That Space Stuff, Part 3

I got my character created, my laser pistol in my holster...now what? Do I have a job at a starport? How much does that pay per day? Are there mission, planet, and star system generators? Can I easily create alien species, robots, starships, security systems, and NPCs? Are there mission creation systems?

Sci-fi is a lot more complicated than fantasy. You can run dry on ideas in an instant. The nature of a dynamic environment in three dimensions, with cultures, cities, space travel, and billions of factors, can overwhelm any game master.

Every tool a game gives you goes a long way.

Frontier Space has a lot more of that low-level sandbox sci-fi information. Where a game like Stars Without Number is incredible for creating planets and fantastic adventures, the nitty-gritty for how you do a 'street level' sci-fi campaign is fully realized in FS.

Where 5E games often fall short is in the limited space and energy they have left to do 'the other stuff.' You will have unique characters and powers, but very few 5E games cover the rest of what you need. This has been a curse on 5E ever since the original 5E DMG was released, and the world took that as, 'Oh, game mastering advice is not important.'

I can find plenty to do for my Frontier Space pilot-engineer. There is a table for wages and pay grades. If I have a million credits, I can buy a scout ship.

My Esper Genesis character awaits a published adventure and boxes of credits to open in space dungeons. The game does an incredible job with classes and powers, but like 5E, what lies beyond that is weaker and depends on published content.

This is the same problem Starfinder had for me. The entire starship economy in that game is lost in space, and taking cargo for profit to buy ship upgrades is hand-waved away. They have this strange space socialist society where starships are given to parties, and the upgrades are free. I still felt there was no sandbox to play in, nothing to the world on a low level, and the game revolved around the adventure path. All the flashy powers in EG or Starfinder are useless without supporting material.

Again, another difference between old-school games and new. OSR games give you the tools to fuel your imagination. 5E and -Finder games are tools to sell published adventures and put your wallet on a content stream.

Give me Frontier Space, Traveller, Stars Without Number, and any other classic or old-school sci-fi game, and I am set for life. I like the Esper Genesis vibe, and it feels like Mass Effect.

But I can get space magic through modding Frontier Space with Barebones Adventures. I can also get trading and exploration games with Traveller or SWN.

Many of these 5E games are fantastic, but many are just flashy collections of classes and powers and not much else. I see many Kickstarter 5E games, too, and most of them follow that same model - lots of cool character options, and behind that façade, the support for living in a world like that feels lacking.

5E is fading fast for me, outside of Level Up Advanced 5E. That game backs up the other pillars of play, and every other game - even 5E sci-fi - feels lacking compared to the entire sandbox and social play support that A5E gives me. A5E spoils me regarding 5E, and the other wannabe 5E games feel like they have pieces missing.

Even stock 5E feels weak compared to the better character-building systems of games like Shadow of the Demon Lord (and the Shadow of the Weird Wizard Kickstarter, which I am in on).

Esper Genesis vs. Frontier Space: Round 2

I did create my pilot-engineer character in Esper Genesis. I wanted to make sure my comparisons weren't just theory-crafting and go through character creation and that big 'what next' step that happens after.

Both systems created the same character. My hybrid pilot-engineer hero guy who makes his living flying a piece of junk, keeping it running on ingenuity alone, and getting into trouble he has to fly his way out of. In the 5E space game, he had "space magic" that simulated fantastic engineering powers. He had a skill and toolkit in Frontier Space - no magic.

To be fair, in EG it isn't magic but 'super high tech' nano-bot and energy science that lets him do amazing things. In game design terms, it is magic. A way to quickly describe the impossible by today's understanding and comprehension. The world of EG feels higher-tech than a traditional Star Frontiers or even Frontier Space setting. I assumed he had one of those Mass Effect-style arm computers with a holographic display. That thing could use an ancient energy source to do amazing things, like conduct scans, blast laser energy, and direct nanobots to make minor repairs close to him.

