There’s a little movie out right now that you might have heard of called Guardians of the Galaxy. It’s a romp, and at times it feels very much like an RPG session. All of the protagonists are at least somewhat absurd, and their behavior marks them as Chaotic Good or Chaotic Neutral (with Good tendencies, maybe) in D&D-speak. So they come across pretty nicely as PCs.
I got to thinking about what game I’d use to run a similar story, and while my initial thought was something like Supers!, I think that may have been based on lingering ideas that Guardians as a superhero film rather than a big ol’ pulp scifi adventure. I still can’t quite decide between X-plorers and Tales of the Space Princess, though. So I thought I’d work out how I’d do a couple of the more popular characters and use that to inform my thoughts.
So, without further ado, here’s how I’d approach the core race/class considerations for a certain raccoon and his tree-guy buddy…
For X-plorers: Race-As-Class Classes
X-plorers, by default, focuses strictly on humans. But there’s an excellent supplement for designing alien and robot classes, and that’s what I’ve used here.
Gun-Happy Masked Rodent
Humanoid, Animal-Stock
+1 AGI, +1 INT
Pilot 15+, Security 16+, Mechanics 14+, Stealth 14+
Diminutive (+1 AC, -1 melee damage)
Deadly Marksman (+2 to hit/ranged, +1d6 damage/ranged)
Very Large Plant Man
Humanoid, Plant
+1 PHY, +1 PRE
Martial Arts, Survival 14+, Security 16+, Mechanics 14+
Large (+1 melee damage, -1 AC)
Regenerative (2 HP/Round)
For Tales of the Space Princess: Races w/ Suggested Classes
Tales of the Space Princess has great rules for building unique aliens right there in its core book. I approached these two along those lines. Since race & class are separate in TotSP, I’ve listed a suggested class for each.
Gun-Happy Masked Rodent
Alien: Mammal (+1 DEF, Claws/Teeth do 1d6)
Alien Special Ability: +1 DEX
Suggested Class: Scoundrel
Very Large Plant Man
Alien: Plant (+2 Def, Immune to most poisons, +2 to resist mental domination)
Alien Special Ability: +1 STR
Suggested Class: Star Warrior
Conclusions
Even though I’m more partial to Tales of the Space Princess on the whole, I think I have to concede that X-plorers gets this particular job done better. The custom-built race-as-class classes fit just a bit better, even though I’m not 100% sold on the skills that Big Tree Guy winds up with. That’s a reasonable trade for him having a strong Regeneration ability without having to hack on the rules any further.
