Is Star Frontiers Mimimalist? Is it Lite?

What exactly defines a minimalist game is subjective, as is what makes a game "lite." Some people go by page count, with 1-page RPGs the epitome of minimalism. I've seen some people say it's bare minimum dice types, bare minimum ability scores/traits, and bare minimum word count. I've seem people say that it's a universal mechanic and plenty of space for players to do things not on the character sheet. I've seen various combinations of the above. I'm sure there are other qualities I'm overlooking at the moment.

So, how does Star Frontiers (Alpha Dawn) actually rank as a minimalist RPG? 

Page Count: 16 page Basic Rules, 60 (or 64?) page full game. 

This would count as minimalist in relation to doorstop games like Pathfinder, but still pretty hefty compared to many indie games. Fairly minimalist, for the time it came out.

Dice: Only d10s. 

Definitely in the minimalist camp here.

Resolution Mechanics: d% resolution for most actions, Xd10 damage, 1d10+modifier initiative, a few oddities like 2d10 bell-curve resolution tables for vehicle damage. 

Pretty tight, but not as light as it could be. 

Abilities/Traits: With eight abilities, but these grouped into four pairs, it's fairly tight. The fact that the scores (or 1/2 the score) are also the % chance to make a check is streamlined design. Alien species' special abilities are also % based. 

That is again pretty light mechanics load, but not as streamlined as possible. Not bad, but could be simpler.

Character Options: Four alien species (one human), three primary skill areas, 13 skills. Five of the skills have no subskills and are Ability dependent (weapon group skills), and all others have two to nine subskills at set levels which are learned as a suite. Only the Martial Arts skill has unique mechanics (increased Punching Score and knock-out chances). 

This isn't very heavy. With basically four die rolls for Abilities and three choice points (not counting Ability adjustment and selecting starting gear), you have a character. Roll Abilities. Select Species. Select Primary Skill Area (PSA). Select two starting skills, with at least one in the PSA. You're good to go. 

Creatures: Aside from descriptions and special ability rules, most creatures are represented by seven descriptors/numbers: Size, Number (appearing), Move (given in general categories), Initiative Modifier/Reaction Speed, Stamina (health), Attack (%), Damage. 

I've seen games where there are fewer stats for creatures, and something like D&D you can get by with fewer actual numbers most of the time (AC, HD, HP are enough for most encounters), but this isn't a lot, either. The game also provides typical stats for herbivores, carnivores, and omnivores of each size category, to make creating your own alien creatures simple. 

Again, it's almost minimalist, and for the time it came out, it's again pretty light. 

Combat, Movement, Etc.:  The basic combat resolution is dead simple. Roll d%, if you roll lower than your chance to hit, you deal damage. But there are a LOT of modifiers, for melee and ranged combat. The vehicle combat isn't too complex, but it does add new subsystems (like the vehicle damage rolls, mentioned above), acceleration, and turning radii. Movement rules are generally simple, until you add in things like modifiers for planets' gravity, rough terrain, and species' movement rates. 

There's a minimalist core there, but also just enough crunch to make things interesting and pay some attention to the science side of science fiction. This is one area where the game stops being minimalist, but it's not maximalist to make the hardcore science nerds happy. This is, I would wager, one of the things that really makes people dislike the game. It's too complex in certain ways, too simple in others.

Equipment, Weapons, Etc.: The game uses "credits" as money. There aren't a whole lot of items on the weapons, defenses, equipment, or vehicle lists, and those that are are one-size-fits-all. There's only stats for "laser pistols" not XM-03 Blast-all and Zerk-tech Laserific Pistols, with fiddly distinctions between what are essentially the same weapon. All ground cars share the same stats, with no distinctions for make/model/species it's designed for.

Robots and Computers are the two areas where there can be a lot of customization, but even then, the options available are limited and streamlined. This is again an area where hard sci-fi people, and gearheads, are going to be disappointed that the system's gear is so bare-bones (and the computers presented were obsolete not long after the game was on shelves), but things are just fiddly enough that it can't be called minimalist. 

There are no rules for building, buying, or operating starships. This is again something that many people deride the game for, but again, this isn't something that's actually necessary (or realistic). There are rules for FTL travel, and prices for PCs to book passage. You just can't own your own ship. This is actually both more realistic, and more minimalist. But it rubs many people the wrong way. I'll go deeper into this in a future post. 

Setting: The Frontier Sector is fleshed out in small bites throughout the rules, with a lot of information in the Basic Rules book, and small details scattered across the Expanded Rules book. All in all, though, it's a skeleton of a setting, with lots of room for the referee to flesh it out as they please, and plenty of uncharted star systems on the sector map. 

This is a pretty light setting, but it gave my friends and I enough of a structure to flesh things out, with inspiration from various sci fi books, TV shows, movies, and games. Again, I'll post more on this particular point in the future. All in all, it's not minimal, but it's a very light setting with just enough meat on the bones to not be useless. 

THE VERDICT

Is Star Frontiers minimalist? No, but then it wasn't trying to be. That wasn't even really a thing back in the late 70s/early 80s when the game was designed and published, as far as I know. 

Is it a lite game though? I'd say so. It has its complexities, but from experience it was pretty easy to ignore a lot of these rules when we were young and didn't care that much. And even as we grew older and got more proficient with the core mechanics, it wasn't hard to add in the extra complexity of the game, because it never gets THAT complex. 

The thing is, I think that it COULD be a minimalist game, if stripped down. The Basic Game is already pretty minimal, but it's also a bit more of a board game than a proper RPG. Still, using it as a base, and selectively including only the bare necessities from the Expanded Rules, you could play a very minimalist space opera/exploration game.

 

 

Minimalist Sci Fi Gaming

I'm not sure exactly why, but I've had Star Frontiers on the brain the past couple of days. 

I know the game has a pretty bad reputation among many gamers, but it also has its ardent fans. I loved the game as a kid. And while I would probably not say I love the game anymore, I still like it and find it fun to play. Although it's been quite a while since I've tried to run it, I might still brush it off and give it a go some day. 

