Systems for space opera

does anyone know a good system for space opera? I looked at travelers and gurps. just wondering about style, I am think Starwars, meets mass effect.

I think TRISTAT would work. It is by the people who made BESM (Anime system that is out of print). You could try to find Star 'Blazers or look around for other anime rpgs. Those tend to favor the style of Space Opera.

thanks knight, found TRISTAT on Rpgdrivethurstuff.com

It should be free. Good luck.

you can also look for d6 space. That is the system that the older star wars system uses but it is more generic and I think it is free also.

Yes, West End Game's D6 Space is available as a free download from the RPGNow site.

This D6 system look pretty tight, I am to give it read, thanks again.

GURPS is second to none for any sci-fi. I use it for Star Trek and it's magnificent.

No problem. If you are familiar with Star Wars the d6 system will be familiar but it is not tied to that setting and is somewhat more generic. I have it somewhere in my pdf collections. I have almost the whole d6 collection books.

I'll also approve the D6 system, it's dated but it can work really well regardless of setting.

A few years ago I was going to build a d6 setting that was based off Star blazers, Battlestar Galatica and Star Trek Voyager blended together.

I am a big fan of Alternity. All you need to find are the GMs guide and Player's guide. I see them online on ebay a lot. Traveller is crunchy more or less hard sci fi. Star wars d6 is good and lots of dice rolling, could work for anything space opera with some work. Spacemaster is a bit crunchy but you can do a lot with it. Star Hero is a very crunchy toolbox. Star Frontiers is older but good and free online. Easy to play designed in the 80s for teens to play, but fun.

I was going to say, "Space Opera? Terrible system, avoid it at all costs!" But hey, you're talking the genre, not the thirty-something year old game... I'll second Alternity, but I'd avoid Star Frontiers, if at all possible. It is an exceptionally easy system to learn and use, but not very robust and the game has a weird skill system that makes flying starships impossible for beginning characters using the RAW.

Alternity would probably work but I didn't suggest it since I'm not familiar with it. I think I have it stored away somewhere if I haven't gotten rid of it. Star frontiers is ok but it was not originally designed for starships. That is what alpha hawks (or something like that) was wrote up for and even then it was still clumsy mechanics.

Knight Hawks is the name of the space supplement for Star Frontiers. You can find all of the books online for free, except for a few map tiles, but even those can be found if you know where to look. The biggest problem, hands-down, with Star Frontiers is how slow combat can go with starting characters. If you try to run their Module 0, you'll find it will take two sessions just to deal with the first scene.

g-lich said: does anyone know a good system for space opera? I looked at travelers and gurps. just wondering about style, I am think Starwars, meets mass effect. I'll echo the suggestions about WEG's Star Wars and/or D6 Space. It's a solid system that you can tweak to your needs rather easily. Playing on a VTT means the dice are added up for you and the players, speeding up the game a little bit from pure tabletop play. Supplements for Star Wars for the most part are fairly cheap and available from the usual locations. If you're in the mood for something a little bit more streamlined, but still compatible, you could check out the free Mini Six. Two options that haven't been mentioned yet that I recommend are Stars Without Number and Savage Worlds. Stars Without Number is a sci-fi game based around B/X era D&D, but has a wealth of well written supplements that can push the game in a few different directions. Regardless of whether or not you use the game system, it has tons of random generation systems for sandbox and on the fly gaming. If someone put a gun to my head and demanded I run a Star Wars game tomorrow, I'd use Savage Worlds to do so. The Core Book is ten bucks in pdf or print, so it's not free unlike the other options. Being a generic and pulpy game, people have made various conversions for Star Wars and Mass Effect already so you're not forced to reinvent the wheel (check out the Savage Heroes website ). There's a sci-fi companion book coming out in two weeks that can make your life easier as well if you're so inclined. Even beginning characters have a Han Solo like veneer of awesomeness, the game integrates nicely with Roll20 and it just works.

