An appeal to Mongoose Regarding Spacequest

[Chardros The Reaper]

Please, as much as legally possible, make the upcoming SpaceQuest book easily adaptable to the Star Wars universe. Throw in some psionic abilties that mimic Force powers...starship shield rules...(an)droid pc rules and the like. I think RQ would be an excellent system to use in the Star Wars setting. The hit location rules alone are perfect for lightsaber combat. Of course, I could do all the conversions now for myself, but I won't have time to as I intend to be playing loads of Hawkmoon and Elric in the coming months. But keeping Star Wars in mind whilst designing the SpaceQuest rules will save us d20-disenfranchised GMs a lot of time!

Thanks and keep up the good work!

 

[Mage]

Well the gus at mongose are huge Star Wars fans, and from what I remember in an earlier Signs and portents download, they did want to do some sort of Star Wars game, but I cannot remember the details, however they could not get the license.
Odds are mongoose staff won't comment on this due to legal safety reasons, but do not be surprised to see stuff similiar to storm trooper armour (power armuor and the like). Lets face it, light sabers have been in all sorts of things (Gundam Wing, the Mega man games, parodied in god knows how many other shows, transformers, spiderman, mortal combat, superman, everything).
It probably will not be too blatant, but odds are there wll be stuff as Star Wars is a heavy part of the sci-fi genre.
Also, I believe Judge Dredd and Starship troopers will be settings for spacequest, so stff from those might help with ships, armour, and other things.

 

[Halfbat]

Absolutely: stuff like powered armour is commonplace and has a massively wide range. As are energy weapons. And the whole starship trader thing is a staple of SF (from Traveller to Star Wars to computer games).

And shields? Absolutely! From the early fiction onwards this has been key. I wonder if the various forms of Interstellar travel will be considered? Slowboats/generation ships, static wormholes (roll on Stargate! - but Heinlein had them years before), and hyperspace/Warp would all be useful.

As far as I can see, one of the more difficult things is not only a coherent and controllable skill set but getting a play balance between the extrordinary amount of damage some of the SF weapons can do and RPG "hero" characters. And this, I think, will have to be tested intensely. Perhaps shock and mook rules would be useful.

 

[weasel_fierce]

As long as it can do Aliens and Traveller I dont care about the rest. Throw in "laser swords" and "the power" if you guys like

 

[klingsor]

Ideally it will be a good set of core rules with a lot of variants, not quite settings but more setting styles – low, moderate and high tech each in sensible, fairly realistic flavours and more outrageous versions so high tech outrageous could be used for Star Wars.

I was going to use Serenity/Firefly as an example but I stumble at the inclusion of mental powers, these I would put in the gosh-wow version but not the realistic one (see Niven's 5th law) but otherwise Serenity is moderate to low tech. I think the place for that sort of thing is obviously an appendix as if you put it in the core section players will want to use it.

For example I want to be able to model David Drakes Reaches books which have an odd low-moderate tech mix.

I think you need to look at different methods of FTL propulsion but it is almost inconceivable that more than one would be even possibly in any one setting (plus the STL generation ship of course).

Key issues, just a few examples, an exhaustive list would be very long indeed.
Stardrive
* STL
* FTL (hyperspace, star gates…)
FTL Communications
Space Drives
* Reactionless drives
* Torch drives
Aliens (are there any?)

I hate to say it but GURPS Space is worth a look for how it tries to cover every base. It is not a setting book though so much as a toolbox for making your own and that is both its greatest strength and its worst failing. I think Mongoose are going to want their own setting, possibly with the alternatives or rather the tools to make them relegated to appendices.

One issue will be in differentiating what fits where in the tables – one somewhat cynical example born out of bitter experience (remember the G11 in Twilight 2000). If you have blasters and force swords on the weapon lists then the players are going to take them even if you are trying to run Firefly.

 

[duncan_disorderly]

I hate to say it but GURPS Space is worth a look for how it tries to cover every base. It is not a setting book though so much as a toolbox for making your own and that is both its greatest strength and its worst failing. I think Mongoose are going to want their own setting, possibly with the alternatives or rather the tools to make them relegated to appendices.

If the intention, as with RQ, is to provide a generic rule set to power In-house and OGL SF settings then GURPS Space is exactly the sort of model that they should adopt. A GM who wants to use this generic rule set to run (eg) a Firefly game will be able to pick and chose the rules he wants. If it is published as a setting (without this being made very clear) then expect lots of complaints when people expecting to be able to run (eg) Star Wars find the Firefly-esque setting missing all sorts of rules for Droids, Aliens, Force use, Lightsabers etc etc...

 

[Smokestack]

Hey all. Just thought I'd point out that Spacequest was a line of video games released by a company called Sierra in the late 80's and early 90's, so if the Spacequest being mentioned here is short for "sci-fi Runequest" and is not an actual license of the video game, there may be some copywright problems. Hopefully all has been resolved already, just thought I'd let ya know.

And yes, I'm new here... :wink:

 

[Rurik]

Hey all. Just thought I'd point out that Spacequest was a line of video games released by a company called Sierra in the late 80's and early 90's, so if the Spacequest being mentioned here is short for "sci-fi Runequest" and is not an actual license of the video game, there may be some copywright problems. Hopefully all has been resolved already, just thought I'd let ya know.

