Wherein your humble scribe presents a cyborg bounty hunter duo for some crazy 60s/70s style sci fi setting for BRP that doesn’t exist. I used the Super Powers rules from the Big Gold Book to build out the cybernetic enhancements, with a Character Point Budget equal to the characters’ highest unmodified characteristic (e.g., Heroic power level).
Traveling the backwaters of the Trobane Conferdate aboard the Paranotoreas, HARC-7 and 3V3 work together to round up escapees from the penal colonies. Their methods aren’t exactly orthodox – but they get the job done – so the Confederate’s enforcers tend to overlook the occasional shattered bone or plasma burn on the recaptured criminals. There are some within the establishment, though, who are more than a little concerned with the fact that neither bounty hunter appears in the official records of the Grand Census. It’s probably only a matter of time before the hunters become the hunted.
HARC-7, Cyborg Mercenary
STR 20 CON 12 SIZ 14 DEX 13 INT 11 POW 15 APP 14 HP 13 MW 7 DB +1d6
Weapons: Plasma Pistol 55% (2d10+2), Brawling 85% (1d3+1d6), 4 Plasma Grenades 45% (3d10/2 meters)
Armor: Adaptive Mesh (1d4+2)
Skills: Artillery: RailGun 11%, Brawl 85%, Climb 50%, Dodge 66%, Energy Pistols 55%, First Aid 50%, Grapple 65%, Knowledge: Natural History 25%, Knowledge: Streetwise 45%, Projection 46%, Spot 55%, Stealth 40%, Strategy 21%, Throw 45%, Track 30%
Powers: Duraplast Skin & Steel Plating (Armor: Kinetic) 5, Cybernetic Arms (Super Characteristic: STR +3) 3, Cybernetic Eyes (Super Sense: Super Vision, Infrared Vision, Night Vision) 9
3V3, Cyborg Space Pilot
STR 10 CON 14 SIZ 10 DEX 20 INT 16 POW 10 APP 16 HP 12 MW 6 DB none
Weapons: Plasma Pistol 45% (2d10+2), Stun Lance 75% (1d6 +stun)
Armor: Adaptive Mesh (1d4+2)
Skills: Bargain 25%, Demolitions 41%, Dodge 80%, Drive: GravSled 30%, Energy Pistols 45%, Heavy Machine: ExoLoader 11%, Knowledge: Streetwise 25%, Listen 45%, Melee Weapon: Stun Lance 75%, Navigate 50%, Pilot: Spacecraft 61%, Persuade 35%, Repair: Electronics 55%, Repair: Mechanical 45%, Spot 45%, Technical: Computer Use 35%
Powers: Cybernetic Blur Mode (Defense) 5, Cybernetic Fast-Twitch Muscle Response Enhancement (Super Characteristic: DEX +3) 9, Cybernetic Ear Implants (Super Sense: Sonar Detection) 3
I love your NPCs…. even if I won’t *ever* be able to use them! (I don’t run sci-fi)
Thanks, Gianni! I’m very glad you like them 🙂
In all honesty, I haven’t run a scifi game in over a dozen years (or played in one in 10 or so). But lately the genre’s been clawing its way back into my brain and I imagine that the situation will change sometime in the next year or so. The problem I have with scifi as a genre is a microcosm of the problem I encounter with RPGs in general far too often – getting everyone on the same page.
With regard to scifi, it’s just that it’s such a broad concept that, if you’re not careful to define the particular universe you’re going to be running, the players show up with everything from jedi and vulcans to cyberpunk street samurai and battlestar fighter jocks and beyond. A setting with all of those sounds fun, but ultimately it’s just too busy for me to wrap my head around.
The short answer is to play in a established setting, but I chafe at playing in someone else’ universe (and, of course, there’s the question of canon and extended canon and all that junk as well).
The longer answer is to do just enough work to define the setting well enough to be playable without wasting a boatload of effort on something that’s (a) supposed to be fun and (b) has the perpetual chance of crashing and burning before it even gets off the ground.
I’m probably overthinking this, but the main reason I haven’t run a scifi game in all these years is that my previous attempts all ended quite poorly due to the very situation I’m overthinking. 🙂
All of this stuff applies to other genres as well, but to a much lesser degree in my experience. There’s at least some established shorthand for “classic” RPG fantasy genres (D&D-style, specifically) that you can generally communicate what you’ve got in mind pretty easily. And, of course, for historical settings it’s generally even easier.
Still, the siren (or should it be psiren?) call of scifi rings in my ears…
I agree… The problem with sci-fi is how broad it is. I have successfully ran several SW (D6) games when in I was in university but then everybody knows Star Wars!
I have taken part to several one-shot sci-fi games (as a player) at various conventions and I didn’t enjoy them… because my vision of what science-fiction should entail didn’t correspond to the gamemaster’s.
An idea I’ve had for a long time is of a Luke Skywalker coming-of-age kind of campaign game where the players start as country bumpkins in a sandbox game centred on a single planet and then slowly discover the whole universe as they rise in skills.
The only scifi games I’ve ever truly enjoyed playing were crazy Traveller shoot ’em ups back when I was a kid. We never played in the Imperium, but the game dictated the milieu well enough that we never had the problem of people having wildly differing ideas of what the setting would be like.
Since then I’ve run and tried to play in number of scifi games that, though enjoyable for the folks involved, fell short on any number of levels. Still, I hope to be able to pull off a game well someday.
I like your concept for starting out on a backwater planet and moving outward quite a lot. I’d just want to avoid coming too close to Star Wars in overall feel. Specifically, I’d hate to replicate what I consider to be the biggest failing of that franchise – the idea that a gigantic universe with thousands of sentient lifeforms really just boils down to the story of one dysfunctional family. 🙂
Good stuff! I’ve been toying around with trying to do something in a Traveller-like vein with BRP for a few months now, and stuff like this is just grist for the mill. Glad to see the use of Powers, as I’d been considering how to handle things like cybernetics, aliens and the like.
Glad you like the post, Jason! I think BRP is a great option for Traveller-esque scifi gaming (of course, I think BRP is a great option for most things, but still). The Super Powers subsystem should handle most cybernetics & alien abilities pretty well, with the Psychic Abilities subsystem filling in for psionics (natch).
If you’re really looking to do Traveller-style stuff, see if you can’t get a look at the old Future*World rules, since they had a nice career path thing working. You can always just steal the concept and give folks something like +10% or +20% to a couple of skills (random determination optional) for each year spent in a specific career.
Thanks for stopping by, amigo. Here’s to some good scifi gaming for you soon!