How's Starblazer Adventures?

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Tue Oct 26, 2010 1:20 am

I've been contemplating the genre that this game covers, and I noticed that it uses the same core system as Spirit of the Century. Has anyone played/read this game and is able to tell me whether it's worth anything?

K · Post by K » Tue Oct 26, 2010 11:25 pm

I looked it up. It's a interesting rules-light system, but it seems to be heavily dependent on DMing. I could see it devolving into angry arguments when people try to use their various little things since the DM is supposed to bone you but give you Fate points, and let you use Fate points when you can con the DM that you have the right trait.

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Fri May 18, 2012 1:35 pm

Managed to get ahold of a copy. It looks a lot like Spirit of the Century, but seems to have less emphasis on aspects; more crunch in general.

One frustrating thing I'm discovering is the lack of forums where people talk about it. The official one is essentially dead.

angelfromanotherpin · Post by **angelfromanotherpin** » Fri May 18, 2012 1:45 pm

I have a copy at the store, I'll give it a look, see if it addresses any of the issues I had when playing SotC.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Fri May 18, 2012 1:53 pm

I can't even evaluate it, because it's all supposed to mimic the feel of a British comic book from the late 70s. Seriously, you might as well be saying that you've developed an RPG based around Serbian writer Zoran Živković's book "Vagon". Is it true to the source material? I have no idea!

-Username17

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Fri May 18, 2012 2:06 pm

I remember bits of the original comic. It wasn't a single story line or even setting, but an anthology for comic creators in the sci-fi genre. A British version of Amazing Stories, essentially. Therefore, the question is whether it can recreate pulp-era space opera and remain fun.

angelfromanotherpin · Fri May 18, 2012 10:03 pm

Okay, preliminary analysis as compared to Spirit of the Century:

1) They do not aggressively avoid referencing the numbers of their system. +2
2) The 1d6 minus 1d6 RNG is longer and less steep than the 4d3-8 RNG. +1
3) The damage system is a good bit harsher - dramatic combat may be possible. +3
4) I'm not going to read them all, but in general Stunts seem to have taken a turn for the bullshit smaller. A use-limited or conditional +1 to a skill is bigger here than in D20, but nothing like as cool as most of the Stunts in SotC. -2
5) Bullshit Dresden Files Refresh Economy: The more Stunts you have, the fewer Fate Points you get. What? -1

Wait, no, Stunts have also become bullshit small. -2

6) It's hard to evaluate the starship rules.

The actual biggest problems I had with SotC seem to have been at least somewhat addressed. It might actually be playable. I would jettison the refresh economy and look hard at the Stunts from SotC (which are *far* more interesting and useful than the ones I read in this book) and bring the SA ones up to snuff.

As for simulating the source material... meh. It supports space opera, but doesn't really seem to steer one toward the mad creative energy of the specifically Brit-gonzo source. The comic panels throughout the book do a good job of setting the tone, but the actual text doesn't contribute much.

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Fri May 18, 2012 11:29 pm

What is the difference between SotC via book and the online SRD? I ask because I was glancing through a lot of the stunts on the SRD and comparing them to Starblazer, and they seem to be identical.

It looks like it would be viable to drop the Dresden Files refresh economy and port over the Doctor Who initiative system (Talkers, Runners, Doers, then lastly Fighters).

Libertad · Post by **Libertad** » Sat May 19, 2012 12:23 am

K wrote:I looked it up. It's a interesting rules-light system, but it seems to be heavily dependent on DMing. I could see it devolving into angry arguments when people try to use their various little things since the DM is supposed to bone you but give you Fate points, and let you use Fate points when you can con the DM that you have the right trait.

Does the game explicitly encourage adversarial behavior and tricking the DM?

Otherwise the problem you described is more the problem of passive-aggressive behavior instead of the follies of a rules-light game itself.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sat May 19, 2012 5:18 am

Libertad wrote:
K wrote:I looked it up. It's a interesting rules-light system, but it seems to be heavily dependent on DMing. I could see it devolving into angry arguments when people try to use their various little things since the DM is supposed to bone you but give you Fate points, and let you use Fate points when you can con the DM that you have the right trait.
Does the game explicitly encourage adversarial behavior and tricking the DM?

Otherwise the problem you described is more the problem of passive-aggressive behavior instead of the follies of a rules-light game itself.

The FATE economy is one of harm management. You gain FATE points when shitty things happen to you, and you spend FATE points to prevent shitty things from happening to you. But there are also die rolls, which can make shitty things happen or not which don't gain or lose you any FATE points (although if the die is modified in your favor by you, it costs FATE points, and if the die roll is modified against you by the MC, you gain FATE points).