Never said it was a good system to use. I agree that is not a system to use for the space opera genre. The system has to be fast fluid and very descriptive which is nothing that star frontiers/Knight Hawks is unless you are willing to gut most of the system to the bare bones. That is why I pointed out D6 and Tristat (if you can find the older BESM then that is good system to use also).

Dave D. said: Two options that haven't been mentioned yet that I recommend are Stars Without Number and Savage Worlds. Stars Without Number is a sci-fi game based around B/X era D&D, but has a wealth of well written supplements that can push the game in a few different directions. Regardless of whether or not you use the game system, it has tons of random generation systems for sandbox and on the fly gaming. Read Star with Number awhile ago but didn't really like it so I didn't mention it. Didn't think about Savage World because I like to try to suggest free systems and I've played Savage World games once or twice but not enough to voice my opinion on it yet.

I know no ones said anything about it....but, D20 Future, a supplement for the D20 Modern games is possible. It isn't free, though it is on the SRD so technically it is free, so if you're familiar with D&D 3.5 you can jump in from there.

It's not so popular anymore but palladium published alot of material for my favorite space oprea, macross. I mightcstart there.

As a setting Macross was cool but the palladium mechanics was more garbage than treasure. I played it for years with their various books, robotech, TMNT, Superspies and ninjas, Heroes Unlimited, etc.. while I loved all the settings up to and including Rifts, the game system was such a mishmash of mechanics. There are many more systems now that are superior to it but the setting is still top notch.

d20 future is the Alternity core with the guts ripped out, replaced by d20 system. The actual alternity books have more flavor. But d20 Future is better as a bare bones deal and easier to find.

You should look into Bulldogs! version of FATE. I am running a space opera campaign in it now....

I bought the huge 656-page Traveller 5th-edition book, but it has a lot of errata. Undeniably it is a complete system for running a game in a star-empire. There is no setting information in it, but people rely on the Third Imperium or other settings or time-periods from previous editions of TRAVELLER. If you want to download D6 Space, the science-fiction setting for the D6 System, you can easily do it on the Polgarus Games site. You can download the basic D6 SYSTEM rules, then D6 SPACE, D6 SPACE: ALIENS I, and D6 SPACE: SHIPS <a href="http://www.polgarusgames.com/download-page" rel="nofollow">http://www.polgarusgames.com/download-page</a> I have found a few other free "space opera" games with wild and weird ideas, all free (though you may have to register your e-mail and password on the site.) STARS WITHOUT NUMBER: <a href="http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product_info.php?pro" rel="nofollow">http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product_info.php?pro</a>... ICAR (a British RPG): <a href="http://www.icar.co.uk/" rel="nofollow">http://www.icar.co.uk/</a> There are just so many... And oh, STAR FRONTIERS is still my number-one fave RPG. The clear combat rules integrating vehicle combat AND aerial combat at the same time did it for me! KNIGHT HAWKS was the companion rules for spaceships and spaceship combat. ZEBULON'S GUIDE was a re-working of the rules using an action-table, with added background material. The current fan-resurrected edition is available on <a href="http://www.starfrontiersman.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.starfrontiersman.com</a> when it was kicked off by Bill Logan, but the main page is not working for some reason. The download-directory page is, though: <a href="http://www.starfrontiersman.com/PDF" rel="nofollow">http://www.starfrontiersman.com/PDF</a> Download the file that simply says Star Frontiers.pdf; that's the main rulebook. Then there's also KNIGHT HAWKS, ZEBULON'S GUIDE, GAMMA DAWN (a fusion of the Gamma World setting on Star Frontiers rules!), adventure modules, character sheets, and the original maps. Oh, and hardcopy books and adventure modules are available (at print-cost) if you search author "Bill Logan" at <a href="http://www.lulu.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.lulu.com</a> . His fan-magazine Star Frontiersman is also available.