Galactic Encounters Role-Playing Game

[toddlyons]

Thanks. Didn't know it was OGL... that makes some things easier.

You're welcome. It was just for that 2008 release: Mongoose's Traveller 1e. They released a 2e later that wasn't under the OGL.

You could question creating a scifi game for that niche when Traveller is available for free...

True, there's unprecedented availability of formerly out-of-print classic games in PDF and print-on-demand, and no shortage of new retro clones either, but if you think there's something wrong about the options that exist, I agree it's better to craft something new that has the right feel. Chance are, you're not the only one.

When COVID-19 isolation made me yearn for D&D again, I looked at every system I could find. OSRIC is seriously cool, and I bought it as a hardcover, too... but it's unwieldy, true to the game it replicates.

There's something about BFRPG that makes me love it more than anything else available, including the '81 Red Book. This new Sci-fi game could be that, too, for people who used to love Traveller or Star Frontiers, etc.

[Seven]

So, the smart thing to do is to have a standard "credit" which can be electronically transferred, and not think too hard about it otherwise.

The issue with that is that you need a central bank of some sort to have a standard credit.
Right now we have national currencies and the value of those currencies fluctuate.
Most of the international transactions are in US dollars because it's the "strongest" country. A standard currency implies some overreaching entity managing it. At best you can have something like the Euro, which is controlled by several nations without having to describe them all. You can have a bunch of local currencies and maybe a reference currency but for a global currency there has to be a central bank. Even crypto-currencies are just scare resources like gold or baseball cards. And then there's the black market which doesn't function well with electronic currencies. And forgery, which is always an easy crime.

[Seven]

Vance did quirky, somewhat comedic (but not like Discworld) fantasy. It was supposedly one of Gygax's influences, but I never cared for it all that much; read The Marvelous Rhialto and one or two of the Cugel books because "everyone said I should."

Vance started with short stories in pulp fiction. His fantasy shorts were collected in The Dying Earth. Lots of logic, some absurdities, totally ruthless characters, deceit, dishonesty everywhere. The 2 Cugel books were serialized stories. The second Cugel book and Rhialto would have come out after Gygax had published D&D. So while he wrote 2 fantasy series (Dying Earth + Lyoness) he covered many SF themes, mostly focusing on biology (alien races, ESP, genetics, etc.)
Gygax references Planet of Adventures at least a couple of times in the DMG, even though it's pure SF.

[daryen]

You could question creating a scifi game for that niche when Traveller is available for free... I did, just now. But I played Traveller back in college (they say that's when you experiment...) and never really liked the mechanics. I really want a game that "feels" like BFRPG or Iron Falcon, and can exchange content with those games freely. So this is still, as they say, the way.

Two things:
1) The Traveller OGL is pretty bare bones. There are a lot of things missing that would have to be filled in.
2) Someone did fill it in. There is something called Cepheus Engine, which is the Traveller OGL "finished" into a complete game. And it is sold as "pay what you want", so it is mostly free.

That said, I think that what you are trying to make is still quite mechanically different than Traveller/Cepheus. If someone wants Traveller, they have Traveller/Cepheus, yes. But, if you are trying to add in leveling, classes, and the rest, you will be offering something that they don't.

[Bumblepig]

If I remember right, Expedition to the Barrier Peaks was a crossover between Gygax's Fantasy and Sci Fi games. Have you thought about (eventually) offering a similar crossover adventure for BF and this Sci Fi game?

[Solomoriah]

So, the smart thing to do is to have a standard "credit" which can be electronically transferred, and not think too hard about it otherwise.

The issue with that is that you need a central bank of some sort to have a standard credit.

Cryptocurrencies don't involve a central bank. Bitcoin isn't a "currency" as such right now despite the name, but there's no reason it couldn't be.

In the Demon Princes books Vance imagined a very large and respected bank, not "official" in any sense but accepted by basically everyone. This bank issued banknotes secured by a secret method which Kirth Gerson (the antihero of the piece) kind of accidentally learned about, allowing him to make believable counterfeit bills that passed all relevant tests. But that story was written before modern technology changed what we thought was possible. Still, there's no reason why the central bank has to be run by the government; and given that the galaxy is very, very large, a truly "central" bank may be hard to properly imagine.

I did some very basic math regarding the possible growth of the human population over about a thousand years and kept coming up with truly staggering numbers. I'm not confident of my math or my assumptions, but I was somewhat conservative and still figure that a thousand years with moderately quick FTL could result in over 80 million inhabited planets and a total human population of over 200 trillion. Estimates say that there are likely about 500 million planets in the galaxy in the "liquid water" zone; given that not all of them will be able to support human life (and ignoring terraforming), we could quite literally fill up the galaxy in that time frame.

Even if I'm off by a factor of a thousand, it's still a lot of worlds. With fabrication technology, trade could be prirmarily in luxury items and rare resources, but you still would have trade and some currency would be needed.

It's quite possible that the galaxy could end up with many different forms of currency, each covering anything from one world to a few hundred, but a truly standard currency is hard for me to imagine. We can't do that now, on one planet, with a trifling few billion people.

[Solomoriah]

Does anyone have any commentary on the name?

[SmootRK]

GVRPG - neutral about it.

Galactic Adventures Role Playing (minus "game') = GARP
And while sounding a little weird at first, makes a nice acronym that can be sounded out (think what they did with thac0, or the similar acronym GURPS/Generic Universal Role Playing Game).
Could be a little thing that helps keep it on the public's mind easier... ie a Marketing thing.

[Solomoriah]

Galactic Adventures runs the risk of confusion with Star Wars Galactic Adventures.

All the good names are taken...

[SmootRK]

Yes, any suggested names need to be fully vetted. I was not aware of SW Galactic Adventures. In no way should we encroach upon Disney, lest we feel the full fury of some Mouse Overlord.

Space Adventure Role Playing (Game) - SARP
or Space Adventures Role Playing - same SARP