FTL Tabletop roleplaying

[Wiseacre]

Clearing this in anticipation for play test version.

[Wiseacre]

Oh yeah. One of my biggest problems is that I need to get a look at one of the detailed instruction manuals if possible, so I can give my players a good description of the motivations of each race. I've picked up a little from playing such as: Humans are boring, The Rockmen's governing body feeds them propaganda to make them more xenophobic, the mantis are bloodthirsty and more bloodthirsty. The Engi are somewhat emotionless possible automatons, and the Zoltan are energy beings seem to favor pacifism, but won't hesitate to defend their homes. Slugs are repulsive slimy tricksters that take advantage of their telepathy when they can and the Crystal are an incredibly reclusive people that dwell in a hidden sector of space. I would like to know if the pdf manual has more that I can use.

[Wiseacre]

I was trying to think how I would use the Scrap currency in a game where it is possible that the players might explore some ruins and return with a hold full of glittering prizes, but after thinking about it a little I decided that the players would just have to barter away the treasure for scrap, or for tech or ship upgrades. The 20ft tall statue made of gold, may in fact be worth much less than the moldering texts that the party passed over.

[Wiseacre]

Condensed into main blob.

[fds1233]

Sounds interesting. How would you do event generation, or would someone have to make up the entire campaign in advance?

[Wiseacre]

I'm a glutton for punishment, so I was thinking of making 100 random events (Borrowing some from the game), and using the percentile dice when the players jump to the next beacon. If the person running the game wanted to include a quest, they they can mark which beacon it's at and there's no random chance there. I would probably make a smaller table for Nebulas.

[Doom Lich]

I don't see why it couldn't be done D&D dungeon master style for encounters. But event cards would be pretty cool if there were enough of them.

[Real]

D&D style would take away from the spirit of the conversion, I think. The random universe is part of the system's appeal. In contrast to what you said though, (op) I think nebulas should have lots of interesting encounters set up. Maybe not with a high chance of appearing, but I've always gotten the feeling IG that I was really out in bad-trip country when inside a nebula. If there were things like "a nine-foot-tall monstrosity composed of radioactive energy appears in your engine room" I think it'd give nebulas the dark feeling they have now. Esp. combined with storms knocking out systems.

[maxmurder]

This would be an interesting concept and would probably be quite fun.

For ships you could use a similar upgrades/augment/weapons system as is in the game however you should allow for things like improvised augmentations, disguising your ship to get behind enemy lines or commandeering another more powerful vessel.

Player's should be able to hire redshirt NPCs for repair/combat support. Redshirts would not get as much of a bonus as a PC for things like manning weapons or piloting but will be able to level skills and attributes. If the players wanted to do boarding actions with redshirts, they would need to have a PC accompany them to be very effective.

[samules]

Look into the Classic Traveller RPG, it is fairly old and uses a good system. Though it works quite a bit differently as in crew are not just greenhorns with no idea how to do anything well, but experienced people, character generation consists of rolling out what skills and belongings they gained in their careers before the game begins. The ship combat system is kinda tricky (I never really figured it out) but other systems can be easily spliced on if needed.