Buck Rogers XXVc and Overlords of Dimension-25

[Evilschemer]

So, I'm not going to do a big multiquote rebuttal. But the skill percentages are multiplied and divided by difficulty levels. so you can just do easy tasks a lot at low levels.

That's what I wound up doing a lot, but eventually, at a certain point, if every task is easy so the players can feel better about the characters - why not just increase the skill percentage?

I actually use one minute rounds and second by second exchanges in Galaxies In Shadow because big fast moving vehicles just need room to maneuver.

Yeah, but one-minute rounds for character-v-character combat?

Unrestricted uses of high tech medical skills may just be limited by the number of bandages in the first aid kit as they are in Star Frontiers or they may be a design choice to get rid of the 15 minute adventuring day.

My first take was to limit uses of medkits and surgical kits. I also said you use up a medkit on a failed skill check. During playtest the player medic just loaded up on hundreds of medkits and burned through them anytime anyone took 1 point of damage.

There's no such thing as too many skills.

Spacemaster has like 215 skills. Its ridiculous. (I counted them one time but that was a long time ago, now I can't find the email or post)

 

[David Johansen]

No, Spacemaster Privateers has about 600 skills and that's not including specific specialties of cascade skills.

The thing is that skills are stat + points. Personally I like three stats per skill and a longer stat list.

The thing about modern combat is that it can cover a lot of ground. You can be firing at targets over the horrizon, targeting with drones or satellites, chasing down targes in miles of terrain. But like I say, exchanges of fire are done in seconds or hundreth of seconds if you really want to break down the Reflexes sequence. That's how I'd tend to look at XXVc combat. We don't watch the time spent sneaking around or, lying very still hoping to avoid notice, or even just getting in range. It's like a second or two of movie time and a minute of real time.

 

[Parkaboy]

That sound pretty awesome. Not familiar with the game or setting. Is this sword & planet along the lines of Flash Gordon and John Carter? Or more sci fi?

No, it's a 1920s sci-fi setting sans the sword and with 1990 projected tech like transhumanism and AI.

 

[Evilschemer]

Imagine the setting from the Expanse with pointy-nosed rockets, flared shoulders, and finned helmets.

 

[Johndesmarais]

I had never heard of the "High Adventure Cliffhangers" version before:

High Adventure Cliffhangers Buck Rogers Adventure Game - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

"This new Buck Rogers role-playing game was a return to the themes of the original Buck Rogers comic strips. This game included biplanes and interracial warfare, as opposed to the space combat of the earlier Buck Rogers XXVC game. There were only a few expansion modules created for High-Adventure Cliffhangers. Shortly afterward, the game was discontinued, and the production of Buck Rogers RPGs and games came to an end. This game was neither widely advertised nor very popular. There were only two published products: the box set, and "War Against the Han"."

Ah yes, a welcome return to interracial warfare indeed.

/snark mode off, this actually sounds kind of fun.

Mechanically uninspiring, but thematically very on-point with the original source material (the good and the bad).

 

[Lunar Ronin]

Evilschemer just announced a new project on Bluesky, a Stars Without Number setting called Insurrection: 5120 A.D! It's a retroclone of the Buck Rogers XXVc setting. I'm really looking forward to it.

 

[Gabriel]

Unfortunately, TSR at the time was in dire financial straights and the Buck Rogers XXVc tabletop RPG was largely a sales failure. Many people couldn't get past the Buck Rogers name, automatically assuming that the game shared the same setting as the Gil Gerard television show when it couldn't be much more different. Others blamed Lorraine Williams and Buck Rogers XXVc for the death of Star Frontiers, (which there probably is truth to that). In three years, the game line was dead, with a couple of advertised books never seeing the light of day. In 1996, Wizards of the Coast bought and rescued TSR. Years later, Wizards of the Coast discovered that TSR had a warehouse full of unsold Buck Rogers XXVc product. The inventory was transferred to Paizo and sold off online in the latter half of the 2000s. I managed to snag two brand new unopened core box sets, and a new copy of the extremely hard to find No Humans Allowed supplement.

I don't think TSR was in "dire financial straights" at the time of XXVc. TSR only supported it for a couple of years, with the vast majority of the game's material being churned out in the first year. This often gets pointed out in support of the idea that Williams was just trying to leech money off the company. And while there is almost certainly some accuracy to that, XXVc had lifecycle roughly analogous to TSRs other games that weren't xD&D or Marvel. The various editions of Gamma World, Star Frontiers, Top Secret, etc tended to only have support for a couple of years with the larger ones having a big dump of product and then being forgotten.

I do think it's fair to say the game sold poorly in addition to way below expectation. It was clear the market wasn't terribly interested. TSR was really trying to make it a big multimedia thing with the RPG, the comic books, the boardgame, the SSI computer game, and just no one was biting. I really do think the Buck Rogers branding hurt the game. For one thing, Buck Rogers was considered hokey by 1990. And even still, it lacked any visual touchstone with the one version of Buck Rogers that people at the time would have had any connection to, the 1980 TV series. If it had been released as XXVc without the Buck Rogers branding, and with a different art direction than the retro-pulp stuff, it probably would have done much better.

