What's your favorite system for sci-fi dungeon crawling?

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Brock Savage

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I am specifically looking for a system that can handle "dungeon crawling" through exploring ancient wrecked starships for valuable salvage.

Mothership and Stars Without Number are on the short list but I want to look at more options before pulling the trigger.

Edit: Golgatha is based on the Black Hack and looks promising, anyone have experience with this one?
 
I have done this with SWN and it worked fine. Crawford has some great supplements you will want regardless of the system you ultimately choose: Dead Names, Relics of the Lost, and Sixteen Stars.

Golgotha was designed specifically for doing exactly this. I think it's fine mechanically, but it is built around a setting which, in my opinion, has some real flaws. I have read the book but not actually played it.

If you like the idea of not-Jedi with mystic/psychic powers and laser swords, you should consider Star Adventurer. It's just 35 pages of classic OSR mechanics. It's next on my list for sci-fi crawling.
 
I have done this with SWN and it worked fine. Crawford has some great supplements you will want regardless of the system you ultimately choose: Dead Names, Relics of the Lost, and Sixteen Stars.

Golgotha was designed specifically for doing exactly this. I think it's fine mechanically, but it is built around a setting which, in my opinion, has some real flaws. I have read the book but not actually played it.
I looked at the sample for Golgatha on DTRPG and the typos in the table of contents were enough to drain my enthusiasm before I even got to the setting.

I have a lot of material for SWN but have not actually run the game nor have I looked closely at the supplements.
 
Classic Traveller had some adventures along these lines. Snapshot and Azanti High Lightning were skirmish boardgames for firefights on ships, I recall the latter having complete deckplans for a large ship. It's easy to slap on full Traveller rpg rules onto these.

The basics of Traveller are pretty simple.
 
I've never personally played Traveller as a dungeon crawler. I do agree it'd make a good candidate with one caveat: Traveller is decidedly lethal. That's more true of Mongoose Traveller than of Classic Traveller, but still. If dungeon crawl = combat, be warned.
 
I am specifically looking for a system that can handle "dungeon crawling" through exploring ancient wrecked starships for valuable salvage.

Mothership and Stars Without Number are on the short list but I want to look at more options before pulling the trigger.

Edit: Golgatha is based on the Black Hack and looks promising, anyone have experience with this one?
So, in SF dungeoncrawling, is the NPC that points you to the dungeon a chick in black latex:shade:?
 
Different dungeon, though you still might be made to crawl.
Me? No, no, I brought the dungeoncrawling implements (rope included:shade:)!
Other people are going to crawl, though, since it's kinda fun to watch:devil:.
 
My go to for this sort of thing would be some flavor of BRP (likely Mythras, nowadays) because it is SO easy to incorporate stuff from all the different splat books. If GURPS is more your thing I bet that would work really well.
 
Oh one thing, I prefer sci fi settings where PCs are humans or analogues like androids. I prefer my aliens to be weird, inscrutable, and inimical to mankind.
Hulk's and Horrors has a floating Squid or Octopus PC race as I recall but you could just houserule it out.
 
Esper Genesis seems like it would be an appropriate fit.
 
An SF system I've never heard about? Tell us more:smile:!
It probably won't be your thing , as its 5e D&D spacefaring, with magic refashioned as psionics

Classes are reworked, and a variety of new starfaring races.


It's super high tech with FTL routine thanks to their universes version of unobtainium, plus star gates left by the ancients.

Its a kind of Star Wars universe as regards species, there is a high degree of integration of them.

As of the core rules there are no big wars going on. Psi powers are unusual but accepted, and all PCs have a touch of Psi power but that's integrated in their class abilities (so the mage analogue has more spell like powers than the fighter analogues). So PCs stand out from the norm.

I think if I wanted to do D&D in spaaaaaaace it would be my starting point as I am happy with what %e does.
 
I agree with zanshin zanshin about Esper Genesis. It’s what I have most of my 5E experience with, and I really enjoy it, the authors’ coyness about clarifying ammunition rules notwithstanding.

