Making SF distict among other games of the SciFi genre ...

JMiskimen's picture
JMiskimen
October 3, 2019 - 8:59am
Classic Traveller is my go to game for Science Fiction, but I do have an affection for Star Frontiers ... How do I or should I make a distinction between the two games to give them an identity, feel, and scope from each other scenario-wise?
Comments:

JCab747's picture
JCab747
October 3, 2019 - 3:45pm
First, Traveller allows you to span a galactic empire, if you chose, with lots of different races, planets, ships, etc.

The Frontier is a small, cutoff sector, possibly surrounded by hostile Sathar clans.

The technology, especially for starships, seems to be greatly different. And, heck, Traveller has far more canon modules and other source material to work with. Star Frontiers has a more open play setting... because much of it is undefined.
Joe Cabadas

JCab747's picture
JCab747
October 3, 2019 - 4:30pm
P.S. Thanks for logging on... A lot of people seem to have abandoned leaving comments in the forums and just post ont the Facebook page... I guess there are some other related groups but I've only paid attention to this one and FB.
Joe Cabadas

JMiskimen's picture
JMiskimen
October 3, 2019 - 6:04pm
No problem .. I really want to add this game into my repitoir - though some Star Frontiersman-isms may be critical to that ... :)

jedion357's picture
jedion357
October 4, 2019 - 3:38am
I think you need to separate setting from rules in your question.

Traveller= space opera

Star Frontiers = Western with a side of robber baron rail road tycoons in the form of mega corps.

My Scilian plumbing partner said of wine: "Drink what the hell you like" This advice applies to most things in life and same for RPGs I think.

Some people play Star Frontiers with savage worlds or Frontier Space or home brew or other. Can't say much about Traveller in that reguard although rumor has it that you might not survive character creation. LOL.

I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers!

JMiskimen's picture
JMiskimen
October 4, 2019 - 7:15am
hmmm ... I think you are right. Maybe I'll try a Pulp SciFi/Pseudo-Western sort of thing that Traveller doesn't easily have the feel for ... Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers, Space Patrol, et al. ...

Shadow Shack's picture
Shadow Shack
October 4, 2019 - 10:20am
Despite some similarities (KH combat rules are quite similar to 1983 Traveller Starter Set rules) there are noteable differences that make Star Frontiers unique. 

1> Personal combat is very survivable. To expand on the wild west comment made earlier in the thread --- unlike what Gollywood would like us to believe, gunfights took a long time to resolve due to low quality control in the ammunition. No two cartridges were the same, powder equality and lead uniformity were both pipe dreams back then so accuracy was an interesting game to play. In other words, both sides would reload several times each before someone finally hit the other person. Such as it is in SF, because instead of crappy ammo the damage dealt is pathetically non-lethal in many cases...so just like the old west, you'll be reloading a lot before someone kicks the bucket.

2> Subspace communication. It doesn't take a year to get information to the other side of the Frontier, instead it takes a few hours or a couple days tops, depending how far away the receiving world is. In other words, if someone rats you out as you begin to leave a system, the next system will know about it long before you get there.

3> Artificial gravity. Simply put, if your ship is moving you have gravity. If it is coasting along you're in zero-G. There are no gravitics in SF, instead the decks-perpendicular-to-main-axis design allows gravity under thrust. Anything else is a house rule.

4> Setting - unless your Traveller experience is limited to the original core three LBBs, there really isn't much definition in the Frontier. There's the UPF versus the Sathar. There's a few definitions for how UPF Spacefleet works in the campaign. There are a handful of systems and a map showing where they are in relation to each other. Aside from Volturnus (Zebulon system) being fleshed out in the original boxed set/Alpha Dawn and the three modules coinciding with those sets, you're pretty much on your own for filling in the details in the rest of the Frontier. In other words, you make it YOUR Frontier. Your Frontier won't be anything like my Frontier or Jedion's Frontier or Joe Cabada's Frontier It's the B/X D&D of SciFi in that regard.

