Sci-Fi Brainstorming [Dungeon Crusade 2.0]

[Koumei]

It's not even the skeleton of a project, just the brainstorming of ideas, so it can go here. When it's actually becoming a real thing, I'll put it in IMOI.

So we have some basic ideas already. I was already thinking "races: warrior aliens, engineered humans, robots, ???" (with possibly some philosopher-psychic alien that's sort of Eldar/Spock/Protoss) and "classes: psychic that is arguably a Jedi, warrior that is basically a space marine, stealth-master assassin, ???".

Now we have this:

Race	Power Armor	Force Field	Psychic Warrior	Stealth Suit	Weird
Death Worlder	Space Marine	Sardaukar	Luke Skywalker	Christine Royce	Alia Atreides
Warrior Race	District 9	War of the Worlds	Tyvokka the Wookiee	Predator	Time Lord
Robot	Cylon Centurion	Borg	Xena: Warrior Princess	Major Kusanagi	X

Now, let's step away from that for a moment and look at technology. Aside from stealth suits, force fields, robots and power armour, I mean.

What ranged weapons do people use in this space empire? For instance, 40k's Imperium walks in with lasers, solid projectiles (from pistols to artillery cannons), missiles (including boltguns), plasma, melta and flamers. And a few edge-case things as well. What sorts of things should they be taking into D&D world to transmute dragons into corpses?

How about melee weapons? I think it's okay if power armour types mainly use cannons rather than "strong == big melee weapon". And the stealth people might do "invisible close combat ninja" but they could just as easily be super snipers, where you have to guess which tree just shot you.
But psychic warriors probably have special devices that channel their energy into a psi-blade (light sabres), and the force fielded people would be using chemical weapons and indeed melee. So what are we looking at? Stuff that's just very very sharp due to the great manufacturing process? Weapons that deliver a lethal electric shock? Hammers with explosives in the head? Massive drills?

What sort of transport do we want the actual PC team to have? I don't care that back home everyone has a hoverpod and teleport-stations and whatever. Even the capabilities of their ship don't really matter, as that has crash-landed. So as long as it can crash-land, and can't just fix itself up, that isn't such a big deal. Maybe not the theoretical "moves faster than we thought possible, but unfortunately when it stops it bombards the area in neutrons and everything dies" kind.

But should they have their own personal APC/jet packs/hover bikes/tanks/choppers? Should such things come online at later levels as the mechanics manage to salvage and repair these things, coincidentally at the same time that enemies tend to be liches and dread wraiths and demonic harpies?

And finally, what kinds of goods should they be bringing to the world to destroy economies/improve lifestyles/amaze the locals? If their super lifestyle tech is destroyed, they basically have to learn to trade with gold and will want any utility magic items ("it makes endless clean water, it's like a crappy version of our multi-stream (TM) fluid creation modules").

Indeed, they could go into the Logistics and Dragons thing where they give zero fucks about magic weapons (their own are better - though if they find a wizard who can enhance their stuff, that's another matter) but really want the gadgets that do other things, meanwhile they're trading with adventurers who want MOAR MAGIC SWORDZ.

Letting them have amazing technology that caters to all their needs, on the other hand, gives a huge bargaining chip with basically anyone they meet who doesn't have Wish (Sp). And "our ship has fabricators" is a sort of middle-ground where they still need raw materials (even if they just need the very basic molecules or even just enough mass worth of atoms, in which case feathers that turn into trees are a great deal) but can go back to base and make great wonders.

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Also, we don't need the "Low Tier" and "High Tier" things any more. I think it should be acceptable for people to go all the way up to level 20, however I'm not convinced there should be the possibility of starting at level 1. Player characters have a lot of training, and are innately awesome racially, and have such superior technology, it might be better to have them flat-out start at level 4-5. Thoughts?

[Avoraciopoctules]

So, this is a more general premise than the original DC, and it's just "a sci-fi setting" and "a fantasy setting" get linked up?

...Via one or more groups getting stranded in Fantasyland by a ship crash, so you probably don't want interplanetary teleportation or magical stargates. A 3.x Wish Economy would rapidly change the situation once they started replicating the newcomer's stuff and scrying on their home.

