GURPS: Star Frontiers

Star Frontiers is one of those classic systems, and my first thought is, "Why would I ever play it with another set of rules?"

Well, this is probably going to sound like heresy, but I did a second playthrough of the Volturnus series, and I hated the melee combat in that first part of the adventure. Having 4-5 crew members doing 1-2 points of damage a turn and praying for knockout results was so unsatisfying I ended up having the only crew member that knew martial arts get the pirate into a hold, and the rest of the crew beat the poor idiot with their fists.

And it felt like one of those moments where another pirate would have filmed this with his cell phone and the video would have gone viral.

I know, use clubs at a minimum, but the chances to hit were so bad the entire fight felt like it would have never come out right or had any sort of satisfaction. Ranged combat and melee combat with weapons in Star Frontiers? Great stuff, pulp action, and fun! Bare fist combat without the martial arts skill? Ugly. Yes, I still love the system, and it is one of the all-time greats. But it needs some love and attention in a few areas.

Also, beyond random ability scores and broad skill categories, the characters felt the same. I did not really get the feeling my starting crew was really cool and different from each other. Star Frontiers always has a special place in my heart, but the game is sorely in need of a revision. Frontier Space by DWD Studios is a cool upgrade to the d100 engine and one I want to try after I run through my current experiments with a few different systems.

Yes, I am saving that for last since that is where I expect to end up.

The Starfinder Experiment

Well, I tried a Starfinder version of Star Frontiers, the D&D 3.5-ish sci-fi system with the leveled weapons, armor, and gear. It was a fun run but turned out to be way too crunchy and strange in terms of the ownership and upgrades of starships (they were free). I had this very strange situation after the first adventure where the characters were level 3-4, broke, and could not afford the upgrades they needed to make in order to play the level 3-4 content. It felt like a video game with leveled gear, and my first thought is they could not continue their adventure, they had to go somewhere and grind for upgrade money.

And I did not like the space goblins everywhere. Honestly, I am a bit tired of the Paizo goblins everywhere used as cheap toss-in enemies, and in every adventure, you could count on them being in there as filler combat fodder. My brother would have called them space herpes (when used in this context). But as bad guys, I feel they are overused punching bags (they do deserve more respect, they are a character race), and the entire universe feels weaker by having them be the idiots you walk around and callously kill for "combat fun."

See also, insane robot enemies, which I also feel are overused as combat filler. Starfinder has this strange problem where they take anything that could be a cool bad guy, like the obvious one, space undead, and make them a friendly allied faction (the Beginner Box adventure). Come on, zombie soldiers, space ghouls, space demons, cyber skeletons, and space vampires in starfighters are cool bad guys.

And telling the space elves and dwarves to "get to the back of the book" and mostly ignoring them was such an insult. Not cool. The goblins are there and a part of the universe, why the bias?

Combat was fun in that d20 way, but magic was way too overpowered. Most of the party were flinging 1d4 lasers every turn and feeling like they were never doing much, and the mage could cast 20 hit-point nukes and one-shot most anything, once on a crit. And then the adventure out leveled them, they had a starship and were broke, and those 3d4 laser pistols everyone needed were out of reach.

The only thing that worked was AoOs with that gas grill on a polearm thing, but even then swinging that thing around in close quarters meant setting people's blue hair on fire and causing third-degree facial burns to your friends.

GURPS: Star Frontiers?

I know this has been done by a few people and they say they like it. I wanted to do this but gave up until I had the latest GURPS Character Assistant software and became somewhat skilled in using it. Now, I feel I am ready to dive in.

For me, I would ditch everything about the Star Frontiers gear lists and just use the GURPS equipment and weapons, and keep the original setting and races. I would not try to convert every weapon, power clip, and tool kit. This would technically be GURPS: Space in the Frontier setting more than a 1-to-1 conversion of everything in the original rulebook. I want to be able to use GURPS Character Assistant and not be converting in gear, so if something has to go, it will be the old gear and equipment.

And another thing, treat all your characters as specialists. The most frustrating thing about designing a GURPS character is sorting through those skill lists, so it helps a lot to create a small history for your character and take them through the training and experiences they had in life. You will never make a jack-of-all-trades character in GURPS, nor do you want to.

And yes, your skill with GURPS starts with being able to sort and pick skills. Design a lot of different characters and it will come to you. Also, remind yourself you are designing a character that isn't going to be great in one thing, but okay in everything they experienced in their history so far.

Great comes later.

Know Your TL and Technology

Another helpful thing to grasp is what technology you are using. In my game, my pilot character will have the fast-starship piloting skill since he does not fly the slow space barges. He only needs hyperspace pilot and repair skills and not FTL, since there are no Star Trek FTL warp drives in this universe - just hyperspace. He knows how to fix a limited subset of stuff, like his explorer truck, basic starship engines, armor, electronics, a hyperspace drive, and a few other components. He needs a crew to do computer, sensor, communications, weapons, or medical systems repairs. He used to drive his explorer out to the woods on weekends as a teenager and go gil-jet flying.

If we set tech-level at 10, we are doing reactionless drives at 0.5 or 1G (std/hot per engine). This is about Star Frontiers level speeds, and you will be taking a few days to travel between planets. I don't really want to be doing the Traveller fuel thing with the large fuel tanks and the DeltaV calculations, but you can with GURPS Space and that is cool. The fact the system supports both and gives you all the math is amazing, and I would assign that task to the navigator player and have them do the work.