5> Speaking of B/X D&D, it's a simple set of rules that is very flexible...much like sticking with just the three core LBBs in Traveller would be if one was so inclined. Being new to Traveller myself, I can attest to how addictive acquiring those other booklets can be...it can get rules-heavy quickly if you let it. SF didn't enjoy the publication expanse that Traveller did (and still does to this day).

6> Zebulon's Guide to the Frontier - Just ignore this. The creators ignored everything that preceded it, so you should too. You'll find a few ideas that can be incorporated in the original game but don't even try to make any sense of it from there. The creators certainly didn't try to make any sense out of it (unless nonsense counts), and honestly had the other two volumes been released I sincerely doubt it would have seen much in the way of improvement. 
I'm not overly fond of Zeb's Guide...nor do I have any qualms stating why. Tongue out

My SF website

KRingway's picture
KRingway
October 4, 2019 - 12:10pm
Shadow Shack wrote:
6> Zebulon's Guide to the Frontier - Just ignore this. The creators ignored everything that preceded it, so you should too. You'll find a few ideas that can be incorporated in the original game but don't even try to make any sense of it from there. The creators certainly didn't try to make any sense out of it (unless nonsense counts), and honestly had the other two volumes been released I sincerely doubt it would have seen much in the way of improvement. 


This, of course, is a matter of opinion. As is this: my rpg group got a lot of mileage out of Zeb's Guide when it was first published, and ported some of it over to Alpha Dawn when we played again a few years ago. So, don't ignore it. Read and see if there's anything in it you like and feel you could use for your game.

KRingway's picture
KRingway
October 4, 2019 - 12:15pm
jedion357 wrote:
Traveller= space opera

Star Frontiers = Western with a side of robber baron rail road tycoons in the form of mega corps.

After many years of playing and running Star Frontiers games, I don't think I or any of my players saw it in that light. Possibly because we're not Americans Wink  SF was more approachable as an RPG than Traveller to a unch of 12 to 14 year olds in the early 1980s. I'd played Traveller but Star Frontiers just seemed less fiddly to get up and running. Also it was less lethal in terms of character generation Laughing

Shadow Shack's picture
Shadow Shack
October 4, 2019 - 5:32pm
KRingway wrote:
Shadow Shack wrote:
6> Zebulon's Guide to the Frontier - Just ignore this. The creators ignored everything that preceded it, so you should too. You'll find a few ideas that can be incorporated in the original game but don't even try to make any sense of it from there. The creators certainly didn't try to make any sense out of it (unless nonsense counts), and honestly had the other two volumes been released I sincerely doubt it would have seen much in the way of improvement. 


This, of course, is a matter of opinion. As is this: my rpg group got a lot of mileage out of Zeb's Guide when it was first published, and ported some of it over to Alpha Dawn when we played again a few years ago. So, don't ignore it. Read and see if there's anything in it you like and feel you could use for your game.

Yep, pretty much what I said...adapt what you like from it. 

Replacement mechanics for the original game (i.e. 2e SF)? Forget it.
I'm not overly fond of Zeb's Guide...nor do I have any qualms stating why. Tongue out

My SF website

KRingway's picture
KRingway
October 5, 2019 - 12:14am
Again, that's your opinion. There's nothing wrong with 'Column Shift' system. We used it for many years and even adapted it for use in some other rpgs. Similarly, we got a lot of mileage out of Zeb's Guide and only recently decided to port bits of it back to Alpha Dawn (after not playing SF for 20+ years). And we only went back to Alpha Dawn out of sheer nostalgia, not practicality. Originally we were just going to use Zeb's because it was more useful to us and we remembered more about it than AD after a gap of several decades Wink

So, in the interest of fairness, 'just ignore this' isn't necessarily a fair overview of Zeb's Guide. You don't like it - fine. But it's unwise to tell others to ignore when not everyone thinks Zeb's is crap.

