Can White Star do ...Star Wars?

White Star feels like a White Box Star Wars game, but it pulls in so many other inspirations that it feels like an "anything" White Box game. That unfocused feeling, where star squirrels are running around with space-pirate halflings, makes the game capable of handling Star Wars, since it has many of the iconic elements, but is very all over the place in terms of genre support.

There is Star Trek, Guardians of the Galaxy, and a bunch of other stuff going on here.

I wish the game were less random and more focused, with the special genre support in expansion modules. The base game should be as generic as possible, and things like Star Knights and other "war-of-the-stars-like" elements should be added in the "science fantasy" module.

The Trek-like elements could be added to a space federation module, with xenomorph-style content in that module, and so on. There is room in BX for a "star opera"- style game, and White Star tries to be an everything game, but it feels like it is trying to do too much.

I love the idea of BX sci-fi, and I miss the old Space Opera game, which did generic science fiction that could be Wars, Trek, Alien, Galactica, Rogers, Apes, or anything else. A BX version of that would be a dream game.

White Star sort of floats in generic sci-fi, not really Star Wars-inspired, and just generic, yet with oddly specific classes and race choices. With a lot of work, it could do Star Wars, but it would need a lot of houseruling, custom classes, gear, vehicles, and starships. A lot would need to be cut out, but it is possible.

For others to play with me? Easier to play the official game and let them experience that. I have had "let's play X with Y" games fall apart on me before, as it is too hard a sell for people to buy into, and even more so if "X" is available as its own game. There are times when it is easier to buy something they can buy and agree to play that together.

If we are playing Star Wars, and the game is available and in print, we will play that. It is far easier to sell and get people interested in the official game than in a homebrew or a modded system.

But, White Star does an okay Star Wars with some modding and tweaking. It needs the iconic aliens, or facsimiles, as classes. Some of the goofy classes should be pared back. We need more gear and a bunch of starships to replace the official ones (most work fine, but I want to see more). It works; it could be better if it were more focused, and some assembly is required.

If you are looking for a game that is in the OSR that could serve as a Star Wars game, White Star is as close as you can get at the moment.

BX and Star Wars

The original Edge of the Empire game was released in 2012, and it is still an amazing experience. This is one of the most lore-dense games I have encountered in this universe, and it continues the tradition of the roleplaying community carrying the Star Wars fandom and keeping the torch lit when hope seems lost and the light is dimming.

I get that this seems like a modern game, but it really feels like something from the late 1980s that carries into the 1990s. Technically, the West End Games' Star Wars system is the 1980's version of the game, but this is what we have today, and it works well enough to take me back.

If we can have Classic Pizza Hut back in 2026, we can have Classic Star Wars, too.

The same thing applies to Old School Essentials; this is my 1980s throwback game. While yes, we have the original BX books in PoD these days, there is no guarantee those will be around forever, and OSE is the path forward. The original BX books are the better game for learning to play, but Basic Fantasy also does a wonderful job teaching the game. For me, OSE is a fast-playing, more-optioned, easier-to-use, streamlined set of rules that disappears into the background and lets me focus on the dungeon turn, the story, and being the referee.

Keep your BX books close for inspiration and for that positive karma. For me, OSE is BX D&D, the game that brought it back to the mainstream and became the de facto standard for creators and adventure writers. There is no way you can publish for BX anymore except through the OSE license, and that is getting free of the OGL next year. The BX books are teaching games only until the rules are released under a Creative Commons license. If Wizards could put out as much as possible under the CC, for every edition, that would be a huge gift to gaming and go a long way to winning me back.

Given the sad state of both 5E and Star Wars, I am ready to go back to the 1980s and forget today, and relive those times. Yes, that is not possible without d6 Star Wars (you can still get the d6 Space system in PoD), but the Edge Studio games are fine and in print rotation. I am supporting this game while it is still out there, and I hope it continues.

Do I hope Disney can turn it around? Yes! Wishing for failure is just evil. I want good Star Wars again. Until I can get it, I will go back to the last, best Star Wars we had. There is an argument for Rogue One, Andor, Mando Seasons 1 & 2, and The Force Awakens being glimmers of light in the darkness - so the current state of things is not a total loss. We have fallen off, post-Pandemic, and we need a turnaround.

TFA had potential. It could have gone so many places. Even that seems like something that could have started off rough but gotten better over time. If I ever play in the sequel universe, it will be with TFA as the starting point, and nothing that comes afterward will count.

Poe would be a hero, assembling a team of Resistance fighters under Leia's guidance.

