (sp) with a couple of other races...

Regards,
David R

Mine?

Traveller of course. Mostly because I managed to nearly destroy an imperial destroyer with a disposable lighter (long story).

Universe because it took into account a PC's home world gravity.

Alternity, which is D&D3e without the idiocy of feats and crap like that.

Dangerous Journeys: Changeling. You want gonzo space opera, this is gonzo space opera. Col. Pladoh's paen to b-pictures, sci fi, and Metamorphosis Alpha. Where else can you have agents of Colossus doing battle with the Robot Men on the Moon?

Quote from: mythusmageDangerous Journeys: Changeling. You want gonzo space opera, this is gonzo space opera. Col. Pladoh's paen to b-pictures, sci fi, and Metamorphosis Alpha. Where else can you have agents of Colossus doing battle with the Robot Men on the Moon?

Can you link me to more info on this? Google just keeps giving me info on that shitty WW game.

Quote from: Elliot Wilen3. Jovian Chronicles. I snagged a near-complete set off of eBay and I've been looking it over. Excellent illustrations. Mecha are the main bit of unreality, otherwise it's pretty hard SF, so the campaign is confined to the Solar System. I like mecha.

Very underrated IMO, basically a solid hard sf game.  Even the mecha seem vaguely plausible, and that is the only time I've ever thought that.  Good pick.

We don't play too much sci-fi, so my experience is more limited. These are my preferred:

Blue Planet: Solid and gritty system, setting with endless possibilities, adaptable to any modern or futuristic game.

Star Wars 2nd Revised Ed. (by WEG): The equivalent of D&D RC if you play SW. SW D20 is good, but this does it better.

Star Trek CODA RPG (by Decipher): As true to the series as their LOTR RPG. CODA system is great.

Burning Empires: We haven't played it but, man, Frank Herbert would have played this sucker to death again.

Fading Suns: Here in Spain is probably the most influential SF game along with SW, and is well deserved. Dramatic system, original and interesting setting.

Traveller Hard Times/TNE
At the risk of provoking a torch-bearing mob of Traveller grognards, I have to say that my preferred Traveller gaming is using the later Megatraveller and the New Era stuff.  I would rate Hard Times as one of the best sci-fi rpg supplements ever done, and if you want to crash an interstellar society, accept no substitute.  I also appreciate the idea of TNE, effectively creating two complete settings that allowed different kinds of gaming.  One of which (the Reformation Coalition) was a gritty, post-apoc sci-fi setting, while in the other (the Spinward Marches) one could cheerfully continue to do the bog standard "Merchants of Death" campaign in what was essentially the old Imperium setting.

Heavy Gear
For your giant robot love, this is a good choice in my book.  The mecha were mostly believable, the game system was solid, and the Terra Nova setting rocked!  It felt lived in.  It had lots of interesting nooks and crannies to explore.  The major societies each had a moral ambiguity about them that smacked of the real world and make things interesting.  And finally, the first storyline book they produced, Crisis of Faith, knocked my socks off!

Fading Suns
I've always like the Dune-inspired Gothic sci-fi vibe, and it was largely unfulfilled for me in a gaming sense despite my best efforts (see below) until this game came along.  At first it looked to me like a Warhammer 40K universe clone and I didn't pay much attention, but I was so wrong.  Once I discovered it, I played the hell out of it.

Space 1889
For the sheer fun of play, this is one of my favorite games ever!  It has a sense of wonder and goofiness that I enjoy deeply.  I also thought that the system was pretty good for the pulpy feel.  I still remember vividly cruising around Mars in Italy's sole aerial gunboat, protecting the interests of the King and crushing sky pirates...good times, they were.

Star Trek:TRPG (FASA)
I could have picked any of another great sci-fi game like Star Frontiers, but in terms of the sheer amount of playing time for me personally it would be hard to top FASA's old Star Trek RPG.  Yeah, the system kinda sucked and the setting information was spotty, but I played metric assloads of this game in junior high and high school.  Usually it was just me with my best friend Monty acting as GM, and I got to cruise around the galaxy as the captain of my own damn starship, zapping the shit out of the Klingon spies who always put phasers on overload in my quarters.  Damn them!:D

And one that could-have-been....Mechwarrior (1st Ed)

I have a love-hate relationship with Battletech/Mechwarrior.  After FASA made a giant robot fighting game they bolted on a post-apocalyptic, pseudo-Medieval setting that almost worked for me.  They even riffed off of Dune in the 1st edition of Mechwarrior, which I thought was cool.  The game system truly, truly sucked, however, and the fiction and setting veered wildly off in other directions over time.  For my Dune-esque Gothic sci-fi fix I now have Fading Suns, but in the old days I spent way too much time and energy trying to make Mechwarrior work in this niche.  I was largely disappointed...