It does not surprise me that a 5E game leans into the 'personal power' design style, shipping hundreds of powers, dozens of classes, and even more variance with subclasses. This is how a 5E game works: it ships with hundreds of options that could never be tested on how they work with each other. The game sits broken, sells expansions, and is technically in beta for 10 years. They release a new edition that finally addresses the exploits - and nobody will play it since the broken design was more fun. If you cater to self-focused power gamers, shipping a fixed edition will not appeal to them.

So we could never do 'space magic' in Frontier Space? Not true.

DWD Studios also creates a little-appreciated game called Barebones Fantasy. This has a magic system. All you need to do is add the five magic skills to the game and add one +0 skill pick (that does not have to be a magic skill) to character creation. You add these skills to FS:

• Cleric
• Enchanter
• Leader
• Scholar
• Spellcaster

Ignore the scout, thief, and warrior skills in BBF; these are already skills in FS. And set the following skill/level equivalencies in FS for the magic skills, and improve them like FS skills:

1. -20 to +0
2. +5
3. +10
4. +15
5. +20
6. +25 and higher

Ignore the BBF magic skill percentage chance calculations and stay in FS's skill and success chance systems (the action economy will take care of this quick). If our engineer with nano space magic wants to do a scan with his +5 'spellcasting' skill (level 2), it is PER plus 5 as the success chance. Spells are picked off the BBF lists, and the 'divination' spell becomes 'scan' for our space engineer, and it can be used once per hour (as per the divination rules in BBF).

A repair power that uses nano-bots? The heal spell is in BBF, and we could flavor this to only work on machines. Our cleric spellcasting skill would use the same spell for living things and have their Mass Effect-style armband project nano-healing bots to repair wounds.

It is all flavor! Play Cypher System, and you understand this.

BBF has a concept of a primary skill; wizards, if they choose spellcaster as their first skill pick (in FS, the +0 skill), this is a primary skill, and you get 2 spells a level instead of one. You can simulate this in FS by saying if you put a +0 skill in a magic skill, it is a primary.

And characters with that extra +0 skill choice do NOT need to pick a magic skill. You can pick another skill and ignore 'space magic' entirely, which works well since in EG all engineers are assumed to be 'space magic casters' - and in the hybrid BBF-FS hack, you can have engineers who rely on traditional skills without all that 'nano space magic' stuff. Characters who do not choose magic skills get that extra +0 skill and start off more powerful.

And with the BBF-FS hack, you get a few interesting new character types. A scholar with space magic scholar powers? Enchanters who can use powerful nano-powers to enhance objects, or even create robots? Leader skills for space admirals? Clerics for 'nano-powered' space healers?

Just flavor all the BBF magic with 'techno science' explanations, and you have a sci-fi plus space magic hack that feels like EG without all the 5E imbalanced cruft, self-centered design philosophy, and system complexity. FS plus this system feels like a Mass Effect, and characters have 'personal powers' that enhance the game but do not focus too much on personal power. But they feel more unique and capable, which hits that 5E sweet spot.

This also could be used for my 200-years-after game set in the original Star Frontiers universe and gives me a set of kewl-powers to add to the game that signifies a jump in technology and personal power. The Enorea crystal tech on Volturnus was probably used to create all these cool nano-space magic powers, and now everything is techno-slick like Mass Effect. Yet there still is room for those holding onto the old ways and that original traditional skill base and way of doing things. Even without space magic, it is possible to roll up your sleeves and fix a hyperdrive the old-fashioned way.

Part three for this comparison and hack is coming, and it has to do with the part that happens after character creation...

The 5E Thing

I wanted to use Esper Genesis for a Star Frontiers ' 200 years after' style campaign, but it fell apart. This is a great game, with many compelling character powers and classes, along with one of the best "Mass Effect" vibes - with no magic - that I have ever gotten from a sci-fi game.

But it isn't Star Frontiers.

These days, the excellent Frontier Space is my Star Frontiers. Nothing is close, nor does anything work as well as this. The original Star Frontiers rules work but show their age in many ways. With FS, the action economy is fantastic, the support for many sci-fi standards is right there, and the rules give me easy character creation and options for improving characters that beat the original game. Scores above 100% in FS do not break the game; the game is designed for higher-level play from the start.

