Slashdot Mirror
Battlestar Galactica Pen and Paper RPG
gerbalblaste writes "Margaret Weis Productions, Ltd. has reached an agreement with Universal Studios Consumer Products Group to produce roleplaying game products based on the enormously successful, critically-acclaimed television series, Battlestar Galactica. Weis' company is known primarily for the recent release of the Serenity Role-Playing Game. From the article: 'The game book will be a full-color hardcover book featuring still images from the series as well as original artwork. It will provide rules for play, character creation, and information about the ship and crew of Galactica as well as the other main characters from the show. A Quickstart Guide will be released in early 2007 with the core product premiering in the spring. Additional products will closely follow the release of the core product. The entire line will be supported by an interactive website. Jamie Chambers (Dragonlance Campaign Setting, Serenity Role Playing Game) is helping lead a team of writers and designers dedicated to re-creating the excitement, drama, and danger of the groundbreaking television series.'"
Except I'll wait for the sexy Number Six figurine in the red dress before playing the game. If you're gonna play it, play it right!
Change #1 Cylons were NOT created by man
Change #2 Cylons ALL look like robots
Change #3 Starbuck is a man
That said, I love the new series, but consider it as separate from the original which I waited months for each new episode.
Jonah HEX
Horror & SciFi Erotic Nudes
Classes:
This is a sig. It is appended to the end of comments I post.
-Eric
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
I love the show, but I'm always leery of license RPGs... A good movie or tv show is not necessarily a good reason or setting for an RPG.
In particular here, with the story not yet resolved, the GM would have to basically invent the motives/reasons for things that we don't know yet. Nothing wrong with that except that it will likely be proved false as we continue to watch the show. We know who the cylons are. So right off the bat you'd have to start changing show canon if you want any suspense on that account.
Also, the setting is rather in where you can be, either on the fleet or maybe a resistance force back on the colonies. Ok, those are entire planets, so maybe there is more potential there.
Your bestiary is likewise fairly limited, you have centurion, raider, biocylon and from there you have to start inventing stuff.
The licensed RPGs I've enjoyed best were ones that had a wealth of material to turn to as well as a resolved story but had large sections of it with time and places where little was known. I liked Iron Crown's Middle Earth RPG (MERP). I didn't care for the first Babylon 5 RPG. The serenity one... is better I suppose, but at least has the wide open solar system where lots of things go on that are outside the scope of what we saw on the show. BSG tends to pretty much account for everyone, there are
That being said I may well end up getting this anyway. Often times these RPGS are more useful as sources of background material, especially if they can get some collaboration from the show's creators on the content. Just not sure I'd run it.
"Waste not one watt!" - CZ
I flipped through the Serentity RPG, the game mechanics seemed to leave a little to be desired. I wonder how much play testing games like this get?
Why not fork?
...depending on their favored theory of personal identity.
... you number 129 is nearing the window of the space station...
... ...plus others.
Player: Out of ammo? Damn. Nothing left... Kamikaze!
DM: You 'heroically' charge the civilian spacecraft, ending many lives including your own.
Player: Cool - when I wake up, I want to go get another ship.
DM: You WERE the ship. Anyway, you don't wake up.
Player: Huh? But we have a resurrection ship right there! You never said it was toasted, and even if it was, I would only lose a couple days memories since my last major network synch.
DM: It's not that. It's just that personal identity doesn't end up working like that. Another Cylon has just awakens, sure, and with your memories, but it isn't you. That's gone now.
Or, alternatively:
DM: Alright, you've successfully climbed the wall, escaping the rising algae pool. That's you number 128. Next up, [shuffles papers]
Or, alternatively:
DM: You awaken to the sound of marching and the cries of the dying. There is a loud explosion to your left. You are marching with a large group of identical Cylon Centurions.
Player: Oh wow - um, I'm going to break off from the group. I want to investigate that explosion.
DM: I'm sorry, but God won't let you do that.
Player: Uh, really? I - ah, I want to wave my arm in front of my face.
DM: Your programming will not allow you such choice. You decide to follow the group to
Ryan Fenton
My roleplaying buddies and I were excited when we heard about the Serenity RPG, but hugely disappointed when it was based on a new set of game mechanics. My friends have settled on D20 as their ruleset of choice, and it was enough of a struggle for me to get them to play Call of Cthulhu using BRP which is a piece of cake to learn.
So my pleasure at hearing about a BG RPG is tempered somewhat by the knowledge that I will never play it.
Dunx
Converting caffeine into code since 1982
Steamy sex with hot imaginary partner... Are you sure Doc is not a slashdot poster?
