As the title suggests.

Do you want the "Federation of Planets" thing - where multiple races band together against other star-faring empires? How gritty do you want it? Ship combat? Away-mission variety? Or gritty war-campaigns with more fantastical elements like Star Wars-ish stuff? Pulpy sci-fi?

Do you prefer realistic stuff with mechanics that try to emulate real physics as long as its fun?

Tech-levels? Large command-ships with swarms of fighters? Or just capital ships slugging it out in space. Orbital bombardments and drop-ships with mechas and power-suited shock-troops with rich military specialties?

What pop-culture IP's inform your tastes?

Space disco in Sky City with Playmate of February and the Princess of Venus.

The short answer is, "it depends on my mood". The long answer will have to wait until I get home from work, because it will be long.....

Quote from: tenbones on March 16, 2025, 11:52:30 PMAs the title suggests.

Do you want the "Federation of Planets" thing - where multiple races band together against other star-faring empires? How gritty do you want it? Ship combat? Away-mission variety? Or gritty war-campaigns with more fantastical elements like Star Wars-ish stuff? Pulpy sci-fi?

Do you prefer realistic stuff with mechanics that try to emulate real physics as long as its fun?

Tech-levels? Large command-ships with swarms of fighters? Or just capital ships slugging it out in space. Orbital bombardments and drop-ships with mechas and power-suited shock-troops with rich military specialties?

What pop-culture IP's inform your tastes?

I'm happy with lots of different IPs. Planet of the Apes, John Carter, Neuromancer, Terminator, Mutant Year Zero, Doctor Who, Paranoia, etc.

There's a sense of "sci fi" to mean only rayguns and aliens and spaceships, which bugs me. It's similar to how "fantasy" is assumed to mean D&D-esque swords and wizards and monsters. Nothing wrong with D&D or Star Wars, but the genres include such a wider range of possibilities that it seems like people just don't consider.

That said, I have been thinking of an Alien adventure - which is spacefaring sci-fi. But there's plenty of sci-fi that doesn't involve space at all.

I like ship-to-ship combat and pulp adventuring.

My favorite space opera stuff is Errol Flynn movie type of adventure in space.  I like the idea of having a hero's arc but much more muted than what you get in typical fantasy. 

Robots and and aliens spice it up and boy do I love morally grey supporting characters like Han Solo and Bester (from Babylon 5) to round things out.

I love factions in my game.  A good number of factions that are flawed but have relatable perspectives at cross purposes to each other make for great drama and great game play. 

Introducing cool tech concepts is something I love.  In space opera, they should have some form of foundational rationality but they don't need to be hard science based.  It's a tech that can be learned and replicated but doesn't necessarily need to be fully explained nor 100% engineered to pass a pier reviewed journal acceptance.

For space combat, I'd pick an IP to emulate, based on where I wanted play to focus.  Depending on my mood I might pick Lost Fleet, Ascent to Empire, CoDominion, Robotech, Empire of Man, or Star Wars.

I'm utterly soured on Star Wars and anything else leaning into fantastical "space magic". When there isn't even a skein of versimilitude to explain why various design choices were made, then I'm not interested.

I prefer stuff towards the harder side of things nowadays. The Expanse and films like Alien, a grimy, lived-in universe where the only aliens are horrors. Mass Effect is about as space opera as I can take.

Quote from: Kuroth on March 17, 2025, 12:13:52 AMSpace disco in Sky City with Playmate of February and the Princess of Venus.

Halleluiah! Say it louder for the back! We want sumptuous, violent, decadent fantasy -- in SPAAAAAAAAACE! Opera, y'know, high drama that doesn't have to completely make sense if it interferes with the drama. Emotions, emotions, emotions! With costumes! And cool background sets! And a side cast with stunt doubles that outnumbers the orchestra! MOAR!

My opera needs stuff like Luke staring off at dual sunsets, Han Solo sass & 'droid audience prompts, Slave Leia diva energy, and Darth Vader redemption culmination. Lush, easily grokkable main plot, convoluted twists just because, a glorious panegyric to a golden age, finishing with high moral pageant bringing us back to satisfaction, be it comic or tragic.

Don't worry about plausibility; when habitable planets with singular biomes is de rigueur you can get away with a lot.

Personally, I find "hard" sci fi quite boring, especially in gaming. I agree with Kuroth and Opaopajr. My optimal sci fi game would be some combination of Heavy Metal/2000 and The Fifth Element, with a little splashes of Original Star Trek, Farscape, Cowboy Bebop and Vampire Hunter D.

Fencing. Personal space cars. Dogfights. Improbable alien races/mutants. Unknowable ancestral races. Arcing electricity and pumping liquids in all computer facilities. Mechanical monsters as playable race.

