Sunday, March 1, 2020

Tiny Frontier, Stars Without Number, and Traveller



After the most recent session of my Star Wars Storm Trooper Mini-Campaign a few weeks ago, I felt that maybe Tiny Frontier wasn't robust enough for what I was looking for and I've spent the last couple of weeks reading Stars Without Number, Mongoose's Traveller 2E and Cepheus Light.

I really enjoyed converting the characters to SWN and I think they are very flavorful. I'm not sure if I will use them when we get to the next chapter, but I really enjoyed the conversion process.

Discovering that SWN's skill system was based on Traveller, I decided to finally give those games a look (when I was coming up Traveller: The New Era was the big thing, GURPS Traveller never grabbed me, and Mark Miller's Traveller 4 just wasn't what I was looking for). 

I think my favourite out of the bunch is Cepheus Light (though Cepheus Quantum is pretty cool too), but I found an amazing Star Wars Fan Supplement for MGT2 that is very well done.  However, when I started making characters I was unimpressed. Character Creation was a bit of chore and the characters are underwhelming and fairly indistinct. I'm sure to some degree it's because I'm running a Storm Trooper game, but it just left me cold.

What drew me to TinyD6 for these one-shots in the first place was that Traits were a straight-forward way to easily and quickly distinguishing the Troopers from one another.

One thing my group and I talked about after our latest session was that I rarely had them roll standard (2d6) checks. I was always granting Disadvantage or focusing on a Trait's Advantage. So that is something I plan to work on in the future.

I think at this point I might just stick with Tiny Frontiers and give the system more time to breathe and for me to master it a bit more.

My Gaming ADD is pretty high right now and I'm trying to reinforce to myself that it's not the system, but the group that makes things fun. TinyD6 is a pretty awesome system with great support.

6 comments:

Matt said...

Gallant Night Games also has a game called Aliens and Asteroids that's very similar to the Tinyd6 system, but it has a bit more crunch. might be worth a gander.

I haven't actually played stars without number, but when I was experimenting with Sci-Fi games a few years ago, one of the SWN books jumped up to my shelf of awesome. Not at my shelves at the moment, but I think it's called Dead Names. It's a book about generation ancient alien cultures, mystical abandoned facilities, planets with strange properties, and artifacts of eldritch power. Except, you know, sci-fi instead of fantasy stuff. Seriously, this book is a cool tool for making stuff like that for your game. Worth checking out.

Cross Planes said...

I just got Aliens and Asteroids and I agree that it is a great game. I will check out Dead Names, thank you for pointing it out.

Brutorz Bill said...

The damage mechanic in Tiny Frontiers throws me off, although admittedly I haven't played it. I've had fun running SWN, and hope to play Cepheus at some point. Not familiar with Aliens and Asteroids.

Cross Planes said...

@Bill, I understand. Alan, the game's author, suggests granting bonus damage based on a player's description of their action.

I've used +1 damage per each six rolled.

Aliens and Asteroids is pretty sweet for what it is. I recommend it.

Brutorz Bill said...

Thanks for the tip!

The Daily Creative said...

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Daily Creative

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