But the fascinating thing to look at here is why EG failed for this setting. EG is a Mass Effect-feeling version of 5E, a stand-alone system with fantastic classes and non-magic powers. It should be an excellent choice.

And then I realized that, at times, the secret sauce design of 5E can suck. The entire 5E design theory is to keep granting powers and abilities at every level. 5E is heavily influenced by mobile game design, and constant reinforcement and power grade make you want to play "one more level."

But 5E has a dirty underside with the design. Because the notion of power is centralized within the character, external items and wealth are deemphasized. The game reinforces a very inward-looking design, where "my character is my god" sort of feeling. You gather so many abilities and powers it gets to be like a bad MMO, where you fill up 100 action buttons (and still need more), and how you "play" the game involves rotations of what buttons you press, in what order, and on what timing.

5E is a very "me" focused game. Wealth and magic items are relatively unimportant. The world around you is less important. The story is less important. The NPCs in the world are unimportant. The god you serve is the exponential power curve, and the power is mostly inside you.

With Star Frontiers and Frontier Space, character power is relatively linear. What is important in a sci-fi game like this? Having credits to buy a starship and maintain it. Establishing contacts, finding missions, and building a story. Relationships with NPCs are essential. Story arcs are important. Character power happens naturally, but it is not a driving force.

Your adventure motivation is for the story and not to gain power.

The sources of power in traditional games are often outside the character - wealth, relationships, accomplishments, treasures, and a few other things. Very few character types are built on that 'internal power' design philosophy - wizards, clerics, and a few others - but it is not 100% that all the classes are inwardly focused like that.

In 5E, I stare at those character sheets and wonder, how can I get to another level? The 5E design is based on a very me-centric and selfish design philosophy. It is a superhero game where nothing outside your list of powers matters.

When I want to be a space trucker, visit a star system, figure out what is going on, and how I can flip my cargo for a profit - I am externally focused. No power will do that for me. I need to get my hands dirty and roleplay. I need to make friends and get into trouble or have trouble finding me. My eyes need to be open. I need to ask the right questions. I need to meet people and determine how my next space trucking run will expand my bank account. Someone may need help along the way.

The EG classes and powers did not feel correct for a Frontier campaign.

They felt so inwardly focused and took over my thinking of how my characters interact with the world.

Space Dungeons

I started the SPace Dungeons blog just to focus on a game and a setting I love, the Frontier Space rules, and the Star Frontiers setting.

https://spacedungeons.blogspot.com/

Off the Shelf: FrontierSpace

Frontier Space (FS) is really such a great game. I like it better than the original Star Frontiers (SF) since the action economy is so good. The game is designed much better, and the entire combat system is fun. The character-building options eclipse the original inspiration, feeling modern while keeping that retro vibe - and even allowing you to DIY parts of the rules to your liking.

Want to do Star Frontiers the right way? Buy the POD copies of the original game and the adventure modules from DriveThru and play this. This game even does "Guardians of the Galaxy" style swashbuckling space adventure better than most of its contemporaries.

All of the original races in the original game are trivial to port in. The setting works. The modules convert easily. The gear and tech are even better and give you an "advanced setting feeling" to the original game.

If you like the starship combat wargame of the original, Knight Hawks (KH), it is not that hard to use that wargame with these rules - everything is percentage based in both games; simply make skill checks with FS and do the rest with KH. If you need the FS "starship ability scores," simply use the ones in FS, or use a modified skill roll by a character based on the ship they are flying. Freighters are slow and clumsy and throw a significant negative modifier on flying through an asteroid field compared to a starfighter.

Done.

You don't need many rules for much of this anyways, and making a ruling and moving on makes a better game system.

Want a collection of fantasy monsters and spells to do a Starfinder-style game? Pick up Barebones Fantasy (another excellent d00-lite system) and hack them. The monsters here could be reskinned to be FS alien creatures easily and give you ideas for special alien powers and attacks.