If you have psionic laser knights, combat cyborg @mans, and prawn-piloted battlesuits bristling with deadly energy weapons and homing missiles as starting options, you definitely want a minimum starting level.

[Maxus]

I'd honestly say you should include things for both. Stealth suited ninjas are freakin' awesome, but so are the long-ranged attacks of the Predator. I'd want to play both, at different times. Or, at least, have my Space Infiltrator pick up a sniper rifle and know something about using it.

Likewise, Space...SEALS? Green Berets? Dragoons? Whatever. Both REALLY DAMN BIG GUNS and BIG MELEE WEAPON are both conceptually awesome and could conceivably be viable for SPESS WARYAHS to carry around, if you set the tech right. Ripping off Dune's Slow Shields, as Frank mentioned, makes for some sense. Melee weapons, I suppose, would bypass a lot of armor and other defenses.

The quality of materials depends on how one-sided you want this, because, well, a lot of Dungeon Crusade's fun is from the potential ability to rip through lots and lots and LOTS of D&D monsters in a hurry. I don't know if you want that to carry over or not, but I wouldn't mind if it did.

[Avoraciopoctules]

Yeah, the organization level of the opposition PCs can expect will make a huge difference in the tone of the game. Is the Lich King cackling amidst his human skeleton horde, or is he telekinetically hurling drop pods full of spectres at places he doesn't like from the safety of his moon base? Was the Sultan's palace built in a decade by human slaves, a year by some master artisans and a magical lyre, or a month by the vizier's collection of bound genies?

[erik]

About the starting at level 4-5 bit. Certainly start around level 5, but don't go up 1 level at a time. We don't need that much granularity, do we?

6 levels should do it.

Dual BAB tracks of Ballistic Skill and Weapon Skill seems the proper way to deal with future schtick.

Level	1	2	3	4	5	6
"BAB" progression
+1 BS/WS	+5	+8	+11	+14	+17	+20
+0.75 BS/WS	+3	+6	+8	+10	+12	+15
+0.5 BS/WS	+2	+4	+5	+7	+8	+10
Psy DCs
bonus + Stat	13	14	16	17	19	20

[Koumei]

The main problem with that is that it means progression will be a very rare thing, which leads to staleness. One way around that is to give regular skill points or whatever that people can just slot in as something extra, which also helps the team diversify a lot seeing as you still can't go over the maximum rank.

[Username17]

You probably want to rip off Dune a lot, because it is the preeminent setting involving people from the space empire having to wander around a dangerous world of magic. You can also rip off Avatar, because reasons. So the basic setup is that the Space Empire sent a group to extract resources from the Magic Planet and then the people who were doing that got betrayed by another house in the Space Empire and their base got blown up and now they are wandering around doing stuff.

Race	Power Armor	Force Field	Jedi	Stealth Suit	Weird
Death Worlder	Space Marine	Sardaukar	Luke Skywalker	Christine Royce	Alia Atreides
Warrior Race	District 9	War of the Worlds	Tyvokka the Wookiee	Predator	Time Lord
Robot	Cylon Centurion	Borg	Xena: Warrior Princess	Major Kusanagi	X
Genetic Enhancement	Arm Forces	Sue Storm	Kahn Singh	Ghost	Mewtwo
Demon Possession	Nightmare	Protoss	Goa'uld	Space Vampire	Gul Dukat

Now of course, you aren't actually going to want to name your classes "Jedi" and "Power Armor", they are going to want to have names that are in-character and sound cool. Just off the top of my head, your five classes could be something like:

• Templar
  Guardian
  Dancer
  Shade
  Weird

Anyway, you could and should go the Dominions route, where there are explicitly a bunch of magical resources (and non-magical resources), but the Space Empire only cares about a few of them. The Space Empire really honestly does not give a tinker's damn about your pile of gold, because they have collected actual asteroids made of gold. Also they don't care about your diamonds because they can make better ones, and have no use for virgin sacrifices. But orichalcum and adamantine and chaos crystals are fucking awesome and the Space Empire Do Want.

