Spacequest: Runequest vs D20 vs GURPS vs D6 in space

[mthomason]

It would be nice to see some rules reguarding uing the OGL from Mongoose. IMO the lack of rules/ standards is what's killing D20. So many companies, so few decent products.

I've noticed the change in attitude since the initial release of the d20 licence.

To start we had

"Oh, cool, d20 logo - I can use that with my existing stuff"

Then we had

"More d20 products.. well I'll just have to decide which one I want the most"

And finally

"Oh #@!&, yet another d20 product. It probably sucks just as much as the last ten homegrown things I bought, I'm not even going to waste my time picking it up and looking at it."

I stopped looking for the d20 logo and started looking for the publisher's name long ago. Note how Mongoose dropped the d20 logo off most of their lines over the past year, and it doesn't appear to have adversely affected their sales - people know Mongoose so they buy the product on that basis. Now any publisher slapping a d20 logo on something is likely just a poor attempt to get noticed amongst all the rest. The "d20 boom" is over, it's been over for a long time, but some people continue to stick the logo on because they know without it their product will have to stand on it's own merits (or lack thereof)

 

[Durand Durand]

If you can get it. The Ringworld RPG, done years past by Chaosium, is really, REALLY good. The rumour is that Mr Niven himself, when throwing open his 'known space' world open to a select few authors, gave each a copy of the rpg & said "This is everything you'd ever need to know about known space." We used it pretty liberally for sci-fi gaming for some time. Dang hard to get a copy, I ain't seen one for several years, and they cost $$.

DD

Just seconding this opinion - its an outstanding game with very few changes from the RQ formula:

substitute EDU(cation) for POW, MAS(s) for SIZ, Continuous thread of Impulses instead of Strike Ranks broken into rounds, and of course different skills and equipment. There's also an unusual mechanic for handling long, complicated science/engineering tasks breaking them into steps and identifying the skills needed. Don't know how it plays but seemed very cool at the time.

Actually, Ringworld kept POW and added EDU (like CoC). When people can live for centuries with longevity drugs they could spend a lot of time studying. We had PC's with EDU's in the 40's. We also had one with POW 32 (a lottery child), and one ~150 years of age.

For Sci-Fi games, POW is a simple indicator on strength of will and the will to POWer, you personal ability to make the universe treat you nice (luck). It's not just about magic and psionic powers, it's a little more. It's your ability to cope with stress, with loss, a measure of your confidence and happyness (High POW doesn't mean your happy, but that you have to potential to be if you wanted to).

DD

 

[wartorn]

If you can get it. The Ringworld RPG, done years past by Chaosium, is really, REALLY good. The rumour is that Mr Niven himself, when throwing open his 'known space' world open to a select few authors, gave each a copy of the rpg & said "This is everything you'd ever need to know about known space." We used it pretty liberally for sci-fi gaming for some time. Dang hard to get a copy, I ain't seen one for several years, and they cost $$.

DD

Just seconding this opinion - its an outstanding game with very few changes from the RQ formula:

substitute EDU(cation) for POW, MAS(s) for SIZ, Continuous thread of Impulses instead of Strike Ranks broken into rounds, and of course different skills and equipment. There's also an unusual mechanic for handling long, complicated science/engineering tasks breaking them into steps and identifying the skills needed. Don't know how it plays but seemed very cool at the time.

Actually, Ringworld kept POW and added EDU (like CoC). When people can live for centuries with longevity drugs they could spend a lot of time studying. We had PC's with EDU's in the 40's. We also had one with POW 32 (a lottery child), and one ~150 years of age.

For Sci-Fi games, POW is a simple indicator on strength of will and the will to POWer, you personal ability to make the universe treat you nice (luck). It's not just about magic and psionic powers, it's a little more. It's your ability to cope with stress, with loss, a measure of your confidence and happyness (High POW doesn't mean your happy, but that you have to potential to be if you wanted to).

DD

Ahh ok I was half-thinking it was still there - whoops. This explains where I got the idea that POW = Will (and was thus a good base stat for morale tests in Fantasy)

 

[Utgardloki]

I remember from the Ringworld novel that Luck was something that a person could have more or less of than another person. Humans were said to be particularly lucky, and one of the characters in the original novel had so much luck, she never had to bother with being careful.

For my own purposes, I'd like to keep a "plausible deniability", so POW becomes a useless attribute. In fact, maybe I'll tell the players to not even bother to roll it, and reserve it for select NPCs who might have a low POW score.

Another option might be to have players consider it to be a FLOW stat, which represents how well they can respond to the Universe. (DEX would be how well you can manipulate, dodge, or manuever; FLOW would be knowing exactly what to manipulate, dodge, or manuever.) This would be simular to treating it as LUCK, but less powerful.

An example of use of FLOW might be (to draw from history), a case where George Washington charged into British troops, and came back without a scratch. (This is from Flexner's book _The Indispensible Man_.) Based on what Flexner wrote, George Washington might be a real-life example of a guy with high FLOW (POW).