Frontier Space just does sci-fi easier and better than most systems. Many systems try to convert clumsy d20-style classes, level systems, and rules frameworks into space, and you get this mesh of rules and special conditions that feels like it should work better together than it really does. And what happens is the rules bloat and get incredibly huge. Only Stars Without Number breaks this trend, and they do it by throwing out most of the d20 wargaming framework and starting fresh.

Star Frontiers - as a classic setting - deserves better than it is getting today; with all the silly drama going on between a few companies that I care not to mention and the mess around Spelljammer. As a "star dungeon" genre game, Star Frontiers beats the pants off of anything from Hollywood or the big two game companies. The SF setting, and also the genre Frontier Space plays in, is this "modern space civilization" meets "John Carter of Mars" sort of mix that creates infinite heroic exploration adventures.

Very few games "get it" in this genre. You get games that want to be cyberpunk, space military, Alien, Star Wars, Star Trek, or any other "easy to emulate" genre. You go back to the origins of all of those, especially the black-and-white serials of Buck Roger and Flash Gordon, and you mix that with planetary swords and sorcery like John Carter - and you understand the genre. FS does all those genres too, but when you want to land your starship next to a strange alien ruin, get out the flashlights, grab your laser pistol, and go inside to check it out - no game does it better.

This is the ultimate "star dungeon" game with throwback nods to the 1980s and those great percentile systems.

Star Frontiers & FrontierSpace

One of the hardest things I did recently was shelve all my old nostalgia games. I got to a point where I had a very nice collection of OSR games, plus a few new ones I wanted to try, but my legacy collection of games kept sitting there and silently demanding attention.

I love them, my brother and I played them for years, and those will always be a special part of my life.

But there is a point where I felt they were holding me back from having new experiences. Also, buying reprints of them and being in fan groups for them felt like that was holding me back from trying and enjoying the new stuff. I still am in those groups (and I do have a lot to add), but I want to make time to explore new games and join new communities.

And while I like having POD reprints of the classics, sometimes having them means they demand attention and they take time away from indie creators trying to get attention and coverage. While I love my classic games, I love the excitement and new ideas that this generation of publishers and creators are bringing to the hobby. Instead of giving money to a billion dollar corporation for a POD legacy game they no longer really support, I would rather give that money and attention to those fans and creators working in a basement somewhere to create new and fun experiences.

I realized I can't always be looking behind me, and that was holding me back from discovering games that I may love. Any game - even newer ones - can become an obsession like this too and prevent you from exploring and finding yourself.

I love you old games, but with limited time and attention I would rather give that to people out there trying to build something new and cool. So with that in mind, I wanted to collect some of my thoughts on nostalgia games and the systems I am using today that replace them.

FrontierSpace

What could ever replace Star Frontiers for me? The classic game my brother and I played for a good amount of our lives, kept us excited about science fiction, and was a great "other universe" from the tentpole franchises of Star Wars and Star Trek. One I am looking at now is the excellent FrontierSpace game from DWD Studios. This is a classic d100 style game with an excellent action economy and support for ability scores and skills over 100%. 

Star Frontiers Unarmed Combat

The hand-to-hand game seems light-years better than Star Frontiers, which limits unarmed damage to the few points of your Punching Score, no damage dice, and has you hoping for a 01-02 roll or "ends in zero" roll for a knockout result in melee. Or getting someone in a hold with martial arts skill while others beat him for a few points of damage per hit.

I tried replaying the Volturnus modules with the original rules and the first "escape the starship" scenario fell flat because of the unarmed damage and combat rules. They game felt and played "wrong" to me, like there was something missing. This wasn't an OSR "then make it up" moment, the rules laid out options and none of them felt really great or worked well.

FrontierSpace Unarmed Combat

In FrontierSpace base unarmed damage is 1d5+melee damage bonus, and those with the warrior skill (basically melee combat) can buy a skill benefit and do 1d10+damage bonus. You can multi-attack too as much as you want as long as you can stomach the cumulating -20% extra action penalties (which also apply to defense).