-Username17

[Username17]

If you have psionic laser knights, combat cyborg @mans, and prawn-piloted battlesuits bristling with deadly energy weapons and homing missiles as starting options, you definitely want a minimum starting level.

Well, the @man thing brings up a valid point: what about classes who aren't literally expected to be on the battlefield? Science Fiction adventures usually feature more than just spess marines and assassins. There are usually doctors and engineers and captains and stuff.

A drone pilot like an @man has the advantage that even though they aren't specifically able to hold their own in a fight with an ogre, they have flying gun turrets who are. So they could be folded in as an extra class even if you did intend "all dragon fighting, final destination". I'm not sure a doctor or an engineer could make that claim. The Captain should be default be dead or a traitor or both to prevent players from lording it over other players.

As for advancement, I would suggest that the default assumption is basically zero sum growth. That is: people lose ammunition and don't get it back, but they also acquire magic and experience. So early in the game, you still have missiles and bombs, and you can take out really bad ass dragons and shit even though you are "low level".

As for the enemies, you have the traitorous faction of the Space Empire which is taking this planetary holding that you have to fight against (this is where you can loot extra bullets), and I presume they are allied with some big bad on the planet like the King of Nightmares or something.

-Username17

[Koumei]

Well, the @man thing brings up a valid point: what about classes who aren't literally expected to be on the battlefield? Science Fiction adventures usually feature more than just spess marines and assassins. There are usually doctors and engineers and captains and stuff.

I imagine there are a lot of people that are level 1 NPCs, much as Dungeon Crusade 1.0 had some "5 to a sheet" stat blocks for Expert (Pilot), Expert (Comms Officer) and Warrior - the minions you boss around.

So they could be folded in as an extra class even if you did intend "all dragon fighting, final destination". I'm not sure a doctor or an engineer could make that claim.

Not without making the Engineer the Torchlight one who has a cannon, a forcefield and an explosive wrench, along with robotic minions.

Making a medic battlefield-suitable would involve giving them a lot of tech that is crazy-good while also being technical enough that only they can use it. Given the party probably starts with a bunch of stimm-injectors, nano-surgeon tubes and flesh-printing slap-patches (and then starts to run out and would then very much appreciate those potions of CLW), I'm not sure about it.

As for how much combat there is, I imagine a big part is flat-out exploration and trying to map the area, find the (good resources), and dealing with the barbaric nativeslocal sentient species in an attempt to exploit themmake progress. Actually winning people over with your tech (showing that "yes, it's just like the magic of your world except even you can use it, mister shitshoveller.") could be a big thing until it runs out. But every now and then, you'll wander into a cave full of giant spiders, and maybe the lich king will field an army against you.

For a lot of this stuff, if the party spots the enemy at any distance, they win, because "oh look, they're charging at us! Let's put an explosion where they are!" When shit happens in close combat, they still have a good edge with their gear and abilities. A lot of basic encounters should really be curbstomps.

But when the lich king fields an army, they get to blast mobs of minions apart, and that's great, and then suddenly some wraiths go "we're immune to bullets and can drain you through your armour, lol" and they have a real fright, and then they're pitting their artillery and intelligence against the vast spells and intelligence of the lich king himself.

So basically it's often a one-round exercise that reminds the PCs they're awesome. But then there are boss fights that are tricky, and sometimes there will be fights that will scare the crap out of them.

The Captain should be default be dead or a traitor or both to prevent players from lording it over other players.

Agreed.

As for advancement, I would suggest that the default assumption is basically zero sum growth. That is: people lose ammunition and don't get it back, but they also acquire magic and experience. So early in the game, you still have missiles and bombs, and you can take out really bad ass dragons and shit even though you are "low level".

So you'd actually start at a reasonably low level, just with disproportionately awesome gear, and they don't have replicators to keep them topped up, and don't get to requisition bigger guns as they level up? That could work.

For this I would also probably have the magic crap be even more random and varied than normal. As in, Torchlight where you will legitimately turn down a breastplate that has "a bigger armour bonus than my current breastplate, and more energy resistances", because your current, lower-level breastplate makes your pets stronger.

