Science Fiction is the odd one out in the world of tabletop roleplaying games. It’s been around forever, but it’s never achieved the same levels of popularity that fantasy gaming has. So this post is all about getting the word out about some great science fiction RPG options. So buckle up and enjoy a listicle of 6 Must Try Sci-Fi RPGs!
Building a world for play is, to many, one of the big attractions of playing a TTPRG. However, it can be a daunting task, especially if you get caught up in the minutiae of it all. Also, the time requirements can be onerous. It’s all good though, because you can still develop a nuanced, holistic world! The trick is planning and scaled development. So let’s take a look at developing your world in stages.
So, I was driving home and tossed in The Rat Pack Live at the Sands for the ride. I was muttering to myself about Dungeons & Dragons and other fantasy games and how they treat both POC and non-humans as being less dimensional and nuanced. This had been set off by reading through my shiny new pdf copy of Tiny Dungeon 2e, where I was simultaneously elated at the variety of player races and depressed by the stereotypes applied. So, mid-mutter, Sammy Davis Jr came into the set, and I heard his iconic line of “Integration! Integration!” So let’s talk decolonization and integration. And yes, I’m picking on D&D in this, because it set the pattern.
Rifts is my eternal problematic fave, and also a source of bizarre, contradictory, and confusing lore. However, something that’s easy to let fall through the cracks of the gonzo setting is that there are actually many survivor states in the post-apocalypse. That’s right, places that directly trace their lineage, governance, culture, and dominant populations back to the Pre-Rifts era. And this Backgrounder as an overview of them!
Old timers and grognards alike in the RPG hobby like to complain. “Things were better back in…”, “We didn’t have or need that when we played in…”, and so on and so forth. But one of the oddest complaints I hear is about how games today, and specifically, D&D, are too much like video games. So let’s take a look at a very interesting cycle of mutual influence, and see what we can learn from it. For ease of bracketing years, I’m going to use console generations for this.
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