Just picked up The Void and its various supplements. Looks like a good (lite) way to.do me some hard sci-fi horror. Anyone playing?

Quote from: rgrove0172;1036801Just picked up The Void and its various supplements. Looks like a good (lite) way to.do me some hard sci-fi horror. Anyone playing?

I have all the books, and I think it's a solid system. I had pursued another system in lieu of this one, but I may be reconsidering that system and kicking the tires on this at some point in the future.

Quote from: rgrove0172;1036801Just picked up The Void and its various supplements. Looks like a good (lite) way to.do me some hard sci-fi horror. Anyone playing?

I hosted a game of it aggeessss ago. It was a pretty workable system. It's really, really barebones in places though. The equipment section, for one, is a joke. And tactical options-wise, same thing when it comes to special abilities. There's no real spaceship rules either (although I believe they emailed back in time that they'd released a supplement for them).

I ended up creating a fuckton of new/modified weapons for it, an occult magic system, new armor, added shields plus additional rules to clarify certain things or streamline them (e.g. reloading, fire, ) I'd be happy to PM you what I've got left of it, if only to spare you having to equip every player with the same godamm SMG over and over again...

Game ran for about two-and-half months worth of seshes, give or take a sesh. I began it in a transport cruiser that had been infiltrated by a powerful alien sorcerer (for reasons unknown): the ship's systems were compromised, the crew and other passengers were dead, The PCs awoke from stasis having avoided the nightmare elsewhere in the ship, they gradually found each other having awoken in different bays in area of the ship hosting the stasis chambers and naturally investigated what the hell went on. They were supposed to have gotten off the cruiser fairly quickly but they were having fun exploring the ship, chatting and RP'ing so I let em' be -- they never did get off though, hah hah. There were PvP situations in which non-trivial damage was done but luckily they all banded together when they realised there were malfunctioning security bots aboard who turned out to be pretty damage resilient and armed with some nasty lethal and less-than-lethal weaponry.

Oh, and I also had the guys use the freeform chargen rules which I highly recommend (I'd ignore Eclipse Phase rip-off Firewall premise of the game). I had a bunch of experienced gamers and those who had played in previous games of mine so no problems there. Once we got all nine of us together, was a pretty good experience.

I've been running Traveller / Cthulhu for decades and I've enjoyed using ideas from Cthonian Stars / The Void. For me, I like bare bones systems like Classic Traveller or CoC when running horror so for me, that works best. I like my horror fast and brutal. The Void did a good job with their Near Future Earth.

Thanks guys and especially PrometheanVigil as I see me doing the same thing (tons of house rules I mean.) Ive already scratched down some rules for vehicles other than spacecraft and how they are used in combat, weapons options (Shotguns, grenades etc.) larger support weapons and such, more combat options, mores skills, qualities and talents, enhanced space combat and ship damage and thats just the start. There are huge Voids (non pun intended) in the tech that is mentioned and needs to be fleshed out such as launch and interphase vehicles, computer tech, sensor details and so on. Ive got pages of this stuff roughed out and I havent really decided for sure if its the way I want to go. My previous choice was Traveller's 2300AD setting but it was a bit too advanced for what I wanted to run. Similarly Traveller's "Orbital" setting was just a bit too primitive. Finding a happy medium between NASA ships taking months in zero G to get anywhere and laser battles is kind of a challenge. I think "The Void" fits the slot pretty well but man does it seem it needs a lot of work to make a complete campaign. For a one shot or something I think its fine as is but I see it as the core of what needs to be a much more involved system if its going to sustain itself over the long haul.

The real question I guess is... is it worth it? Is it 'special' enough to warrant all that work or frankly would a guy be better off just tweaking Traveller? I find Traveller feeling a bit dated, the system as time honored as it is seeming a little crusty. New RPGs have jumped on the special Trait, Talent, Ability, or whatever bandwagon and Ill admit they add a lot to the character, making each seem more than just a few stats and skill modifiers. Its kind of hard to go back to something as simplistic as Traveller once youve gotten used to that sort of charm.

Can someone give a brief rundown of the system?

It's a D6 pool system, attribute + skill, each 5 or 6 is a success. Difficulty is rated in number of successes needed. It's simple, looks fast, and is serviceable.

However, after picking up a bunch of Cepheus Engine stuff, I'm thinking this would work just fine there. Also the recently released Hostile for CE looks to be fairly close to this in tone, tech level, etc. so you probably wouldn't have much work to do.

Quote from: rgrove0172;1037712Its kind of hard to go back to something as simplistic as Traveller once youve gotten used to that sort of charm.

Some people prefer RPG 1.0. I prefer the 2.0 stuff that Mongoose has been doing for 10 years.

So what does this do that other sci-fi horror games don't?

Quote from: RPGPundit;1037997So what does this do that other sci-fi horror games don't?

Outside the setting, which is enough to make a good foundation without being overbearing...  not much.

You could just as easily do this with BRP/CoC, Eclipse Phase, GURPS, Unisystem, or Stars Without Number. I think the dice pool thing is a particular flavor vs. other games in the genre.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1037997So what does this do that other sci-fi horror games don't?

What may attract some players to The Void is the lite-ish game system it uses (and its free price at times). Otherwise, they probably already have a space horror RPG and don't know it.

Quote from: Shawn Driscoll;1038120What may attract some players to The Void is the lite-ish game system it uses (and its free price at times). Otherwise, they probably already have a space horror RPG and don't know it.

Well, if the system isn't OSR, these days I'd say it's a counter-attraction.