[Username17]

I hesitate to suggest such a thing, but possibly you don't want to do "levels" in the traditional way. Generally, a level based system is there for characters to advance in power in a balanced and predictable fashion. But this is actually not desirable in Dungeon Crusade, because one of the themes you're running with is diminishing resources powering overpowered technological devices.

That implies that people are going to be playing a Logistics and Dragons game with their land mines, anti-vehicle rockets, and plasma shells. It also implies that power levels won't be balanced or necessarily on an upward trajectory. Which implies a non-level based system. Possibly a skill based system.

Another issue is that you want to shoot dragons with bazookas and have them fall out of the sky dead. That implies not using hit dice and damage dice but instead doing something that scales such as soak rolls and wound boxes.

So maybe you want to start with Shadowrun and work in a melee system rather than starting with D&D and adding in laser guns and force fields. Or a percentile skill system (obviously a roll-over percentile skill system because this isn't the early fucking eighties). The player characters don't have to be better swordsmen to blow the fuck out of enemy death knights, and arguably they simply shouldn't be.

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As for having "specialists" who are stuff like biologists and technicians and stuff who are non-player characters that are not expected to fight, that seems like a perfectly reasonable option. Possibly you get to choose your starting escape pod, and it has different "supplies" in it. And some of the "supplies" are civilians who have futuristic expertise.

As for magic-land resources, I think you want to have both magic-land resources that are totally useless to the PCs but very valuable off-world (such as orichalcum and chaos crystals) and magic resources that the player characters can put to immediate use (such as protection charms and crystal balls). This in addition to the resources that magic-worlders value that the PCs think are trash (gold, gems, most enchanted swords, etc.).

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And yeah, you're going to want a wide variety of futuristic equipment. Ranged weapons, melee weapons, recon equipment, defensive equipment, utility equipment, the whole thing. And basically you want three categories of battery life/ammunition - things that can only be used a couple of times (or even once), things which can be used a bunch of times (but still run out), and things which are essentially eternal (whether because the battery extends longer than the predicted game length, or because it's actually just a diamond tipped super blade that will outlive the sun).

So you can get a monofilament garrote that you can murder someone just by waving your hand near them (but only once), a rocket hammer that will let you bash the fuck out of things a couple of times before you run out of plasma shells, a laser sword that can be used in a large (but not unlimited) number of combats, or a straight up diamond axe that will hold its edge longer than the mountains.

You might want to have interchangeable ammunition, but I think that should apply to at most just a couple of things. Maybe the plasma shells and power cells are interchangeable, but the rockets, bullets, and all the rest are not.

-Username17

[Avoraciopoctules]

So, if resource depletion is a thing, does that mean we have to worry about Raiden and Mewtwo overshadowing Predator and Space Marine in actual play? They just shoot mind blasts and chop things in half screaming about RULES OF NATURE.

Or do we want to make everyone depend on some level of special resource? Maybe Mewtwo starts with psionic amplifier helmets that can burn out, and Raiden needs to manage fuel cells carefully without other cyborgs to steal spines from.

[Parthenon]

So, if resource depletion is a thing, does that mean we have to worry about Raiden and Mewtwo overshadowing Predator and Space Marine in actual play? They just shoot mind blasts and chop things in half screaming about RULES OF NATURE.

Drugs. The Weird have to take notSpice to use their powers, and they only have a limited amount of it. I mean, they can learn to dice dragon brains and ferment it to make an alternative, but the good shit runs out.

---

I'm thinking they should have a satellite in orbit that they can remotely hack to keep under their control and occasionally get orbital bombardments and supplies, but only every XX hours since thats how often it takes to make an orbit.

That way you can have some daily limits to powers and occasional extra exposions, but after a little while their orbit will fail and you have to decide whether to hope it stays up there or deliberately make it drop on an enemy.

[Maxus]

I don't know about using the skill system/Shadowrun hitboxes thing, Frank. That's pretty much making an entire new system, given how you'd have to write up all the usual fantasy trappings--dragons, liches, orc warlords, etc--, rather than just a bunch of classes and rules for the PCs.

