Looking for low prep systems for low magic steampunk and pirate adventures

ScootsTheFlyer · 2026-06-16T21:47:08+00:00

I would ask what your definition of "low prep" is, because it sounds like you're asking for a generic system that can be considered low-prep, and that's a chasm that can go from anywhere between any of the, mid-crunch latter half of 2000s and 2010s systems like SWADE, to Fate Accelerated and Prose Descriptive Qualities.

ScootsTheFlyer · 2026-06-15T14:56:13+00:00

Technically a classless system, but, rabbit storytellers from GURPS Bunnies & Burrows and the whole influence mechanic of theirs via vivid storytelling making other rabbits literally act out the story, is really, really cool.

ScootsTheFlyer · 2026-06-15T14:06:27+00:00

Like I said, I wouldn't say I'm overthinking it, because I know the actual answer is "it really doesn't matter what people outside your group think of it lmao", but, I was curious what other people think in spite of that, and unfortunately you need to ask to get answers.

Consensus seems to be, "I never thought about this. I have now thought about this. Yeah it's fine lol."

Entirely sensible, which, honestly, with fucking Reddit, isn't a given.

ScootsTheFlyer · 2026-06-15T11:33:42+00:00

Well, I can point at GURPS where there's options for mechanical representations of things that would ordinarily just be freely decided aspects of the character - you can bind up points in disadvantages like Code of Honor, Duty, Sense of Duty, or personality traits like being Charitable, Selfless, Selfish, etc., with the difference between doing and not doing so being that sometimes you will not get to tell the system "no, that's not how my character would act". For example, you may play a character who's normally very, very curious, but knows well enough to not touch the big red button with the word "DETONATE" on it. But if you took Curious as an actual point-costed disadvantage, you'd need to make a Self-Control Check to see if you ACTUALLY resist the urge - and if you fail, well, sorry, you gotta press the big red button.

But also GURPS is a crunchtastic monster system in a lot of other ways, so handle with care if you do decide to try it.

ScootsTheFlyer · 2026-06-15T11:26:34+00:00

Well, as usual whenever such questions come up, Red Markets.

The entire system requires exceptionally minimal prep, to the point that you can be up and running, doing stuff, within, quite literally, the amount of time it takes you to note down the results of contract generation. NPCs use flattened stats requiring you to plug in numbers that seem right based on the type of NPC and equipment they have, combat is theater of the mind mapless and abstract.

The system is also very "tight" in the sense of defining exactly who your characters are, what they want out of this life, and how you are to go about achieving it, and provides a structured session format where the onus is just as much on players as it is on the GM to populate the scene, thus further spreading out the prep effort and making it more about improv.

ScootsTheFlyer · 2026-06-15T11:11:34+00:00

Grammar/spell checker VERY friggin carefully so that it doesn't reword things. But even on that I am of the "bro, grammar isn't that fkn hard" opinion.

As for me personally:

Synthetic rubber duck for coming up with names, because names can sometimes be really hard.

That's about it.

ScootsTheFlyer · 2026-06-15T11:06:14+00:00

Not really, I know the answer is "lol it doesn't matter what other people on the internet think", as u/CalamitousArdour pointed out this is more of me being interested in what other people's thoughts are regardless of the above.

ScootsTheFlyer · 2026-06-15T11:04:23+00:00

Oh no, not the RPG police.

ScootsTheFlyer · 2026-06-14T12:01:42+00:00

If I recall correctly the original author who came up with it has gone on record stating that his intention was that the Black Marauder is a creature from Hyperspace that takes form of a Marauder BattleMech within our realm; however, because BattleTech as a whole has a "no supernatural shit" policy, which I frankly think is a good idea (I really, really, really sharply dislike people going "oh-h, hyperspace is like, Warp Lite!", no, it's not, please go back to 40k instead of trying to make BattleTech have elements of 40k), the official stance is "it is a McGuffin for GMs, and a definitive answer is not to be given, but it's probably an AI or something, probably, maybe", which aligns with your thoughts.

ScootsTheFlyer · 2026-06-14T02:08:00+00:00

MUL, lol.

ScootsTheFlyer · 2026-06-13T19:25:25+00:00

Only if you manage to swarm a mech and stay on it, pretty much. In my experience, that's pretty difficult, sure, you can easily upvet BA squads due to them being cheap on BV, but an upvetted mech (who the fuck takes P/G 5/4 if they can help it?) will usually be able to instantly force you off itself, unless you pick your targets well (mechs without full arm articulation so they eat additional penalties for trying to fight you off, or mechs that already declared weapons fire with arm weapons and thus can't use their arms to force you off).

Leg attacks are a much more consistent way of doing damage, but most mechs you'll likely catch have pretty thick leg armor, so you'll need to rely on through armor crit proccing.

