Your fav science-fantasy RPG system?No Shadowrun

What is your favorite science fantasy system? I write "system" as I would like to play something that is build from ground up for those themes.

Technology, magic, science, cybernetics, preferably: also space ships. Some crunchiness of the rules is very welcome, but RPG are not war games and overcomplicating things is not good too(Shadowrun 4th and later additions). From other side of things: very simple rulesets(PbtA - I'm looking at you!) won't do here too.

Also I'm less willing to hear about the "settings only" - that try to do it for some other existing systems(especially anything "new DnD" derived as I simply don't like those, but OSR have some interesting things).

Of course obvious choice would be: Shadowrun - but I'm looking for something less obvious, less mainstream(if that was ever the case with Shadowrun? ;) ). As I have already discusses it in other threads. And as AFAIK it is not aimed to have space ships and exploration?

Traveller - as is probably my favorite system right now - is not "fantasy" at all... even having phonics. So is crossed out too.

I know about Numenera and Cypher systems... but still willing to hear why they are best science fantasy systems - if you really think about them in that way?

So: something less obvious, less "mainstream".

That was in general. A specific case for what I'm looking for, or putting it in other words:

I'm looking for a system that allows me to buy official/ready adventure modules:
- from fantasy systems - you can always land your ship on some underdeveloped planet that is at the level of Middle Ages and go in for some dungeons under the castle, and find there something magical, (Stare Gate-like?)
- from hard-sci fi system - space station overtaken by rouge AI - no problem with that,
- from other sicence fantasy systems - like i.e. Shadowrun, Numenera(also alien dungeons filed with magical artifacts, strange technology and the real feel of exploration of new worlds)

And then: Adopot them. And play it with the same bunch of PC moving from one planet to another. With the same rulesets. That allow for long and interesting development of PCs.

AND to still feel that the world is complete, concise and logical(as it seems with Shadowrun but it is only aimed on one planet, and fighting with corporations not so much exploration AFAIK...).

Coriolis is pretty great. It's a Middle East-themed sci-fi game. Not much fantasy, but it's different than other sci-fi games because there are gods and its a more gritty feeling. It's made by Free League and they put out high quality products.

Genesys system has many science-fantasy settings. There's Star Wars, of course, but also Salvage, Keyforge: Secrets of the Crucible, and Starcana. There's also a fan-made Final Fantasy VII book for Genesys. Never played any of these settings but they look cool!

There's a very Stargate-like game of Egyptian sci-fi called Baroque Space Opera which uses the Fate system.

Last, there's Vhain: Claim to Power which is sci-fi where you play elite warriors who travel to other worlds and have psychic powers and can gain blessings from gods.

Thanks! Those are VERY interesting recommendations. Certainly will explore them some more. Starcana looks very good also at the first glance.

But does it have some additional rules for space ship combat?

I presume you are a Genesys player, so do you find space ship combat rules in core book good enough?

The best one I have seen - providing the role and something to do for almost everyone during the space combat battle - were indeed in Corliolis. Are there similar rulesets for some of the Genesys supplements? Which one you find the best?

Hi,

If this is your goal:
... then you don't need the fluff, only the crunch. In this case, I would recommend that you just pick a generic system. Some that could easily implement science fantasy settings include Fate, Cortex Prime, Savage Worlds or GURPS.

I am a fan of Genesys, but not in PbP; too much back and forth needed for the narrative dice. I've only used Genesys for Star Wars and an 80s/90s brawler setting, so I unfortunately can't answer anything about ship combat.

Rifts

The Savage Worlds adaptation is excellent, and I would happily play that game. If you haven't given it a try I strongly suggest you check it out.

Palladium had (has) a Robotech system using their standard percentile mechanic that I played the hell out of in the 90's. Awesome stuff, all the main serialized sagas (Macross, Southern Cross and Invid) were included in their own books.

Take a look at Dark Sun, perhaps?

Love Dark Sun. So ahead of its time for a DND publication back then and what a cool world concept they built.

Saw Stardrifter ttrpg online. It's free to play and that would be a cool ttrpg to play as a play by post game. you basically have a ship and you fly in outer space and get to explore planets, avoid supernovas and stuff.

The best system I can suggest at the moment would be FrontierSpace. It uses DwD Studio's D00-Lite system (well, an evolution of it, really). This means the combats are dynamic as combattants gains progressively worse penalties the more actions they perform in a round.

The Frontier is pretty well established, has a rich history going back for hundreds of years, and has several powerful factions and corporations. Still, everything is superficially described to help you make your setting your own.