Shadow Shack's picture
Shadow Shack
October 5, 2019 - 1:39am
KRingway wrote:
But it's unwise to tell others to ignore when not everyone thinks Zeb's is crap.

My wisdom must be showing then, as I didn't tell anyone to ignore it "because it's crap." Wink

What I said was "to ignore it because the creators ignored everything preceding it." Seriously, they butchered a lot of what was printed in the former rule books in many ways, starting at the beginning with Volturnus/Zebulon. The more I read it the more I found it did not mesh with the game I grew up with that preceded it. I distinctly remember picking this up back in 1985 and reading it for the first time where I checked the cover more than once to see if it was Star Frontiers.  

Back to the original topic, Traveller has seen numerous editions and from what I've read, each one picked up where the last dropped off (IIRC save for one, T-2300) rather than making significant changes to the game, setting, and mechanics in one fell swoop. I haven't owned many different RPG systems but I can't think of hearing about one that changed everything in a later edition like SF did with Zeb's Guide and attempted to make it a completely different game system, complete with altered/new setting and mechanics.

KRingway wrote:
Also it was less lethal in terms of character generation Laughing

While this is a common jest --- even among Traveller fans --- chargen survival really isn't as bad as it's made out to be. Aside from the Scout career (it's the least favorable for survival), it typically goes that way because the player gets greedy and tries to extend the career further and further rather than quitting when they're ahead. In many cases (Scouts aside) you end up failing the reenlistment for another term versus actually dying.

FWIW a good GM will recycle any/all of those failed chargen attempts as NPCs and/or adversaries. Cool

Frankly, Star Frontiers character survival can be more lethal...starting out with your two lv-1 skills you can die pretty quickly before attaining the veteran status that a Traveller character "begins" at. That's a significant difference, with SF you start out at level-1 a la Basic D&D while Traveller starts you out with a veteran character that has left his/her branch of service with a background of skills and acquired wealth/equipment to "begin" a life of adventure. SF starts you out at age:18, Traveller starts you out at middle aged. Either that or think of it as starting off with experienced pre-gen characters.
I'm not overly fond of Zeb's Guide...nor do I have any qualms stating why. Tongue out

My SF website

jedion357's picture
jedion357
October 5, 2019 - 5:58am
As the former champion of Zebulons Guide Revisited project I'm now closer to Shadow's Orbit on forget Zebs Guide.

If you want some new goodies/equipment sure raid it

If you want some ideas from the time line (without actually using the timeline) sure, raid it (clarification I would use a detail on the mechanon's gleaned from the timeline without using the timeline because of all its idiotic problems)

If you want to use the cadres and mega corp setting information, which is compiled from KHs and a Dragon magazine for the most part, sure raid it.

If you want to use the new races or the new star systems or the new planetary notes then sure, raid it.

RE: column shift mechanic
 no body now uses this, only Zebs and a superhero game did back in the day for the most part its slower than having a target number and rolling dice.

and with a character sheet and dice you really dont have to waste time looking anything up 1/2 ability score plus 10%/level is right there on the character sheet and you roll. and all subsequent combat rolls shouldn't require relooking at the character sheet as you should be able to remember that one number vs constantly comparing and consulting a column shift chart for every single dice roll. To be sure if you like the it then use it, some people reportedly played and enjoyed Rolemaster.

I'm forever sold on the fast play of AD style mechanic after having run two separate combats in 1/2 hour plus some skill checks and role play in that same half hour then played D&D 3.5 for 3 hours where we only got through 1 combat -that was tedious.

Zebs is a chinese menu- pick and choose what appeals to you. Ultimately not a fan of it. Although i do slum with it now an then but in those cases we can blame that on the synthetic alcohol.

I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers!

JMiskimen's picture
JMiskimen
October 5, 2019 - 7:25am
Super helpful, guys!!!

This board is WAY more active than I first thought - which is a great thing!!!