SciFi RuneQuest

[Astromancer]

And there's always Cthulhu Rising. Just take out the Cthulhu Mythos-related parts.

Why!

 

[Astromancer]

Future World.

I never got to see this game, I'd heard of it, and I bought most of RuneQuest3rd and all of RingWorld. With these rules as guidelines, since they are meant to blend smoothly, why not just blend any prefered edition of Runequest with RingWorld and make that your SpaceQuest?

 

[soltakss]

And there's always Cthulhu Rising. Just take out the Cthulhu Mythos-related parts.

Why!

Because it's irrelevant claptrap?

The Cthulhu Mythos is fine if you want to run a Cthulhu-based game. However, I don't much care for it.

There's enough wierdness in SciFi gaming without having to add on an extra layer of Mythos stuff. In any case, most of the minor Mythos beasties strike me as being just different kinds of aliens. The Gods don't really have a place in SciFi games anyway, except perhaps as planet-detroying monsters and we can have those without resorting to Mythos.

 

[soltakss]

Future World.

I never got to see this game, I'd heard of it, and I bought most of RuneQuest3rd and all of RingWorld. With these rules as guidelines, since they are meant to blend smoothly, why not just blend any prefered edition of Runequest with RingWorld and make that your SpaceQuest?

Because the original Ringworld rights are owned by Chaosium, Ringworld is no longer a licensed setting and Chaosium probably won't want their material used with RQ - they have their own BRP system which is compatible with RQ but different.

Future World is OK, the setting is a reasonable one but the rules are sketchy and quite light.

 

[Halfbat]

There's always Translight http://www.comstar-games.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=40&Itemid=56 from Martin Dougherty (of Avenger fame, Spinward Marches).* It may well have stalled again, but it did have a fairly comprehensive and usable base set of rules. I'm not sure where to download a playtest copy though, or even if Martin continued with them.

It's not MRQ, but it is MRQ-like. And it's inspired by Traveller but isn't a pure Traveller-to-MRQ translation.

*NB: There's another, unreleased system called Translight by Mike Parkin that uses d6, not d100.

 

[master of reality]

Future World.

I never got to see this game, I'd heard of it, and I bought most of RuneQuest3rd and all of RingWorld. With these rules as guidelines, since they are meant to blend smoothly, why not just blend any prefered edition of Runequest with RingWorld and make that your SpaceQuest?

Because the original Ringworld rights are owned by Chaosium, Ringworld is no longer a licensed setting and Chaosium probably won't want their material used with RQ - they have their own BRP system which is compatible with RQ but different.

Future World is OK, the setting is a reasonable one but the rules are sketchy and quite light.

Actually, I think the rights to anything RingWorld are owned by the SciFi channel. Supposedly the SciFi channel is making a RingWorld movie.
I own Chaosium's RingWorld game. It's too bad that Chaosium can't do anything with this game or that Mongoose can't buy the rights to it or publish new supplements. Only one RingWorld supplement was ever published. There's also a RingWorld adventure in an issue of Different Worlds magazine.
It's a great game. As soon as I get around to scanning the game and saving it as a pdf, I"ll play it again. I don't want handle my copy too much because it is permanently out of print.

 

[Utgardloki]

I think you probably could do a setting on a world that is a ringworld as long as it is not in Larry Niven's Known Space, just as you can do a story with robots that follow the Three Laws of Robotics as long as you do not quote the Three Laws without permission. But I am not a copyright lawyer.

As far as gods in science fiction are concerned, I have been coming back to the idea that there would be creatures with the power of gods, who are so far beyond human technology that there is nothing that humans could do about them. There would not be a reason why EVERY such race would seclude themselves the way the Organians did in the Star Trek episode "Errand of Mercy". But they might regard humans the way that humans regard ants.

As far as Call of Cthulhu is concerned, I've thought about using Call of Cthulhu for a campaign set on the Moon, but not telling the players whether or not the Cthulhu mythos applies.

There are just so many options for a science fiction campaign, that it is hard to know where start. I would look at my favorite day dreams as a kid, and end up with a universe where you'll meet that space disco pinball chick portrayed on a glass plate that I would have liked to have bought for my basement except I didn't have the money for it, and I didn't have a basement, and I didn't have the money to buy a house with a basement.

 

[Loz]

Actually, I think the rights to anything RingWorld are owned by the SciFi channel.

You could be right. I do know that Mr Niven's agent will not discuss game licensing of any form given the TV/Film rights.

Supposedly the SciFi channel is making a RingWorld movie.
I own Chaosium's RingWorld game. It's too bad that Chaosium can't do anything with this game or that Mongoose can't buy the rights to it or publish new supplements.

Chaosium did approach Larry Niven about a Known Space game about two or three years ago; he was keen, but his agent said no, on the basis of the film and TV rights. A shame, that.

Only one RingWorld supplement was ever published. There's also a RingWorld adventure in an issue of Different Worlds magazine.

Somewhere, hidden in a box file, I have all the background notes to the proposed campaign book to support the Ringworld RPG. It was my first commission for Chaosium and, had it come to fruition, would've been a great campaign setting. But the rights got pulled and killed it before birth.