The unarmed skill also has a great assortment of abilities and bonuses when fighting in melee (purchasable with development points, DP). They can gain improved dodging against being unarmed versus armed opponents, multiple attackers, and dodging ranged attacks. They can get a massive bonus when using two-handed weapons or dual-wielding, and even can conceal melee weapons. 

All of these bonuses can be bought with improvement points as the character gains experience, so their skills improve in unique and interesting ways. If my player wanted to create a new skill benefit, maybe one based on a feat, power, or special ability from another game (for example, bonus sneak attack damage or blocking missile weapon attacks with a laser sword), that could be written up, balanced, and dropped alongside one of the existing ones they give you and purchasable as you gain DP.

There is a lot of customizability here, and with benefits existing for every skill, the system is incredibly flexible and adaptable to anything you could want or add to it. The melee game in particular feels a lot better than the original game this was inspired by.

In our legacy Star Frontiers campaign one of my brother's main characters was a melee fighter and Star Law Ranger. This set of rules would have made my brother very happy and his character a lot more fearsome than the Star Frontiers version. In our legacy campaign we ended up switching rules a few times to get that feeling, and the base game never really did a good job at making his character feel powerful. Here, he could customize his Star Law Ranger into being one of the most fearsome melee fighters in the galaxy and have the special abilities to back it up.

This is one of the advantages to playing a more modern set of rules written by fans of the original, you get so many of these "play improvements" that make the entire experience a lot more satisfying and interesting than the original game. You get a high degree of character customization. This game feels like a next-generation Star Frontiers to me.

The Setting

I love the original Star Frontiers setting, and I know I would port the original setting races into any universe I play with these rules. The original Star Frontiers setting said "the original races came together here" so there are a few questions hanging out here. Did they gather anywhere else? Where did they come from? Are there any others out there?

So there is enough latitude to create your own map and universe without playing on the original Frontier map. You could add new races and have them intermingle with the existing ones. You could also have a mysterious race of worms show up and find this area of space and salvage a lot of the original lore and conflict without sacrificing too much.

The included setting in FrontierSpace is workable, I like the fact there are are different governments to deal with and to have interacting with each other. One thing the original Star Frontiers setting lacked were different areas of space controlled by different factions, things felt very much a uni-faction with one Star Trek style Federation (UPF) running everything.

I suppose if pressed, I would do a more grand sweeping space opera style setting, with ways to return to the original home-worlds of the major races (via slow travel space arks), some home-world factions involved, and more main-map factions and areas of space. Maybe make some of the new races native to this "crossroads" area of space, and put an over-arcing metaplot in place. Something like the crossroads is an area of dense and heavy metals and natural resources, the only place like it in thousands of light-years of low-density space, and the resources extracted from here are critical to the home areas of space of the major races.

Without these raw materials the home worlds will stagnate and exploration will eventually grind to a halt within 100 years. Every so often a new mammoth space ark shows up from the home-worlds after a journey lasting hundreds of years, new factions are introduced, population for a new planet is awoken, and the space ark is loaded up with raw materials for the trip home that will take hundreds of years.

With this campaign setup you could drop the original Frontier setting in there as a home-world faction and area of space that is supplying colonists to this area of space and have that nostalgia hit while keeping things in the newer campaign setting fresh.

Technology

The technology level is different, the ships are a bit more advanced with antigravity and speedier travel, but since the timeline could be advanced or reworked, that isn't too much of a problem. Again, if this is a campaign set after the Frontier timeline and that area of space has been depleted of resources and we are playing 500 years in the future this all works.

Star Frontiers works best when it is "D&D in space" with a mix of modern-style RP, hexcrawls, dungeon adventures, and space combat added on as a fun, almost cinematic, battle where everyone gets to take part. You put too much advanced technology in there, all-seeing scanners, teleporters, real-time instant interstellar communication, and you lose a lot of the adventure elements the game depends on to be "D&D in space."