Finn would be a Jedi and lead the new Jedi Order through Luke.

Ben Solo would need to find redemption through sacrifice, just like Vader, through Han.

And Rey would fall to the dark side, betraying them all, and becoming the new Emperor.

Look at that poster, that is the story it tells me. Where the characters are, the lightsabers they are holding, Rey crossing the red saber towards the darkness, and Finn holding the blue. Subliminally, this is the story we were promised but never given.

The game lets me tell that story, fulfill the dreams I had of that place in my universe, and finish the trilogy in my head the right way. Yes, it is fan fiction, but it is better than what we got. One of the most beautiful things about gaming is being able to finish one story and begin another. And to take the huge box of action figures and vehicles, this big box of toys, and play pretend.

TFA, as a starting point, could be salvaged.

The Edge of the Empire and sister games are GOOD Star Wars games, full of nostalgia and memories, written by people who love the EU and the source material. I hope these continue and are even expanded upon. I want PDFs and VTT support!

But I know this may not happen, so I will hold onto my library tight.

It is really all I have, unless someone makes a "clone game" of BX Star Wars in a like universe. There is White Star, and that is getting a new edition from those who brought us OSRIC 3.0, which is great news. I need more drop-in replacements for some of the "SW-like" items and to make parallel, BX-based play in this universe easier.

There is room in the BX and OSR communities to make a parallel science-fantasy game that delivers a Star Wars-type experience well while leaving the door open for us to write our own stories. This is likely one of the next steps to take in the hobby, just to keep the stories alive if the licensed game were ever to fall.

Until then, I will be back here in the 1980s, enjoying myself, with classic BX and the EU books and games. I will keep an eye on the new stuff and hope it shows promise, but I know where I will be happy.

Here.

Mythmere Games Acquires White Star

https://jamesmspahn.substack.com/p/mythmere-games-acquires-white-star

You know the OSR is hot right now since we get this type of news. The publishers of OSRIC and Swords & Wizardry bought the rights to the White Star RPG, and they will be releasing a new version this year or next. The original creator is still onboard. Head over to James Spahn's Substack for more info.

A refreshed, updated, and improved White Star RPG is coming? We are getting more classic BX science fiction?

Sign me up.

The OSR is cool right now, and the place to be.

d20 Sci-Fi: White Star & the Starfleet Genre

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.

White Star: Essential Books

The core book of White Star (Galaxy Edition) is essential. Note that the Galaxy Edition is the newest version of the game, including material from the Companion (the old game is still on DTRPG, so be careful buying). But where do we go from here?

White Box Fantastic Medieval Adventure Game costs five dollars on Amazon and is one of the best, most compact, and inexpensive White Box games out there. It's digest-sized, too, so it slips right next to your core book and doesn't eat a shelf. This is an obvious buy for classic monsters, spells, magic items, and classes for a Starfinder-like mixed science fantasy game.

White Box FMAG is also d6-based, like White Box, so you do not need d4, d8, d10, d12, or d00 dice - which is nice. I enjoy the games that cut down the number of dice, and I don't have to sort through a bucket of dice to play the game. There is something magic to a fantasy game that only uses a d20 and d6, removing pointless distractions and needless dice optimization. When I play the game, I put the dice I don't need away and maybe keep out only one d100 set for tables. 

But White Box FMAG does have d12, d4, d10, and d100 charts, so they come close but their table optimization skills need a little more clarity and focus. White Star eliminates those dice entirely, and only has d6 and d20 charts.

Alternatively, the beyond-excellent Iron Falcon is another low-cost option, though this is less White Box and more of a 1e alternative, using all the dice.

Tools of the Worldshapers is a good resource, even though this seems like an earlier book, and some of the material made it into the new edition of the main game and the Galaxy Edition. They have race creation here and a balanced human option that allows for more customization. Also worth the price of the book is a chapter on faster skill advancement and a talent system that allows for even more character customization. There is also some new gear and other things you may find helpful. There are a lot of good system hacking tools here, and this will help you customize to your heart's content.

Heart of Varrul is next, a 300+ page setting and adventure path? Obvious choice. I would have put this as the number two book, but I am a system hacker and want to simulate a specific genre and setting. Science Fantasy with Magic fits in the setting, and the core book even suggests this as a campaign type.

If you go for the Varrul adventure, there is a 100+ page supplement PDF with more adventures. This is a good buy, but sadly, it does not come in a digest-sized book.