A few of the common complaints against the system that I find are as follows (not all inclusive, just what comes to mind right away): 

• It doesn't have starship operation/creation rules (until Knight Hawks).
• It's a "muddled" or "incomplete" system.
• It lacks realism in the skills it offers.
• The setting is under-developed and silly.
• It's a game for kids, not serious sci-fi fans.
• The tech in the game is dreadfully outdated.
  

I don't want to answer all of these criticisms in this post, but I may get around to them later. The thing that's been on my mind is the action resolution system of Star Frontiers. 

It's a simple percentile system, roll under your Attribute or Skill number. Easy peasy. 

It's the same resolution system that Call of Cthulhu uses, yet that system is not derided as simplistic. Of course, CoC has a big "comprehensive" list of skills, alphabetized on your character sheet. And having played a fair amount of CoC the past year or so, there are a whole lot of those skills that NEVER get used. In fact, one of my previous posts was basically about how I managed to make my PC's musician background relevant in the adventure, and helped out by making an Art (Jazz) roll at an appropriate time. 

Star Frontiers has a very limited skill list. There are skills for each of five or six weapon groups, martial arts, demolitions, mechanics, robots, computers, medical, environmental, and psycho-social. Each of these has subskills that you automatically gain access to when you take the parent skill. And when you improve the parent skill, all subskills improve. 

It's very minimalist in design. It features skills for things your PCs are likely to be doing (fighting space monsters or the Sathar, exploring planets and meeting alien species, and dealing with technology problems). The lack of starship content is because of the conceit of the setting. It's Aliens, not Star Wars. Starships capable of FTL travel are huge, expensive, and the province of governments and huge corporations. It's not designed to be Traveller with its African Queen style tramp-steamer starships. But that's a discussion for another post, I believe. 

Part of what makes Star Frontiers work well, at least for me, is that the eight Attributes can actually cover a lot of "skills" that aren't covered in the rules. For those not familiar with the game, the Attributes come in four pairs: 

• Strength/Stamina [STR/STA]
  
• Dexterity/Reaction Speed [DEX/RS]
  
• Intuition/Logic [INT/LOG]
  
• Personality/Leadership [PER/LDR]
  

Most of these don't affect skills. Your base weapon attack value is half of your DEX (you can use half of STR for melee/martial arts if it's better than DEX), plus 10% per level in the appropriate skill. The Technology and Bio-Social skills (everything not combat related), plus Demolitions, all have a set base percentage that you start at for each subskill. A few subskills are just set at that base percentage, but most gain a 10% bonus for each level of the skill a character has trained. 

So, people complain that the rules don't cover lots of other actions. But actually, they do. All those other actions, if they require a resolution roll to determine success, can be mapped to one of the eight Attributes. In fact, this makes the game system both rules-lite and fairly comprehensive in its coverage of actions that the system can resolve. 

Below, I've copied the skill list from d20 Modern. I'll note which ones are already covered by a skill or subskill in Star Frontiers, and which Attributes (or in a few cases other rules) could cover the action in a Star Frontiers game. 

Balance  DEX
Bluff    PER
Climb   DEX (there are climbing rules in the game)
Computer Use  Computers already covers this
Concentration  STA
Craft  A few of these are subskills, others could be Attribute checks. Crafting other than robots, or survival gear in emergencies, isn't normally part of the game, but if you wanted it to be, it could be.
     Ct:Chemical  LOG, Environmental, or Demolitions depending on the use
     Ct:Electronic  Technician, Computers, or Robotics depending on the use
     Ct:Mechanical  Technician, or Environmental for simple tools and weapons
     Ct:Pharmaceutical  Medical
     Ct:Structural  LOG or Technician
     Ct:Visual Art  INT or DEX
     Ct:Writing   INT
Decipher Script  LOG or INT, depending
Demolitions  Demolitions are already covered
Diplomacy  PER, but also partially covered by Psycho-Social
Disable Device  Technician, Computers, or Robotics depending on the use
Disguise  INT or PER depending on how it's being used
Drive   already covered by Technician
Escape Artist  DEX
Forgery  DEX or INT, depending
Gamble  LOG or INT, depending on the game
Gather Information  PER
Handle Animal  LDR
Hide   Environmental covers this already
Intimidate  LDR
Investigate   LOG
Jump   There are jumping rules that determine distance depending on local gravity that don't need rolls, but STR if a roll were necessary
Knowledge  Hmm, OK, here's an area that may be hard to cover. Lumping them all under LOG seems too broad. Some, like Arcane Lore, don't really play a part, and some others can be assumed by having other skills. A system like the Language rules (see below) might be imported if a Referee felt these sorts of determinations were important to the game. Otherwise, the closest Attribute or Skill, in my opinion, are listed below.
     Kw:Arcane Lore   not relevant
     Kw:Art   ???
     Kw:Behavioral Sciences  Pscycho-Social
     Kw:Business  ???
     Kw:Civics  ???
     Kw:Current Events 
     Kw:Earth and Life Sciences  Environmental
     Kw:History  ???
     Kw:Physical Sciences   LOG
     Kw:Popular Culture  ???
     Kw:Streetwise  PER
     Kw:Tactics   LOG, or assumed with a Military PSA?
     Kw:Technology  Technician, Computers, or Robotics depending on the use
     Kw:Theology and Philosophy  ???
Listen  I would probably go with INT for this, but it's a bit of a stretch. This is something the game assumes Referees will decide depending on circumstances, rather than requiring a roll.
Move Silently   Environmental covers this
Navigate   Environmental covers this
Perform   DEX or INT, depending on the use
Pilot  Technician covers this
Profession  There's already a system of determining pay per day depending on total skills known, used for hiring NPCs, or for pay offered to PCs for jobs. No need to make rolls.
Read/Write Language  The game contains a system similar to Skills for languages, with each level in a language costing 3XP and granting a +10% bonus to communicate in that language, starting at a 40% base.
Repair  Technician, Computers, or Robotics depending on the use
Research   LOG
Ride   DEX or RS depending on use
Search   I would probably go with INT for this, but it's a bit of a stretch. This is something the game assumes Referees will decide depending on circumstances, rather than requiring a roll.
Sense Motive  Pscycho-Social covers this
Sleight of Hand  RS
Speak Language  The game contains a system similar to Skills for languages, with each level in a language costing 3XP and granting a +10% bonus to communicate in that language, starting at a 40% base.
Spot  INT
Survival  Environmental covers this
Swim   There are swimming rules that don't involve checks, but STA might be used for endurance situations
Treat Injury  Medical covers this
Tumble  DEX

I think the case can be made that Star Frontiers actually can be a robust system, covering a wide variety of checks you might want to make with its base rules, even if they aren't covered in the Skill system. It's also a good minimalist game, focused on less serious sci-fi action, rather than hard sci-fi or more modern Star Wars-influenced sci-fi media. 

