Jumping off from Aos's comments, it's kind of interesting, for me, to compare the three longish fantasy campaigns I played in the 80's.

First one: set on a continent with nations surrounding an inland sea. Characters hailed from all over but ended up making their "home base" on the central island nation. Adventures typically involved some kind of seed or hook that took us to one of the surrounding coasts, so we got to know the flavor of different lands over the course of several visits.

Second one: set in a much smaller area, maybe a few thousand square miles (thus the map was less than 100 miles on a side). Premise explicitly involved dealing with a vast empire that stretched off-map but was only relevant as a "bad guy" faction locally. I can't really say we got to know this setting any better than the previous one, although the narrative was more tightly developed--less picaresque/episodic, more focused on a single conflict. As well, the the setting elements were more closely linked to each other. (I.e., all the major NPCs pretty much knew each other.)

Third one: set on an entire continent, the course of the campaign basically took us from one end to another, without revisiting. For me this wasn't quite as satisfying as the other two. It's hard to compare since each game was a different GM, and this one was an entirely new group, but I think the way things worked out, it had a very "patchwork" feel, where the setting of one week's adventure had little relationship at all to the setting of an previous week's.

Cool! There's definitely a mix of how to treat a big setting - some preferring travel and others a more "get to know it in depth" approach. I think they are another example of tastes in playstyles.

-clash

Quote from: flyingmice;242119Cool! There's definitely a mix of how to treat a big setting - some preferring travel and others a more "get to know it in depth" approach. I think they are another example of tastes in playstyles.

-clash

Now that I'm older, I'd love to run a scifi campaign which spent more time on any given planet. It's too bad that my old group from years ago has scattered on the wind.

I like both forms of Sci-fi Space Opera campaigns. There is a lot of fun having the players build/design a space ship and then get to fly it about the big wide cosmos.

If I do a travelogue I always love introducing the concept of how big space is (I use an old star map of all stars out to 20 light years and their relative distance off a z-axis which can be found here .. one day I would love a full 3D holo display on the middle of the table to display it though

But I also like doing the flipside of that and have some dirt-sucking players explore some awesomely huge city or explore some strange new worlds.

Man I love sci-fi =)

Quote from: tellius;242233I like both forms of Sci-fi Space Opera campaigns. There is a lot of fun having the players build/design a space ship and then get to fly it about the big wide cosmos.

If I do a travelogue I always love introducing the concept of how big space is (I use an old star map of all stars out to 20 light years and their relative distance off a z-axis which can be found here .. one day I would love a full 3D holo display on the middle of the table to display it though

But I also like doing the flipside of that and have some dirt-sucking players explore some awesomely huge city or explore some strange new worlds.

Man I love sci-fi =)

Same here! SF is my favorite genre, even though I'm more known for historical games these days.

-clash

One thing that I really didn't like about Fading Suns (and other games with big settings) is the seeming need to fill in every last square inch with canonical details, leaving little to the individual GM. While such settings may be entertaining to read about, as a GM I prefer RPG toolkits with simple, elegant rules that are not very crunchy, and big but only slightly sketched-out settings that I and the players can fill in as we go--I usually make up my own settings anyway, but a light sketch is nice as a starting point.

*****

On another note, I've been shopping around for Space Opera games myself, specifically ones that are currently available and are not media franchise tie-ins. So far I've got:

Star Frontiers (available for free at StarFrontiers.com and Star Frontiersman)

StarCluster2

HardNova 2

Starblazer Adventures (I suppose this technically counts as a media tie-in, but the game is sufficiently generic and the media it's tied to is long enough dead that I figure it's fine.)

Traveller (Link is to Mongoose Traveller, though I'm aware of the others.)

Thousand Suns

Fading Suns

StarSiege

Not to mention the various generic games such as Hero, GURPS, BESM, etc.

Any other suggestions?

Edit: Of course, the meaning of "currently available" changes with the existence of Drive Thru RPG and RPGNow ...