Now with regards to Star Frontiers, I think XXVc replacing Star Frontiers was an unreservedly good thing. I even revisited Star Frontiers last year or so and XXVc, warts and all, is just so much better a game than Star Frontiers could ever hope to be.

The Rocket Jock class, as written, has no bearing on space combat.
I added optional rules in the space combat section to incorporate Rocket Jock class skills.

This right here. This issue with XXVc has always bothered me from my very first read of the game.

 

[Silverlion]

I appreciate Overlords of the 25th Dimension it is a pretty clean and solid clean-up of BRXXIV. I think my only changes would be tie skills to D20 rolls (If I were in charge) and tighten the system to modern game design. I do think it's a fantastic game. I might have gone hardcore on making it more serious SF too (with the caveat of bioengineering and a touch of transhuman stuff added) Since it works well that way (mechanically it has no caveats to pulp-style action, and that's alright, but not ideal.) I might if I were going full pulp add some pacing rules with perhaps a luck/action mechanic to let it play more pulpy.

 

[Evilschemer]

I appreciate Overlords of the 25th Dimension it is a pretty clean and solid clean-up of BRXXIV. I think my only changes would be tie skills to D20 rolls (If I were in charge) and tighten the system to modern game design. I do think it's a fantastic game. I might have gone hardcore on making it more serious SF too (with the caveat of bioengineering and a touch of transhuman stuff added) Since it works well that way (mechanically it has no caveats to pulp-style action, and that's alright, but not ideal.) I might if I were going full pulp add some pacing rules with perhaps a luck/action mechanic to let it play more pulpy.

In a recent thread on another site, the consensus seemed to prefer porting the original setting to a new simpler system like SWN.
I also took a lot of notes on updates to the setting, which is why this isn't a new edition of Overlords of Dimension-25. I'm moving it to our dimension but in the year 5120AD (VCXX - see what I did there?) .

I had created Overlords as a retroclone of the XXVc system. But most people seem to have more nostalgia for the setting than for the system.

 

[Silverlion]

In a recent thread on another site, the consensus seemed to prefer porting the original setting to a new simpler system like SWN.
I also took a lot of notes on updates to the setting, which is why this isn't a new edition of Overlords of Dimension-25. I'm moving it to our dimension but in the year 5120AD (VCXX - see what I did there?) .

I had created Overlords as a retroclone of the XXVc system. But most people seem to have more nostalgia for the setting than for the system.

Nice! I'd love to see it. What kind of system are you going to work for it? A version of Lightspeed? (Which the simplest version I adore), d6 based? Tell me!!!!!!

 

[Evilschemer]

Nice! I'd love to see it. What kind of system are you going to work for it? A version of Lightspeed? (Which the simplest version I adore), d6 based? Tell me!!!!!!

There was a lot of debate - and even more discussion on my Discord https://discord.gg/6j9mHe6w
I have settled for sure with a version compatible with Stars Without Number.
Part of me really wants to make a version compatible with Star Frontiers, but I think that's the same issue as XXVc, People are more nostalgic for the setting and aesthetic than for the system - thus games like Frontier Space. I mean, Frontier Space is also a possibility.
Cepheus was also mentioned but it doesn't speak to me like SWN does.
I even entertained the idea of a version compatible with MOTHERSHIP.

 

[Evilschemer]

 

[Silverlion]

There was a lot of debate - and even more discussion on my Discord https://discord.gg/6j9mHe6w
I have settled for sure with a version compatible with Stars Without Number.
Part of me really wants to make a version compatible with Star Frontiers, but I think that's the same issue as XXVc, People are more nostalgic for the setting and aesthetic than for the system - thus games like Frontier Space. I mean, Frontier Space is also a possibility.
Cepheus was also mentioned but it doesn't speak to me like SWN does.
I even entertained the idea of a version compatible with MOTHERSHIP.

I'm a much bigger fan of Star Frontiers than SNW (including the system) because I'm not a huge D&D/OSR person anymore, and I'm find with Frontier Space, and definitely a huge fan of Cepheus/Traveller these days.

 

[David Johansen]

A Star Frontiers version of XXVc would be pretty cool.

 

[Tulpa Girl]

I'm personally not a fan of D&D mechanics for non-fantasy settings, for the most part, but SWN is a solid and popular base to use, and since the original Buck Rogers game was very D&D-esque in its mechanics, it's also perhaps very appropriate.

 

[David Johansen]

There are a lot of paralels between the XXVc and Mutant Chronicles settings. Terraformed inner planets. Dinosaurs on Venus. A particularly mean GM could have the PCs wind up on Pluto among strange alien ruins and a strange seal that makes eerie noises in a vacuum. Mind you, for such bait and switch games, I strongly suggest the GM have a door at their back.