 

[Astromancer]

As far as gods in science fiction are concerned, I have been coming back to the idea that there would be creatures with the power of gods, who are so far beyond human technology that there is nothing that humans could do about them. There would not be a reason why EVERY such race would seclude themselves the way the Organians did in the Star Trek episode "Errand of Mercy". But they might regard humans the way that humans regard ants.

For the devout (which thank GOD I'm an atheitist) there are already Gods in science fiction.

Propose you set your game in a distant solar system in the year 20,372CE inhabited by colonists of Hindu/Indian, Yoruba, Thai, Japanese, and Brazilian origins, with the origional Brazilian colonists all being followers of various syncretic Afro-Amerindian faiths.

Have these pollythesistic space settlers discover new ways to access the inner divinities of the collective unconscious. In otherwords, use RuneQuest magic in an otherwise hard scifi campaign. It's only incongruous if you say it is.

Another option, used in the Long Sun novels is that the Gods are AIs that run a generation starship. Picture the ALs that run a RingWorld, each the uploaded personatity of a long dead philosopher or religious leader, each determined to create a utopia no matter who suffers, nor how many, nor how long.

 

[SSWarlock]

A friend of mine once ran a high magic campaign using the Traveller 4 rules. The campaign ended when all the PCs found out they themselves were all AI androids on a lost "R&R" world that had just been rediscovered by the Imperium. All magic effects were handled by a world-wide network of supercomputers (i.e. the "gods") using nanotech.

Really blew their minds.

Of course, it didn't do much for the Imp Navy's contact team's confidence either...especially when one of the gods was Orrecos (as in ORbital REtaliatory COmbat System)

 

[Utgardloki]

As far as gods in science fiction are concerned, I have been coming back to the idea that there would be creatures with the power of gods, who are so far beyond human technology that there is nothing that humans could do about them. There would not be a reason why EVERY such race would seclude themselves the way the Organians did in the Star Trek episode "Errand of Mercy". But they might regard humans the way that humans regard ants.

For the devout (which thank GOD I'm an atheitist) there are already Gods in science fiction.

Propose you set your game in a distant solar system in the year 20,372CE inhabited by colonists of Hindu/Indian, Yoruba, Thai, Japanese, and Brazilian origins, with the origional Brazilian colonists all being followers of various syncretic Afro-Amerindian faiths.

Have these pollythesistic space settlers discover new ways to access the inner divinities of the collective unconscious. In otherwords, use RuneQuest magic in an otherwise hard scifi campaign. It's only incongruous if you say it is.

Me, I have hundreds of ideas. I'm just responding to ideas brought up in this thread with my own thoughts.

To clarify my post quoted above, it's not that I was looking for a way to incorporate the gods in a science fiction campaign. It's that I was thinking that just because an interstellar race is as powerful as Star Trek's Organians, that does not mean they would necessarily have to sequester themselves on out-of-the-way planets. If they chose, a race like that could be gods. And who would stop them?

So let's say there are 14 races in the galaxy that have evolved to what I call "Rank 6", which means they have approximately the capabilities of the Organians. If there are 30% odds that they will sequester themselves, then there are about 4 or 5 planets like Organia scattered throughout the Galaxy. But if there is a 3% chance of any particular Rank Six race deciding to become gods, then a galaxy with 14 such races would have a 45% chance of being controlled by god-like beings.

But I do not think that this sort of thing is what Soltakiss had in mind when he started this post. It's an interesting idea. But of course the numbers in the previous paragraph were just pulled out of my head without any justification, and there might not be *any* Rank 6 races in the Galaxy.

(Note: for those who do not recognize the reference to the Star Trek episode "Errand of Mercy", I am referring to the one where Kirk beams down to a planet called Organia, and discovers a race so advanced that they just decide to nuetralize the entire Federation and Klingon star fleets, and demand that both belligerents agree to a peace treaty whose terms they dictate.)

 

[Astromancer]

The cultural background/satiric point of ST:tOS episode Errand of Mercy is the arrogance of the Cold War powers toward the third world. Because the Klingons, like the Soviets, were dipicted as worse (even though the fact is unimportant), rather than being a simple anti-US diatribe, most folks miss the satiric point.

 

[SSWarlock]

the culture background/satiric point of ST:tOS episode Errand of Mercy is the arrogance of the Cold War powers toward the third world. Because the Klingons, like the Soviets, were dipicted as worse (even though the fact is unimportant), rather than being a simple anti-US diatribe, most folks miss the satiric point.

Heh. I always liked Kirk's being slapped down by the so-called 3rd world Organians...

Kirk: "...We have the right–"
Organian: "To wage war? To kill millions of innocent people? To destroy life on a planetary scale? Is that what you're defending?"

 

[Astromancer]

The Organians had the right to speak to Kirk very sharply, unlike the Klingons HE knew better.

 

[Loran]

SF-godlike entities could also be like Vernor Vinge's singularity entities as described in his book "A Fire Upon the Deep".

 

[Astromancer]

SciFi entities that are GODLIKE could also be like the old joke where Ike asks the Computer:

Ike:Is there a God?
Computer: There is NOW!


