Scott, this Ron Smithers from the Star Frontiers group. Coudo's to you on tackling this subject. All very good points and I agree with you as to what makes D&D more popular compared to Sci-Fi gaming. On a matter of note though, it is interesting that Star Wars RPG, when WotC had the license, was a level progression system, and yet no on plays it anymore! This despite that Knights of the Old Republic, one of the greatest video games of all time, was in fact using Star Wars WotC rules. Star Finder is just Dragonstar reborn. No one plays Dragonstar anymore and it had level progression as well. So, while I do agree with your statement and position, it is interesting that the data suggests another problem and I think you hit on it but you went in another direction. The problem is the nature of the Sci-Fi genre doesn't necessarily translate well when it comes into level progressing epic story telling. D&D is about Archetypes. The Dungeon being an Archetypal fear of the unknown, the Dragon being the Archetypal villian and monster, the ultimate anthropormorhic expression of human greed and hubris. Yet when it comes to Science Fiction, even when it is well and good, it's about the Science. Science is either the solution or the problem that needs solved. Exit archetypal villian stage left. Star Frontiers had the enigmatic Sathar, and yet it wasn't enough. Hard Science Fiction unless someone is an astrophysicist, or philosophically inclined at some point turns people off, or make them want to hit the snooze button and reset to sleep. Why? I'm not sure if I have the answer, but I think it is just the way we are wired. As game masters we have to give the players incentive to keep playing. "Hokey weapons and Ancient Religions are no match for a good blaster at your side.", as the great Han Solo said. It comes down to either they fight, flight, or freeze. Basic human instincts that we need to appeal to if we want to keep them coming back for more.
There is a lot to unpack here Ron, but I really like where you are going. I think Star Wars D6 from West End is an easy (roughly) system that is the choice system among Star Wars players, and Star Wars players are a different breed because they are fans of the intellectual property, but even so, Star Wars isn't being played in enough numbers to warrant inclusion on most game tracking websites (nor is anything science fiction other than Starfinder). I like the idea of arch villain, and I have to consider more of that, but I already had a vlog planned for the sathar concerning this. I also think that threats for the game were lacking in that it was created in 1981, when corporations were still roughly trusted as a place that supported an ever improving middle class, unlike the cyberpunk boom of 1988 when the Reagan years had begun to manifest corporate greed and mega-corporations were turned into the 'dragons' of the day. Thus, as 'threats' there needs to be some revision, which I do try to address in Zeb's V2 without turning the game into Shadowrun :)
Excellent point, sir. The importance of narrative to the Human psyche cannot be understated. Our biology seems to be structured around it on some important levels, so it makes sense to adapt it toward absolutely any endeavor where individual engagement is a priority.
Scott, first off, I love your videos. However, I have to disagree with you on this video. I think sci fi gaming is very viable. As sci fi gaming! No, it's not played as much as everything else. Everyone wants to hack and slack and collect all the treasure. You will not get those players to enjoy sci fi for what it is. The hard core sci fi fans know what they are getting into. Maps- What scenarios are you playing that have no maps?? Every game needs maps! Levels- Again, you are trying to play D&D in space instead of sci fi. If you want players skills or abilities to increase, change the number of experience points or whatever to reflect that above normal status that you want the players to have. Treasure- Again, not D&D in space. Treasure can be anything of value. Could be a ship, or upgrades to such, information, social positions, etc. Psionics- Lots of potential uses for this! Explore it. Again, I see where you are going, but I think you need to look at the players more than the setting. If they want to murder hobo their way through the game, stick to fantasy. These are strictly my opinions. Not trying to convince anyone of what I think. I just think that you need the right group to play sci fi. You just can't any gaming group and do this. They have to have understanding of what they are getting into.
I like the idea of the Tetrarch "magic", I totally agree with your take on the psychology of gamers but I also think there is something to be said for systems that are different. Perhaps, the reason scifi games do not do as well is because they are not written for the usual gamer mind. I'm not trying to sound elitist, but not all games are made for all people. I think levelling would make SF suck. The level chase does not appeal to everyone.
