One setting, multiple systems

[tkdco2]

Let's say you have an idea for a science fiction setting that mixes roleplaying and wargames. It's going to be a military campaign, so the PCs will be soldiers or starship crewmen. Perhaps you will be using the HERO System rules for roleplaying. But starship combat will be a big part of the game, and you don't like the way HERO handles it. So you use a game made for starship combat, like Starmada or Full Thrust. And since there will also be a lot of ground battles going on, and you decide to use the Warhammer 40,000 game for that part. That's a lot of stuff for one campaign. It's likely you won't be using all three systems at once; maybe you'll do starship combat one session and roleplay the next one. But that's still quite a bit to keep track of. Has anybody tried this sort of thing? And if so, how well did it turn out?



I know the some games such as Traveller can do all those elements. But it's possible to like the roleplaying system but not the starship combat part (or vice versa). So going the multiple system route can make sense.

[Malcadon]

You just described MechWarrior and Star Frontiers. All editions of MechWarrior are stand-alone RPGs, but if you want to fight in vehicles, mechs, air/spacecraft or warships, you would have to pull out one of a number of wargame sets (Battletech, Aerotech, etc.) Star Frontiers, on the other hand, got the default Alpha Dawn system, which is good for personal- and vehicle-level action, but if you want to have spaceships in your game, you'll have to use Knight Hawks rules; which is built as a space battle war game at its core. In both cases, integration is a mess for various reasons.

[tkdco2]

Traveller 2300 also has the whole thing in one, but I don't care for the mechanics.

[tkdco2]

Another thing I do is overthink by trying to use systems that fall into more than one category. For example, I may use GURPS Lite for roleplaying, FUBAR for ground combat, and Full Thrust Light for space combat. I'd group these together because they're all:
1. Free (and legal) downloads
2. Rules-light versions/games
3. d6 based

Or maybe I'll use HERO or GURPS for roleplaying and Starmada NOVA for space combat. These systems
1. Use d6 exclusively
2. Are versatile when building chararacters/starships
3. Have a bit of math involved.

Why do I obsess over these details? I don't know; I'm just weird that way.

[Finarvyn]

Sorry I missed this the first time around.

I think that the role-play and ship combat have very little connection to one another, and grabbing two systems from two different product lines would be no problem at all.

For example, the FFG Star Wars stuff is all the rage at my game store so I'll use that. They have their Armada game line which allows for Star Destroyers to battle with x-wing squadrons or Mon Calamari cruisers or whatever. Great for ship-to-ship scale battles, but I think I could use that system with pretty much any RPG system I wanted. I could use FFG's new Star Wars RPG or I could use WEG's d6 Star Wars system from the 1980's or I could use "OD&D in Spaaaaaace" as a homebrew and I don't see that it would have much effect on the Armada scale ship combat.

Of course, this assumes that roleplay characters are interchangible on the ship-to-ship scale. What about Luke in an x-wing or Han shooting the Falcon's turbolasrs? My solution is to give the PC a small bonus in ship-to-ship combat. Let it be a plus on a die, an extra die, an edge on initiative, or whatever.

This isn't unique to SciFi, as you can imagine. It's the same problem you get when you have D&D characters involved in a war or a sailing ship combat. You can try to keep things on a personal level or shift over to a larger scale where the individual becomes less significant. Chainmail allows for multiple attacks for Hero types and makes them harder to kill. Other systems either ignore the issue of the individual or handle it in much the same manner, so how you do it probably does not really matter that much.

As you suggested, you may be overthinking this whole thing. Just grab your group and play!

[tkdco2]

True, I overthink it. The question is whether my players would like to learn that many new systems at once. But we hardly get to play nowadays, and they go along with what I've prepared, so maybe there isn't a problem anyway.

At least until their characters get killed when their spaceship is destroyed, that is.