B/X Options Class Builder is another good hacking resource for making classes. Not that White Box uses the d6 for hit dice, so you will need to adjust and use White Star as a guide, with 10 HD at the 10th level being a fighter. Five to ten HD at the 10th level is the range you are working with, so a d4 class would be closer to 5 at 10, while a d10 class would be 10 at 10.

Alternatively, figure the average roll of the hit die and roll a modified d6 instead:

• d4 = 1d6-1 (minimum 1)
• d8 = d6+1
• d10 = d6+2

You can use many classes here, even with the other dice referenced. Want a "Star Barbarian?" Need a "Space Sorcerer?" You got it. There are race variants here, too. Cap the levels at 10, and you are good to go. You must add White Star skills to any class you import, but using the Worldshapers book as a guide is easy enough.

And I love these "X in 6" White Box skills - they are better in every way to DC systems, roll under ability, and most any other messy hack to add skills into d20 fantasy gaming. Need a new skill? Add it, but be mindful of adding too many since you must increase the skill gain rate (Worldshapers, again).

X in 6 skills solve stat inflation, manage player expectations, allow customization and specialization, and let players focus on an area outside their class to gain non-standard class abilities. I would use these in place of most ability score checks.

There are other books in this game, all of them very interesting. The core book and the Worldshapers are the minima for pure sci-fi, and the others I consider more a hacking resource and extra stuff. Still, that White Box base game is handy to reskin monsters from. The adventures are fun, and the B/X Options book is the least needed here, but you can never go wrong with extra classes.

These are my core books for the system, and enough to provide me endless adventure and fun.

Off the Shelf: White Star

I had White Star boxed up in a post-OGL funk about d20 gaming in general. Mind you, D&D 5 is still on my "sell it all" list, and I will get those books ready to ship soon. If a book brings me negative vibes and feelings, it gets put away, and these days, it gets sold. 5E alone isn't at fault; the Wizards team is, and D&D is still dead to me.

This was a mistake; this one is one of my best sci-fi games.

It is easy to underestimate and dismiss this game, but it is good. It has a sort of Guardians of the Galaxy feeling to the proceedings, with a mix of anthropomorphic kin, aliens, and humans. You can make up a race (pick 2 special abilities or modifiers) and insert it or do race-as-class. Stars Without Number feels more Traveller and Star Trek to me. This feels like space dungeon crawling.

Frontier Space is still my best Star Frontiers replacement, and I have that on my shelves. But FS doesn't do B/X and White Box very well, and I need a space fantasy game with good compatibility. Yes, I have Stars Without Number, which is also great. But something about the digest-sized, straightforward, no-frills White Star implementation perfectly emulates Swords & Wizardry White Box, which only uses a d20, d6, and maybe the d00.

d20, d6, and d00 are the Cypher System dice, and games that use this set have an elegant and streamlined feeling that I love. I never knew eliminating the d8, d12, and d4 could speed up a game so fast and shift the focus back to the story and away from the rules - but it is true. Never having to roll a d4 again is also excellent, especially since classes are so tied to them (thief, rogue) that the little caltrops-like and impossible-to-pick-up pieces of triangular plastic junk drag those classes down.

When you have too many dice, you start inventing reasons to use them, which puts too much focus on the dice and rules. Without them, and with a single modified d6 for damage rolls, your design goes from cluttered to elegant. The average roll between a d4, d6, and d8 is only a 1-point difference, and you could do all this with a d6, plus or minus one. The die size matters far less than the fixed modifier. White Box fixes the out-of-control die roll modifiers in B/X and reduces the need for stat inflation.

Without the extra dice and "+3 at 18," you are not getting less of a game - you are getting more. I used to feel White Box was less of a fun game than B/X, but it isn't. You can roll 3d6 down the line in White Box for stats, and you can't in B/X. That graduated set of +2 and +3 modifiers (and higher) on the 3-18 scale creates such pressure for high stats the trouble starts from here and never stops.

The 3d6 generation should be the heroes. 4d6 and drop the lowest is an inflationary patch to a design flaw.

White Box implementations fix many of the problems that later editions introduced and enshrined.

White Star completely replaces Starfinder for me. If I toss in a book like White Box Fantasy Adventure (a 5-dollar book on Amazon), I have it all: fantasy races, spells, classes, plus sci-fi. The same digest-size, small shelf space packed with fun and not a bloated collection of digest books is fantastic. I feel this is what many of these giant, 8.5x11 books miss; they are too large to collect, and the size leads to bloat. I am happy with a tightly-designed digest-sized game with familiar rules.

