I would argue that Traveller is not science fiction. It's generic adventure for any government or tech level world. Most Traveller games, when you watch them on YouTube, are played more like episodes of The A-Team or Galactica '80.

FFG is winning the best sci-fi RPG contest because Star Wars invented sci-fi for Happy-Meal(TM)-eating man-babies after all.

At least until Starfinder comes out. Every fat neckbeard here will buy it all up pretty much.

It would depend on what I want to do. If I'm making up my  own setting, Traveller '77 is the one. But sometimes I like to play FASA Star Trek (either edition but I'd prefer 1st) or West End Games Star Wars (1st edition).

Why? Well, I know the rules for Traveller and I like the feel of it, including the slow communication between star systems and how it affects the setting. I'm also a fan of a lot of the science fiction Traveller was written to emulate. I already own a lot of the books so there's no need to spend any money if I play it. The only downside is a lot of younger players think sci fi means Star Wars mysticism and laser swords and aliens on every street corner and I have to disabuse them of the notion (although I could easily include that stuff in a Traveller game if I liked it).

FASA Star Trek works just fine for me and I like the random rolling of your PC's prior career and skills acquired. The optional starship combat game is pretty fun, too.

WEG Star Wars does exactly what it needs to do and has everything I need to run a game forever in the 1st edition and its sourcebook. It also takes about 5 minutes to each a new player the rules, create characters, and start a game.

My favorite Sci-fi games, currently:

1.) Stars Without Number: The current Revised Edition Beta is moving even further into my happy zone with solid hacking rules, a cooler starship combat system, and more flexible character creation that still keeps an overall stripped down vibe. Even though it has an old school D&D base, this game, especially in the direction it's headed, manages to still make me feel like I'm playing Sci-fi and not some warmed over "Dungeons in Space" vibe I was afraid it would provide when I first heard of it. While it is primarily aimed at that Golden Age sci-fi area, rules for mechs, some cyberwear, and psychic business give it the tools to branch out into most sci-fi. It feels like Crawford has taken any given system you might expect or want in a sci-fi game, and provided it at the minimum complexity required to get surprisingly diverse results. I've wanted to love Traveller, but SWN maintains top position.

2.) Heavy Gear 2nd Edition/Jovian Chronicles: I miss the old Dream Pod 9. These games combine a miniatures game with a real tech/geek mecha anime vibe that hits a lot of good notes. While Heavy Gear feels more wedded to its setting, Jovian Chronicles works well as a pretty general Sci-fi game, especially if you decide to strip out the giant robots, which doesn't feel like a weird thing to do. If you take the giant robots out of the Jovian Chronicles, the setting is basically "The Expanse", if you dig those books/that TV show. If you are a gearhead type, maybe the best games ever. I love all of the vehicles and the vehicle design system.

3.) WEG Star Wars: It's simple, it's evocative, it works. There may be a bit of nostalgia here for me too. I think of it as a good Star Wars system, but not necessarily a good general sci-fi system. The books were just good at being evocative of the setting, and the rules were easy enough to encourage the kind of free-wheeling action you expect out of classic Star Wars.

Quote from: Shawn Driscoll;972137I would argue that Traveller is not science fiction. It's generic adventure for any government or tech level world. Most Traveller games, when you watch them on YouTube, are played more like episodes of The A-Team or Galactica '80.

How people play a game and what the game can be are two different things.

I can't say you are wrong about how you observe lots of folks playing Traveller. But that is mostly a function of GDW's OTU and the adventures created for the Classic Traveller line. GDW focused on a specifically "conservative" sensibility for their product line. (In a recent interview Miller commented specifically on this stating they wanted a setting where all players picking up the material could feel comfortable in the setting and that the setting should not have anything too weird about it). The OTU and the GDW adventures are one expression of a setting and style of play of the game -- but hardly the only one.

But for my reply I specifically referred to Classic Traveller Books 1-3. Which means no setting, no published adventures. The Referee has the tools and freedom to make any kind of exotic and SF-driven setting he wants.

That people choose to ignore this and play "Just like today but in space" isn't a function of the game -- but how people are choosing to use the game.

I should add that you might be using "Science Fiction" in a very specific or even narrow sense that cuts out decades of SF writing. Classic Traveller was written from the inspiration of adventure driven SF from the 40s through the mid-70s (Norton, Piper, Anderson, Vance, Tubb, and others). This isn't the "Hard SF" beloved by so many today where you take an odd scientific premise and drill all the way down to construct a thought experiment disguised as a story. Instead it is the tradition of SF as exotic tale with fanciful SF plots and devices providing plot shenanigans and local in the place of fairies and djin.

If you think SF is only "Hard SF" (and I'm not saying you are) then there's not much to say. You would be faulting the game for it being what it wasn't designed to be -- and a lot of SF tales as well.

But that said -- if one wants to use the Classic Traveller rules for a Hard SF scenario there is no reason one can't. Nothing in the rules will stop you. And -- again -- the flexibility of the rules will support you.