While designed and marketed as more of a kids game, compared to Traveller, it's not as bad of a game as many people seem to think.

Download some stuff!

Thanks to bhyeti for requesting my old Star Frontiers module The Derelict, a bunch of stuff I used to give away for free here on the blog is now back up and available for you to download. There's a new standalone page link at the top there for them. 

I had originally posted them to another blogger's hosting site (and it was so long ago, I forgot exactly who it was), but something happened and they let the site go down. And no one was clamoring for those files, so I just let them sit on my hard drive for years. 

Anyway, you can now get that SF module mentioned above, my Unique Magic Items series (weapons, armor/shields, wands/staves/rods), the compilation of my old Beast of the Week series, and some supplemental stuff for Flying Swordsmen or old school D&D games for free. Everything's hosted on my Google Drive now, so unless something happens to me and my family decides to scrub the web of my presence, they shouldn't be any more hiccups with hosting.

When it stops being a game

This is a bitching and moaning post, but it does have a point to make about gaming in general, I hope, so please bear with me.

Recently, one of the players in the big AD&D game I take part in on RPOL.net wanted to start a new game of cowboys vs zombies using the Star Frontiers rules for the game. Since this is basically what I did with Caverns & Cowboys, I was definitely on board to see what he'd done with the rules.

And I wasn't disappointed there. He doesn't have magic as a player option, but a few of his ideas for skill choices seem potentially better and simpler than what I'd come up with.

So in the game, all the players are in the cavalry. No option to be anything else, that's the premise of the game. Fine. I knew that going in, I signed up for it. And I also realize this is a playtest for the rules mods. So things change every now and then as issues arise or questions are asked that he can't answer. Fine again.

But my first red flag was when before we'd even really gotten the game off the ground, he was trying to entice him into his "real" game of cowboys vs Lost World. That raised my suspicions that this game I'd already signed up for would maybe not be the best game, but I liked my character and decided to soldier on (yes, pun intended).

Now, the situation is we arrive in a town that no one has returned from for a few weeks and no telegraph either. As soon as we ride into town, zombies attack. My character is Native American and another is half Native, and as soon as they appeared, we agreed IC that they were wendigo. The GM went along with that, and has been calling them that ever since. Hooray for player input being accepted into world building!

But as soon as players started acting like players in an RPG, trying to tactically problem solve like good RPG players, he through both the NPC sergeant and GM dictate ruled that all characters except mine and another (who had been asked to investigate a house on the edge of town) were to line up Civil War style and blast away. No riding around to distract or lead off some of the zombies, no taking cover, nothing allowed by what he told us. Second red flag appears.

Luckily for me and the other player, since we were in the house when the firing line was formed, we were free to run across the street to the saloon where civilians were calling for help from the upstairs window. Inside, we found a couple of zombies. My partner attacked while I checked on the safety of the civilians then returned to help him fight.

This morning, when I logged on, the GM had made a big long post where he just arbitrarily moved everything ahead two combat rounds -- although that was far from clear from the post. Everyone on the firing line was arbitrarily moved back on the sergeant's orders, and my partner and I had just unloaded our guns on the two zombies in the saloon to minimal effect -- my partner missed with everything and I only hit once (although when I checked the die roller, actually he'd rolled that I hit with three of my five remaining shots in my six-shooter).

And only now, AFTER he decided to do this, is he asking for us to post our actions two or three moves in advance. Apparently, he'd forgotten how crappily beginning characters fight in Star Frontiers, and how little damage 2d10 or 3d10 bullets do to zombies that have on average around 45 Stamina points. And there are a crap ton of zombies moving in. And he's not letting most of the players do anything other than fire and reload. So, third red flag on the field.

I think it might be telling that since this morning, the only person to post besides myself complaining about this is a new guy who just rolled up a character. I think the other players might also have sensed this is not going to be the cool game we hoped it would be.

I'm usually one for letting novice game masters have some slack, and having run play tests, I realize the rules can and should change to reflect issues that crop up. But the lack of agency he's allowing most of the players makes me think that this isn't a game so much as a novel he wishes he was writing. And that makes me consider quitting the game. Because at that point, it isn't a game anymore.

I'll give it a few more days. See what he says, and what the other players do. But I think this brief interesting idea for a game may have just gone off to Boot Hill.

Caverns & Cowboys

This is an idea for a game I've had for a long time now. And apparently I discussed it mostly on G+ instead of here on the blog. I did a search of the posts here, and only found a few mentions of it.

So what is Caverns & Cowboys? Not hard to guess. It's a Western themed game, but also a fantasy dungeon crawling game. Or that was the original idea. I'd thought maybe run it with a combination of Go Fer Yer Gun (or later Tall Tales RPG) mixed with Labyrinth Lord/Classic D&D.

I even made this map as a bit of a trial at a Wild West setting that isn't part of our real world. Did I share this map before? Maybe. I know I shared it on G+ a few years ago (the image file shows I made it in 2017).

Anyway, I let the idea go for along time. Now I'm back on it. Only not using a D&D style OSR game.

A few weeks ago, I started adapting the Star Frontiers rules for a fantasy Western.

Why Star Frontiers? Well, for one thing it's a skill/level based system rather than a class/level based one. The skill system allows more flexibility to create characters that cover lots of different archetypes.

In SF, and in C&C (this iteration of it anyway), you gain a handful of XP each game session, and a few more when you complete an adventure. Then you can spend them to improve your character's base ability scores and skill levels. You can add new skills easily just by spending a few XP if you want, or you can save up to level up your existing skills.

