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! :D
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.
Quote from: Cathode Ray on March 17, 2025, 04:20:15 AMI like ship-to-ship combat and pulp adventuring.
Like Flash Gordon? With Ray Guns(tm) and Death Rays, Rocket Packs? And the protagonist is wearing no gear but a longsleeve shirt which gets torn off and he's wielding a sword in one hand and a blaster in the other?
I can always get down with that.
Quote from: jhkim on March 17, 2025, 02:28:29 AMQuote 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.
Totally get all of that. But do you lean any particular way? or it is purely on your mood at the moment of a game? Should probably differentiate whether you're playing or GMing. There is a big difference.
Quote from: Kiero on March 17, 2025, 05:35:06 AMI'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.
So Star Trek/Babylon 5 - is more on the Star Wars side of the spectrum for you? Do you GM or play? And does either of these positions affect your tastes?
Quote from: tenbones on March 17, 2025, 12:21:44 PMSo Star Trek/Babylon 5 - is more on the Star Wars side of the spectrum for you? Do you GM or play? And does either of these positions affect your tastes?
Pretty much, yes. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed
watching both of those properties, but wouldn't want to play or GM them.
My kids are my default target player group nowadays, I could get my eldest excited about The Expanse, other stuff would be a hard sell.
Quote from: tenbones on March 17, 2025, 12:19:06 PMQuote from: jhkim on March 17, 2025, 02:28:29 AMI'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.
Totally get all of that. But do you lean any particular way? or it is purely on your mood at the moment of a game? Should probably differentiate whether you're playing or GMing. There is a big difference.
It just depends on my mood and the game. I've greatly enjoyed some Star Wars and Star Trek games, but I also enjoy gritty sci-fi and hard sci-fi.
I'd distinguish that "gritty sci-fi" is more about the trappings. Things are more cynical and dirty with less sense of wonder, but there isn't necessarily a greater basis in science. I'd put the Alien movies, the Firefly series, and the Murderbot novels in this category. A good example here is that in Alien, crew go into hibernation to save on resources - but they still have FTL travel that goes hundreds of times the speed of light. Going 100c doesn't have any more scientific basis than going 10000c, but it feels grittier to say that travel takes weeks or months.
Hard sci-fi is about exploring scientific possibilities, which is independent of being gritty. Some hard sci-fi has dazzling technology, like A Fire Upon the Deep, Blindsight, or The Three Body Problem. It's not that it's close to Earth tech, but the possibilities are inspired by science. Most hard sci-fi is closer to modern-day tech - like The Martian, The Doomsday Book, Project Hail Mary, and others - but not all. Something like the sophon of The Three Body Problem or the astrophage of Project Hail Mary are incredible and wondrous, but they are inspired by science rather than trying to find ways around science.
Hard sci-fi is pretty rare in general, and particularly rare in RPGs. That doesn't make it better. I've rarely tried for it in games that I've run, but I've considered it. I have thought about trying to do a first contact game of some sort, set in close to modern day Earth.
Again, I'm more interested in the particulars of the game than about soft vs gritty vs hard sci-fi. What makes the game interesting is more to the point.
My sci-fi tastes are all over the place and I don't think one game can capture them all. I like xeno-archeology and first contact stories, exploring derelicts, and discovering ancient mysteries. But, those don't really fall into the game of the week category. I also like blue collar in space settings like Hostile, Those Dark Places.
I got Across a Thousand Dead Worlds, Entity, First Contact, and some other sci-fi titles in my to-play queue.
Quote from: tenbones on March 17, 2025, 12:18:01 PMQuote from: Cathode Ray on March 17, 2025, 04:20:15 AMI like ship-to-ship combat and pulp adventuring.
Like Flash Gordon? With Ray Guns(tm) and Death Rays, Rocket Packs? And the protagonist is wearing no gear but a longsleeve shirt which gets torn off and he's wielding a sword in one hand and a blaster in the other?
I can always get down with that.
Exactly!
First, let me preface this post with saying I am a merchant seaman, I primarily run games on ships, and thus campaigns tend to last about 6-8 weeks 3-4 times a week and then either the crew change ends it or the ship schedule does. I also decide what setting I use based on the feel of the group of players I can assemble.
I have two different scifi setting games I run. Over the years I've tried different systems but largely it's irrelevant as the settings themselves jelled a long time ago. Currently I use a mash-up Traveller and Cepheus Engine rules set.