And yes, I only just recently figured out the color keys. Why do you ask?

 

[Astromancer]

A book on useing RuneQuest's rules for Space Opera and Planetary Romance need not be a stand alone game. You'd need some new professions, some new skills and feats, Psionics (if you weren't useing magic), and some details of the genre and a good bibliography.


Planetary Romance is almost the same genre as RuneQuest anyway, and Space Opera is swashbucklers in spaaaace! So the basics game engine doesn't really need to be different.

 

[soltakss]

I'm working through the High Guard and Mercenary SRDs and adding them to the RQ SciFi SRD.

Traveller loves its tables, it's taking half my time combining multiple tables and stripping out unnecessary tables.

When looking at Traveller-style character generation, the rules in the new SRDs refer to Degrees of Effect and allocate results accordingly. Now, I take this as being the number that a target is exceeded by, so if I have a target of 7 and I roll 10 then I have 3 degrees of Effect. Is that right?

What would be the best way of converting this mechanic to RQ? I could say 1 Degree of Effect for every 20 rolled, so rolling 01-20 gives 1, 21-40 2, 41-60 3, 61-80 4 and 81-100 5, but this doesn't take into account criticals. My preference would be based on how much you make a roll by, but this doesn't gel with RQM.

Also, the Traveller rules goes very heavily into ship design, but the SRDs are very sketchy and are little more than toolkits. How many people have built ships using the Traveller system? How many would want that level of flexibility for a RQ SciFi game? To a certain extent it leaves me cold, but the power gamer in me is itching to optimise ship design and I would guess that a lot of people feel the same.

Are there any sample Traveller ships on the web? I couldn't find any when I last looked, but there again I didn't look very hard. Personally, I would prefer to have a dozen or so sample ship types that people could use off the shelf rather than having to spend ages designing a ship.

Also, people seem to like the Traveller Lifepath character generation system. I don't know why - it seems overly complex, unrealistic and cumbersome to me. Are there any examples of other professions available anywhere? I've got examples of Scout, Merchant, Mercenary and Navy but that's a very small number of professions.

I'm also posting this on the BRP forum for those people there who don't use the Mongoose forum.

 

[Loz]

When looking at Traveller-style character generation, the rules in the new SRDs refer to Degrees of Effect and allocate results accordingly. Now, I take this as being the number that a target is exceeded by, so if I have a target of 7 and I roll 10 then I have 3 degrees of Effect. Is that right?

Not quite. Traveller Effect is (Number Rolled+/- DMs) - 8. So if you roll 9 and have a +1 DM your Effect would be 2.

Effect doesn't gel neatly with RQ precisely because of crits (fumbles are less tricky to account for). Personally I think you would be better to simply lose Effect as a mechanic for Space RQ - although that lmay leave you with a problem where Traveller-style damage from weapons is concerned, because, in Traveller, you add your Effect to your rolled weapon damage, reflecting the quality of the shot, location hit, and so on. You could ramp-up weapon damage to account for that, although, with a basic gun doing 3d6-3 (average damage therefore being 9) you're going to have a reasonable chance of inflicting a major wound with a successful hit (armour prevailing, naturally), so adjusting weapon damage isn't, perhaps, necessary. And, if you crit with a weapon roll, maximum damage is going to be quite nasty (15 points in the 3d6-3 gun case). Also, for melee weapons, your Space RQ character may have a Damage Modifier too.

Not sure this helps Simon - but I fully understand the challenge!

 

[soltakss]

Not quite. Traveller Effect is (Number Rolled+/- DMs) - 8. So if you roll 9 and have a +1 DM your Effect would be 2.

Thanks, it's even more complicated. That's why I like RQ - it's a lot simpler than most other games.

There are places in character generation that use the Effect to determine how many extra points you get. One example is the Ticket Adjustments in the Mercenary Ticket rules.

Ah well, I'll just have to use another table for these.

Effect doesn't gel neatly with RQ precisely because of crits (fumbles are less tricky to account for). Personally I think you would be better to simply lose Effect as a mechanic for Space RQ - although that lmay leave you with a problem where Traveller-style damage from weapons is concerned, because, in Traveller, you add your Effect to your rolled weapon damage, reflecting the quality of the shot, location hit, and so on.

That's not a problem as I am using RQ-style damage and skill resolution.

You could ramp-up weapon damage to account for that, although, with a basic gun doing 3d6-3 (average damage therefore being 9) you're going to have a reasonable chance of inflicting a major wound with a successful hit (armour prevailing, naturally), so adjusting weapon damage isn't, perhaps, necessary. And, if you crit with a weapon roll, maximum damage is going to be quite nasty (15 points in the 3d6-3 gun case). Also, for melee weapons, your Space RQ character may have a Damage Modifier too.

Actually, I have ramped down weapon damage, on the whole. Traveller SRD weapons have very high damage that doesn't work with Hit Locations. In a BRP game, however, higher damage is OK if used without hit locations.

Not sure this helps Simon - but I fully understand the challenge!

It does help, thanks, if only to reinforce my intention of not using any Traveller game mechanics in the RQ SciFi SRD.