SF has Military, Technological, and Psycho-Social skill areas. I have Interaction, Combat, and Magic skill areas. Yes, instead of Vancian magic, I'm going with magic as a skill. The spells are your subskills, and you have a limited number of spell points to use to cast spells. Gaining levels in the magic skills increases the potency of the spells but not the cost. There aren't really many flashy spells like lightning bolt or fireball, though. I tried to go with 19th century thematic magic types.

Interaction skills run the gamut from cowboy to lawman to doctor to engineer to criminal. I've got the most skills here (although Combat skills have quite a few as well). And while SF makes Military skills the cheapest to learn/advance, I've made Interaction skills the cheapest.

I've also converted a lot of monsters. I took the list from Holmes Basic. I removed a few (for IP or thematic reasons), and added some more (for thematic reasons).

I just need to get the rules for awarding XP and for placing treasure/monetary rewards written up, and I'll be ready to start play testing it.

Other OSR

Part of my readings on game design have got me thinking about other old school games besides D&D that could be used for designing old school games. Yes, this topic has been around in the OSR for pretty much as long as the OSR has been around. And D&D is the biggest name in table top roleplaying. Yet it's still interesting to revisit the topic from time to time (at least for me).

The actual impetus for this blog post was a bit of inspiration I had just yesterday. A while back, JB of BX Blackrazor asked me why Chanbara was a Japanese-themed game when I live in Korea. Of course, the answer is that I lived in Japan for 10 long years (I've lived in Korea for a little over 10 years now, so I've been here longer) before I lived in Korea, and speak the language better, so I have a better grasp of Japanese fantasy. (By the way, I should probably be plugging Chanbara more...you can get it in PDF for $10, print or print/pdf combo for $20, right here!)

The fact is, I wasn't really sure what a Korean OSR game should be about. And not in the indie game sense of "about" but in the Kevin Crawford sense of "what are the verbs?" (A.K.A. what do the players do in the game?). Because honestly, with a bit of palette swapping, either Flying Swordsmen or Chanbara would work well for a Korean-themed dungeon crawl/hex crawl D&D style game. The weapons are similar. The magic system is similar. The themes in the source literature are similar.

If I really want to get a game that's somehow essentially Korean, what the game is about needs to be a bit different. And then my eureka moment started to hit me two days ago and finalized yesterday. We had gone up to Seoul to take care of some business at the U.S. embassy. We brought the boys and stayed the night, and did a bit of sightseeing. One place we went was the Korean Folklore Museum. At a display of civil and military officials' garb and gear, the idea started fermenting. On the KTX back to Busan yesterday, the idea hit me in full. And it's related to ideas that have been in my head for a while now about using other games besides TSR era D&D as a basis of old school design.

Still with me? I hope so. I think my thought process leading up to this is important to the design. Anyway, I realized that a game where civil officials are an important part of the game shouldn't be one where the primary goal is killing monsters and taking their stuff. The game should be about (and XP awarded for) solving a variety of social/economic/military problems [which, from time to time, may include supernatural/monster problems]. People are going to be the main adversaries, and combat should not be a prioritized means of solving conflicts in the game. Basically, a class/level system like D&D, with XP awarded for combat and treasure acquisition, doesn't cut it.

But a system like Star Frontiers, which is classless and skill-based, with an XP system based on how well missions are accomplished rather than the exact amount of foes defeated/wealth gained is perfect for this.

If you've never played it, Star Frontiers is a d% based game. Characters get eight stats (arranged in four related pairs) that can range from 1 to 100, and that's your percent chance to accomplish something based purely off of those stats. That includes saving throws, which get keyed either to your Stamina (which are also hit points...and saves are usually at current STA rather than total, so it's harder to stave off poison or disease or knock-out gas if you're wounded) or Reaction Speed (it's all in the reflexes). In addition to ability checks, there is a skill system where you either get a set base percent chance plus 10% per level in the skill, sometimes lowered by 10% of the level of the opposition, or 1/2 a related ability score plus 10% per level of the skill (again, sometimes minus other factors).

Each skill is actually a group of related subskills, each with their own different base percentage of success. So a PC with Computers has a chance to bypass a computer's security. The base chance is 30% +10% per skill level -10% per computer level. So with Computers level 1, bypassing a level 1 computer has a 30% chance, and a level 2 computer is only a 20% chance. At skill level 6 (the maximum), the PC has an 80% chance to bypass a level 1 computer's security, and so on.

For combat, melee is 1/2 of Strength +10% per level of Melee weapons. For ranged combat, the skills were divided into type (beam weapons, projectile weapons, etc.) and the chance to hit was 1/2 of Dexterity +10% per level of the appropriate ranged weapon type. Armor absorbs damage rather than reducing chances to hit.

XP awards are small (1 to 5 per session, usually) and XP was spent to increase skill levels and to raise ability scores (and some of the alien races had % based racial abilities that could also be improved by spending XP).

Pretty simple base system, right?

So for my potential future Korean fantasy OSR game, I shouldn't try to do yet another version of medieval Asian D&D. I should do medieval Asian Star Frontiers. All I need to do is set up the skill system to reflect what Joseon (or Goryeo if we want to go farther back in time, or Silla/Paekchae/Goguryeo/Gaya if we want to go even further still) officials and citizens were doing. Then set a system of XP awards for doing what you should be doing well.

Related to this idea (of using other, non-D&D, games for OSR designs), I'd been thinking recently that for an OSR supers game (yes, I know MARVEL FASERIP is available free online and does it well) that Gamma World would be an interesting base game to use. I'm most familiar with the 4th edition of the game [1992, not the 4E D&D one], but any older edition might work.

Gamma World's mutations are basically a list of superpowers and some super weaknesses. And the artifacts are high tech play-toys. Create a system for Batman/Iron Man/Green Arrow/Black Widow style (pure-strain) humans to roll or purchase high tech items, while altered/mutant/alien characters roll some powers (and maybe get some tech too) and you've got a supers generation system. It just needs a few tweaks to change it from a game about scouring post-apocalypse ruins for artifacts to a game about stopping super-villains.