This is the same problem "too much divination and teleportation" magic that D&D has, and it applies to sci-fi as well. If character have no need to leave their starship, can scan a planet and instantly find the crashed and stolen satellite, and lock onto it and beam it up to the ship there is no need to get out of the ship at all. You have to start inventing reasons why "the scanners and transporters" don't work, or why "instant communication back home doesn't work here."

For good "pulp adventure sci-fi" there has to be work, travel, and going down there to see what is happening. You can't shortcut player investigation and face-to-face interaction with a button on a console.

With super-tech, you end up doing more work finding reasons to limit the unlimited than you do in crafting fun adventures. It gets tiring after a while, which is why everything needs a cost and limitations - magic and technology - in order to have that classic adventure experience.

To be honest, Pathfinder 1e with unlimited first and third party expansion-books ended up this way for us too, you can literally be a mage and solve every problem in the world with a near zero-cost spell. You didn't even need other character classes beyond a cleric for heals and resurrections.

Starships & More

To keep things simple I will probably use the FrontierSpace ships. I had ideas of mixing in Traveller ships, but that feels like too much of a jumbled mix of rules and ideas to work practically. If I go with the assumption this is a 500 years after Star Frontiers setting the only thing I need to keep are the Frontier races that I would like in my game, and possibly use the others in FrontierSpace as expansion material.

It is one of those things, if I am moving on to a new rules system, keep things as much as possible in it and give it a chance before changing everything. The few things I want to keep, some of the legacy lore, can be added easily. I don't need everything from the original rules except the races and the original setting still being somewhere "out there in the stars."

I still would love to do a Traveller-style campaign with these rules, but I may have other ideas for Traveller I want to explore. For now, keeping what I loved about the original Star Frontiers and upgrading to a new set of rules seems like the best fit for this game.

This game really is a better fit for Star Frontiers than the original, at least for me. This is one of those few non-B/X games that is on my "best games" shelf and I look forward to diving in.

Mail Room: FrontierSpace

Back in the day, Star Frontiers was our game. My brother and I played that since it came out, and ran an epic campaign that lasted decades. What we loved about it is the game setup a sci-fi sandbox and let you go crazy with all sorts of adventures, starship battles, and exploration all across the universe where a small starship and crew could make a difference.

Contrast this with Star Trek and Star Wars, which can feel like the only way you can make a difference in the galaxy is with a giant battleship and fleet of capital ships. Yes, there is always the small smuggler ships and Edge of the Empire went a long way to restoring the small ships matter feeling, but every movie that comes out works against you in it puts into your mind that bigger and better is the only way to affect change in the galaxy.

Small Ships = Adventure!

This is also why I like capping the size of ships in Traveller to the original tonnage limits in book two to the 5,000 ton maximum, and the best drive performance you could get out of those "battleships" is only 1 or 2 G acceleration and jump 1 or 2 as well. Got a star 4 hexes away? Sorry, not going to encounter any ships larger than 3,000 tons there, and that ship would be loaded with Z drives. Small ships could frequently outrun larger ones, and you never got these 50,000 ton 6G acceleration battleship hot rods like we had in High Guard (that could also have jump 6). The game became Janes All the World's Navies at that point and a lot was lost.

Yes, Star Frontiers (with Knight Hawks) had battleships, but there were very few of them in the galaxy. You could outrun larger ships in a small ship. You had to watch for starfighters. The low-level starship game felt really good. Everything else came from that model of starship reality, and the planetary ground game was a direct result. How planetary militias worked. The exploration game. How ships got hired for jobs. What ships got sent to investigate mysteries and respond to emergencies. A small team in a smaller ship could make a difference.

If an outpost in a far away star suddenly goes silent, sending a small adventure class ship to investigate was the first choice. In a universe with modern space navies, the planetary government is likely to send a destroyer out there with a few hundred troops, with escorts, and your scale gets messed up. There is no reason for smaller ships and those classic one-party adventures.

If a sci-fi system does not balance ship size, speeds, and jump distances it gets boring quickly for me because the universe will go to the biggest ships with the biggest fleets. The small-scale sci-fi adventure I love is lost.

