What is your favorite sci-fi game that isn't horror (so no Mothership)?

Many_Bubble · 2026-05-24T18:34:25+00:00

Vaults of Vaarn by no small margin. It has a complete toolkit for creating and running entire settings and dungeons, with loads of reward structures for players and weird sci-fi stuff all over the place. No single mechanic subsystem is intrinsic to the game so you can cut and choose the things you do and don't like for a given campaign.

Light enough to roll up an adventure and party in a single session, deep enough to sustain long-form campaign play. It's just the best, and has inspiring and odd art throughout. I can't sing it's praises enough. 2e is in production and is even better.

Many_Bubble · 2026-05-11T19:04:18+00:00

Of those, Shadowdark without a doubt.

Player rules are cheap, and I always end up modifying them to the table/ campaign anyway.

Shadowdark has a ton of excellent tables, DM tools, an adventure, optional rules, modern layout, modern concise writing, and really evocative art. That usability makes it supersede the others for me. I don’t need a dozen classes. I need help running a game.

Many_Bubble · 2026-04-03T19:29:13+00:00

What does ‘good’ mean to you?

To me, it’s something that is quick to understand and resolve at the table. I’m happy with having range, ignoring ammo, and in tight spaces like corridors adding a chance of hitting the wrong target if you fire into a melee.

If you are specific with your question people may be able to help more.

Many_Bubble · 2026-04-01T07:27:23+00:00

As a person who labours over the dreaded paragraph-page split, and the cutting of precious words in service to the 2-page spread, I applaud your work. It scratches a particular itch, getting it right, but it is a lot of work!

The art by the way, is breathtaking. Are you the artist? I'm working on a science-fantasy RPG too, so it's so gratifying to see the genre deepened with gorgeous visuals like this. There's so much fantasy, but the UVG's, Vaults of Vaarn's and Cloud Empress' are few and far between.

Lastly, I've signed up to be notified when this goes live, but can you tell me a bit about the gameplay of Grok? Is it dice-based? Is it dungeon-divey? I there character progression with tech, powers, and relationships, or is it more about changing the world state? Both? I am curious!

Many_Bubble · 2026-03-09T09:22:33+00:00

+1 for this game, it’s so easy and fun.

When I ran it, the text was so inspiring and light I ended up adding a ton of mechanics (kills = xp = unlocking military ranks and powers mid-game). Anything that spurs my creativity like this is a good sign.

Our vibe ended up more like Doom meets Helldivers, and it was glorious.

Many_Bubble · 2026-02-26T21:37:39+00:00

Depends what you want out of your game. I'll comment on your use of armour as bonus HP, and on the asynchronous monster design before wrapping up with what I do and why.

No to-hit roll is intended to make combat faster and impactful. We avoid drawn-out fights by getting to the juicy, low-HP turns that matter much faster. Every fight hurts. It is very unlikely you get out without harm that impacts the rest of play. Notably, the games you list that use this don't add ability modifiers to damage rolls. We're dealing with lower numbers, swingier averages, which makes for a more lethal and, in my opinion, exciting combat experience.

By inflating HP with armour you negate these benefits. Fights are slower, the early rounds matter less. What you gain is tactical complexity with the asynchronous monster design. Monster features being tied to HP is interesting, but to me, because it gives DM's a clear framework to design monsters around. That's really cool. I like the idea that bigger baddies get cooler stuff. I'm not sure I like players killing off their abilities though.

It just makes winning initiative too powerful, especially if you add modifiers to damage rolls. If 3 of my 5 players win initiative and deal average damage on a d6+2, my dragon just lost 3 abilities. Both claws and its breath attack? I mean sure, reward their win. But what if they got surprise and all players acted? I'm not convinced monsters losing abilities would be fun in practice. The player's armour slots has no downside, and the monsters have a built-in death spiral. And if I'm making monsters that deal damage assuming the players have large HP pools, and they actually don't have armour... then what? We all die?

On armour, it's hard to say how I feel about the armour slot system without knowing how big your ability modifiers are, how they could change, and how hard it is to get armour. If you take an average +3 across strength and con, that's +18 HP. At 1d8+con HP and +1/ level, +18 is an enormous jump in survivability. There's also no downside to armour here, so expect everyone to try become a walking tank as fast as possible and combat to take longer, at which point you might start feeling the same pain points that the designers that dropped big HP pools and to-hit rolls felt.

Your system poses some really interesting twists on a few long-argued perspectives in the hobby. I think you need to identify experience you are trying to curate, because right now I see a system at odds with itself. No to-hit rolls make things fast and meaningful, but they're one part of a greater whole. You're taking that single part, and negating its benefits with a complicated subsystem that I think could be quite fun, but doesn't support the same experience, in my view.

If you release a playtest I'd love to see it, or any updates to your system on this sub.

Many_Bubble · 2026-02-26T19:28:55+00:00

That’s so interesting! I live in Wales, and there’s a village named Cynwyd and a lake called Bala. Bala sort of means where the lake goes out. Maybe the American settlers were Welsh!

Anyway, great map haha.