TGA

5: Star Wars - the D20 version. Better than nothing, and while it can sometimes feel like D&D in space, there's nothing necessarily wrong with D&D in space.

4: Star Wars - the West End Games version. The flavour of Star Wars has changed since this one came out, mainly due to George Lucas forgetting what made the series great in the first place, but as far as capturing the spirit of Star Wars when it was good you can't beat this one.

3: Burning Empires: An RPG inspired by a comic inspired by Traveller? I'd be doubtful, but what you get is a wonderfully crunch GM-vs-players experience that can be played like for Narrative Hippy Forge nonsense or can be played as a balls-to-the-wall gamist experience equally happily.

2: Traveller: My favourite edition is probably Classic Traveller, simply because the core system is so simple - when you feel like you want more crunch, you just bolt on the required supplement. Megatraveller went too far in making lots of crunch non-optional, Traveller: the New Era simply didn't get it, T4 failed due to poor editing and support material, and GURPS Traveller and T20 run off systems that I don't particularly care for.

1: A|State: Partially because it's the one that I've played the most, but mainly because it's one of the best rulebooks (in terms of value for money) I've ever seen. The setting is what you'd expect if Charles Dickens, William Gibson, and David Lynch collaborated on an adaptation of Warren Ellis's Transmetropolitan. The game designers have made a sacred vow not to come up with "canonical" answers to the game's mysteries, leaving individual GMs free to make their own decisions about them. And the main rulebook is simply packed with locations, NPCs, and factions, to the point where you can't turn a page without coming across some cool stuff. The system's nothing to shout about - a workmanlike BRP knock-off - but as far as settings go, A|State delivers when it comes to providing a mix of SF sense-of-wonder, what-ifs, and experiments with society. More cyberpunk than Cyberpunk, these days.

Blue Planet - It's an incredibly rich, deep and alive setting with lots of fun, gameworthy stuff (arguably too much) for PCs to do.

Transhuman Space - Likewise an incredibly rich and deep setting, it is more "realistic" than BP but falls short in terms of gameworthy activity for PCs (the setting mitigates a lot of "traditional" play models IMO).  On a personal note, the evangelism of some of its supporters is moderately annoying ("It's a great game because you can play a sentient octopus"... well that's nice, but WTF does a sentient octopus actually do?  There's a big fucking difference between intelligently pontificating on future technological trends and providing an enjoyable game, and the former does not automatically result in the latter.).

Heavy Gear - Another elaborate setting, this one is a lot less realistic than THS but a lot more gameable in the vein of BP.  It would probably rank higher had the latter, off-world supplements not taken a big crap all over the quality of the line IMO and if it had been less mecha-centric (even though I do love the mecha, they don't mesh well with the RPG-able elements).

Star Frontiers - The first SFRPG I ever owned, and it set a standard for a certain type of gaming that IME has yet to be reached.  I'd kill for a modern ruleset that provided the same kind of generic space-opera fun as SF (Star*Drive was close but I didn't much like Alternity).

There is no #5.  This spot would probably belong to GURPS Traveller, if it weren't a 3rd edition product that relied on a small army of supplements for completeness.  I don't care enough for the mechanics of CT to get more supplementary setting material for it (I own The Traveller Book hardback), and I've never read any of the other versions of Traveller except T20 (which I don't really like).

KoOS

Quote from: YamoCan you link me to more info on this? Google just keeps giving me info on that shitty WW game.

Not really. It first appeared in Mythic Masters Magazine back in the early 90s. The files for which were later put up on TSR's website by their then webmaster, Sean Reynolds. Changeling is now spread by secret means to true DJ believers.

Premise: Start with a universe where Tesla's ideas caught on, and Hugo Gernsback was a technological prophet. Moon landing in the 50s, Mars colonized in the 70s, and dinosaurs roaming the sweltering jungles of Venus. It's the Solar System of Amazing Stories as told in stories by various people. Many of whom were pen names for Robert Silverberg. Then a mysterious cloud swept through the Solar System and screwed things up.

Now Marz is fighting against agents of The Computer on Urth, Venuz is home to frontier types battling primitive tribesmen and the aforementioned dinosaurs, and insane robots in Lunaz turn covetous eyes on Urth. All the while a multi-generational starship of immense size orbits around Jupiter, inhabited by people, plants, and creatures shrunk down to 1% of their normal size.

As I noted, gonzo.