GW more or less uses a D&D design (except for 3rd edition, which uses FASERIP...as does Star Frontiers' Zebulon's guide), but it's got some differences. And I might want to think about FASERIP now that I think about it, as well as WEG's d6 system (the old Star Wars game) which is now open game content.

So, it may be time, for me at least, to take a break from the D&D-based OSR design scheme, and try out a few ideas for other games based on other designs. 

You're just like school in the summertime... [Chanbara post]

...No class!

So yesterday, after posting about my ruminations on simplifying Chanbara, I used Google+'s survey feature to run a quick, non-scientific poll.  Out of exactly 100 at the time of writing self-identified OSR gamers (or gamers who at least like to keep abreast of what the OSR is doing by joining the G+ OSR group) who use G+ and respond to surveys there, half of them (51%) favor having a small number of character classes, but having options to customize them.  So my idea to strip down Chanbara to three classes and have Profiles (like 2E kits or 5E backgrounds) for customization, along with special abilities, may indeed be the most popular way to go.  I was probably going to do that anyway, so there's a bit of a morale boost for me.

Interestingly, 10% clicked on the "classless" option, which I had added as a bit of an afterthought.  I was sort of curious how popular such an idea might be with the D&D-centric OSR crowd. 

Before I decided to make Flying Swordsmen as a retro-clone of Dragon Fist, I toyed with the idea of a classless wuxia game, partially inspired by the classless skill system of Star Frontiers. 

For those not familiar, Star Frontiers (Alpha Dawn, Zebulon's Guide does it a bit differently, I think) has you pick your alien race, then select a "Primary Skill Area" of Military, Technoloical, or Bio-Social skills.  You then select two skill sets, one of which must be in your PSA.  Having a skill grants access to all related subskills.  As you adventure, you gain XP which can be spent to raise your skill levels or gain new skill sets.  It's cheaper to purchase skills in your PSA.  You can also use XP to improve your ability scores or racial special abilities. 

Had Flying Swordsmen gone the classless route, it would have been something like this.  Different martial arts schools, adventuring skills (wilderness, thief skills, etc.) and types of magic would have been skill sets, and characters would have gotten a PSA and two skill sets at character creation.  It would have been quite customizable, expandable, and fairly easy to manage. 

Some people dislike the Star Frontiers skill system as being fairly limited, but I find that the constraints of the skill system are what inform me of just what the game is "about."  The designers imply that these things are what your characters should be doing: exploring worlds, communicating with aliens and helping explorers deal with the rigors of space travel, dealing with alien technology and robots and vastly complex computer systems, and of course fighting the Sathar and their terrorist agents with a variety of future weapons and some primitive ones as well.

I'm not planning to go this route with Chanbara at the moment, but maybe in the future I'll go back to this idea and create a new fantasy RPG (possibly Asian-inspired, or maybe not) using this kind of system.

The circle is now complete. (March Madness Day 31!)

31 What out-of-print RPG would you most like to see back in publication? Why?

Well, I started this month long challenge out with Star Frontiers, it makes sense that I come back to it for the finale.

Yes, I know, the Starfrontiersman web site has their “digitally remastered” version for free on their website with WotC's blessing. And lots of additional content through the Star Frontiersman zine. But having the actual box set of Alpha Dawn back in print would be cool. The digital remaster version doesn't have the cool fold-out map or counters, for one thing (although I think they do have a scan of the counter sheet that you can use to make your own... or at least somewhere you can get it, as I did make a duplicate set when I was in Japan).

No, it's not the best sci fi game out there. It's “futuristic technology” is really dated. The options for character creation are limited by today's standards. But you know what? The game works. It's fun. It's well designed for game play that involves exploring of alien worlds and/or combat against bad guy aliens like the Sathar and their terrorist agents. It's not designed to be a generic sci fi game. It has its subgenre down fairly pat, and does a good job filling it.

If it were to come back in print, I'd definitely pick up an extra set or two (probably the Knight Hawks expansion that I never had as a kid as well). Heck, I'd probably even spring for a reprint of Zebulon's Guide to Frontier Space even though I don't like how they tried to revise the system to use the Marvel color-coded chart for resolution, or the even sillier cast of alien races it adds.

It would be great to have all that stuff in order to play with my son, since my own original books and poster map are really worn out.  It might also make it a bit easier to get new players into the game, especially kids who might dig the maps and counters more than they would a pdf of a 30+ year old game.

In a world... (March Madness Day 20)

20 Which setting have you enjoyed most? Why?

Published or homebrew? And non-D&D (because really, the most fun we had back in the day was with the Known World of the Expert Set/Isle of Dread, and more recently, I've had some good times with various other D&D worlds, including our sorta stalled out Vaults of Ur game).

Let me think of what non-D&D campaign settings I can think of that got more than just a session or two of play (sorry, WEG Star Wars, as much as I love original trilogy SW, I never got to play it much).

The Frontier Sector – Star Frontiers

Marvel (616?) Universe – Marvel Superheroes RPG

Gamma Terra – Gamma World

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles – TMNT and Other Strangeness

Prequel Star Wars – d20 Star Wars RPG

Not sure if it has a name, but the dystopic future of Trinity RPG

Arkham, Mass. and environs – Call of Cthulhu

Aliens/Predator-verse – d20 Future

and tons of D&D settings (homebrew and canned) or settings that never saw play beyond one or two sessions (and actually I'm trying hard to remember if the Marvel game actually got that far or not...)

If I had to pick, though, it would be Gamma Terra. From my first introduction to it through the Endless Quest book Light on Quest's Mountain to our early 90's game with the old BECMI group, to my more recent games with the Busan Board Game Group, it's always consistently provided a strange, funny and dangerous place to adventure.

The Frontier Sector would have to come in second just from sheer numbers of sessions played within it.

Gentlemen, behold: The Future! (March Madness Day 10)

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

If you've been reading my blog posts this month, or my blog regularly for any length of time, you'll know the answer to this is Star Frontiers. The rules are just simple enough, the setting just evocative enough, that I was able to use it to run all sorts of sci fi themed adventures as a youth. Even now, I've still got designs to eventually run both a straight-up game in the Frontier Sector battling Sathar and exploring strange new worlds, and also a game set in the post-Judgment Day Terminator universe using a slightly modified version of the game (only human PCs, modified weapons/equipment list, otherwise the same).