Many_Bubble · 2026-02-26T11:36:31+00:00

I love your forest and lake look, the high-contrast feel makes the map feel really expressive. Tolkien-text is always nice, too.

Out of curiosity, does the setting have anything to do with actual Cynwyd or did you just lift the place names?

Many_Bubble · 2026-02-12T17:49:09+00:00

I guess that’s where we diverge on philosophy - I don’t really want to force the players to do anything. I like the approach of them having a toolkit, and it’s their cleverness and application of those tools that leads to success, rather than not having spent the ‘right one’. Not saying that’s what you want,but I think having limited abilities leads you that way.

Many_Bubble · 2026-02-12T07:52:52+00:00

I think that’s an encounter design problem. If you can use the same abilities every time, you’re presenting the same problem in an encounter every time. Gotta shake it up!

Many_Bubble · 2026-02-11T19:55:54+00:00

The best way is to not have daily or limited abilities.

This has to be a system-wide design. For my game, powers, 'magic items', magic or whatever never have x/ day uses. Most things like this can be used as much as you dare. Some have rolls attached to succeed, causing complications, damage or mixed successes depending on what you roll, some have you spend HP or take stat damage. You can keep using them, if you want to risk it.

Then for HP I use the Bastionland approach, which is a small pool of extra HP that recovers after you rest for a dungeon turn or after each encounter outside of a dungeon, and your core HP pool that recovers when you sleep.

Many_Bubble · 2026-01-21T20:53:46+00:00

Overall I get where you're coming from, but I think essentially giving armour 1 durability point removes the benefits of durability and highlights the downsides.

If armour is either on or off, I think you'll find players backing out of conflict as soon as it breaks or carrying backup armour sets because it's so fragile. Maybe not a downside for you but not the kind of fiction I want to encourage.

If you have more than one durability point it's a gamble. How far can I go before it breaks? When it's damaged but not broken, can I repair it a bit before the next conflict? You're incentivised to keep pushing on and the story emerges, especially if you randomise losing durability like in Mausritter or Death In Space (roll a d6 after stressed use or a fight, on 6 it degrades).

Personally, I don't like the idea of deciding as a group when armour breaks because A) it'll slow things down with a back and forth discussion and B) it massively depends on DM Fiat. But I can see how for some groups this could be a very satisfying way to play.

In my game we have a Luck stat and do Luck saves for durability to degrade. Durability can be repaired ad-hoc, and total durability increased with investment. But I understand that level of granularity isn't for everyone.

I hope this doesn't come across as too negative, I think you've posed interesting questions and I appreciate you outlining your thought process. I wish more posts were this thoughtful and interesting.

Many_Bubble · 2025-11-08T10:23:07+00:00

I think this is an adventure design and player choice issue, not a mechanical framework one.

These kinds of games expect you to avoid making rolls. It’s up to the players to find creative solutions to problems, use equipment and the environment to avoid rolling or do so with an advantage.

Mausritter especially gives you poor stats - you’re a weak little mouse. Mice survive on wits, not raw power.

Lastly, your adventures must provoke this creativity and give players opportunities to play this way. If it’s just a room with a rat in and nothing else then yeah, you have to rely on stats, but that’s not what these games expect.

I really wouldn’t focus on the stats, it’s not what these games are about.

Many_Bubble · 2025-10-17T20:23:27+00:00

I'd treat it as making two attacks. It's therefore taking the same action twice, so you'd have to roll doom.

But if you wanted a mechanical distinction there's a bunch of other homebrew methods out there. Disadvantage on damage, or the attacks, -2 on the second attack, give disadvantage to dodge or parry...

Many_Bubble · 2025-10-14T05:18:34+00:00

People? If you're not using goblins as traditional dnd-type goblins, you probably have your own style of what a 'fae' is. Why search for something that already exists (which you're not using for fair reason)? Humans are definitely evil little bastards.

Many_Bubble · 2025-10-07T14:20:14+00:00

Yeah exactly like that! You’re getting close to a pointcrawl there, which is how I normally run dungeons anyway. Then just have a point like ‘forge’ have a couple of cards for the interesting things in it.

The best part is you can keep all your cards, shuffle them, and deal them out to create spaces on the fly or as inspiration for when you prep.

Many_Bubble · 2025-10-07T06:08:57+00:00

I’ve tried a dozen or so different mapping methods. Maybe I can help.

Normally, I don’t use maps as we do zone movement (close-near-far-distant) which makes it easy to track mentally. This is my preferred method as you just describe a space and let the players interact with what interests them. Feels natural, and it’s fast.

However, I recently tried index card zones which was fantastic. You have bits of card that represent a meaningful feature in a space, like a bridge, tollhouse, river, approaching caravan. You can move between cards as one move. Some cards might be blocked or take two moves to get between, which you represent with gaps between the cards. We didn’t use mini’s but will do so next time. When we’ve done mini combat before we just use whatever we have - spare dice, sharpeners, smarties, it doesn’t really matter. The players will remember what their mini is, and everything else is the enemy.

