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rPBtA
•
3 yr. ago
GerryVonMander

Uncharted Worlds or Impulse Drive

Which would you recommend as a Sci Fi PBtA game Any pro's and con's

We're looking for an RPG to play online. I'd like to find the most simple system,
but without compromising on actual game design. Scum and Villainy is off the list
because I found Blades in the Dark to be generally more mechanically complex than
the average PBtA.

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Sully5443
•
3y ago
If I had to pick between the 2, it would be Impulse Drive.

UW doesn’t really capitalize all that PbtA has to offer. It is a little too generic
in its approach, and PbtA games work best when there is a laser focus on the
premise of the game. UW kinda tries to hit as much Sci-Fi at once and doesn’t
really nail any one particular area. Of course, with some significant elbow grease,
the table can put their minds together and really nail down that focus; but I
always found that to be quite challenging to do.
ID, on the other hand, is far more focused on delivering the “Misfits on Spaceships
Crisis of the Week” routine and leverages PbtA design philosophies because of that.
However, I still felt ID was incredibly rough around the edges. Areas that I didn’t
care for

Playbooks, while providing more of an identity that UW’s approach with “cobble the
character together” (which is clever, but I don’t think always works so hot in
PbtA... though Ironsworn pulled thatoff quite well), still lacks enough identity
between each other. Having such stark differences between Playbooks in games like
Masks, Urban Shadows, Fellowship, and the like really makes Playbooks shine. In ID,
they start with 2 Moves, neither of which really set the stakes of identity, and
have minimal discernible difference.

The Ship Playbooks aren’t that great. On the surface, there’s some super evocative
stuff. However, once you start to play and begin going through the “Job Loop” that
is common to the genre of Space Opera that ID tries to emulate, it begins to fall
apart. The way the Ship Payment Move works often lends to only a few actually good
choices, which become so overused that you start to run out of interesting things
to do with those choices. In addition, the FTL Moves had the same challenge

So, I went ahead and tried hacking ID to “fix” these rough edges and the end
product was just a really sub-par version of Scum and Villainy. So, I pitched the
idea of a game switch to my table and S&V was a night and day difference and really
helped to amp up the table.

I know Blades FitD stuff has more moving pieces than your typical PbtA game, but
they are really similar in practice. You’re still approaching the game with the
Fiction First Mentality where the Fiction is used to determine

If a mechanic is needed

Which specific mechanic- if any- is needed

How that mechanic transitions us back into the fiction

The difference is that the mechanics are no longer Moves, but Action Rolls, Fortune
Rolls, and Resistance Rolls

The Action Roll and Fortune Roll follows a similar “Strong Hit, Weak Hit, and Miss”
structure.

The Former is for when there is Risk. The Latter is when there is Uncertainty and
no other mechanic seems to apply.

The Resistance Roll is to mitigate Incoming Consequences at the potential cost of

Stress

The Action Roll codifies a process to capitalize on the Conversation that you
should already be having when you make a Move in a PbtA game

You set the stakes and expectations by explaining how bad things can get (Position)
and how much they get out of the situation (Effect).

So, the bottom line here is

If I had to pick between UW and ID, I’d pick the latter

However, I’m still not a fan of ID. What’s there is good. It’s not a bad game by
any stretch. However, it’s a game whose core loop gets really shaky after a good
handful of Sessions

As such, while I know there’s more moving pieces, if you like the Touchstones of
Star Wars, Firefly, Cowboy Bebop, Guardians of the Galaxy, and whatnot... S&V is an
excellent game and my top favorite Space Opera game to date. I’d strongly urge you
to give the game a shot (also, the Roll20 sheets for S&V far outclassed the ones I
used for ID. The S&V sheets aren’t as good as the Blades in the Dark or Band of
Blades Sheets; but they’re still awesome).

If you’re still dead set on staying away from S&V, Offworlders- a World of Dungeons
hack- is quite nice; and I’m looking forward to the release of Starforged (which is
basically Ironsworn... IN SPAAAACE) likely coming out later this year. I’ve also
heard good things about Last Fleet, which is basically “Battlestar Galactica... the
PbtA Game.”

Hopefully that all makes sense and hopefully that helps

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gc3
•
3y ago
I had a problem with scum and villainy in that the rules were pretty
interconnected...like if you dont like a particular idea like Cred or Wanted,
ripping it out breaks too many other areas of the rules...the subsystems are
tightly coupled, not loosely coupled.

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Sully5443
•
3y ago
This is very true, S&V is very heavily tied to its themes and loops of Scoundrels,
Criminals, Outlaws, and Rebels out to make a name for themselves and to profit. The
further you get away from that, the less S&V will work as intended. However, this
is the game’s strength as well- when you play S&V, you know what you’re getting
yourself into.

Though, with some elbow grease, you can most certainly tweak various aspects much
like what has been done with a few Blades in the Dark Supplements.
However, this can be said for many games- including PbtA games.

The further you lean away from Teen Drama in Masks, the more things you lose out on
what the mechanics have to offer.

