Thread: BRP Space opera

After my 10+ years pendragon campaign ended due to the characters being lost with my car, I have been considering starting a Space opera Campaign. I want to use the old ICE SM2 setting for it but using BRB as the system. I am however unsure as to how I should deal with spacecraft. Has anyone here done a space opera campaign with BRP? Tips, tricks, pitfalls?

The biggest pitfall is that there is very little SciFi stuff out there to work with. If you want to use spaceships you are pretty much on your own as far as stats and game mechanics go.

As far as tips & tricks go you could use something like Cthulhu Rising sans Cthulu Mythos for some of the tech and spacecraft. Or you could adapt or adopt spacecraft rules from another RPG to BRP. The latter isn;t as crazy as it sounds since many RPGs use differernt rules for spacecraft than they do for characters.

Have to agree with Atgxtg on this. There's not a lot out there.... but I'd take a look at GURPS Space 4th Edition, which contains much useful information that, while biased towards its own game system, can be adapted for use with other rules.

As an aside, the best fun I ever had with Spacecraft combat was Full Thrust, so I'd check that out too... it doesn't adhere to any system but its own, but is fast, simple, and adaptable with a little work...

It sounds like a good opportunity for a new teaser for BRP Mecha. I will post a new one each week. I cannot collect them in a downloadable supplement for copyright reason, but posting them here on a fan site should be okay.

So here comes

Space Cruiser Yamato

(I hope it is "Space Opera" enough for the OP)

SIZ Class	SIZ	POW	DEX	APP	PP	MOV	Handling
30	900	900	-	-	900	2	-

D20	01-03	04-06	07-09	10-12	13	14-16	18-20
Location	Bow	Starboard	Port	Lower Deck	Main Deck	Weapon Deck	Stern
Armour	6	6	6	6	6	6	6
Hit points	30	30	30	30	24	30	30
Sections	Main Engine [2],	Point Def Turret (x4) [2, 3, 4, 5]	Point Def Turret (x4) [2, 3, 4, 5]	Observatory [2],	Command Room [2],	Main Cannon Battery (x3) [2,3,4]	Motion Wave Gun [2],
	Auxiliary Engine x2 [3,4],			Fighter Launch Port [3]	Sensors [3],		Missile Launcher (x2) [3, 4]
	Rear Cannon Battery [5]				Point Def Turret (x2) [4, 5]

Weapon	Position	Type	Damage	Range	Cost/Ammo	Special
Missiles	Stern [4,5]	Explo	3d6	20 [L]	50 each	Twin
PD Turrets	Bow, M Deck, W Deck	Energy	1d4	5 [S]	1PP	Twin, Burst, Impale
Main batteries	Wpn Deck, Bow	Energy	2d10	15 [L]	12 PP	Twin, Impale
Motion Wave Gun	Stern	Energy	Automatic kill	30 [XL]	600 PP

Note: Losing one auxiliary engine exhaust port will not block the spaceship, but will slow it down and subtract -20% from the helmsman Pilot (Spaceship) skill.

If you're not interest in big space battles, which yes, space opera's have lots of, you could just not deal with space craft, treat them as a method of getting from one place to another without worrying about activities between the ships.

Also you could look at the original Traveller rules, Rules Wiki. They had a very comprehensive ship building system. There is a recent versions of the rules out there, but I haven't seen the ship building part so I'm not sure it's quality.

Or you could go with something along the lines of what Rosen posted.

Back in the day when I ran a Prime Directive: The Star Fleet Universe Role-playing Game, I just created a quick Starship Tracker sheet and starship combat system. I gave each ship a Hit Point rating, armor in the form of energy shields rated from 3-6 pts, weapons that ranged from 1D4 on up to 1D10 for a photon torpedo. There was a hit location chart roll for each point of damage that got through (which covered each major part of the ship ('Structural damage' as the most common and 'Bridge' as the most dangerous). Characters made 'Pilot' rolls to try and evade attacks, 'Weapon System' to hit, and engineering rolls to fix damaged systems. Most battles ended with the enemy ship's warp engines damaged and hence no power to their shields and weapons. Or on a bridge hit have them roll a Luck save to avoid the panel blowing up in your face. That never gets old.


As long as players are rolling dice and feeling in control of a starship the details of the ship combat system matter much less. YMMV (Your Mileage May Very) of course.

Originally Posted by Karandras

After my 10+ years pendragon campaign ended due to the characters being lost with my car, I have been considering starting a Space opera Campaign. I want to use the old ICE SM2 setting for it but using BRB as the system. I am however unsure as to how I should deal with spacecraft. Has anyone here done a space opera campaign with BRP? Tips, tricks, pitfalls?

I'm just curious, didn't the players have copies of their character sheets ?

Originally Posted by Erasmus1966

but I'd take a look at GURPS Space 4th Edition, which contains much useful information that, while biased towards its own game system, can be adapted for use with other rules. .

I wouldn't recommend GURPS Space 4th edition. Unless you're into lots of superfluous detail on planetary systems, and astronomy. If you want a less detailed, more space operaish feel, go with GURPS Space first edition. It has more about starship construction and less detail on planetary system generation.
I would also recommend Worlds Beyond RPG if you can find a copy, which is a BRP variant space opera setting, which is a bit like Traveller. I'm running it at the moment, using the BRP rules.
And there is a Traveller scenario converted for BRP here: http://seegras.discordia.ch/Roleplay...s/TheAlgol.txt
And the Traveller BRP conversion rules are here: http://www.basicrps.com/links/stefan/brp.html

And another thing, don't give your player's characters antimatter grenades unless you like having a good laugh at their expense!

I just finished a 2300AD mini campaign that used the excellent conversion avaialble in the downloads section here and the BGB (plus my extensive library)...

Pick a set of ship rules you like from any SF RPG and plug them in - it's what I usually do.

The only tricky thing is getting people to wrap their heads round the differences between SF and fantasy - unless you are doing really OTT tech, for all the technobabble etc, an SF setting needs to feel different to a fantasy setting, but it's far to easy to be hadnwavy and imprecise with stuff such that it ends up feeling like fantasy / magic with weak and thin SF trappings. Also, warfare / combat are very different with high tech weapons and players need to have grasped that or they can get caught out...

If you can track down copies of Other Suns, Worlds Beyond, Ring World or Future World they'll all help to varying degrees. I personally adapt the planets and ships system from Space Opera by FGU, as they are fun and playable and without being math / science heavy give the right feel.

Cheers,

Nick

Originally Posted by NickMiddleton

If you can track down copies of Future World they'll all help to varying degrees. Cheers,

Nick

Future world is part of the Worlds of Wonder RPG. Here is a link: http://basicrps.narod.ru/index-wow.html