Dungeon Crusade is a huge expansion in its own right, but it's almost entirely stuff for the players--write yourself up a Sister Burninatrix of the Sisters of Battle, and go to town setting orcs and zombies on fire.

[Koumei]

Yeah, the whole idea is that the DM can place their normal D&D stuff down, and then the players just happen to the setting, using the stuff from this. I'd rather not make a new setting.

Also, I fucking hate dice pools. I can't stress this enough. I can tolerate "roll a pool and add the numbers together" (ala L5R), but even then it'd be better to make that dice pool into one-sided dice, and add a single random amount to that, say, a d20.

That said, as long as the PCs are all Dungeon Crusade characters, and someone doesn't join the game as Pocahontas the Blue Elf Druid of Fern Gully*, there's no reason the PCs have to follow the D&D rules of advancement.

It could still essentially be skill based, and every session the PCs get a few extra skill points, and the skills can include "shooting people in the face" and "the alchemical art of fusing axes and faces to craft... corpses". So they actually have like 15 HP each (ie a starting level martial character), but they have such great gear that their HP rarely becomes an issue - and then when it does become an issue, things suddenly got real. And they go about working on their people skills (for dealing with the populace), their survival skills (for finding the good stuff to trade and for eating the right trees), their combat skills (for ice skatingcombat), their skills for harvesting and crafting things that can help stretch out their resources and so on. And picking up new languages, because guess which empire doesn't speak Common! (Hint: it's the one that also doesn't trade in Universal Gold Currency)

The fact that they will in no way look like a Level 1 Samurai, a Level 5 Samurai, a Level 10 Samurai or a Level 20 Samurai/Demon Knight/Bone Rider is completely okay.

As for how many skills to have, and what the limit should be and so on, that's another matter. I know someone who once started work on a Skills-based D&D thing, where "max rank = governing stat" and every 4 ranks in (stat)-based skills increases the stat by 1, and then I asked "so what about Constitution?" and the answer wasn't "fuck you" but it should have been.

*Feel free to mash more references into there

[K]

So, if resource depletion is a thing, does that mean we have to worry about Raiden and Mewtwo overshadowing Predator and Space Marine in actual play? They just shoot mind blasts and chop things in half screaming about RULES OF NATURE.

Drugs. The Weird have to take notSpice to use their powers, and they only have a limited amount of it. I mean, they can learn to dice dragon brains and ferment it to make an alternative, but the good shit runs out.

How about OldSpice that is literally Spice that is aging and losing potency?

[Maxus]

So, if resource depletion is a thing, does that mean we have to worry about Raiden and Mewtwo overshadowing Predator and Space Marine in actual play? They just shoot mind blasts and chop things in half screaming about RULES OF NATURE.

Drugs. The Weird have to take notSpice to use their powers, and they only have a limited amount of it. I mean, they can learn to dice dragon brains and ferment it to make an alternative, but the good shit runs out.

How about OldSpice that is literally Spice that is aging and losing potency?

Well, the stuff IS blue...

[Chamomile]

I would second the recommendation that you ditch a pure level system and go with something where power may actually trend downward as increased skill fails to keep up with dwindling supplies of hypertech salvaged from your ship. I have a vague notion in my head of some way of randomly generating both what kind of ship you crashed in and what's left of it, and it seems like that would be cool.

Since I don't know a thing about dicepools I will assume that Frank is correct when he says they are better for this sort of thing, but I would also say that if you can't stand dicepools, I'd rather see a skill/salvage-based system executed with a sub-optimal core mechanic than D&D with a space skin painted over the protagonists.

[TheFlatline]

We had a discussion about grey goo nanites a few years back and how you could use the idea of hacking nanite clusters to create dungeons of psychotically fucked up variations (acidic atmosphere or whatever).

I could see the traditional "dungeon crawl" working along those lines, but you play professional salvagers who go into the crashed ships and abandoned bases that have gone haywire and look for the shit the nanites were supposed to produce, but incidentally produced the uber-dungeon of lethal ass-kickng.