I always found the main drawback of running Sci-Fi was that while technology allows the characters to overcome many obstacles, like magic does in fantasy, it is much more difficult for a GM to use it to rationalize limitations that he wants in order to drive whatever story he might want to tell. In fantasy you can make magic rare. A character can have a sword that helps them fight, but not a flying carpet that solves 90% of their travel problems. But in sci-fi it is hard to rationalize having characters fly across the galaxy in a couple days or hours in a space ship, but they can't buy a flying drone to map out the dungeon. Or, give some plausible excuse for why they have to attack the base of the "space pirates" on the ground and can't just drop rocks on it from their space craft in orbit. Science fiction, for the most part, has to obey the actual laws of physics and chemistry, aerodynamics and common sense. With magic you can rationalize away pretty much anything much more easily. You can flex things a little bit in sci-fi. But if you do too much then your sci-fi game has become Star Finder with "dragons in space".
I can see a point here, but I guess as a GM one must contend with 'overly active players' and this is to say if every player wants to do crazy tech crap, like drop rocks on a pirate base from space (which is inherently stupid, BTW, because how the F is a little transport ship doing to have an effective rock launching weapon in it, cause you aren't just throwing a rock out an airlock and hoping it hits a specific building on a planet, and besides there are likely things inside the pirate base the characters are required to recover, thus exploding it doesn't work, but nonetheless...) the GM needs to have a clear design strategy in place to explain why a bit of tech decorum is required and how the players should act accordingly. And speaking as to drones, I actually use them a lot, allowing players to map out things using advanced drones, thus providing maps. If I don't want something seen, I have 'interference' or a drone gets knocked out of action. Otherwise, characters with computer skills can often pull up a schematic of a structure, which gives the blueprint but doesn't provide enemy placement. All things that are easily managed by a good GM, but again, we are talking 'hard' problems here in your post, not the existential ones of 'why people don't like science fiction as much' that I'm truly speaking to in my video.
I completely understand what you’re saying but you can always say that there’s interference which prevents technology from working properly or at full capacity. You can have technology which doesn’t interface with whatever they have on hand etc.
@@erikmartin4996 Sure, there are way to rationalize most anything. the whole point is that in Sci-Fi those rationals ring more hollow than in fantasy. Magic by its very nature of more malleable to the your narrative needs than technology. You can build a compelling an dramatic story in a Sci-Fi game it just takes more planning and forethought since you don't have quite the same level of "wave your hands and make a problem go away" in one genre that you do in the other.
Well, I think a great story helps both D&D and Sci-fi, and storytelling would be a boon or a problem for any group, so it doesn't directly have an impact on just science fiction. This is more about why people don't tend to play extended science fiction campaigns.
As a Writer/Game System Developer, I have far to many ideas/concepts on the subject of "Science Fiction Gaming" to list here, but to suffice it to say that I would start with "Rethinking What Science Fiction Gaming is" and re-engineer your product/concept of choice to meet your needs or those of your players.
The 'rub' is that I'm a kind of purist, and many people who watch my Star Frontiers videos always want to tell me to 'make a new system', and I simply don't want to, I just want to understand the drawbacks of the game well enough to find creative ways around them that people can employ while still enjoying the beautiful core that I think Star Frontiers is.
Write a good adventure. Be good at the story. You can do SciFi gaming WITHOUT the momentum being treasure or whatever. You just have to CREATE the incentive. Relying solely on 'treasure' to move your game forward is lazy even in the fantasy genre. Just because someone wrote variety into a book means you need to use it. I've been in fantasy games that only use the variety of the book and that 'murder hobo' garbage is what results...Write your own and I promise you, SciFi could be good too.
Good points. But Runequest uses the BRP system. No levels but one can increase skill levels. As for Traveller, no levels but one can increase skills and wealth.
Without changing the game system, the answer to many of these problems is to not play a sci-fi game as a "sandbox" & play them as a story line type game. Say in this game you are playing the Marshal & his deputies on a mining moon, there have been a number of seemingly random deaths that end up because of miners ODing on some drugs, investigating further you find out that the mine foreman has been encouraging taking dangerous drugs to increase productivity. He is upset you found out & has called in some hit-men to take the party out. This gives the players a goal to accomplish other than "Look I am now Lvl N+1 Stellar Knight now with a psi-laser katana!" Sandbox play is really fun in Fantasy games, but takes more work/a different mindset for the players in a sci-fi game.