My first setting I describe to my players as a combination of Bladerunner, Outland, Silent Running, Moon 44, and Johnny Mnemonic. I play it straight and it's done as a more grounded and almost cyberpunk style game.
My second setting is heavily inspired by a lot of the scifi books I read as a kid. It's definitely an advanced universe with aliens, easy to use FTL,and and magic by today's standards tech. I definitely borrowed a lot from Frank Herbert, EE Doc Smith, Andre Norton, and Edgar Rice Burroughs. This tends to have a bit more of a high adventure feel.
The best advice I ever got for running games is "run the game you want to play." These two settings are very different from each other but they are both games I'd love to play and I love to run for my players.
I'm not going to add anything else from my semi-coherent views except this. If you want to do a space opera game, you are doing yourself a solid favor by reading the Preliminary Notes section and skimming the rest of the Atomic Rockets website.
https://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/index.php
Quote from: Kiero on March 17, 2025, 05:35:06 AMWhen there isn't even a skein of versimilitude to explain why various design choices were made, then I'm not interested.
This is one of my biggest hangups too. The settings' tech capabilities can be fantastical, but they need to be internally consistent.
Quote from: zircher on March 17, 2025, 02:37:47 PMMy sci-fi tastes are all over the place and I don't think one game can capture them all. I like xeno-archeology and first contact stories, exploring derelicts, and discovering ancient mysteries. But, those don't really fall into the game of the week category. I also like blue collar in space settings like Hostile, Those Dark Places.
I got Across a Thousand Dead Worlds, Entity, First Contact, and some other sci-fi titles in my to-play queue.
Alternity Star*Drive probably fits the bill for you. It's deliberately designed as a space opera kitchen sink.
It has multiple extinct precursor civilizations that left ruins and weapons behind. One of them is fairly conventional advanced civilization, while another is outright lovecraftian.
One of the novels has salvagers enter an alien derelict, only to discover that it's actually a cryoship and awakening the crew. The crew then uses their onboard wormhole generator (this is not a known technology in human space) to bring in reinforcements and establish a beachhead. Turns out they're not!Scarrans from Farscape!
The setting has psionics, robotics, cyberware, mutation, etc. and multiple jockeying human civilizations dedicated to specific niches. The Thuldans are like the genetically modified humans from Andromeda mixed with space Romans and Gattaca, the StarMech are space Western, Austrin-Ontis is space Texas, Borealis Republic is University of Planet with mass cloning, Hatire are militant space Amish, Orlamu are deistic rocket scientists, Voidcorp are corporate klingons, Rigunmor are plutocrats, Nariac is space soviet cyberpunk, etc.
There's also invading alien forces reminiscent of the Covenant from Halo. The same book also introduces a Star Trek-, Niven or Mass Effect-esque federation of alien civilizations opposing the religious nutjobs.
It was basically TSR's attempt to create a generic scifi kitchen sink that would be to scifi what Forgotten Realms is to fantasy. Naturally, WotC cancelled it so they could get the license to Star Wars, which they lost a few years later and is now worthless. To add insult to injury, they decided to make an original IP for their upcoming in-house c/rpg Exodus. It has talking animals and time dilation.
Interesting, will have to put out some feelers for that title. Thanks for the heads up.
Quote from: jeff37923 on March 17, 2025, 05:57:12 PMI'm not going to add anything else from my semi-coherent views except this. If you want to do a space opera game, you are doing yourself a solid favor by reading the Preliminary Notes section and skimming the rest of the Atomic Rockets website.
https://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/index.php
Also, for some inspiration on some board games and RPGs that employ innovative spaceship mechanics, Prhject Rho has a harder-to-find page that you will love:
https://www.projectrho.com/game/coolgame.html
I'm good with most sci-fi. I like Star Trek*, and Star Wars* for different reasons. Big Dune fan. Babylon 5, The Orville. (Doing a re-watch of that show right now.) I even like the 80's cheesy sci fi like the original Battlestar Galactica and Buck Rogers TV series.
*Usual caveat about the recent poor quality of these franchises.
I will say I like hard sci-fi, too. :) But I really glom onto that "Opera" part of space opera as a genre. It's hard for me to fight against my expectations of such a charged word. :D So much is conveyed in a name...