Downsize your roleplaying game collection, and not just in the number of books. If you give a company like Paizo or Wizards a 600-page 8.5x11 book, they will pack it with filler and hide it with great art. You get an indie doing a digest-sized White Box genre implementation and have my attention. You shrink that book, and the designer must do severe game-design flex to fit all the rules while avoiding bloat.

Games are the same as electronics; the smaller they get, the better the design must be. The cleaner the UI needs to be. The smaller the game, the better the user experience needs to be.

Only $5???

Two digest-sized books, White Star plus White Box, give me more than two shelves of Starfinder books. In White Star, starship, vehicle, and mech combat all follow the same formula as personal combat. In GURPS, I was doing algebra and adding and subtracting modifiers from +30 to -30 on a 3d6 scale. Starfinder and Star Frontiers need hex grids and completely different systems for every type of combat.

Starfinder has that infamous 3.5E bloat. The Wizard's design model is to write bloated games they use to sell you hundreds of pounds of filler-packed books. The design theory of Paizo and Wizards is similar to how they sold IBM mainframes in the 1960s: get you in the door and install such a bloated and heavy system you will never replace it for decades.

It is less of an engineering design theory and more of a sales and support model. And the support often sucks and breaks the system later. And you can bet your wallet these games lure you into an expensive post-sale support stream.

Shout out to Stars Without Number, a fantastic game that deserves to stand alone. This has White Box compatibility, but for some things, I feel it strays away from the simple way of handling things and gets into the weeds, ship combat, for one. The starship combat system has good details and layered tactical depth, but I want something even more straightforward. The system is designed to give every character something to do and fight boredom, but sometimes, I want to avoid all these layered rules.

Let White Box be White Box.

Having ships fight like any other character or monster is fine. The White Star number of attacks against a ship's AC, reduced ship hit points, and destroyed at zero is okay. It does what it needs to do. Mechas and vehicles work the same way. I could have a mecha (or vehicles) exploring a "mecha/vehicle dungeon" or a starship flying around a "starship dungeon," it all works the same as character combat.

Easy.

My brain thanks me.

Like Cypher System, I can do more with fewer rules. I can focus on the story.

The goal is to replace Starfinder with a mix of fantasy and science fiction while keeping the standard tropes and backgrounds. Starfinder has moved on to the tax-form character record sheets of Pathfinder 2, and I wish them well, but damn, is that character sheet horrible. They are also removing a bunch of favorites from lore, like dark elves, and I like my space dark elves (and they have them in Warhammer 40K, so don't OGL me).

White Star plus White Box Fantasy Adventure is my "D&D in space." I can use all the classic monsters, reskin them, put lasers on them, make them robots, use them as creatures in cyberspace, or use them any other way without problems. I can have space wizards and a selection of magic items. I can roll a +2 flaming laser pistol as a magic item (+2 to hit, adds 1d6 fire damage, can ignite objects). The more this feels like a crazy version of "He-Man in Space," the better. Unlike Stars Without Number, this game is more goofy and lighthearted.

A simple set of rules lets everyone laugh and have fun.

Best of all, they are all digest-sized books.

Little books, big fun.

The More I Read, the Less I Need

With B/X games, I started with my original preference, Labyrinth Lord. This hybrid mix of D&D and AD&D gave clerics a spell at the first level and had the best support with dungeons and expansions written for the game. This also had the -3 to +3 ability score modifiers I was used to and all my favorite AD&D monsters. The second edition of this is coming too, which is nice to see.

Then I was all over Old School Essentials. This had it all; the best organization, art, incredible presentation, and ease of use were second to none. The expansion classes are excellent and fresh takes on the classics through a B/X lens, including one of the best OSR bards.

It lacked the demons I expected, so it always felt incomplete - especially when Advanced came around, and this started to pull in AD&D concepts. The base game is limited to fantasy and generous with ability score modifiers. There is no percentage-based magic resistance.

This is still the best edition of B/X you can buy - especially if you are coming off of 5E and need to have rules support for many things. This is both a strength of the system and a weakness; if you need a rule - it is there. But B/X from earlier days was designed for you to just make it up as you go along. There is a difference in the B/X community between the "fully ruled" later editions and the "make a ruling up" earlier editions of the game. There is still much room in OSE to make up rulings; I just lean towards more freedom and my own rulings.

These days, I am gravitating back to Swords & Wizardry. This is a hacker's game, made to modify, and there are some genius-level simplifications here. A lot is left up to you on how to handle; where OSE will have rules for everything, S&W lets you make a ruling. This has the AD&D monsters, and it has percentage-based magic resistance. This also limits ability score modifiers to a lower range and limits STR bonuses for melee to fighters only.