I've never played Traveller in any form. Never played Twilight 2000, although I now have it on .pdf. Never played the Aliens RPG, although I sure wanted it in the late 80's.  Some day... There are probably lots of other classic sci fi games I've never played and just don't remember, or have never heard of.

What other sci fi games have I played?

WEG Star Wars – Killing Machine and I played one or two sessions of this. I liked it, but D&D and Star Frontiers were easier to run, and I tended to DM/GM anyway. This was KM's game.

d20 Future – the supplement to d20 Modern was well done, a good toolbox book that catered to a fairly wide range of gaming styles. I ran a kick-ass Aliens/Predator game with this for the Ebisu group.

Star Wars d20 – we played a bit of this with the Toyama group over Yahoo Voice Messenger IIRC right after I'd moved to Yamanashi. It was fun, but a bit clunky for Star Wars style gaming.

Trinity – White Wolf's low-powered supers in space game. Fun, evocative, and my only experience besides rolling up a character for the Street Fighter RPG with the White Wolf Storyteller system.

Stars Without Number – free OSR game, basically Basic D&D with lasers and robots. I like it a lot, obviously.

What I'm thinking about:

Some day, after Chanbara is published, Flying Swordsmen is revised, and Presidents of the Apocalypse is released, I'd like to work on a retro-future style RPG, probably titled "Rockets vs. Saucers" since in lots of old 40's~60's sci fi the humans flew rocket ships and the aliens had flying saucers.  Ray guns, heat beams, jet packs, bubble helmets, shiny suits, all that jazz.  I'm thinking it will be class/level based, but in a twist there will be no "Fighter" class.  Everyone will be equally bad-ass (or equally piss poor, depending on if you're a half full or half empty type) at combat.  Classes would be based around exploration of planets, space flight, science, and contact/communication/socialization.

Memorable Monsters (March Madness Day 6)

6 What non-D&D monster do you think is as iconic as D&D ones like hook horrors or flumphs, and why do you think so?

Gotta go back to Star Frontiers for this one. And IMO it's the most iconic monster (not counting the Sathar as monsters) from the game.

The Quickdeath.

This bad boy is genetically engineered to ruin your day. Literally. The Sathar twisted the genes of the common cat to create this monstrosity, and it has numerous ways to tear you limb from limb, chew you to pieces, crush you in its tentacles, and then deposit whatever's left in the kitty litter.

And since it's in the book, and anyone who plays through the Volturnus modules will likely face one armed only with a spear and a straw dummy to use as a distraction, players will fear this monster. It really fits its simple name.

I oughta do a conversion for Basic D&D and throw some in my megadungeon, now that I think of it...

Dralasite, Human, Vrusk, Yazirian? (March Madness Day 2)

2 What was the first character you played in an RPG other than D&D? How was playing it different from playing a D&D character?

I don't really remember my first Star Frontiers character. He/She/It probably died trying to fight some robot or Sathar agents or something. I have a few memorable characters from my old SF game, but if one of them was the first I created, I couldn't say.  It was probably a Yazirian, since Larry Elmore's cover art featured them.

How was playing Star Frontiers different from D&D? Well, for one thing, the skill system meant that you could have all kinds of character types without much limitation. Sure, it cost lots of points for your Combat PSA character to learn robotics or become a medic, but it was allowed. There were no weapon/armor restrictions. The alien races for the most part felt alien, unlike demi-humans in D&D. That's not to say that we necessarily played them as truly alien, but I at least had a sense that choosing to be a vrusk was somehow more different from human than choosing to be an elf was from being human.

Spaceward Ho! March Madness Day 1

Yes, I'm participating in my first month-long blogging challenge.  Tedankhamen's Non-D&D OSR blogging fiesta.  I'll be posting mostly this month about games other than D&D or Chanbara, although I may find some time for some updates there, too, since I've already prepared some posts for some days.  

So let's get down to the first question:

1 What was the first roleplaying game other than D&D you played? Was it before or after you had played D&D?

Star Frontiers, TSR's sci fi game, was the first non-D&D game I played. There were ads for it in the back of the Endless Quest books and the back of the Mentzer Basic set, so I got it around 1986 or so. It was pleasantly different from D&D, being a “skill” game rather than class/level based in addition to the sci fi setting.

We played the heck out of the Alpha Dawn box set, but none of us ever got Knight Hawks or Zebulon's Guide.  We tended to base games either following the patterns of the sample adventures (Sathar agents/terrorists/criminals in Port Loren, monster on the loose in Port Loren, rescue/recovery of a downed ship etc.), or on whatever sci fi, Western or action movie we'd seen recently and thought was cool (Arnold movies, Aliens over and over, even Ghostbusters!).  And we had the Volturnus module included in the set, which we ran several times, sometimes just the initial battle with space pirates on the starship.

One other big difference with D&D was that it came with the 1/2 inch counters and maps.  This made our games somewhat more boardgame-like at times, since all we really needed to have fun were some stats for aliens or enemy agents, and just throw counters down on one of the maps.  It made for a lot of quick, simple games, but I didn't keep a lot of the notes, which is a bit of a shame.

On procrastination and good reads

Well, I've come the point where I know exactly what I want to do with Chanbara, and I seem to be putting off actually doing it since it involves throwing out a fair chunk of the work I've already done on it.

See, when I revised the game last, I had the realization that most "ninja" skills were really covered by what I term exploration rolls.  Last edition they were x in d6 rolls similar to demi-human search rolls in D&D, but the potential increase from using a skill die made it seem too easy.  I want ninjas to be good at what they do, but not ridiculously so.  So the new edition uses a 2d6 roll, more like Cleric Turn Undead (again, in Classic, not AD&D).  Gone are the % Thief skills of D&D/Dragon Fist or the d20+modifiers of Flying Swordsmen.

Anyway, if you want to be stealthy, just roll 2d6 + your Constitution related skill die, vs. a target number set by the DM (or the 2d6 + Wisdom skill die roll of an opponent actively trying to spot you).  The same goes for dealing with security devices, acts of theft, bluffing or fast talking, and all that.

