#RPGaDay2015 Day 18 - Favorite SF RPG

Geez this one is really tough too. For a fairly long period the great bulk of my gaming was in the science fiction genre.

I'm going to limit this to only games I've played or run - there's a number, like the Firefly RPG that I'm really looking forward to trying at some point. Even limiting it to that gives a pretty broad range of RPGs. Off the top of my head, that'd include (in rough order of my first time playing them):

  • Gamma World (2nd Edition)
  • Star Frontiers
  • Star Trek (FASA)
  • Doctor Who (FASA) 
  • Star Wars (West End Games)
  • The Babylon Project (Chameleon Eclectic)
  • Star Trek (Last Unicorn Games, various incarnations)
  • Star Trek (Decipher)
  • Star Wars (Wizards of the Coast, various editions)
  • Serenity
  • Star Wars: Edge of the Empire
I'm pretty sure there's one or two missing. Interestingly, I've never actually played Traveller, though I have often borrowed from it for many games.

There's two there that really rise to the top, though I've good memories of all of them. The Last Unicorn Games incarnation of Star Trek is what what got me back with a regular gaming group after many years of irregular gaming at best. We had lots of fun aboard the starships USS Quetzalcoatl and Icarus. We experienced the mysteries and wonders of the starport of Bridgetown and its mysterious Iconian artifact. The online community that grew around this incarnation of Star Trek was a great one and I'm still in touch with a number of people I met online through this game and its successor at Decipher. (I'm actually referenced as an Easter Egg in the Decipher Starships book).  I'm not certain the Last Unicorn incarnation is its best one, but man did I have a ton of fun playing it and it got me back into gaming, a run which has persisted, with breaks of a few months here and there, since 1998...




The other game which comes to mind is the West End Games incarnation of Star Wars. It's probably the game I've clocked the most hours in, though Call of Cthulhu has got to be beginning to catch up to it. I've sung its praises before but I feel its one of the greatest RPGs developed - super easy to learn, plays well, and fits its genre incredibly well. I think Fantasy Flight Games is doing a fine job with its Star Wars games and I had a lot of fun with the various Wizards of the Coast incarnations (especially their final effort, the Saga Edition), but I think West End Games captured lightning in a bottle.

I'd probably give a teeny nudge to Star Wars, mainly because it'd be so darn easy to grab some six sided dice and play a game of it - heck I did so a few months back and had a great time. Star Trek is a bit more involved in terms of rules.
One thing which comes to mind for both of these is the extreme pity there's little chance of either being legally published again - I'd love to see some arrangement made to release previous incarnations of these licensed games.


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