No Dungeons No Dragons ‘March Madness’ Blogserk – Day 10

Other blogs can be found HERE.

The questions can be found HERE.

10 What science fiction RPG have you enjoyed most? Give details.

We played a lot of GURPS Space back in the day, but to be honest the chargen was a bit too involved. I’d certainly never run it, as I am a big hand-waiver as a GM.

I picked up the original Traveler off RPGNow a few years back and would like to give that a shot – minus some of the calculations. I think that game really captures the feel of the 1970s scifi I cut my teeth on. It has shades of Asimov’s Foundation and Niven’s Grasping Hand books.

Speaking of Niven, I have a copy of the Ringworld and as a BRP fan could see me running or playing that. Evidently, Niven himself used the game as a reference when writing the 3rd installment of the series!

Honestly, I have not found that many people who want to play scifi, except for Star Wars d6 or Star Trek (I’d run Far Trek or Where No Man Has Gone Before in a sec given the chance).

I think the problem with scifi that scares people off from gaming in the genre is threefold:

1)     High tech rules make GMing a taxing proposition

2)      Any setting besides an established IP requires extensive background

3)      Knowledge of physics and astrogation basics seems necessary

Fantasy gaming suffers none of these hurdles – tell someone he is an elf, let him roll up a starting spell and some equipment and they’re good to go. Maybe someone needs to write a scifi rpg that doesn’t scare off beginners of the non-scientific.

Good luck with that.