Some people hate class & level implementations for science fiction games. We started science fiction with Space Opera and later Star Frontiers, so I understand the feeling.
My first class and level-based sci-fi RPG was the semi-infringing Starfleet Voyages RPG back when Paramount/CBS did not care much about fan creations, and they let a lot slide. This gave us Starfleet Battles and many fabulous fan-made creations that would never be possible today.
Strangely enough, this "Star Trek Dungeons" was a fun concept. Teleport into the salt mines, kill many silicate rock monsters, save the captured colonists, and teleport to the med bay to heal damage. Same with Klingons (as orcs) or any other sci-fi monster. Classes and levels in this game work since the original series had such vital crew roles that "Bones McCoy as a Doctor class" fit.
The concept works, and it has a 'stupid charm.' Klingon orcs are attacking the science outpost, making local giant Gila-monster lizards angry with pain implants and sending them to attack the outpost. Shoot the giant lizard attacking your landing site. Do a hex crawl to find the Klingon base. Shoot the Klingons, and then raid the ancient dungeon they were looking for treasures in. Send the treasures to the Starfleet Museum of Planetary History for more XPs.
There were "credits as loot" in this game, which was strange, but having those prices opens up trader and mercenary games.
This worked in a simple model and game loop, where you got excited to level your science officer up to the next level and got a few new "X in 6" abilities or improved the ones you had. Discover the rock monsters' weakness? Your science officer does double damage when they fire their phaser at them!
Level up and be assigned larger ships. Go from a tiny single-engine scout ship with 20 crew to a complete fleet cruiser with a thousand! You are like that guy in the TV show now! Talking. With. Pauses.
White Star fills that niche today with the optional Five Year Mission book. You can even play a Paranoia-style-clone "red shirt" who can die and be replaced by another from the ship, keeping the same level and abilities, just the next in line. Some of the class names are a bit rough; Sawbones is too medieval for my tastes as a sci-fi doctor class; since White Star covers "Combat Medic," just rename this "Ship's Doctor" and be done with the cringe-inducing names.
I get it; Star Trek was viewed through a Guardians of the Galaxy-style lens; you need to use silly names. But that levity aside, a good, crunchy, serious, B/X-style Star Trek-like game is hiding here with a simple tone shift. Perhaps the humor is needed.
Best of all, Five Year Mission meshes perfectly with White Star. So you could have a Guardians-style area of space meet a Star Trek-style "Space Federation," and it is all a semi-serious parody of the genre. Star Wars tried to do Guardians but died on that hill, so the serious-themed science-fantasy genre was lost in space.
Starfinder? I tried, but the 3.5E rules dragged this down into a mess that needed Starbuilder to figure out. I am also checked out on Pathfinder 2 and the upcoming Starfinder 2; the character sheets are bad. The game was designed by a team who thought electronic character creation was the be-all and end-all. This is a game and setting I wanted to love, but it isn't happening for me. This also started with getting rid of classic fantasy backgrounds and putting them in an appendix, embracing them in the adventure paths, and I feel OGL issues will force another retcon.
I like my space elves, space dwarves, and star drow. I will do them myself with a B/X set of rules, not waste a few thousand dollars on books and ultimately be let down. I can have a drow science officer in Starfleet.
3.5E is the best version of Wizards' D&D, but it pales compared to a solid White Box set of rules or even AD&D 2nd Edition, which is a far superior game. The Castles & Crusades game beats them all. But Starfinder is hard-pressed to do a good Trek adventure, though it dungeons pretty well due to its 3.5E roots (at lower levels when they still matter before the strings of boss fights begin).
With White Star, Five Year Mission, and White Box FMAG I can have it all. A game where Trek-style adventures happen in a Guardians-style universe where magic and science mix. The PDFs are $10, $3, and free. Tools of the Worldshapers (a hacking guide) is $7. You have a complete collection of rules that does nearly anything for under twenty bucks.
Add another $10 for B/X Options Class Builder, and you have most of the "missing" classes of other games, like bards and druids, plus a robust BYO toolset. Make "Halo Guy" a class. Wookie can be a class. Reskin fantasy classes as sci-fi classes. Space bard. Galaxy barbarian. Worm rider. Do what you want.
One of the worst "advances" in the hobby that 3.5E+ and Wizards made was to ruin homebrew and give the impression that only "professional game designers" can create content for the game. Wizards wrote the game to enshrine the company as the official source of balanced content, which was never the case.
In B/X Land? A player can create a custom class and give it to the group for approval, and we can all play with that. We like it, great! Overpowered? Fix it. Underpowered? Tweak it. If that class was only one person in the history of the world, okay. If we like it and use it again, it is outstanding!
This is really my go-to toolbox for B/X sci-fi that does it all.
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