The Referee's Guide as plenty of good advice on making your own sector of space and your own alien species. There are also plenty of published scenarios available, both official and from 3rd party publishers so that your players should easily progress to about Rank 3 or 4 (out of 10).

Any flaws would be that the system is oddly obsessed with multiple of 5s compared to past iteration of the system, but hey, it still works. Specialized skills are odd in that you'll never roll them under their actual score until a few Skill Abilities are later purchased. I'm also not a huge fan of armor that just grants people another pool of "HP" opponents have to punch through in order to harm the person inside...


Another good contender would be Aliens & Asteroids which sells itself as a mix of Starship Troopers, X-Com, and Lovecraftian cosmic horror, and yeah, I can totally see it! The universe is a bit more fleshed out that in FrontierSpace, but you'll have to search a bit to find published material for it, such as purchasing the Ouroboros magazine, or searching the defunct A&A section via the Way Back Machine on Gallant Knight Games' website.

Thanks for all suggestions!

One game that I found recently and looks very promising in this subject is: Subversion RPG - by Fragging Unicorns Games. Recently was on KS and the provided some test rules.

Looks like having all the aspects of Shadowrun, but don't have buckets of dice.

We will see:)

Subversion looks like it could be good! I'd be interested to see the rules to see if it is as good as I hope.

It looks like their test rules are still available form their KS... so here you are:
Subversion+v0.50.pdf

:) Looking forward for any opinion(as I don't have time currently to analyze the rules deeper) and if you will ever consider GMing it here on GP - count me in as first player! :)

Awesome, thanks! I'll give it a read this weekend.

I still have a love of Spelljammer. Just rock it in all its AD&D glory.

Also Trinity isn't science fantasy but the psions there are basically magic users so I'd count that if you like the white wolf style "here are the ten tribes, er clans, er aspects, er" style.

For science-fantasy, I need look no further than Savage Worlds. It really is a versatile system, but you asked for something specifically designed for such. I should note that Traveller is perfectly capable of doing science fantasy just fine with minimal changes to the system (see Flynn's Guide to Magic in Traveller). My favorite fantasy science-fiction setting was Alternity, though it is hard to find now (the original), or Gamma World, though GW is more of a setting unto itself. If you are a Star Wars fan, then really, the original d6 System can't be beat. And then there was Spelljammer, which really did justice to science-fantasy.

Thanks for all the suggestions. I like Traveller, but I feel that still didn't discover it full potential. But I like its "serious" attitude to the subject:)

This Flynn's looks interesting. Someday I will buy it and read:)

I'm a fun of SW too, but in this case it seams too generic - as you mentioned I look for something with "dedicated science-fantasy feel".

You mean: this Alternity??

Gamma World and Spelljammer is from DnD family.... and somehow I don't like this rule sets. I don't know, maybe to rigid. Maybe I don't like the "most popular things"... :) I know they are part of history, but I prefer other rules system. (But I like Knave! and it's hacks:) )

I'm looking "at" some d6 systems for some time now. They really seem to have something interesting in them.

But how you would compare Mini Six: Bare Bones Edition isn't it the same but condensed ?

If I would have to define what I'm looking for it would be: ruleset supporting science-fantasy feel as much as The One Ring ruleset supports "Tolkien feel" being very elegant at the same time.

Maybe Fria Ligan will release some science-fantasy system that is not too dark some day? I hope so:)

I had a lot of fun with the Palladium system for Robotech: Invid Invasion back in the 90's, a dystopian sci-fi setting with an ever-present alien oppressor. The Palladium system is well done if a little crunchy but I found it easy to absorb as a teenager so I'm sure it would be easy for you.

Nope, the one that predates that. The system that was the predecessor to that one.
I'm honestly not sure, as I've never read the Mini-Six rules, but I've added them to my cart and intend to rectify that. I will provide a more in-depth answer when I have read them.

I respectfully disagree. I found that the Palladium system was okay, until you go into Mega-Damage. I've never played Robotech so I'm not sure if it uses M.D., but Rifts was horribly unbalanced. Fantastic setting, lousy execution. And the power creep! Every sourcebook that came out had more powerful classes than the last. And there was no internal consistency between the books. Palladium Fantasy handled skills differently than Rifts, which handled skills differently than Ninjas and Super-Spies, even though all three were the same system!

That would drive me crazy but fortunately for me I only ever played Robotech via Palladium so I have no frame of reference as there was no splat. MD seemed to work well enough for that system, what was it 100:1 conversion? Made perfect sense to me that a 9mm would do nothing to a 60' Veritech and that a mech would basically disintegrate a human in one shot... What didn't you like about it?