My favorite sci fi RPG is GURPS Space, in a homebrew setting, because it's GURPS, has a non-pile-o-hitpoints tactical combat system, and will be a homebrew setting (assuming the GM does a good job and runs something I like).

Classic Traveller for all the reasons Christopher Kubasik mentioned.

Frank

Hard to pick a favorite. I'm pretty equally fond of Traveller (Classic or MegaTraveller), Blue Planet v2, Star Frontiers, Heavy Gear, and Jovian Chronicles.

I forgot all about Star Frontiers. I think I may have played Star Frontiers before I played Traveller. I remember a neighbor had Alpha Dawn (was that the name of the RPG boxed set?) and there was some kind of city map and little square markers to represent your PC on the map. I think we also played the space fighter jet combat game as well (was it called Space Hawks?) but not nearly as much. I liked the extraterrestrials as none were just "upright cats with opposable thumbs" as we often see in science fiction.

I have a soft spot for Star Frontiers. Good, fun game. But my older sister's boyfriend gave me his boxed set of Traveller and that quickly became one of my all-time favorite RPGs.

WEG Star Wars. It's the one I've played the most and know the best.

Quote from: Shawn Driscoll;972137I would argue that Traveller is not science fiction. It's generic adventure for any government or tech level world. Most Traveller games, when you watch them on YouTube, are played more like episodes of The A-Team or Galactica '80.

FFG is winning the best sci-fi RPG contest because Star Wars invented sci-fi for Happy-Meal(TM)-eating man-babies after all.

At least until Starfinder comes out. Every fat neckbeard here will buy it all up pretty much.

LOL! Good point. What makes a sci-fi game? More specifically, sci-fi adventure. Star Wars is basically fantasy in space.

I actually quite like the idea of Ashen Stars - investigative game in space. I'm not a fan of GUMSHOE system, but the adventures should be quite what I would look for from sci-fi game. Even good Dr. Asimov even wrote his robot series as crime-mystery stories.

My favorite would be the 1992 edition of Gamma World. Yea I know it's a post-apocalyptic setting. But it has rules that can be adapted to all sorts of things. Need aliens? Robots? Weird plants that control minds? All right there.

Cyberpunk 2020 and Star Frontiers are also solid options for 'classic' games. Stars Without Number and The Mutant Epoch for more current material. I love how SWN handles psionics.

Quote from: jux;972186What makes a sci-fi game? More specifically, sci-fi adventure. Star Wars is basically fantasy in space.

This is why I usually refer to Star Wars as science fantasy. You want a representation of science fiction? Go read and watch The Martian

Quote from: Shawn Driscoll;972137I would argue that Traveller is not science fiction.

.

Of course you would.

Next up, D&D is not fantasy.

Quote from: Shawn Driscoll;972137FFG is winning the best sci-fi RPG contest because Star Wars invented sci-fi for Happy-Meal(TM)-eating man-babies after all.

And this folks is why I love it when Shawn posts.

That is awesome.

Quote from: ChristopherKubasik;972145But for my reply I specifically referred to Classic Traveller Books 1-3. Which means no setting, no published adventures. The Referee has the tools and freedom to make any kind of exotic and SF-driven setting he wants.

I absolutely agree with you on the tremendous freedom granted by the LBBs, but there are multiple supplements for Classic Trav that can easily be ported into many original settings. Citizens of the Imperium (Supplement 4) really isn't about the Imperium, but just a book of new Trav classes (belters, barbarians, bureaucrats, hunters etc) and pre-rolled NPCs.

Quote from: Tetsubo;972191My favorite would be the 1992 edition of Gamma World. Yea I know it's a post-apocalyptic setting. But it has rules that can be adapted to all sorts of things. Need aliens? Robots? Weird plants that control minds? All right there.

True. I feel the same way about GW 1e. I used those rules to run a 40k RPG campaign when the original Rogue Trader came out. It was awesome fun. The mutant rules were everything I needed to duplicate psionics, demon magic and alien abilities. And the powered armor rules did fine to create Space Marines, Terminators and Dreadnoughts.

Quote from: Shawn Driscoll;972137I would argue that Traveller is not science fiction. It's generic adventure for any government or tech level world. Most Traveller games, when you watch them on YouTube, are played more like episodes of The A-Team or Galactica '80.

FFG is winning the best sci-fi RPG contest because Star Wars invented sci-fi for Happy-Meal(TM)-eating man-babies after all.

At least until Starfinder comes out. Every fat neckbeard here will buy it all up pretty much.

Someone's gallbladder is producing too much bile again.  Or else the piles are acting up.

A couple of scifi favorites for me. I don't want to count homebrew stuff, only games commercially produced, and in pretty much every case I like the first version put out over later revisions.

(1) Metamorphosis Alpha (1E) because it's scifi with the creepy "crawling through a broken ship" vibe to it.

(2) Classic Traveller (the black books) because it's pretty generic and can be used for pretty much any scifi setting.

(3) WEG Star Wars because of the topic and the fact that the d6 system is pretty easy to run.