Your basic ability economy is powered by you and the MC declaring that shitty things happen to your character. In FATE systems, your abilities (whatever they are), are literally powered by your character being the butt end of slapstick and having relationship problems. It actually encourages players to act like Scoopy Doo characters where they do stupid shit that gets the whole party in trouble.

-Username17

Libertad · Post by **Libertad** » Sat May 19, 2012 7:22 am

FrankTrollman wrote: The FATE economy is one of harm management. You gain FATE points when shitty things happen to you, and you spend FATE points to prevent shitty things from happening to you. But there are also die rolls, which can make shitty things happen or not which don't gain or lose you any FATE points (although if the die is modified in your favor by you, it costs FATE points, and if the die roll is modified against you by the MC, you gain FATE points).

Your basic ability economy is powered by you and the MC declaring that shitty things happen to your character. In FATE systems, your abilities (whatever they are), are literally powered by your character being the butt end of slapstick and having relationship problems. It actually encourages players to act like Scoopy Doo characters where they do stupid shit that gets the whole party in trouble.

-Username17

But if the players and GM on board with it, then the only other adversity is from the other players. Is there any GM sidebar where they say "if you're trying to make the game less fun for everyone, the GM is well within his rights to penalize you" or tell you to cut that crap out? Because I think the intent from what it sounds like is basically "your character got screwed over? Here's a FATE Point as compensation!" And if the other characters get screwed over by the actions of one, then they should get FATE Points as well.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sat May 19, 2012 7:38 am

Libertad wrote: And if the other characters get screwed over by the actions of one, then they should get FATE Points as well.

Yeah, well, they don't. The FATE points go to the character whose trait is activated. So if your curiosity gets you to alert the guards and then they train into the party, you get FATE points and they don't.

-Username17

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Sat May 19, 2012 3:02 pm

Should we not come up with variations for the FATE point economy? I'm pulling ideas out of my butt here...

Any FATE points earned go into a communal pool, starting FATE points may or may not be gathered into it
Players award each other FATE points when a PC does something cool/interesting
Don't allow slapstick Aspects

echoVanguard · Post by **echoVanguard** » Sat May 19, 2012 7:17 pm

1. I don't get people's objection to refresh pools. You have a fixed amount of narrative influence, which you can either spend on stunts/powers/equipment or keep for more fate points. Either way, you gain a method to influence the outcome of the story, either by having powers that let you do things outside the normal scope of character abilities, by having stunts that give you numerical bonuses that let you score higher than normal on rolls of a specific type, or by just having more fate points to add bonuses when you need them or make metagame adjustments to the story (such as showing up somewhere at the right time/place, which Fate points let you do).

2. If you want players to adhere to a particular tone, give them a list of prewritten aspects to choose from rather than letting people write in whatever they want. That way they can only accept compels on things you consider to be non-silly.

3. As far as the Scooby-Doo syndrome, personally I always found this hilarious in actual play - but if you're interested in preventing it, just award fate points to each person negatively affected by an event a player compels.

echo

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sat May 19, 2012 7:52 pm

EV wrote:I don't get people's objection to refresh pools.

Refresh pools don't change your rate of acquisition of FATE points from trait activation, relationship trouble, and slapstick. What this means is that a character with a lower Refresh is required to have more setbacks early in the adventure in order to gain FATE points to cover their weakness of having less starting FATE points.

So if one character buys real powers by reducing their Refresh, then they hog the spotlight more during the hijinks phase (because they need more Fate Points) and then they hog the spotlight more during the winning the adventure phase (because they have more and better real abilities).

This is not like Shadowrun Edge, where having less of it means that you spend less of it and there is therefore some breakeven point where you get less luck events and better numbers the rest of the time. Having less Fate Points just means more miscellaneous "bad stuff" happens to you so that you can have the same Fate point buffer as everyone else. But it's Fate, the good stuff and the bad stuff are both screen time.

A Lower Refresh "requires" you to monopolize the story more, and more and better powers allow you to monopolize the story more. It's totally fucked.

-Username17

angelfromanotherpin · Post by **angelfromanotherpin** » Sun May 20, 2012 6:38 pm

virgil wrote:What is the difference between SotC via book and the online SRD? I ask because I was glancing through a lot of the stunts on the SRD and comparing them to Starblazer, and they seem to be identical.

On closer inspection, a lot of them are. I had been looking at the new Stunts under the Careers section, and those are especially bullshit, but the ones in the actual Stunts section have not been changed.

Actually, the starship-specific Stunts are also complete ass. Basically, I think that any Stunt written specifically for this book was written from the perspective that they should be as meaningless as possible, but the ones that grandfathered in escaped that fate.