And yes, I'm new here... :wink:

Welcome.

Troublemaker.

(you should fit right in)

 

[pasuuli]

Rules can be flexible enough to swap in and out features to adjust to the setting.

Give them standard subspace drives and you have Babylon 5.
Swap out the subspace drives with week-delay jump drives, and shrink all of the ships to 25%, and you have Traveller.
Swap them out with hyperspace drives instead, and you have Star Wars.

And that's just for spacecraft. The same can hold for player rules:


Give them standard psionic classifications and you have Babylon 5.
Tweak the classifications to include subtypes and you have Traveller.
Swap them out with the Force and you have Star Wars.

In many cases, it may only be nomenclature changes.


Give them standard projectile and plasma sidearms and you have B5.
Swap the energy weapons with lasers and gauss guns and you have Traveller.
Swap them out for blasters and light sabers and you have Star Wars.



A nice side benefit is that a creative referee can then mix and match modular rules to suit his universe.

Another side benefit is that ships and people and equipment can, to a certain extent, be swapped into and out of different game settings without having to undergo changes.

But then, this might also be one of the benefits of D20.

 

[weasel_fierce]

But then, this might also be one of the benefits of D20.

Actually, as it stands, its the benefit of GURPS or Hero.

D20 games are generally familiar but still largely incompatible. I cant take a Conan character and use him in Eberron alongside my Starship Troopers guy.

 

[vitalis6969]

But then, this might also be one of the benefits of D20.

Look into the flashing lights.... See them spin.... Concentrate on my voice....

There are no benefits to D20...

D20 is evil...

There are no benefits to D20...

When I count to three you will wake up.........

-V

 

[weasel_fierce]

On the upside, if Lankhmar is to set an example, RQ seems like it will maintain internal consistency.

 

[Vagabond]

Hey all. Just thought I'd point out that Spacequest was a line of video games released by a company called Sierra in the late 80's and early 90's, so if the Spacequest being mentioned here is short for "sci-fi Runequest" and is not an actual license of the video game, there may be some copywright problems. Hopefully all has been resolved already, just thought I'd let ya know.

And yes, I'm new here... :wink:

[pedant]The Sierra game line was "Space Quest" - two words [/pedant]

There is also a satellite technology company called SpaceQuest.

-V

 

[AKAramis]

Hey all. Just thought I'd point out that Spacequest was a line of video games released by a company called Sierra in the late 80's and early 90's, so if the Spacequest being mentioned here is short for "sci-fi Runequest" and is not an actual license of the video game, there may be some copywright problems. Hopefully all has been resolved already, just thought I'd let ya know.

And yes, I'm new here... :wink:

[pedant]The Sierra game line was "Space Quest" - two words [/pedant]

There is also a satellite technology company called SpaceQuest.

-V

Guys, that's not a Copyright issue. It's a Trademark issue. While still intellectual property, it's a different batch of laws, remedies, etc. Just as much an issue, but in trademark, as I understand it, if they don't defend it, they lose it, unlike Copyright.

 

[simonh]

Ever the optimist, I have high hopes for SpaceQuest.

I must admit I've lost a lot of my initial interest in RuneQuest, not because there's anything wrong with the basic concept, but the execution of so many individual elements of it are problematic that it's fallen, for me, to a death of a thousand cuts. I will have a look at the new rules fix document and I hope it helps, but with SpaceQuest Mongoose have a true Tabula Rasa on which to build a system using their experiences from the problems with RQ.

I was very excited about RQ when it came out and I tried to be as positive and constructive as possible for as long as I could, but in the end I've run out of steam. I'll be going back to using the Elric 4th Edition rules with RQ magic for the game system, and using some of the excellent Mongoose Gloranthan supplements for setting information. I think I'll also pick up the Lankhmar stuff too as I've been a Lieber fan since I was a teenager.

So, best of luck with SQ Mongoose. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

 

[pasuuli]

But then, this might also be one of the benefits of D20.

Look into the flashing lights.... See them spin.... Concentrate on my voice....

There are no benefits to D20...

D20 is evil...

There are no benefits to D20...

When I count to three you will wake up.........

-V

Don't need to bother with that. I'm not a D20 player.

 

[steffworthington]

SpaceQuest/2320AD? Lord that'd be good!

 

[Lord High Munchkin]

Dear All,

I've run 'Metamorphosis Alpha' (as in the 1st edition MA before it went all space military) using the RQ3 rules and the 'Hawkmoon NE' mutation system - without doubt the best mutation rules yet.

Worked fine.

Regards

 

[yojimbo]

I must admit I've lost a lot of my initial interest in RuneQuest, not because there's anything wrong with the basic concept, but the execution of so many individual elements of it are problematic that it's fallen, for me, to a death of a thousand cuts. I will have a look at the new rules fix document and I hope it helps, but with SpaceQuest Mongoose have a true Tabula Rasa on which to build a system using their experiences from the problems with RQ.

It's not quite a clean slate. There have been a handful of attempts at BRP sci-fi, none of them successful. There was Future World from the Worlds of Wonder set, Ringworld RPG (based on Larry Niven's novels) and Other Suns (which Chaosium declined to publish so it was published by FGU instead).

Still, not much competition to beat, though

 

[Tal]

There was also once a Space Quest RPG. Although put out by a differant company with differant rules.