So, in the previous draft, the Tricks, special abilities mostly for shinobi types, ended up with a lot of combat powers, even though they're not mainly supposed to be about combat. 

Yet, even though I realize I need to scrap some and move others to the Maneuvers list in order to make room for actual special abilities related to acrobatics, infiltration, escape and sabotage, I keep putting it off.  Well, it's a 4 day weekend here in Korea thanks to the Chinese Lunar New Year, so maybe it's time to set Chanbara aside for a few days and focus on something else with my gaming time.

And that brings me to my next topic.  I have been taking advantage of our local English language library to read some classic sci fi novels that I somehow had never read.  In the past month I've read Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land, Card's Speaker for the Dead, and now I'm reading Miller's A Canticle for Leibowitz. 

I'm still in the first section of Leibowitz, and already I've seen how big of an influence it played on the creation of Gamma World, especially the Cryptic Alliances.  Groups that want to preserve the old knowledge of the Ancients, groups that are threatened by that knowledge and seek to destroy it when they find it, groups that worship (the idea of) computers, etc. 

All of this sci fi reading is making me itch to play some Star Frontiers, Gamma World, or something similar (Mutant Future, Stars Without Number, something...).  Or maybe to run something myself.  I've still got a good idea for a Terminator post apoc game.  Or something set in Stephen King's Dark Tower universe.

It might be the sort of palette cleanser I need to get to work redoing the ninja tricks in Chanbara!

Figures have arrived!

I mentioned a couple weeks ago that I ordered a bunch of little plastic figures for my son to play with, including the classic Galaxy Laser Team sci-fi figure set.

They arrived today, and my son was suitably impressed.  Here are a few hastily taken pictures (not the best quality, sorry) of all the little guys set up in ranks.  My son's a bit of a perfectionist/completionist. 

 Here is the whole big mess of them.

Everyone's favorite, the Galaxy Laser Team.  They look really large compared to the other sets.  I've got a couple of the Darth Vader knockoffs in my boxes of random RP related figures.  I'll try to dig them out later and see if they're the same scale as the classics, or if it's just that everything else is on a slightly smaller scale.

Masses of robots!  The ad said 140, we got 147, although one was deformed (looks like they ran out of plastic to pour in its mold).  completely random numbers, but there are six poses in four colors each.  If these were for a Star Frontiers or Gamma World game, yikes!  That would be a tough battle!  The zombies are there on the end of the second picture, in a nice toxic/radioactive green color.  My son thought all of these guys are the bad guys, so they got bunched together.  Sorry there's not a lot of detail on the zombies.  There are twenty of them, four each of five poses (two female, three male).

And here are the zombie hunters.  Slightly disappointing that we didn't get the swat/hazmat dudes from the Amazon ad (I should have read the comments, apparently they're either changed or randomized, not sure).  Anyway, we've got one swat-type with an M4 rifle, and four civilian survivors.  Crazy looking dude with an axe, chick wielding a knife in two hands (?), trucker/farmer with a crossbow, and a dude with a shotgun and a snazzy hat.  All of these (the zombies and the survivors) are really soft plastic, and the bases are concave hollows, so they don't stand up so well.  I'm planning to get some putty to fill in the bases and help keep them upright.

And here we have the cave men set.  Four poses, six of each for each color.  Big old neanderthal with club, and three cro-magnons with boulder, stone ax, and club.  The neanderthals would work well as ogres for standard RPG mini scale.  In fact, all of them could work.  And if you use true 25mm scale, any of these guys could be hill or stone giants.

Crowd Source My Rogue's Gallery!

In order for me to more effectively run more Star Frontiers games for the Busan Gamers this summer, I'm gonna need a list of interesting criminals to inhabit the planet of Outer Reach. 

Want to help?  You don't even really need to have the Star Frontiers rules (although if you want to actually stat up your criminal, feel free to save me some time).  What I'm looking for are just some interesting, colorful characters that I can use as targets for bounty hunting missions, foils, street contacts, and the like.

So if you've got an idea for an outer space bad guy, let me know in the comments here or on G+.  And I'm looking for a wide range of criminals, from pickpockets and hoverbus molesters all the way up to serial killers and criminal masterminds.

And here's a sample format:

Name:
Race*:
Wanted for:
Current Bounty:
Personality Quirk(s):
[Optional] Star Frontiers Alpha Dawn stats:


*The Star Frontiers races I'm using are just the Alpha Dawn set [Human, Dralasite, Vrusk, Yazirian, Sathar], but if you really want to use something from Zebulon's Guide or some wacky Star Wars alien or whatever, feel free.

Incident on Outer Reach

Outer Reach, the scummy hive of wretched villainy, in the Dramune System, the Frontier.  These are the wanderings of a band of jaded mercenaries, on a continuing mission to get more cash, bigger guns, seek out new enemies and kill them.  

It is a time of great unrest.  Rebel forces, striking from a hidden base, have been a thorn in the side of Governor Cohaagen Tulving.  And there are two groups of rebels, the Rebels, and the Techno-Warriors, who have a small army of combat robots and a handful of 50m tall (yes, Godzilla-sized) robots as well.  And of course, the Sathar have landed!  Not to mention all the criminal elements on the planet.

This is what happens when I pull out a set of adventures I made for Star Frontiers roughly 25 years ago, and run it for my current group of players.  We spend a few days actually getting them familiar enough with the rules to make their characters, and discussing any special needs they might have.

Justin - Krueger, a 7 1/2' tall human techie, former Techno-Warrior, with a bracing exoskeleton (flavor only) because of his frail physical condition.  Had all tech skills plus demolitions and environmental.

Jeremy - Z.E.D., an AI robot (actually full conversion cyborg, think robocop without even the lips, just half a human brain inside a robotic shell).  Combat specialized (Beam, Projectile, Melee weapons, plus Environmental) and packing a bladed gauntlet (sword) and needler pistol.

Rick - Mason Hawke, a human ex-military sniper, with his mouth sewn shut and a neural-interface robotic hawk mounted on his shoulder that talks for him (again just for flavor, and everyone calls a parrot).  Purely a military man (Projectile and Melee weapon skills only).