Though I could do the fuel tank and DeltaV thing, and I have that option. That would be a lower-technology Star Frontiers, more like some of the imagery in Knight Hawks but without the reactionless drives. The more I think about DeltaV the more I like the concept since this is how airliners work, they burn a lot of fuel just the get airborne, cruise for a long time, and then burn fuel to land. The entire high-fuel usage game has never really been done right in sci-fi games, even in Traveller where it is just hand-waved off as too complicated.

High fuel usage and slower ships put piloting and navigators at a premium and make them more important to the game. It does reduce the "hop in the space truck and go" style of gameplay (and even Traveller fell into this because it was so appealing). Your starships will be "orbit to orbit" models that carry spaceplanes for getting down to a planet's surface. There will be a lot of quiet time after initial acceleration as you coast through the void, and then the rumble of engines as you burn down to decelerate on that long-graceful arc through nothing to your destination.

Then you need to use your space planes to find fuel to bring back to the ship and refine if there is none there to use at a spaceport.

The "magic space van" is dead, and just crewing a floating tin can in an infinite nothing becomes the game. Your skills and teamwork inside that can become the game, almost like a WW2 submarine movie but in space. And when you get to a planet you tend to stay there a while, so you will need a ground game and be able to work on your feet, with your ship in orbit the "mothership" that still needs to be watched over and protected. Your spaceplane pilots too will be important and vital parts of the operation.

There are a lot of moving parts to this type of game, but it sounds cool and it is very unique.

Nostalgia, Not Always Great

I also made some assumptions about the universe like laser weapons are the most popular hand weapon, so he has an ablative anti-laser suit as his primary armor instead of the typical Star Frontiers ballistic skiensuit. He has a backup ballistic vest in case the lead starts flying, but it is heavy so it is in his combat loadout. Star Frontiers assumes more projectile weapons than beam, and I am flipping that to move the universe on a little. Laser pistols in GURPS Space have like 60+ shots to them (with a reload that weighs 0.5 pounds), so why not?

I am guessing projectile weapons are still out there, such as the rare needler, or gauss weapons in specialized military units. Projectile pistols that fire this cased ammo (brass, gunpowder, case, primer, and the machinery needed to put them together) would be rare since the universe has moved on and manufacturing them - compared to powering a laser pistol or making a metal slug for a gauss weapon - are not really necessary anymore.

This is a great example of changing rules and reexamining the assumptions game designers made about a game world back in the day. Back in the early 1980s, lasers were new and there was mistrust of them. We needed projectile weapons as backups. It could rain you know! And gyrojet weapons, which were a thing in the late 60s but never saw much use. These days, if you look at how technology relentlessly moves on and the old stuff is thrown away constantly, you can see a world where the standard sidearm became the laser since it is cheaper, easier to get ammo for anywhere (just recharge the power cell), and times move on.

Note, that these assumptions will also affect the world greatly, as we will see soon. The feeling and tone are going to change here, so if you want something more action-oriented and pulp, GURPS will not be your thing.

Now Hiring: Starship Crew, All Positions

He knows nothing about communications gear and security systems, and he only has basic knowledge of sensor operations and navigation. He can probably get between planets by himself, but he needs a skilled navigator for hyperjumps. He needs a ship's doctor. He needs a weapons repair specialist. He needs gunners. He needs a communications expert. He needs a computer person for operation and repair. If he were to crew a large ship, he is going to have to start earning and hiring.

In Star Frontiers, one person could probably do most of this stuff. In GURPS, forget it, you would be spending points all over and never be great at the things you want to be great at. Give yourself the few things you will eventually be great at, a background in a few other areas, and let the rest of your crew pick up the slack.

Hard Science Star Frontiers

If you ever thought Traveller was hard sci-fi, think again. I am loving this level of detail, and I actually feel like I am playing hard sci-fi. I am doing math and travel calculations, my crew has to worry about all sorts of crazy problems if the ship takes a laser to the midsection, travel times between worlds are days, systems can break down, and skills matter. Even just thinking about some of these campaigns gives me a lot to think about and consider. Part of the fun of sci-fi is that space survival game, where math, time, distance, and space matter. 

If some games fuel matters, along with time and distance.

If sci-fi is too easy with magic space vans taking you anywhere you want to go, then why not just play fantasy? You are at that point. Only this is an easier version of fantasy with instant communication, rapid transportation, and credit cards. Sci-fi has to be more than just a Guardians of the Galaxy me-too game with bullet sponge enemies and snarky humor.

I like it when things are not easy.

When your ship is the only one that can carry a life-saving vaccine to a world in a week's time, you blast off, and your sensors pick up a ship that will intercept you halfway there - and you don't have the fuel to outrun them.

You just have enough fuel to decelerate when you get to where you are going.

You just sit and watch for days as they draw closer. They don't respond to radio calls. You do not know what they want. You can't identify the ship by using your ship's telescope, but they are armed.

You wait. They start to decelerate to match your speed and vector. You are both locked in this fight, but you still have a day to wait before they are here.

And you know when the ship gets into weapons range all hell will break loose. You pray they don't hit the fuel tanks or the cargo bays.

And there is nothing you can do but wait.

A billion lives depend on you getting to that tiny sphere out your front window, and there is no way anyone can help you.

When the time comes, your crew says a prayer and gets in their spacesuits, the gunners get in their turrets, you depressurize the ship, trip the red alert, and those last few minutes pass silently...

That is great sci-fi.