More Star Frontiers Madness

I'm continuing to dig Star Frontiers.

For the past two weeks, I've had two dialogue settings.

Setting 1: George R.R. Martin ("Have you read FEVRE DREAM?!!?")

Setting 2: Star Frontiers.

I'm not sure if this obsession is madness or epiphany. Perhaps both.

I've discovered a few online communities supporting the game with a wealth of new content.

If I didn't explain before, the appeal of Star Frontiers is that the system is relatively simple, but those mechanics cover a good deal of what you'll want to accomplish in a sci-fi setting. There's also a lot they don't cover, however Star Frontiers comes from that era of RPGs where the GM was given a basic set of tools and rules, and then encouraged to make the rest up. That is to say, the mechanics are based on some core values and the rest is relatively abstract.

That's appealing to me, probably because I'm a story guy. Gigantic tomes full of systems and subsystems--be they entire RPGs or supplements for particularly crunchy RPGs--have always been kind of a turnoff for me. I know I can't memorize all those rules, and I don't want to spend the game looking them up and cross-referencing them. Instead of adding to the "reality" of the game, constantly referencing rules breaks the immersion as much as players quipping jokes. In the words of Mike Kuciak (said to me as I consulted a rulebook for 15 minutes trying to "be correct"): "Dude. Put down the fucking book, and DM."

What I love most about the new content in the online communities is that they haven't changed the rules to the game. Rather, they've added new options and story that expands on the game without replacing the simple core. I'm a little tickled to find that when I read a new "character build" option, the whole article consists of different directions one might take the character and a brief section that pre-builds that kind of character, complete with equipment. Usually I can't stand when a source pre-builds an example character, but the fan publications get this exactly right: the example mechanics occupy a quarter column and those apply to every story seed in the rest of the piece.

An RPG is, I suppose, the sum of its parts. If it's full of crunchy mechanics, that's what people will focus on. If its focus is on characters and scenes (Fiasco, Kagematsu, etc.) that's what people will focus on. Star Frontiers, like the D&D of old, is light on rules and heavy on character/story building. Some of that is likely due to what might be perceived as the system's shortcomings: it didn't have a massive world setting like Greyhawk or Forgotten Realms; it didn't have a whole lot of product support from TSR. I'm cautiously thankful that the game didn't receive a massive development push, and that Zebulon's Guide--the one attempt to change the game--seemed to sort of fall flat. Its legacy is a game very much like the game it used to be, with light (yet relatively inclusive) mechanics, ever-expanding options, and a vast frontier for stellar exploration and worldbuilding.

Then again, perhaps this obsession is merely the urge to justify the Dwarven Forge Sci-Fi sets that have been sitting unopened in my closet for the past four years. Hopefully not!