Dean - Sister Pompeius Izabelle Giulius, 9-year old Bene Gesserit human, just beginning her training in all that Bene Gesserit Jazz (Psycho-Social and Martial Arts skill, plus some special rules for using Intuition as a "power pool" for increasing chances to perform certain actions/rolls) wearing Tibetan monk robes and light-up Hello Kitty sneakers.

Dean actually wasn't able to make it, which may have been a good thing, considering how things played out with the three hard-case mercs that went on the adventure.  Or maybe her calming influence would have changed the dynamic?  Who knows?  

So the PCs decide to hire on with the autocratic governor who controls the mining operations to put down the rebellions, mostly because they assume he's got the deepest pockets.  Gov. Tulving's underling sends them on a mission to track down the hidden Sathar base so the government forces can roll in and wipe them out.  The only real lead they have is that the Sathar arrived during a battle between the government forces and Techno-Warriors that destroyed the city of Glaxon.

Finding some Glaxon refugees after a bit of computer searching, they learn from a refugee that they need to pacify that there are potentially many hypnotized Sathar agents around, and that a Pan Galactic Corporation research facility, Pwason, was shut down but people have reported seeing activity there.

Before going to the research facility, they stop at a military munitions factory and manage to con the commander into loaning them hover cycles and giving them more ammo (but not the rocket launcher they'd hoped for).  Heading to the Pwason Facility on the cycles, they run into an ambush of soldiers (they were Rebels, but the party gunned their engines and left them in the dust rather than stopping to find out).  

They scout out the Pwason facility for a day, watching the eight scientists going about their day doing SCIENCE!!! stuff.  At dinner time, Krueger goes to the lab building to snoop around while ZED and Mason lob doze grenades into the dining hall window.  All but one of the scientists are knocked out, and she opens fire with a shotgun.  She manages to resist needler anaestetic the first time, but after getting a burst shot from Mason, ZED's needlers put her under the second time.

Krueger is meanwhile investigating the scientists' work, finding some strange unknown types of genetic experimentation going on.
  
Mason decapitates the human woman who resisted, and leaves the corpse there for the others to see when they wake up bound.  The first to come around is a female Vrusk, and Mason takes her into another room while ZED watches over the prisoners.  Mason then tries to get her to talk by telling her that he and ZED saved them from an attack, but waking up tied up next to a dead and disfigured companion and seeing the "rescuers" not untying the other prisoners, she's suspicious and uncooperative.  Mason, with help of Krueger on the chronocom, tricks her into revealing her false PGC contact, Bobward Strumm.  Krueger checks, there's no record of such a man working for Pan Galactic.  Still, the Vrusk refuses to cooperate, so Mason kills her.

The party radios into the military to send some troops to pick up the prisoners.  When they arrive, the medic uses Telol (truth serum) to get them to talk, and lo and behold, yes, they are hypnotized Sathar agents, and reveal the location of the hidden base.  

Mission success!  (sorta)

Anyway, the team took the Sathar agents' armory and got paid by Governor Tulving.  Hopefully I'll be able to run a couple more of these games over the summer.  It was nice to play Star Frontiers again, and while I had to look up more rules than I thought I would, we didn't really have any hitches as far as the rules went.

Guess what?

Guess what the Busan Gamers are gonna be playing tomorrow night?

shamelessly stolen from Larry Elmore's web site

That's right, some Star Frontiers!  Of course, Justin, Jeremy, Rick and Dean are all making their oh so grimdark 40k angsty whatever PCs (well, Dean's playing a 9 year old Bene Gesserit, so he's in the spirit), here's the sorts of things I think of when I think Star Frontiers (besides actual Star Frontiers stuff that is):

Zorak

Maurice returns!

Space Cowboy, Space Princess

Right back atcha, Cap'n!

We come in peace!

You leave in pieces!

Thanks to Brutorz Bill's Simian Saturdays for this one.

Space Cowboys, Gangsters of Love

Listening to Steve Miller and reading Carl Sagan has got me wanting to whip up some kind of retro-future RPG.  Space Cowboys.  Scientists.  Strange aliens.  World-hopping adventures on the wrong side of the law.  Dudes named Maurice.

Found this awesomeness here

Now, there are already Stars Without Number, Space Princess, Starships and Spacemen, X-Plorers, and probably a few other sci-fi OSR games out there.  So if I do work this up, it may end up as either a retro-clone of Star Frontiers (even though that's available for free with WotC's blessing), or else a reworking of my Presidents of the Apocalypse system to a slightly more serious space opera type game.

For now, though, when time permits I'm still plugging away at Chanbara.

Maybe I could do retro-sci-fi with the Flying Swordsmen system, but as I mentioned above, the class&level D&D/d20 field has plenty of games already.

Beast of the Week: Space Monkey

Having a little fun this week with the beast.  I've been watching the old Super Friends cartoon, as well as some Cartoon Planet, with my son.  Both feature heroes with cosmic simian sidekicks. 

Should I start a poll?  Who is better, Blip or Gleek?

Space Monkey
Armor Class: 1 (19)
Hit Dice: 1
Move: 120 (40) Climb 120 (40)
Attacks: 1
Damage: 1d4 or by weapon
No. Appearing: 3d4 (3d8)
Save As: Fighter 1
Morale: 9
Treasure Type: N
Alignment: Lawful
XP: 10


Space Monkeys are simian creatures from another world.  They are extremely agile and their long prehensile tails can be used for many purposes.  They are intelligent, but speak only their own strange language of grunts, hooting, and cries similar to that of normal monkeys.  They can understand Common, however, and often communicate with sign language.  Space Monkeys may become fond of certain heroic individuals or duos, and serve them.  If a Lawful character of at least level 4 or Charisma 16+ gains a Very Friendly reaction from a group of Space Monkeys, one of them will become that character's sidekick.


Dual Stats for Star Frontiers


Space Monkey
Type:  Small Omnivore
Number: 3-30
Move: Medium
IM/RS: 8/80
Stamina: 40
Attack: 40
Damage: 1d10
Special Attack: none
Special Defense: none
Native World: unknown