That was the thing. Why play an ordinary human that does S.D.C. when you can play a glitter boy that does M.D.C.? I had a human samurai that was very formidable against even relatively powerful foes, but our party consisted largely of M.D.C. dealers. In order to balance things for them, it meant that anything she faced, she couldn't scratch with her S.D.C. sword or stand up to with her S.D.C. armor. In her element, she was very powerful, but against M.D.C. creatures, she was next to useless. I spent most sessions hiding to keep from being instantly killed by our foes.

Oh yeah, in a non-mecha setting that seems ridiculous. In Robotech it works cuz the game is all about getting in a mech and fighting giant aliens but in literally ANY other setting that would be laughable.

Looking forward to any opinions about Mini-Six system:)

Thanks, I will look into this older version. It's the one with "step dice" mods to main roll?

But I wanted to get back to Savage Worlds for a moment. I like its structure of this rule system and ideas in the rule books very much... but one thing bothers me in this system: main TN is 4.

What means considering that if you are somehow trained in the skill - even just a little - you have more than 50% chances to have a hit on the roll. So it seams that you succeed with doing almost everything in this system? So it seems "too easy". Add to this exploding die (and I like this idea a lot too - at it own) and even 1 level PC is mostly successful at everything?

Of course it is only me theorizing about this system as: besides of reading the rule books I was literally in one game here on GP that were run on SW ruleset. So that's why I'm asking experts in the subject: isn't SW "too easy on PC's" ? And one don't feel the challenge? Or I'm missing a lot of points in this subject?

As someone who's playing in a bunch of Savage Worlds game and enjoys the system a lot for PBP, mathematically, it would seem pretty easy. You always roll two dice, one of which a D6 (on its own already with a 50% chance to hit a 4) and the other based on your skill level. Plus then there's also Bennies, which you can spend to reroll. Your characters are definitely competent in Savage Worlds, but I never got the impression that it was too easy. Failure still happens regularly. I haven't looked at the actual percentage chances for each skill level, but to me at least, the characters don't feel overpowered.

Opposed rolls are also a thing, so if you're fighting some big bad, they will be rolling against the PCs and setting the target number with their roll, so it may be a lot higher than 4.

Sorry, all I have are my vague impressions, no real numbers to back things up.

No problem. Thanks. It's "RPG" we are talking about - so the feeling/impressions probably should be most important:) Good that for you it don't feel overpowered.

But mathematically and practically it seems to me that i.e. system based on Y0E should have much lower rates of successes - so the feel should be different - more hardship and overcoming problems?

And if SW is - maybe - not overpowered but still quite "easy" - that could mean that SW is not the best fit for some "OSR style" gaming - being very deadly ( at low levels at last ) and "forcing"/encouraging player to depend more on some "in world solutions" rather then simple skill rolls ? Or any one of you - my dear fellow players and GM's - has played SW game in such style?

A prevailing theory in ludography is that players get frustrated if they fail more than half the time --or more if they have 'less then even odds of doing things'-- and that it feels bad if you don't succeed half the time. Many games aim for a just over half. Take Traveller, for instance, its default difficulty is 8, and you roll 2d6 which has a 58% chance of getting a 7 or better, so with merely a +1 you have a 58% chance of getting the 8 that you need.

OSR tends to be more punishing than most, and (successful) players transfer their fun away from beating the dice odds to rather finding ways to avoid rolling at all. In SW you roll dice a lot, which means that --just by statistics-- you also 'fail' a lot.

Different games also define what it means to not meet the dice number, some are 'fun' and easygoing, some are 'punishing' and deadly. This needs to be taken into account when judging the numbers.

Yep, one of my favorite elements. It worked well for modern role-playing, science-fantasy, and fantasy, believe it or not.
Yes, it is easy to succeed in SW, but that's what makes the system (as they advertise) "Fast! Furious! Fun!" With your Wild Dice, you have a 50% chance to succeed on nearly anything you try, but in my experience (and I play a lot of Savage Worlds), it doesn't unbalance the system because even if you hit, you have to overcome their Toughness to actually deal damage. There is something really enjoyable about rolling an Ace and seeing the dice explode! And don't forget, if the foe is also a Wild Card (as most of the BBEGs are), they also have a Wild Die, so they succeed as often as the players do. And the Ace mechanic means that even a lowly minion can get a lucky hit once in a while. My players are just getting into Savage Worlds but they really enjoy the Wild Die and Ace mechanics and the relative simplicity of the system.