FrontierSpace

So I got FrontierSpace in the mail last holiday season, and I am just starting to give it a look. This uses the same d00 system that is instantly familiar to players of Star Frontiers, Gangbusters, or Top Secret - but the system is very different and has a cool action economy where you can attempt as many actions during a turn as you want, it is just the one after the first gets a -20 multi-action modifier, and that modifier sticks around, accumulates, and becomes your penalty to your defenses.

Lose initiative and want to make two resistance rolls to dodge attacks before you get to act? The first is at +0, the next is at -20, and your turn starts with a -40 action modifier for your first action, a -60 on your second, and so on. This creates a sense of tactical play over the turn and benefits high skill levels tremendously. It also creates a betting game where you can push your turn hard and try to slip in one more action or attack, and possibly pay the price later. The multi-action penalty resets on each combat turn, so you begin again at zero.

Otherwise, the system and mechanics are very similar to the d100 games we love. Simple, fast, and fun.

Standardized Ships

FrontierSpace comes with a list of standardized ships, and from what I can see, no ship design rules. One could say Knight Hawks also had standardized ship designs, but they had a design system that worked for civilian ships (the military ships were allowed to break the rules). I would have liked a complete design system, but that isn't a deal breaker.

Ships have standardized ranges and fuel consumptions, anywhere from 0.5 to 3 LY per day, one fuel is used for each LY traveled, and fuel tanks are from 20-80 units. There is no benefit for smaller ships, and the larger ships appear to be faster in inter-star travel with longer ranges. I prefer smaller ships being faster with longer ranges, but the ships look well-designed and built for adventuring. Not what I like, but not a deal-breaker again.

A Better Star Frontiers?

From everything else I read, the game feels very complete with more options than the original game in gear, skills, weapons, robots, vehicles, and development options. I am liking what I see a lot, and this looks like a more modern game that is well supported that I would support over the legacy game (even though I love that game).

I prefer to support the indie and newer games over the legacy ones, since people are making a living off of these games and efforts, the community can often develop new material for them, and there is a lot of potential for fan creations and support. With legacy games often you just buy the game for nostalgia and there is not new content being made, so there isn't a future in the game where the community can join in and produce new material.

The races are like the Star Frontiers ones, with a few being very similar. Nothing is stopping you from taking the classics Star Frontier races and using those, or playing the classic Frontier setting with these rules. You do get a few cool new ones, and robots as an option. You could use all the races together, this is sci-fi, so most anything can be dropped in and work.

The original Star Frontiers has some weaknesses, like the very low unarmed damage, and the high ability scores and skills feeling uninteresting as you can't do much more with a high score other than get automatic hits. At least here you can push extra actions and resistance rolls, so high scores can really work for you in FrontierSpace. The game here is much stronger than the original.

New Ships?

You could also use Knight Hawks ships here too, but the ship combat balance would definitely be affected by the multi-action system in FrontierSpace. It may come out better, overpowered, or worse. Same thing with dropping in Traveller ships, you get turns where you are firing three or four attacks with some of these ship weapons that were only designed for one attack a turn and things I bet can get very deadly quick. Still, if you allow pilots to dodge attacks with resistance rolls everything may balance out, but this is a "try it and see" thing.

I mention this because my first idea when I saw this game was to use Classic Traveller starships instead of the ones here to get the space game feel I like. The ships in Mongoose Traveller are a bit different, and tend to be more High Guard with percentage design rules than the classic table based ones. So this would be a Traveller-like map and star travel experience with a modernized set of Star Frontiers rules driving the action.

It may work.

Or I may put my hacking and modding urges aside and play with the ships they give me. This would probably be a better idea because if I am new at the game I need to understand the original system balance.

But I do like hacking and modding games.

More Soon!

I am excited about this game, and I got the other games in the series as well that use the same system for fantasy and spy games. This feels like the perfect game for d100 play, modern, supported, exciting, with an action economy that burns up high skill and ability levels quickly for some awesome action at the table.

I need to play a few games and check this out for sure. Who knows, maybe a replay of the classic Volturnus series with a new engine under the hood? Sounds like a great time.