So in between salvage missions you're gods among the fantasy world so long as the ammo lasts. But you also need that ammo to go do what you're supposed to do.

In that case you could have bizarre nanite shifters who turn limbs into chainswords and generate balls of plasma that they throw like a football while being encased in a shell of nanites producing an armor shell. Your skill-up is basically your ability to reconfigure the nanite parasite on the fly. Of course, said nanites need raw material to do their shit- they can pull matter from surface contact- gas (atmosphere) is your slowest material source but the safest, you can grab hold of a boulder and consume it and use it to power up your armor, or you can have it use your tissue to generate effects. You can't just consume NPCs because reasons.

[Koumei]

Since I don't know a thing about dicepools I will assume that Frank is correct when he says they are better for this sort of thing,

Dice pools are best for playing ordinary or "very good, but not supernatural" humans, and for allowing for the possibility of failure in anything, no matter how good you are. Sometimes I feel that Frank just thinks any game could be improved by actually being Shadowrun.

[OgreBattle]

Since I don't know a thing about dicepools I will assume that Frank is correct when he says they are better for this sort of thing,

Dice pools are best for playing ordinary or "very good, but not supernatural" humans, and for allowing for the possibility of failure in anything, no matter how good you are. Sometimes I feel that Frank just thinks any game could be improved by actually being Shadowrun.

How about you have 10 hitpoints or whatever, and you roll a d20 and the number you beat the DC by determines how much damage you do. That fulfills the "knock dragon out of air with big laser cannon" right?

It's what SAME does.

[Vebyast]

The resources discussion sounds a lot like "casting from hit points". If you run out of ammo, you die instantly; however, using ammo is the only way to kill things. Advancement is nothing more than the process of getting more and more efficient with your last remaining hit points.

It'd be interesting to make everybody in the setting run on the same degenerating schedule. You and your enemies start out as physical gods, rampaging across the setting laying waste to everything not as strong as you are, but gradually run out of energy over the course of the campaign, until eventually it's just you and him with your bare hands in the middle of the radioactive wasteland you created.

[Username17]

Dicepools do a couple of things:

• They linearize an exponential. Each additional hit is exponentially less likely, so when you add more dice you're exponentially better. But you're only adding more dice. The jump from 3 dice to 18 dice has exploded the RNG several times with exponential power jumps, but it's still not too big a number for people to do simple math with, nor is it too many dice to roll in your hands.
• They technically preserve the RNG indefinitely. Whatever target number you're using, however many dice are being rolled, it's still theoretically possible for all your dice to come up 1s. This means that players don't end up doing stupid shit "because they are off the RNG". They don't go to sleep while goblins are stabbing them or leap off cliffs because "it's faster that way". The dicepool preserves (admittedly incredibly tiny) chances that such bravado will not work out, which keeps the rough edges of the system from being exposed much in actual play.
• they have difficult to calculate probabilities. The average is shit simple - it's just the average hits per die times the number of dice. But the chances of getting specific numbers of hits with a specific number of dice is fairly intractable. The variance increases as the dice pool does, so there's no simple way to tell people what the exact chances of success on any specific action are (unless you include "massive lookup chart" as a simple way).

Now from the standpoint of making the game, you have two things you want to fit in:

• Fantasy antagonists.
• Science Fiction protagonists.

As it happens, there is a game that works moderately well that blends fantasy and science fiction stuff, and it's Shadowrun. That makes using Shadowrun as your base extremely obvious, because you already have a handle on what works and what doesn't. Meaning that you can do something that is "evolutionary" rather than something "revolutionary". You'd just be trying to make an improved Shadowrun rather than reinvent the wheel.

But regardless, I would argue that since the players will be directly handling the rules for science fiction characters and the fantasy antagonists will frequently be being blown up off screen with artillery strikes, that it is the Science Fiction part of the game that needs the most attention. To an extent it doesn't even matter if Skeleton Warriors and Goblin Warriors have different mechanics at all. They could both be "Type I Mooks" or whatever, and the players might go the whole game without ever even noticing that was the case. But the players will notice immediately if the Needler and the Blaster function the same, because they have the weapon stats on their character sheets.

