Space Opera RPG

[Stormonu]

Last week, I discovered the existence of the 80’s Space Opera RPG from Fantasy Unlimited - the makers of another game I knew well, Villains & Vigilantes.

Curious about it, I picked up a copy for cheap and have been (unsuccessfully) trying to muddle my way through it. It is a quirky, early game to be sure. Has anyone else here had experience with this game? Apparently, it was one of the ”big three” SF games at the time, between itself, Traveller and Star Frontiers. I’m somewhat surprised I’d never heard of it before, but apparently there are quite a few sourcebooks that go along with the game.

 

[dragoner]

People are still producing sector books for it, and there is also a fan site (they are on my fb friends list). We made characters for it, and played it a long time ago, it is like a lot of 80's games where the rules together were rather clumsy, and one just picked and chose what to use. Basically I remember playing either a transhuman or reptilian H'ssst iirc, because their stats were best.

 

[practicalm]

I ran a game with it in the 80s and it worked okay. It is clunky but a lot of systems were back then. We muddled through.

The sector books are still great for science fiction game ideas.

 

[MattW]

It's a very LONG process to create a character. I used it as a source book for other SF games. Actually... that was the fate of a lot of FGU products. "Aftermath" was a good background for other Post-Apocalypse games

 

[R_Chance]

We tried it, but it didn't replace Traveller for us. A bit less "science" than Traveller and a lot more "kitchen sink". We had played the Space Marines miniature rules that proceeded it. I think that helped as an entry point into the game / setting.

 

[Marc_C]

Never heard of this one before today. I'll read up on it. We played a few games of Star Frontiers and Traveller but it didn't stick. We returned to AD&D.

 

[Stormonu]

For the interested, looks like you can get the game from here. Looks like they have physical product and PDF versions available to buy.

For those who played the game, any supplements to suggest? Sounds like the sector books might be worth looking at?

 

[pemerton]

We had a character-gen session but nothing beyond that. The PC gen rules seemed terribly clunky and unbalanced even back in the early 90s!

 

[MattW]

I have the Space Opera source book "Casino Galactica" . It's been useful in a couple of games: Traveller and Star Wars. You could use it as a good starting point for Space Opera, or any Science Fiction campaign

 

[John Dallman]

I had a copy, but never played it. A few people in my university group tinkered with it, but nobody ever got a campaign running. It is kind of baroque.