Hand in hand with level issues is the lack of a robust shared universe. By that I mean in the same way RPG players want to advance in levels, they also feel accomplished based on the monsters they fight. Everyone remembers when they finally got high enough in level to fight their first Dragon. Over time the monsters in DND get progressively harder and harder, but along the way these monsters are mostly iconic. There is a lack of this in Sci-fi gaming in general, you add in the limited cannon that makes up the Star Frontiers world, I would argue, rather than work on a Zebulon's Vol 2 it might be a better move to make a Flora and Fauna of the Frontier in an attempt to build this shared world. And yes I understand there is the Sathar, but how often does a party combat them hand to hand? This is my feeling on the question at hand. All your thoughts are completely valid.
You see, stuff like THIS is why I post, so that my thoughts and concerns can be joined by other valid concepts that would thoughtfully enhance a universe. I fully agree with the above, and will think long and hard on it. I once created 115 new monster for The Folio of Fiendish Monsters, and it nearly killed me, but I would think you are correct that a system of branded and known 'monsters' would be a very good idea.
You can use a level system, it would require a little house ruling. The experience points you would gain would be in X number of experience points per level, say 20 points per level gained etc. depending on how fast you want the leveling to feel and how powerful you want characters to be per level. Also you would not be allowed to raise any skill levels by more than one per level. I personally would use milestone leveling as it would prevent murder hobo and unnecessary treasure hoarding greed for XP. I may try this as it would be easier to backtrack how many experience points a player has gained and gauge relative power of group for the new campaign I am starting soon.
Some interesting points. Question: do you have any data on the success of the Fantasy Flight Star Wars game? I know they invested a ton in making it, and did not hear you mention them in the current RPG market share??
I don't have any stats on the Fantasy Flight game other than what my eyes can see. It is a VERY expensive game (pretty, but expensive), I've seen lots of discussions indicating the the narrative-based mechanics are not RPG friendly enough, and it DOES NOT appear on any of the remote gaming site user information (Fantasy Grounds or Roll20) which means IF it is played, it is only played at a rate so small as to not exist (now this could be because it doesn't translate to those platforms well, or they don't support it, but still), AND I once asked who played the game to my 2000+ gaming 'friends' on Facebook and didn't get a single 'yes' reply (some owned it, but had never played, which is the case with me, as I prefer D6 from West End Games).
@@artofthegenre6087 I play the game regularly, and I find that it’s a lot of fun. The mechanic is very different from the standard d20 world, which takes some getting used to. It requires that the plot impact of die rolls be more of a negotiation between the GM and the players. I actually find it a nuanced expansion of the RPG that is more immersive to the players and gives them a creative opportunity to turn die rolls into true plot points. BTW Roll20 does have a framework and API for FFG Star Wars. I think you have to search for “EotE API”. EotE = Edge of the Empire. Another thing I like about it (as opposed to other attempts at making an rpg our of SW) is that it simply deals with developing the universe rather than the canon of Star Wars. This makes story options better. That being said, it is more Fantasy than SciFi. What I prefer about Star Frontiers (believe it or not) are the monetary and skill constraints. The steampunk, 2001, ice pirates feel of the game is what makes it fun.
Traveller has a 2d6 system, not %. The advantage and drawback of Traveller was that character development was all front loaded, so any character development was going to be story related, not focused on level up mechanics. Get some credits, a cool trinket, and a cool story. Sustain a sci-fi game by building connections and relationships in the story. Help out a really desperate small colony with a challenge, and your team now is always welcome to lay low there if needed. Trade in favors, not just credits. Build the story, let players start to influence the setting, so they can enjoy how their team have left a mark on the map. See that colony? We rebuilt their water purification plant, and now the colony is no longer having to pay Med Corp all those credits for special pills they used to need. The jerk who was getting rich off the deal hates us now, but it was worth the risk seeing a healthy colony start to thrive.