You don't have to do dice pools. People have made passable science fiction games based on 2d6 systems and d% systems and stuff, so if you want a curved or flat RNG instead of a dice pool that's defensible. But despite people having tried continuously for literally 40 years, noone has ever made a direct port of D&D into Science Fiction. Every attempt to do d20 Syfy has blown ass. Traveler New Era? D20 Future? Fuzion? These games are legends for being terrible and roundly disliked by everyone. I'm all for remaking the wheel. But don't remake a wheel that is shitty because it is made out of actual shit.

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Regardless of what system you use, you're going to want non-linear damage. Part of the point is that you're going to sometimes be swinging a diamond encrusted ax and sometimes you're going to be firing a particle projection cannon. That kind of massive damage discrepancy really lays bare every single way that "hit points" are crap. You're going to want there to be weapons that will one-shot a dragon. And that requires you to non-linearize the damage in some way.

An advantage of dice pools here is that making the damage non-linear is trivial. Give the target a "soak roll" and it's already non-linear as to who expects to soak 2 and who expects to soak 3. So if unsoaked attack strength converts back to non-linear damage, you are fucking done.

-Username17

[Koumei]

As it happens, there is a game that works moderately well that blends fantasy and science fiction stuff, and it's Shadowrun. That makes using Shadowrun as your base extremely obvious, because you already have a handle on what works and what doesn't. Meaning that you can do something that is "evolutionary" rather than something "revolutionary". You'd just be trying to make an improved Shadowrun rather than reinvent the wheel.

I would have to reinvent it though: I have never played Shadowrun, I don't have the Shadowrun books. I actually would have to make it all up from scratch, starting with nothing more than "there are frigging dice pools".

And downloading and reading them isn't happening: I couldn't even be fucked learning all the rules for After Sundown, which is considerably smaller and more interesting.

I'm all for remaking the wheel. But don't remake a wheel that is shitty because it is made out of actual shit.

That's all well and good, but honestly, the project started... well it started with looking at someone else's work, saying I could do better, then doing precisely that. But it basically started as "a D&D mod". And I like making D&D mods, largely because they're so easy to do.

You might be right that "futuristic d20" just can't work, the supporting evidence is certainly vast. Which is a problem given the original goals and the fact that D&D is my comfort zone. As a result, it's probably best if I just don't do it, and give my full blessings to anyone who cares enough to do it themselves. Then someone who has their own great idea for a system or likes Shadowrun or whatever can go and do that, and I'll just relax and spend less time making games that people won't play.

[Username17]

You might be right that "futuristic d20" just can't work, the supporting evidence is certainly vast. Which is a problem given the original goals and the fact that D&D is my comfort zone. As a result, it's probably best if I just don't do it, and give my full blessings to anyone who cares enough to do it themselves.

I don't think you should sell yourself short. You're a pretty good designer, and if you had someone looking over your shoulder to restrain some of your more gonzo impulses, you could be better still.

Enough of your dreams and aspirations revolve around Science Fiction cooperative storytelling, that you should probably get yourself a science fiction capable system that you are comfortable with and start designing from there. It is historical fact that every d20 based science fiction game has been a pile of dick flavored dicks that eat all the dicks, and there's good theoretical reasons to believe it can't be anything but.

Science fiction games exist. Many of them are pretty good. Pretty much all of them are trivially easy to improve. And doing that would be a public service. But the bottom line is that Dungeon Crusade isn't (or at least shouldn't be) an attempt to make a superior version of d20 Future (trivial as that is to do), it should be better than Dark Herpesy or Eclipse Phase (which is also very easy to accomplish).

-Username17

[fectin]

Whether or not I play your games, I love the ideas and craftsmanship that go into them. It's inspiring.

You might try looking at WEG's d6 system. IT's gotten the least hate around here of any system I have heard of yet, and it's apparently been good enough for fbmf to run a very longstanding campaign with.
Also, a lot of it is free: catalogue.

If you go with d20, you might be able to save the doctors, engineers, etc as concepts by basically writing them as NPC classes, then demanding that everyone gestalt with an NPC class.