I confess that while I tend to enjoy both space opera and hard SF, I tend to respect harder SF more as a genre. This doesn't mean that you need to stick strictly to scientific plausibility, but to take the invention of a piece of technology seriously in your worldbuilding and to draw out first, second, and third order consequences of said technology.

Space opera tends to be more of a genre mashup, which in my experience is much more likely to have flavor conflicts and generally careless worldbuilding. Not always, but the danger with space opera is always overbuilding it into a mess, and rarely underbuilding it.

That said, I do tend to think a couple tech tropes are underutilized:

• Interstellar travel through lifespan extension rather than an FTL tech.
• Uplifted species vs naturally intelligent species.
• Realistically understanding the Apes or Angels paradox

A last one which comes to mind is a Star Trek Prime Directive. A lot of the interesting morality conflicts of softer space opera settings comes from the interaction with underdeveloped species, which means that a lot of the personality of a setting can be divined from the in-universe attitude towards a Prime Directive equivalent and how varied the attitudes and behaviors are towards such an idea.

Quote from: tenbones on March 16, 2025, 11:52:30 PMAs the title suggests.

Do you want the "Federation of Planets" thing - where multiple races band together against other star-faring empires? How gritty do you want it? Ship combat? Away-mission variety? Or gritty war-campaigns with more fantastical elements like Star Wars-ish stuff? Pulpy sci-fi?

Do you prefer realistic stuff with mechanics that try to emulate real physics as long as its fun?

Tech-levels? Large command-ships with swarms of fighters? Or just capital ships slugging it out in space. Orbital bombardments and drop-ships with mechas and power-suited shock-troops with rich military specialties?

What pop-culture IP's inform your tastes?

I like my space opera to be either medium-hard science fiction or science fantasy, but both need to "feel" realistic.

Looking at the science fantasy side with WEG d6 Star Wars or Mekton II/Zeta - backdrop of a war with all the pulpy adventures that can be translated from WW2 to the game (spy games, supply raids, civilians caught in the crossfire, A Bridge Too Far kind of stuff). Except X-wings and Gundams require fuel and/or reaction mass. Troops require food, water, and other supplies. The Empire or Earth Federation still need to provide a logistical support structure for the warfighters. This is all to help make starfighters that fly like Spitfires and Stukas (not to forget the heavy starships that fight like sailing ships trading broadsides) "feel" realistic. That suspension of disbelief is absolutely vital in these kinds of space opera. Although while the war is going on, there should be enough wiggle room for trade, smuggling, bounty hunting, or exploration campaigns.

Looking at the medium-hard science fiction like Traveller or Cepheus Engine - backdrop is wide open. I'd say that any science fiction backdrop from the 1950s onward is fair game, but that realism feel comes closer to the forefront. Trade exists, post-scarcity gobbledygook  is just that. Nanotechnology is not "space magic", waste heat of assembling or repairing injured characters is a very real thing. Even if controlled gravity exists, it has limitations. For myself, I really believe that a GM must have a high school understanding of science, engineering, and math plus a strong interest in current discoveries in science to be able to run the game. Adventure ideas come from YouTube channel shows on science and technology. You can't just say, "Oh, I've seen a Star Trek episode on this" and get away with it.

Which leads me to two never ending annoyances for me. Space Magic and Aesthetics.

Space Magic is any bullshit that has no scientific basis to it. This is usually psionics and I fucking hate it. The only two sources that did psionics right is Babylon 5 (which showed the possibilities of how it could be realistically be integrated into society) and Traveller's own Zhodani Consulate from the Charted Space setting (Dom McKinney in the Mongoose Traveller 1e Zhodani book and GURPS Traveller version are both fantastic because they show how another rational way that a society can be integrated with psionics). Everything else has been shit. Crystal hugging hippies back in the 60s-70s believed in psionics and they just don't work in game, even though they live on in the genre like a parasite. Ancients tech that is space magic keeps getting used as well and is just as much a cheat. Just because you don't know how something works doesn't mean that it doesn't follow known science (most people don't know how a TV set works, but they can still operate one). Psionics should always have the threat of an Akira or Stranger Things incident just a telepathic scan away.

The other thing is aesthetics. I fucking hate the art deco design of old 30s Buck Rogers/Flash Gordon rocketships. They may be great for some, but not for me. There are tons of better designed spacecraft art out there.

Now I want breakfast. Maybe more later.

TSR's old dead Star*Drive setting from 1998 is the only scifi setting that inspires me anymore. I wish there was a new setting just like it, but nothing else compares.

I'm not generally a fan of mixing magic/psionics/theForce with sf, however I am a huge fan of Andre Norton's early work that included such things, books like The Zero Stone, Moon of Three Rings, and so on.  If I wanted magic in an SF game I'd go that route.