Well as the subject implies, I'm very hopeful that they'll be able to pull this project off and the RPG community will be able to add another quality product to our shelves, after seeing how the Serenity RPG was handled I won't be holding my breath (for too long).
:-p
I was one of those overly enthusiastic types that bought the first printing of the Serenity RPG, while it IS a good system of play and I enjoy playing and writing modules/campaigns for it, the initial editing of the book left quite a bit to be desired.
The first THREE printings of the book lacked two basic, major items for any RPG - character sheet and index. The need for both, I hope, is self-explanatory. If not - the inclusion of a character sheet screams 'obvious'. Every system has its own little quirks and ways of things interacting, the character sheet is the most basic way for all those things to be tied together in a neat little package, making it easier (not necessarily *easy*) for players, especially new players, to understand how to play the character's numbers - that way the player doesn't always have to know every rule/line from the book. And as for the index, how can you create something as complex as a roleplaying gaming system and expect players to flip through the entire book or read an entire chapter to find the details of, say, 'Dodge'. An index is crucial, enough said.
To add insult to injury, it took them almost a year to publish both of these items as 'free bonus material' on the Serenity RPG website. Add the fact that there were few to no examples of just about anything involving rolling the dice (no combat example, no flight maneuvering examples, nadda...) had the players pretty much making up the rules as they went along. I'm all for free form RPG (I'm a gamer after all), but not after paying a good sum of money for a system that should have been (more) complete at release. I really believe the game was play tested by those that wrote the system - already being intimately knowledgeable of how things *should* work, they missed the obvious failings in the book. Unfortunately, unlike computer/console games, the publisher can't just release a patch - they have to release a completely new printing/edition.
All that said, I do think it's a great system and love playing, but the book wasn't the best. If MW can do better with the BSG, I'll be impressed. But being the geeky little fanboy I am, I'll probably rush out and buy the first edition/printing of the BSG RPG book anyway.
No Sci-Fi RPG system can compare. The ship building, the dogfight mechanics, and especially the joy of reading the rulebook outclass every other Sci-Fi RPG I've played.
r thugs
http://www.ghazporkindustrial.com/index.php?P=sta
"If I were to ask you a hypothetical question, what would you like it to be about?"
ZOMG plz nerf Night Elf Cylons attacking Caprica with nukes from shadowmeld SO UNFAIR blue response plz
RPGs in famous movie settings have to deal with a serious problem. The expectation and their inability to live up to it.
In a movie, you see heros. Those heros are virtually invulnerable and most certainly immortal. Sure, they have their shortcomings and quirks, and sometimes they're just plainly dumb, but they usually come out of "are you effing nuts" risks with but a scratch. They're the best pilots, the best marksmen and of course they always know the wittiest riposte to any kind of insult.
And, most of all, they have a plot to follow, and when they find out something, it's interesting to watch. And that's where it gets tricky most of the time.
Imagine there's something wrong with the ship. Engines don't start. In the show, you see engineers run around the ship doing "diagnosis". You see pretty animations of some kind of leaks or some anomaly and you hear the engineers sprout technobabble what it is. Usually some deus ex machina solution that fixes the plothole just in time to save the show, something you, the spectator, couldn't even come up with because you simply have no idea that this or that actually worked that way.
How do you project that into an RPG? Trying to find out what kind of plot the GM has in mind, what kind of "technological" answer he has for the problem? Usually, it's done with a roll, you find the reason, you solve it. Not fun.
Then there's the plot problem. Galactica deals to some not too small extent with space combat and action elements. This is fun to watch. It's just not fun to play, at least not in a standard table top RPG setting, because it usually comes down to pure chance and luck, the roll of the dice, whether you succeed or fail. There's only so much "tactics" you can employ when facing a foe in the middle of nowhere in space if all you can announce is pretty much "I'm gonna target the second cylon bomber on the right".
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
This means our players can actually, for once, welcome their Cylon overlords?
Of all the possibilities this could entail... I just hope that they stay the hell away from D20.
"I've spent my whole life figuring out crazy ways to do things. It'll work." -- Montgomery Scott, "Relics"
Its called Traveller
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
Roll the dice to see if I nail Starbuck.
Where's the Mountain Dew?
f u cn rd ths u cn gt a gd jb n cmptr prgmng
Do people still play pen and paper RPG's? I thought now that we have had wide availability of home computers for oh... about 15 years now, that they could have moved on. I would love to see a Battlestar Galactica computer game, but I have no interest in this pen and paper nonsense.
DO THEY HAVE A PLAN?
Wow, whoever modded this flamebait needs to lighten up. Maybe not-funny, but flamebait? Er, no.