The more you try to put “Mystery Solving” into MotW, you’ll begin to lose out on
the point of the game being about the Drama between Hunters and getting right into
the Monster of the Week Conflict of the Session.

Deviating from being anything but Heroes in Fellowship (causing more problems than
you solve) defeats much of the tools available in the game.

Trying to “make nice” in Apocalypse World ignores much of the game’s premise to
often seize things by force

Etc.

Now, are these as interconnected as how S&V does things Not entirely- but the point
remains same.

Of course that doesn’t mean one angle is better than the other. It ultimately comes
down to a matter of preference. In my experience, UW was too loose and provided
little structure or direction. ID had a “direction” but was not able to maintain a
sufficient loop on maintaining the “Misfits on Spaceships Crisis of the Week”
notion. S&V did for me and my table what UW and ID could not, so I always like to
provide that perspective. YMMV, as always!

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gc3
•
3y ago
Well, I prefer non interlocking mechanics, S&V could have been written that way....
then modding S&V to play as customs officials chasing the criminals would be easy
rather than a rewrite.

In Apocalypse world a GM (that's not the right term) could forbid a playbook or add
one, and could easily migrate the setting to different kinds of play, since most of
the mechanics are described in separate playbooks. If you add or remove enough
playbooks, it's a different game altogether. Maybe a fantasy version, or a modern
day pre-apocalypse where inter dimensional gates are weakening and the Maelstrom is
approaching.

No such modularity exists in S&V, it's a tightly linked game and it is harder to
add or subtract from without editing the game rules in more than one place. That's
it's one weakness.

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pizzazzeria
•
3y ago
As someone writing a space fantasy pbta game, I really enjoyed reading your
breakdown. I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on Space Wurm vs. Moonicorn if you
have any.

Hadn't heard of Starforged, but will look into it!

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Sully5443
•
3y ago
I’m afraid I don’t have any experience with either of those two games! So I can’t
help you there.

Nonetheless, I can most certainly recommend Ironsworn (and its Delve Supplement),
and I’m certain when Starforged comes out later this year- it’ll be just as
amazing.

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pizzazzeria
•
3y ago
It’s actually just one game. One player is the evil space tyrant, the other is pure
hearted rebel, and all the other players are caught in between. It seems really
cool but also fairly complicated. It also uses a lot of dungeon world stuff and I
can’t tell how helpful that is.

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KBandGM
•
3y ago
We switched from Uncharted Worlds to Scum and Villainy specifically because the
players wanted more mechanics. UW is pretty simple and no playbooks means you make
the character you want. But I’ve ran 3 campaigns and found that none of the players
ever wanted to make “wild jumps,” so if you’re looking for more exploration than
space swashbuckling, you might have to tweak the space travel system a bit. It was
pretty good for something akin to Cowboy Bebop.

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tacobongo
•
3y ago
If you want simple, maybe consider Offworlders It's based on World of Dungeons and
is both simple and well designed.

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GerryVonMander
OP
•
3y ago
Hmm, I'm considering it but can't really find the info I'm looking for. There are
only 4 character types Are they worth it How much customization is possible And is
it a long read

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VanjaMrgan
•
3y ago
It’s definitely not as in-depth as something like ID but it has just enough to sink
your teeth into.

It’s also around 20 pages with a gorgeous layout.

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GerryVonMander
OP
•
3y ago
Well, I couldn't help myself and bought the PDF. Actually seems ideal to start,
create a world, test the waters and if the group sticks for more than a couple of
sessions, move on to a more meaty system. Thanks!

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tacobongo
•
3y ago
Nice! Hope it works well for you

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VanjaMrgan
•
3y ago
Exactly my thoughts!

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gallusgames
•
3y ago
We slightly re-skinned ID for The Expanse and it ran like a top!

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Jesseabe
•
3y ago
If you want lightweight, I'm a big fan of Cat Ramen's Rovers, which is a hack of
John Harper's World of Dungeons Turbo. It's even lighter than Offworlders, but has
some cool and robust ship and planet generation tools for a game with so few rules.
I recommend it strongly. Link to the free pdf here
httpaviatrixgames.comGamesROVERS.pdf

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Scormey
•
3y ago
I really enjoyed UW, but I feel like the critiques previously made by others here
are completely valid. Nevertheless, it does work well, if your table is willing to
put in the work to build a solid setting for it. Without that work, though, it will
be very generic, and likely not a lot of fun for the long haul.

I have not tried Impulse Drive personally, so I can't really comment on it. I do
have Scum and Villainy coming soon (should arrive today, if Amazon comes through),
and have high hopes for it. FitD games do seem way more focused setting wise, even
if they are more mechanically dense than your average PbtA game. In the end, I'll
take a game with more mechanics and rules, if it means the game doesn't require my
table to work as hard to build the setting. Even though they are very experienced
RPers, they aren't very experienced with PbtA games, and world-building isn't their
strong suit.

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gallusgames
•
3y ago
Despite my earlier recommendation of ID I'm running a playtest of the 2nd Ed of
Uncharted World in June, set in the Traveller Universe.

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