Star Smuggler - Everything and the Sink

I've been jonesing for a Sci-Fi game. I picked up the Free League Publishing Alien RPG, but before I did that, I took another look at both Star Smuggler and Star Frontiers. 

All three games are very different from each other. Star Frontiers is very operatic, where characters can dish out and eat high levels of damage. It also has its own starship rules. Star Smuggler is more deadly. It is harder to dish out damage, but once it occurs, it's deadly. And Alien is exactly like movies - Survival is incumbent upon not letting the Aliens close. 

The links above are to my review posts on these games. I have links to Brainiac to download Star Smuggler for free. Star Frontiers is available at DriveThruRPG. I haven't completed my review of Alien, so I don't have links at all.  

I am forever tinkering with Star Smuggler. Right at the start of the book is a suggestion to use this game as a campaign guideline. Personally, I think it is just meaty enough to support an actual RPG. It does need slight modification to be usable as a standalone game. 

First things first, it needs to allow for classes and levels. Duke, your avatar in the game is both multi-classed and higher level than typical NPC characters. If you allow your players to create a crew, then you don't need Duke. You DO need the ability to let characters rise to Duke's abilities. 

What I am tinkering with is allowing each character to have a cunning stat like Duke. This stat is given a second purpose instead of bamboozling people. You can trade one point of cunning to increase one statistic by one point or trade 5 to learn a different trade. 

For example, Duke can pilot, navigate, drive a skimmer, and operate starship guns. On the surface, this is done so that Duke can lead the NPC by filling certain roles. Since you won't have Duke anymore, the rest of the characters need his capabilities and the ability to grow and learn. 

There are just a handful of scenarios that add cunning. To address this, I created a mechanism to increase cunning. Once per event, if a character hits the exact target number of a die roll, they increase their cunning by 1. I like this method as it morphs and shifts throughout play. You aren't trying to roll 2 sixes, but to exactly match your target. In many cases, some characters will have a chance to increase their cunning, while others will not. 

For example, if the party has a shoot-out escaping from a planet, only those who make attack rolls can gain cunning. After combat, medics and engineers can gain Cunning by repairing and healing. The default rules don't make you roll for these actions. I would impose a roll of 1-3, where an exact roll of 3 results in success and a point of cunning. This can only occur once during RRR, no matter how many people are healed or how many items are repaired. 

The next item that needs to be addressed is the money sink. You could maintain the default rules to pay off the ship's loan. It's clunky and requires paperwork. 

One quirk of the rules is that Hypercharges are the only item I have noticed with a standard cost. If you wanted to eat cash quickly, change this to the base cost. This creates a cash sink that requires no paperwork. It also causes players to plan ahead so they aren't purchasing Hypercharges on a high-wealth planet. I feel it is both elegant and time-saving. 

Since I love tinkering with stuff, there are a few events that bug me. In e081, you can capture a Battleship. But then the event says you can't keep it. I suspect that the reason is to stop game-breaking events and the ship is not entirely defined. 

The whole scenario can be fixed by creating deckplans and statistics. I doubt this was expedient or practical when writing the solo adventure. 

The Battleship is ridiculously huge, having 120 hits. The ship also behaves weirdly in combat under the pretense of a skeleton crew. 

That makes sense. 

There are two methods to take the Battleship. Either get lucky, which I have never done, or cheat. The easiest cheat that is not precluded is having more than one ship. Two Antelopes, with two shuttles each, can overwhelm the Battleship. The main issue is that the Battleship will waste shots on the shuttles while your Antelopes close for the kill. It's a lot of die rolls, but it is doable. 

It's hard to do, but nothing stops you from having several ships. It is highly likely that multiple players can coordinate the attack. If you allow for boarding actions, it becomes more reasonable. 

The deckplan to the left is what I came up with for a Pocket Battleship. I would use a fully crewed Battleship so that it has a chance against an attack. 

The ship has several features that make it stand out against normal ships. First, the crew quarters are divided into 6-man pods. A critical hit only affects one pod. The crew quarters are protected against mass decompression. This setup allows for both the skeleton crew option in the game while also allowing for a full 60-man crew. 

The infirmary is likewise protected; it can't take a critical hit at all. It is only destroyed when the whole ship is destroyed. 

It has 2 gun batteries, left and right. Batteries operate just like regular ship guns, except they operate as a unit. One six-gun battery can only fire on one target. To give the ship some teeth, it has one bow chaser turret and two stern guns for use against smaller ships like the hopper. 

Speaking of hoppers, this ship is equipped with two improved hoppers. The main difference is how the cargo and crew are divvied up. These are more troop transports than fighting ships. You could mount guns, or you can drop 6-7 crew on a planet with a skimmer, with space for LSU and Fuel. The last feature is the garage large enough to hold a tank. I have depicted the ship with two skimmers instead. 

Players taking the ship will immediately experience the skeleton crew problem themselves. It is unlikely any party would have the 14-16 starship gunners necessary to utilize all of the guns. 

Let me know what you think in the comments below.