Looking to recreate the feel of Firefly, The Outer Worlds, The Expanse, or similar, in a ttrpg that is somewhat leaning to the hard sci fi side. Any thoughts?
I’ve been poking Traveller but it’s hard to tell what the definitive versions are. Also Stars Without Number looks interesting.
I’m particularly looking for ship based stuff – where the ship is statted and you can have ship to ship combat.
I have been playing Genesys, and I LOVE it. I’m not playing in a sci-fi setting, but the whole premise behind Genesys is that is is adaptable to any setting, and from what I have seen of the system, it would be great for something like that. There are tons of rules for vehicle stats, combat, etc. and it has guidelines for how to design and balance your own vehicles.
If you are interested in making and playing in your own setting I would definitely recommend Genesys.
If you are wanting something with an existing setting that matches that vibe, then I’d first check and see if some of the community made settings will fit that, and if not, then maybe look elsewhere.
There are a ton of community made resources for Genesys on DriveThruRPG and also in a dropbox maintained by one of the community members, and that dropbox has some resources for an Expanse setting and other sci-fi stuff that would be a good starting point: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/raqr7usuzwizglm/AACMnwsNyT5DPHyjokWZwQLOa/Community Content?dl=0&lst=&subfolder_nav_tracking=1
I would also say you should definitely get the core rulebook AND the expanded players guide, as that has tons of good resources and better guidelines for creating vehicles, as well as other useful things. It’s really a fantastic GM toolkit.
EDIT: Also regarding the dice, which can be kind of hard to get, they have an app that you can use, as well as charts for converting normal polyhedral dice to the Genesys symbols, and what I personally do is just use the Star Wars dice, which are the same (with slightly different look to the symbols) and are more available, at least where I am.
I’ve played a Fate game set in the Traveler universe with some of the GMs tweaks sprinkled in. It’s awesome.
Using extras for certain types of equipment (like power armor); weapon damage rating; scale… You can have a pretty realistic and complete system while still maintaining the narrative focus of Fate.
Of course the more options you add, the crunchier it gets, but you don’t need a lot and some things, like scale, only matter if you have a difference of scale at play (say a fighter vs a destroyer).
If you like Altered Carbon then Eclipse Phase does the “you can change your body” transhumanist-cyberpunk-sci-fi thing pretty well. It’s pretty hard sci-fi, but that means it doesn’t really have much in the way of ship combat, so not sure if it’s what you’re looking for!
Unlike heroic fantasy, there isn’t one big sci fi games.
At the moment, I see mostly people playing Alien and Coriolis. I played only a couple of one shots, so have no strong opinion on them. But Alien’s tension mechanic is neat.
Eclipse phase has an amazing lore, However, the system sucks, if you like the lore get the FATE of the eclipse version, not even that FATE is great, but it’s a functional system unlike the D100 one