My first comment implied that only short run story telling adventures work with Sci-Fi gaming. I also ran a 3-4 year long Mekton Zeta (Anime based RPG) set in the Macross universe on a Megaroad colony fleet that got thrown across the galaxy along a fold fault. That game was HEAVY story line driven with Musical bands, romance & transforming space fighters (VF-4s at first & then VF-5000s).
I'm going to address both comments here, and that is to say that you are bringing up a point as to the nature of the skill of the Gamemaster, not truly replying to my post. I would contend a fantastic gamemaster, who is an adept storyteller, can sustain a long campaign in ANY genre (even something like Cthulhu), but this is NOT my point. My point is that the existential principles and often hard mechanics of science fiction gaming were not inherently built to support long-term viability, otherwise Fantasy Grounds would not have a 70+ percentage of 5E plays last quarter while having 2% Starfinder and 1.5% Traveller.
I liked this video so much I watched it twice. Here's a few more changes I'd make... +Information is a precious guarded resource. You have to pay for what you know. Maybe there can be Information Modules - IMs - which are small computers containing AI programs that can be asked questions like a portable professor. The result of this is a technologically advance society that is still not very well-informed, which means that there is a whole universe out there of things for them to discover. +Equipment can be marked as Contraband, and many inventions are kept secret to keep it from being flagged by Star Law as contraband. The last thing any starship captain wants is a device that does the same thing as a Passwall spell - until they really need one. +Electronic banking does not work. The computers are just too powerful to keep such things from being hacked, the only reliable currency is a poker chip containing a microchip containing (ironically) a cryptocurrency which is incredibly hard to counterfeit. This returns wealth to being a physical thing. Levels? Sure. It's fun to have a single measure of growing power. The only problem (really in both sci-fi and fantasy) is where do you draw the line between a character and that character's equipment? It seems like in sci-fi your equipment often determines your power moreso than your character. I would make it so your level is solely about what's under your character's skin and is really just a novelty, an easy way for us to talk about our characters. AND ART! I almost forgot about this! The artwork needs to return to the 20th century. There is more color in the universe than just blue, black and white - which is something that 21st century sci-fi seems to have forgotten. This century of ours seems fixated on bleak pictures of the future, and while that may make for a few decent movies, it doesn't contain the innate optimism of Star Frontiers. With games we want a place that has enough complications to be interesting and yet is interesting enough to escape to. It seems like a lot of Sci-fi games just give us grim worlds we want to escape from.
Jerry, it is obvious that you listened to my vlog twice AND that you 'got it' :) Well done! I really enjoyed the above thoughts, and while one must balance mechanical complexity with play-ability, I think you've done that very well. My level system is NOT as complex as let's say 3E or above D&D, but it does ad wrinkles that only effect the players. While small, I think it is 'enough' to motivate. As for that artwork, I think this your only reply that confused me. Are you saying all Star Frontiers art has to be color? That, I can't particularly get behind, because I think there is true genius in what Trampier, Holloway, Elmore, and Truman were able to do with b/w in the Star Frontiers universe, but I CAN get behind the optimism angle, the effect that is anti-cyberpunk or anti-Aliens (the RPG). I think the bright future was a product of 1981 USA, where we had the new Flash Gordon and the future seemed so open to all. As I said in another reply, this had changed by 1988 when corporations that provided a living wage for a healthy middle class had evaporated into the mega-corporations of a burgeoning cyberpunk revolution.
@@artofthegenre6087 I meant skill levels. There are no archetypes in SCi FI as cool as the Fighter, Magic User, Thief, Ranger, Barbarian and so on. It's tough to compete with that. I have played D&D, Top Secret, Star Frontiers, Alternity.
On the subject of levels, I agree. There should be archetypes and capabilities that are unlocked at certain levels of achievement. That would make progression much more fun.
Part of the way I dealt with loot in my sci-fi 5e variant was to use modification tech for weapons and armor, but not a direct 1to1 bonus amount. By designing mods where 5 might be needed to augment a single laser pistol to give it +1 damage, suddenly it's 5 carrots needed before you get the small bite. That keeps the dice gods happy and gives the lures for players. Maybe build barrels, handles, power cells, etc with more unique combining qualities that are rare to corps.