Quote from: tellius;242233If I do a travelogue I always love introducing the concept of how big space is (I use an old star map of all stars out to 20 light years and their relative distance off a z-axis which can be found here .. .

Dead link.

Quote from: Roman;249466One thing that I really didn't like about Fading Suns (and other games with big settings) is the seeming need to fill in every last square inch with canonical details, leaving little to the individual GM. While such settings may be entertaining to read about, as a GM I prefer RPG toolkits with simple, elegant rules that are not very crunchy, and big but only slightly sketched-out settings that I and the players can fill in as we go--I usually make up my own settings anyway, but a light sketch is nice as a starting point.

That's one of the reasons I set up StarCluster 2 the way I did, with only one system fleshed out, and the other 116 systems only set up in stat blocks. I figured it was the best balance between too much information and not enough. The one system was to serve as an example of how to flesh out the stat blocks. Critics - aside from the Pundit - didn't like that, but I didn't write the game for them anyway.

I would add Nebuleon from Hinterwelt to that list, and would recommend you look closely at it as well as at Hard Nova ][, which is already there.

-clash

Quote from: flyingmice;249537I would add Nebuleon from Hinterwelt to that list, and would recommend you look closely at it as well as at Hard Nova ][, which is already there.

-clash

Fair enough - I'll give them a look. Thanks!

Quote from: flyingmice;249537I would add Nebuleon from Hinterwelt to that list, and would recommend you look closely at it as well as at Hard Nova ][, which is already there.

-clash

If Roman is interested, http://neb.hinterwelt.com/ and our CHARGen at http://www.hinterwelt.com/CHARGen/

Let me know if you have questions.

Bill

Quote from: HinterWelt;249578If Roman is interested, http://neb.hinterwelt.com/ and our CHARGen at http://www.hinterwelt.com/CHARGen/

Let me know if you have questions.

Bill

I will take a look - thank you!. I particularly like the online storage system. I'm surprised nobody else (that I'm aware of) has tried the same thing.

In our D20 Star Wars campaign we did absolutely bucketloads of travelling, we wanted to see everything, that was definitely a major part of the appeal.

BUT

Our first half dozen or so adventures were all on the one planet, and we always had a base that we played from and figured heavily in our play, as opposed to just being nomads.  The base seemed to change a lot though, every five levels or so, I'd say.

I've never been in a Space game that stayed in one place. It's always been move move move. In Star Wars, this is because the Empire finds and destroys whatever you were working on unless you can hyperspace it to a new location. In other games like Alternity and uh something else, the players were either con-men who wanted to outrun their reputations or traders in search of the next big thing.
 
From playing Ars Magica, I'm more tuned into the idea of making a home base and telling cyclical stories so if I ever ran another space game (currently low priority) I'd have a couple of locations for the PCs to visit and revisit.

It looks like there's two different types of stories with Space Opera. One where you move from place to place, never staying long in any one place. Let's call this the Star Trek model.

Then there's the home base model, where the players move out from their home world to others, then back. Let's call this the Babylon 5 model.

Are there others?

-clash

QuoteNot to mention the various generic games such as Hero, GURPS, BESM, etc.

Any other suggestions?

If you're a fan of the Palladium ruleset, you might consider picking up their Mutants in Orbit book.  It's divided 50/50 for After the Bomb and Rifts, detaling what the orbital community, moon, and mars look like for both settings. If you've got a copy of Rifts or TMNT& Other Strangeness, you've got everything you need to run the setting in the book.  You could also just use the background in Mutants in Orbit and run it as straight hard sci-fi.  

If you want a more galaxy spanning campaign, I'd also suggest the TMNT Guide to the Universe and Transdimensional TMNT as two other books to pick up.  Palladium has put out various "Aliens Unlimited" books as well, but I've never used any of them so can't comment too much.

Availabilty:  Mutants in Orbit is in print and available off the Palladium website.  TMNT&OS, TMNT Guide to the Universe, and Transdimensional TMNT are all out of print but available second hand through the usual sources- ebay, amazon, etc.