While I recommend the corebook, I’m not so hot on their adventures. They actually published something of an asteroid crawl, and while I love the RP potential, the big battle has resulted in a TPK every time I’ve run it. I bought all the modules but one, and I still have only read the first three all the way through, as they are very lethal with a four-player group, and the third adventure is as far as we’ve gotten in the campaign before a TPK hits.
 
I would probably go with M-Space (Mythras) or River of Heaven (OpenQuest), purely out of familarity with BRP game mechanics. However Mongoose Traveller would also be an obivious contender. I have Eclipse Phase sitting there on my shelf, but it looks a little complex for my current tastes.
l'd also be happy to check out Stars Without Number, Mothership, or Solar Blades & Cosmic Spells, but I don't actually have them to recommend.
 
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Maybe White Star?
I checked it out but I am not looking for space opera like Star Wars or Flash Gordon.

After a good sleep and some interesting dreams, I realize that what I am looking for is basically something kinda like Mothership but with a B/X-ish ruleset.

I picked up the Mothership megadungeon Gradient Descent and it is excellent.
 
I’d just use Traveller, in all honesty, but isn’t Alien basically just this?
 
I never have played or even looked at Traveler, what's the elevator pitch? By Alien are you referring to an RPG and if so, what's the elevator pitch?
Unless you count Metamorphosis Alpha, Traveller is the oldest, longest established spacefaring science fiction roleplaying game. It has spanned multiple editions, just like D&D, and has a pretty loyal and numerous fanbase. It has a GAMA Hall of Fame status and was listed in The 100 Best Hobby Games (nominated by Mike Pondsmith of Cyberpunk fame).

It is also, arguably, one of the most innovative RPGs ever made. Things like skills and skill based test resolution, career based, life-path character generation, tech levels, starship design, planet and star generation, space combat, trade systems, alien design and other encounters all started with Traveller. It has a default setting, The Third Imperium, which is akin to D&D’s Forgotten Realms for sci-fi, and allows you to travel from world to world and get into pretty much any sci-fi tale you can imagine.

You can use it, with maps and tokens (or figures) to just explore sectors of space and use the random tables to generate worlds and encounters. Scenarios like that of Alien are fairly standard really.

The Alien RPG, based on the movie franchise, was released by Fria Ligen a year or two ago and has high production standards and a specific dice system for simulating stress in encounters with the eponymous antagonists.
 
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Unless you count Metamorphosis Alpha, Traveller is the oldest, longest established spacefaring science fiction roleplaying game. It has spanned multiple editions, just like D&D, and has a pretty loyal and numerous fanbase. It has a GAMA Hall of Fame status and was listed in The 100 Best Hobby Games (nominated by Mike Pondsmith of Cyberpunk fame).

It is also, arguably, one of the most innovative RPGs ever made. Things like skills and skill based test resolution, career based, life-path character generation, tech levels, starship design, planet and star generation, space combat, trade systems, alien design and other encounters all started with Traveller. It has a default setting, The Third Imperium, which is akin to D&D’s Forgotten Realms for sci-fi, and allows you to travel from world to world and get into pretty much any sci-fi tale you can imagine.

You can use it, with maps and tokens (or figures) to just explore sectors of space and use the random tables to generate worlds and encounters. Scenarios like that of Alien are fairly standard really.

The Alien RPG, based on the movie franchise, was released by Fria Ligen a year or two ago and has high production standards and a specific dice system for simulating stress in encounters with the eponymous antagonists.
And the always memorable but almost immediately removed "Death in character generation" feature.
 
So this isn't in the most recent edition either? That's a pity. I genuinely always thought this was genius.
It is still possible, although the Mishaps are generally more forgiving these days. You can go to prison in the current rules though. Also, you can take optional ‘Iron Man’ generation, which reverts back to the harshness of the original.
 
Stars Without Number would be my rational response, but I do have a soft spot for White Star.

Also, any prospective SF dungeon crawl GM should read Alastair Reynolds’ “Diamond Dogs” novella which has a shout-out to D&D right in the first paragraph.
 
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