Originally posted by Ghost Warrior Ok, EvilScheemer horks it. Has anyone here ever played it? It looks like a goofy-fun mish-mash of every cheap sci-fi ever made.
I've played it. My players chose to be rangers with their own star fighters. Played for several sessions, until several PCs crashed their starfighters (they had very low skills) in an asteroid field.
Originally posted by Ghost Warrior It looks like a goofy-fun mish-mash of every cheap sci-fi ever made.
In my humble opinion, this is one of it's strong suits.
The trend in RPGs in the last 10-15 years has been towards deep, complex backgrounds. There is nothing inherently wrong with this -- I've got some great reads sitting on my gaming shelf. And, if everyone is willing to sit down and read the core books, it definitely leads to a deeper gaming experience.
But sometimes I just want to get the dice bag out, get my friends together and play.
Example: I love TRANSHUMAN SPACE. I can't wait for further supplements to come out. But unless all of my players are willing to sit down with the book and read it, there's no way we can play it. THS as a game is the setting -- without full knowledge and understanding of the background, you are not playing to the strengths of THS. (You can replace THS with Talislanta, Mechanical Dreams, Nobilis -- same point.)
With Lightspeed, I can discribe the setting basics to a well versed gamer in 15 minutes, tops, and they will get it. The system will take another 10-15 minutes. Then we build characters and game.
I also like how Lightspeed is set up for good gaming -- not 'fiction' that you have to wedge gaming into. AstroPol Rangers are all equal ranks = no chain of command problems among PCs. Good empire, evil empire, frontier (with pirates), petty 'factions in civil war' empire = easy to get, all dramatic situations covered.
Most importantly, the background is just a framework -- I've got room to breathe running this! I can make Lightspeed my own, without worrying about negating the usefulness of future supplements.
I can't wait for the full version of Lightspeed to come out.
(Should also note -- great 'newbie' game. Instant FUZION is very newbie-friendly, and the cliche ridden background is easy for a beginner to grasp.)
I probably shouldn't jynx this way-cool buzz about my game by talking about it myself, but I just wanted to say:
1) This thread is WAY cool.
and
2) I, of course, have played it with my friends and had fun. However, with my friends being my friends, we quickly discovered that I needed to upgrade the rules to Total Fuzion for their enjoyment, which is what led to the upcoming release.
and
3) I hope I'm not horking the game (implying that I'm vomiting or spitting up the game ), I'd much prefer to HOCK the game, as in to sell it. (I'm so just kidding)
and finally..
4) This feedback was sent to me by a guy named Benjamin Baugh who's played the game. Here are the wicked cool scenarios he ran for his friends..
I ran one very simple game for two friends with by-the-book psi rules and all. I sent them to fetch and escort a touchy diplomat to a peace conference on a pleasure world. Reps from the major galactic powers were all in attendance… but here’s the punch line- they had ALL been replaced by assassins/terrorists/criminals by various rogue and anarchist factions… there were actually no real diplomats there at all! The player’s diplomat turned out to be a shape-shifted and mind-cloaked Mega-criminal looking to steal and sell top-secret interplanetary security data… others included a Droid Nexus berserker droid disguised as a tiny 87 year old woman, a worm-infected bio-enhanced ex war hero, and a highly illegal human pattern bionoid looking to take out his hatred for the species by starting galactic war. When the masks came off, the power bolts flew. They managed to waste the world’s space elevator and shatter its orbital ring (the world was haloed in a ring of diamond and spun-nano cable- a pleasure world, yeah?). It played out very anime (especially Dirty Pair). Problem was, the players tapped out of psi power much too fast and it annoyed them a whole lot when they couldn’t nuke the berserker droid (they had to blow out a ring section with a missile and fling it into space, then torpedo it from their star fighters).
So for a second one-shot, I tweaked the rules a hair.
A divided Psi Power Level by 10. under my revision, it represented a ‘safe threshold’ a character could spend in a single round… they could build up and exceed this limit, but doing so risked loss of Control (“going tetsuo” one player called it). It removed the book keeping of tracking psi level points, and kept the players happy with their ability to use their powers a whole bunch. It also created a neat dynamic. One guy was mostly mental/self control. The other was all PK and teleportation. They made a great team- one subtle, the other overt- but they were both hopeless retards in some areas- because of their powers, the mental guy’s social skills had atrophied, while the PK guy could hardly tie his own shoes manually anymore. The second one-shot ran long, and we never got to finish it. It was WAY to complicated for one sitting (my fault) taking place on a fringe world suspiciously like The Wild West- a frontier world who’s intense hyper-magneto waves disrupted advanced technology. The planet was a major source of Alpha Tritium (basically, the “gold in them there hills”) but the mining was retro 19th century (complete with local horse analog creatures). Also, something about the planet created an unusual number of psi’s (mostly lower level PK and such), and the roving esper had replaced gunfighters as the world’s heroes and villains. The characters were like the “martial from back East”.
I like the feel of it. It might not intend to be, but it feels like one of those charming, if under-budgeted sci-fi shows you used to be able to watch on the weekends... or a sci-fi novel from twenty some odd years ago (without quite resorting to the terms "then we switched from the red ray to the blue ray to try to pierce their megnetic shields!"). I'm one of those guys who doesn't require absolutely everything spelled out for me (the common "Confederate Round" is 2 ozs of geltonium alloy, measuring 15mm across and blah blah blah). Lightspeed gives just enough to tickle the imagination and run with it.
Fuzion (interlock) isn't a bad system, really. It has a kind of transparent feel to it which I've always liked.
Originally posted by EvilSchemer 3) I hope I'm not horking the game (implying that I'm vomiting or spitting up the game ), I'd much prefer to HOCK the game, as in to sell it. (I'm so just kidding)
Sorry, my bad. You're right. You're not slathering the game all over, just good-natured shilling. Besides, your avatar MADE me check it out
Lightspeed!
Linear Mode