My favorite so far is Maps. You get a pile of maps that may or may not depict interesting or dangerous places and may or may not be false. WTF? I can get the same thing with 50 creds and a trip to the flea market, why is that a fucking Stunt?

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Sun May 20, 2012 8:13 pm

Sounds like a job for reediting as they come up in gameplay then. The Maps one could easily be a rejiggered Gift of Tongues, where the character gets ALL standard maps and about a handful to places he has no business having.

Dogbert · Post by **Dogbert** » Mon May 21, 2012 6:25 am

Personally I love Aspects and the Fate Points economy, but then I cherry pick my players so I don't have to treat them like children and watch their behavior.

My only real issue with Starblazer is that it's supposed to be a Space Opera, but getting a space ship costs you nearly all of your stunts? What's wrong with this picture?

Korwin · Post by **Korwin** » Mon May 21, 2012 9:12 am

We used the System very shortly for an Battletech RPG-Engine between Battletech Tabletop sessions.
But only once, I blame the Battletech Tabletop (only the GM liked it).

echoVanguard · Post by **echoVanguard** » Mon May 21, 2012 3:35 pm

FrankTrollman wrote:A Lower Refresh "requires" you to monopolize the story more, and more and better powers allow you to monopolize the story more. It's totally fucked.

I have to admit that's a very insightful analysis, but I still think the core idea behind it is a good one. What do you think would be a good way to fix this problem in the system - fate point caps? Not giving out FPs for hijinks?

echo

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Mon May 21, 2012 4:13 pm

echoVanguard wrote:
FrankTrollman wrote:A Lower Refresh "requires" you to monopolize the story more, and more and better powers allow you to monopolize the story more. It's totally fucked.
I have to admit that's a very insightful analysis, but I still think the core idea behind it is a good one. What do you think would be a good way to fix this problem in the system - fate point caps? Not giving out FPs for hijinks?

echo

Honestly, you have skills, you have aspects, and you have stunts. All of these are good in a way that is somewhat comparable. And you could have people spend some of one to get more of another. That would work. At least, it would work much better than having people move their Refresh Rate up and down does.

Mr. Lucky in such a model would have more aspects, which would allow him to control the story more in order to get and spend more Fate Points.

But really you have to ask yourself why you should be varying the stunt totals of players at all. Some characters are Wizards or own Spaceships and other characters have iron will and steel stomachs or something. There really aren't any character concepts I can even imagine that have as their core feature that they have less stunts. Maybe some that have only a couple of big stunts while others that have a bunch of modest stunts, but they still have stunts.

All the Refresh Rate model adds is that some players can end up as minor characters by having less that they can do and less events that they need to call down on themselves. They can't advance the story as much and in "exchange" the story is less about them. Around these parts, that's called "being an NPC".

-Username17

echoVanguard · Post by **echoVanguard** » Mon May 21, 2012 5:27 pm

FrankTrollman wrote:Honestly, you have skills, you have aspects, and you have stunts. All of these are good in a way that is somewhat comparable. And you could have people spend some of one to get more of another. That would work[....]Mr. Lucky in such a model would have more aspects, which would allow him to control the story more in order to get and spend more Fate Points.

I assume you're lumping Powers in with Stunts, which seems sensible. I'm not sure I totally agree with equating skills, aspects, and stunts equally - DFRPG's Skill Pyramid idea is a pretty solid implementation that forces people to both specialize and have a broad range of interests in equal measure, which I think is interesting but would probably not survive broader integration into the chargen system. Having two separate ability pools - Skill Points and Character Points - would probably be better, with each character having a fixed amount of each which is the same across all characters in that tier. Skill Points would be spent to build your skill pyramid, while Character Points would be spent on either stunts/powers or Aspects. Thus, each character would have the same amount of narrative influence, either concentrated in direct ability to affect the game-world (powers/stunts) or in ability to control the meta-narrative (aspects to get/spend points).

But really you have to ask yourself why you should be varying the stunt totals of players at all[...]There really aren't any character concepts I can even imagine that have as their core feature that they have less stunts.

You already supplied one - a "Mr. Lucky" character, particularly a sort of Mr. Magoo archetype of someone who is intrinsically unskilled but manages to succeed spectacularly on difficult tasks nonetheless. That sort of character idea might sound silly or juvenile to some people, but it's a tremendously widespread trope that a number of people find enjoyable to play. To be honest, pretty much any kind of improvisation-based or unknown-quantity type character would favor Aspects over Stunts in this model - I saw one player with almost no stunts or powers play his character as a sort of "Felix the Cat" adventurer who always happened to have the appropriate tool for the situation in his character's signature bag. Another player also took no stunts or powers, but played his character as an entirely socially-focused muggle who was devastating in confrontations with even terrifying supernatural creatures merely by cleverly keeping things restricted to social combat as much as possible. Both of these characters leveraged their aspects extensively to manipulate roll outcomes, and used their high refresh to fuel these efforts.