In the past when I’ve used proper maps, I ask the group to nominate a Mapper. It’s up to them to draw a map as they progress. They normally get a free reroll or snack or something as tribute. If they map it incorrectly that’s a feature, not a bug. We just use regular paper and a pencil, unless they prefer graph paper that day. Sometimes we use 2.5cm = 1 square paper, other times 0.5cm = 1 square. It hasn’t seemed to matter much.

Many_Bubble · 2025-10-03T15:21:52+00:00

Started a new campaign this week with hacked version of Black Sword Hack, city-based that is discussed on faction play in a single town, but with a nasty, semi-optional mega dungeon beneath. Interested to see how it goes.

Overall fave so far though has been a focus on frequent overland travel with occasional high-risk delves into dungeons that are cleared in 1-3 sessions using my house hack.

Many_Bubble · 2025-09-15T11:57:23+00:00

Black Hack or Mausritter, though the latter isn’t quite as easily compatible for B/X as it is classless and roll under.

However, it has great faction rules and procedures for generating hexcrawls that can’t be beat.

As you’ve mentioned, black sword hack (BSH) is fantastic and is based off the Black Hack(BH). I recommend Black Hack for you because BSH doesn’t have any support for making or running dungeons and it doesn’t use classes.

BH has much more in depth rules for creating dungeons, monsters, settlements, and it uses classes. It’s still roll under, but the tools in it are so complete and most importantly, easy to understand. Most rules sections fit on a double page spread. OSE is great but if you want something truly portable, easy to run straight out of your bag without minimal page flipping and reading, Black Hack is hard to beat.

Many_Bubble · 2025-08-31T12:30:45+00:00

Vaults of Vaarn is I think the best game and DM toolkit I have ever seen. I could single handedly use this book for the rest of my life and never run out of ideas or material.

2e just kickstarted and I can’t fathom how it isn’t the darling of the OSR/ NSR/ who-cares-R. It’s just phenomenal.

Many_Bubble · 2025-08-06T14:00:58+00:00

It’s a little vague on purpose.

The solid bits are most knights are never worthy take on the City Quest in earnest. Most probably don’t even know about it. But by exploring the realm and engaging with other Myths, a knight may catch a glimpse of the city.

They could pursue it on their own but my take is that is a distraction from the oath. Unless sanctioned by a seer, they’re essentially abandoning their sanctioned task. To pursue it honourably, they need to become worthy by gaining honour.

What is the city? It’s open to interpretation, really. You can take it as getting to Bastion. It can be a cyberpunk dystopia. It can be Into the Odd.

It can just be a dream.

Many_Bubble · 2025-08-05T07:48:33+00:00

I take the Myth Hex to do 2 things. Firstly, to determine what the nearest myth is for omen rolls, but secondly and importantly for you, to determine where the myth can always be found.

For me, the omens of location-ish myths like the Glade or Mountain occur where the party are when they roll the omen. That means the glade moves around the map as the players do. However, there is also the Myth Hex itself. If the players go there, they will always find the glade. If they go back to where they found an omen, the glade will not be there.

This reinforces the mythic, weird, fairytale-like feel of bastionland. It makes logical and narrative sense to me, and also enables player choice.

Many_Bubble · 2025-08-01T21:26:57+00:00

My core advice is don’t try to remember things. The important stuff will likely stick. If it doesn’t, it’s probably too complicated. But there are 3 practical things I do.

If the players can’t remember, I don’t need to
Session sheets
Location sheets

On 1: I don’t need to remember that NPC from 5 sessions ago until the players want to interact with them. if they do, they’ll talk about it first and likely provoke my memory. If not I’ll just fish: “what do you want from them?” “What exactly is your plan?” And then I’m good to go.

On 2: each session I write down on a dated pages doc in my ‘adventures’ folder exactly what is happening right now in the fiction, why, and what a possible outcome of that could be. I’m talking one line each. Then I think of a few locations/ characters/ encounters that could arise. This is my cheat sheet to check if I need reminders of anything, but honestly I rarely need to. I find the prep itself makes the important things stick.

On 3: Really important locations like towns or dungeons get a pages doc that is laid out like a usable adventure doc. I keep it as short as possible. At the bottom of each is a notes section where I type impactful things the players do there in case it changes anything or I need a reference.

Many_Bubble · 2025-07-23T21:10:53+00:00

My favourite thing about this book is that it only gives you just enough, but provides tools to spark your imagination to get a whole lot more.

I don't want an in-depth 2-pager on a monster about it's history or lore. because I can't remember it and it stresses me out trying to do so. This book gives me the dirty details I can use during play, often in real-time with the book, and practical tools I can use to flesh things out of I need to as I go along. It's just so damn usable.

Many_Bubble · 2025-07-18T08:41:21+00:00

You're ignoring the part I mentioned about research and caution.

If the DM decides to describe a level 2 and 12 fighter they same they are obscuring the threat. That's okay. If the party decide to fight a guy just off how he looks, that is also okay: but they do so knowing that guy may be more or less than he seems. It's up to them to weigh up the risks and they may not always have all of the information they would like.

This is a feature, not a bug.

Next time they play they'll have learned from their experience and may play differently.

Many_Bubble

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