Giving everyone ability score modifiers for every little thing pushes stat inflation. Straight 3d6 characters feel playable in S&W, whereas in many other games, they do not. The universal +3 modifier at 18 (for all classes) feels too powerful. I like fighters as the only class getting the hit and damage modifiers from strength. Late-era B/X had a lot of "gimmes" that I feel made the game too easy, and since the D&D game of that time was targeted toward kids, the B/X games that emulate late-era D&D feel like they give too much when they shouldn't.

The hardcovers are a bit tricky to find, but they are still being sold on Lulu.

Also, this is 100% compatible with White Star, and all that sci-fi goodness comes in, and you have a Starfinder-style magic and sci-fi game. This is awesome since I love the "science-fantasy plus magic" genre, and I have a game that does that and can pull from sci-fi and fantasy sources and have everything work with no conversions. Laser bow-armed space elves fighting space orcs in powered armor? It works.

The awesome Beyond Belief White Box-based "X!" minigames also play well with S&W, which are expansions to the game if you want them to be, or fun standalone one-shots. Mix those with any S&W material, and your game feels vast.

I need less to have fun with, and massive shelves full of 5E or Pathfinder books these days feel overkill. More is less. And the reverse is true. My imagination and game design skills are superior to "rules written in a book." I know, for some, the rules are a part of the fun - and if that is your game, Pathfinder 2 is a blast.

So I gravitate towards games that give me more creative freedom, with fewer rules written. This isn't "rules light," and I find some of the newer games are more rules heavy in that they impose so many "creative frameworks" on your imagination they limit your creativity and replace it with a rigid "author-approved system of creative play."

Astounding! Amazing! Incredible! Non-stop action using familiar rules! Who wants to read through reams of text just to get to the action? No-one right? These rules assume you know how to role-play. They assume you know about “Golden Age” comic book space fantasy adventures. (Sword & Planet rules through a retro lens). They assume you know how OSR products work. There, it’s done. You know how to play already. Just get on with it. Ray guns set to kill! Flash! Bang! Zoom!

Like the X! games say, and as the above excerpt from Jarkoon says, you already know how to play a roleplaying game.

Give me a box of Legos.

And watch me toss the instructions.

Off the Shelf: White Star Galaxy Edition

I pulled White Star Galaxy Edition off the shelf recently. I have a great sci-fi game in FrontierSpace, so why do I need another?

I boxed up Starfinder recently, and I have a shelf full of Starfinder pawns that will just sit there or get boxed up with it. Starfinder is an excellent game, but for solo play, it is unmanageable tracking a small 4-person party of different species and classes. Starfinder is one of those 3.5 games with too many rules and books, and the rules for everything go into so much depth that a computer is needed to manage characters and know what is going on. Like Pathfinder 2, you need a group and players to fully understand their classes for fun to happen - and it takes work to manage all that solo.

I love you, Starfinder, but I can't play you alone.

So, I have a spot open in my playlist for fantasy slash sci-fi gaming. One where I can have tech characters and magic characters in a shared universe of adventure, and I can pull in a B/X dragon and put it beside a sci-fi game xenomorph. And I can use all my pawns and have some fun with space monsters and cool-looking sci-fi characters. A sci-fi mercenary can adventure alongside a "space cleric" and have cure light wounds cast on them in a pinch.

White Star, a game compatible with Swords & Wizardry and the excellent White Box Fantasy Adventure Game - smiles and says, "I am on the shelf, and you know how this game works already."

Yes, the OSR is fantastic, and all of B/X is cool. Do I have a ton of Swords & Wizardry stuff? Yes! Do I need a sci-fi game to go with it? Well, since I collect OSR, I have it already, and it isn't an expensive buy. Will Starfinder pawns work well with the game? I do not see why not.

The combat system works like S&S, attack bonus, ascending AC, one saving throw number, hit dice, and all the usual things I know how to use. Combat? Just like S&W.

The only change I will make is to have goblins be a more intelligent and serious race than their Starfinder counterparts, where they seem to be shoved into every other room as a cheap combat encounter you aren't supposed to feel bad for killing. They aren't "stupid idiots" you are meant to kill. I love Pathfinder and Starfinder; I just can't stand the goblins these days. Yes, they are cute, but there is a difference between an intelligent and malicious race and one that feels exploited for cheap combat thrills and laughs.

For me, White Star is the better game. Runs fast, simply uses all my stuff, and works excellently solo, and with large parties, one person can run them without that much effort.

Problem solved.