Also, I probably shouldn't need to make this clarification, but I'm going to make it anyway - I'm discussing more in terms of general design goals than trying to talk up FATE/DFRPG specifically, as those systems have some known intrinsic problems that aren't really fixable (combat magic double-dipping on damage calculations and stunts that let you apply your highest skill to all your rolls being two of the stand-outs, along with the whole three-stooges-power-turbine problem). Rather, I'm interested in exploring which things these systems brought to the table which improved the gaming experience, for the purposes of further analysis and refinement.

echo

Korwin · Post by **Korwin** » Mon May 21, 2012 7:50 pm

Whats the magic double-dipping on damage calculations and the three-stooges-power-turbine?

Stunts to apply your highest skill to all defense rolls I do know. (Hell the NPC's in the Backround book (DF-RPG) have them.)

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Mon May 21, 2012 8:29 pm

EV wrote:You already supplied one - a "Mr. Lucky" character, particularly a sort of Mr. Magoo archetype of someone who is intrinsically unskilled but manages to succeed spectacularly on difficult tasks nonetheless.

The thing is that such characters actually just have skill values in Fate. If you do something with any kind of consistency, you aren't spending Fate Points, you just have a big numeric bonus. And your numeric bonus can (at least, in some versions of Fate) be named anything at all. So Mr. Magoo has the skill "muddles through technical tasks" and "danger avoids him through no fault of his own". Those have numbers attached to them, which is why it actually drains his Fate reserve almost not at all.

People think that Mr. Magoo is best represented by having a lot of Fate points, but he isn't. What a big Fate reserve does is make you the protagonist: you save the day at the end by cashing in a bunch of Fate points. Being able to get attacked repeatedly without getting seriously injured just means you have a good defense bonus.

-Username17

echoVanguard · Post by **echoVanguard** » Mon May 21, 2012 9:08 pm

Korwin wrote:Whats the magic double-dipping on damage calculations and the three-stooges-power-turbine?

Stunts to apply your highest skill to all defense rolls I do know. (Hell the NPC's in the Backround book (DF-RPG) have them.)

With combat magic, you use the force of your spell as the weapon's damage value, in addition to adding all your overflow successes to it. The thing is, you also have to roll at least as many successes as the force of your spell to cast it in the first place (Force is a Shadowrun term, not a DFRPG term - DFRPG calls them something convoluted like shifts of power, but force is easier to comprehend). So, for example, let's assume a character with Conviction 4 who wants to cast a Force 7 attack spell - that means you need to roll at least a 7 on your Discipline to successfully cast that spell. If you pull this off, your opponent has to defend against at minimum a 7 attack roll (which they probably won't, because they're going to have 5 dice of defense at best without invoking aspects). So far, so good - exactly the same rules as other types of combat. However, the problem here is that most weapons have damage values of 2 or 3 - and your spell has a damage value of 7. The weapon damage table doesn't even go up to five for non-spell weapons - anything larger than man-portable ordnance is just listed as "4+". Furthermore, because you had to put such a huge spin on that attack to cast it in the first place, you're probably going to have a tremendous number of overflow hits, which jack up the damage even more. Your opponent is probably going to take at least 10 boxes of damage (in a game where 2-4 boxes takes most people out).

And this is a fairly restrained example - you can toss around up to 11 or 12 shifts of power with great ease if you want, and the book gives examples of more than 30 shifts of power in some of the sample spells. What results is a sort of arms race where wizards deal more than twice the amount of damage non-wizards do, and opponents either have to have elemental resistances or the rest of the party spends all their actions setting up the wizard for an even bigger damage bonus. It's completely out of wack with how the rest of the system works because virtually everything else is "compare net successes, overflow is damage", but magic is "compare net successes, overflow + force is damage" where force can be double-digit numbers and every other modifier fits comfortably on a d4.

The three-stooges-power-turbine is something Frank talked about in the previous DFRPG thread - essentially, that characters spend time between life-or-death encounters compelling their own aspects to generate Fate Points to use in the aforementioned encounters. Usually these compels take the form of the characters having paint buckets fall on them or getting amusingly mistaken for a repairman before catastrophically and repeatedly failing at simple but meaningless tasks for comedic effect. The end result of this is that the game devolves into a two-act play - Act 1 is "Everyone Has Embarrassing But Inconsequential Things Happen To Them" and Act 2 is "The Heroes Hit The Bad Guy For Massive Damage And Win".

echo