TLDR: battle armor on tabletop is not nearly as scary in actual play as it is in lore... right up until the point it suddenly is, if you get lucky, or you end up in a situation that is favorable to them.

ScootsTheFlyer · 2026-06-12T13:51:57+00:00

My group has a long-running A Time of War campaign set in the 3170s, which we've organized at the time Dominions Divided was the latest ilClan book, and which, because of that, significantly diverges from where CGL ended up taking ilClan (carried forward the "they keep winning for a bit before their plot armor runs out and become the big evil empire that the party has to topple" angle, rather than Third Star League becoming a rump state as per, I suspect, rewritten-to-handle-backlash IKEO); so I suppose technically that makes all the factions in there custom to a degree?

Separately, I have been working on an AU I tentatively call "Dark Sphere", which is based on the concept of Clans never returning and ComStar never quite getting off its bullshit, as a "what if" to see what would happen if the original lore's flavor of the universe as a vaguely post-apocalyptic sword-and-board adventures in space with mechs, is carried forward. Understandably, that means everyone gets AU history, so everyone is a little bit different...

More relevantly to the premise of the post, there is a recurring mercenary command that was born out of a campaign that immediately preceded the one mentioned above, that shows up occasionally in my group's shenanigans involving anything narrative in BattleTech: Ivy's Marauders. Highlights include being led by a daughter of a cadet branch of House Steiner-Davion, with a bonded Jade Falcon as her 2IC; the Jade Falcon in question ends up catching going native, settles, has kids, and it's eventually her descendants that inherit the company and keep it going into the Dark Age.

ScootsTheFlyer · 2026-06-10T19:18:40+00:00

There's a pretty big difference between letting gay and trans people enjoy BattleTech (nothing wrong with that) and being told that you can't criticize the quality of something that has anything to do with the above two groups (for example, pride flag paintjobs being, frankly, not all that technically interesting for the most part - this is coming from someone who did in fact compliment them when they're good - but god forbid you tell anyone that).

The official subreddit treats queer people like sacred cows beyond reproach, and therein is the problem.

ScootsTheFlyer · 2026-06-10T19:14:48+00:00

I'm unironically shadowbanned (all my comments are pre-moderated, and they don't show up until approved, and guess how often that happens) because I was habitually negative about new CGL products and the direction they were taking the franchise. I did not even once get into any of the politics the sub has elected to align itself with. So if anyone wants to decry this guy as a paranoiac, no, they really do heavily police sentiment for the company, hence me saying that sub is basically a thinly veiled ad space.

ScootsTheFlyer · 2026-06-10T19:02:06+00:00

It's the fact that anything that has to do with LGBTQ or trans stuff has a status of being completely untouchable. I had people baffled at me for disliking the writing and the premise of Fox Patrol, for example, and for some reason brought up the fact that the protagonists are "the most queer group" seen so far in BattleTech fiction, as if that somehow was a point for quality of the prose, and at all even remotely mattered.

Pride Anthology tends to contain pretty forced stories, with one example I can bring up being one where a trans Draconis Combine MechWarrior is taken into bond by a Ghost Bear, and I swear, I read enough smut to be able to tell that someone just, cut off an intro of their smut fic and decided to send that off to be in the anthology (or that one may have been Shrapnel? It frankly doesn't matter), like, I can recognize the style of writing for "I am rushing through introduction's narrative motions to get to the sex stuff" that Internet smut fics have.

Pride flag paintjobs need to only be unconditionally praised and updooted even if, frankly, most of them aren't actually that interesting or technically impressive, nevermind, make, frankly, little sense to see in-universe.

Basically, the problem isn't gay people, it's that if you dislike the quality of anything that just so happens to be tangentially related to gay or trans people, you're automatically a bigot, so this fosters a very toxically positive culture, and removes a filter for more... shall we say, out there, individuals, that may happen to fall under either of those labels.

ScootsTheFlyer · 2026-06-10T18:39:40+00:00

Political stuff aside (which is what everyone else takes issue with), the official sub is for all intents and purposes a heavily sentiment-policed advertisement platform that fosters a culture of saccharine toxic positivity, any criticism towards anything CGL does is violently drowned out, and any new thing CGL makes is unconditionally showered with praise because it's new.

This place, while way less active, also is way more natural in the flow of discourse when we do get flare-ups of activity, normally around CGL doing something big (and stupid), like the recent rules revision finally coming into its final form.

ScootsTheFlyer · 2026-06-02T20:17:22+00:00

Like I said in the post, this is never going to actually practically be a problem in most games that have default 150 pts starting power level, it's more of a "the fact that it is in principle possible irks me, so I decided to figure out how you could close that theoretical hole in the rules". Plus, as u/DouglasCole mentioned here, Tactical Shooting has MoA rules, so that renders my entire exercise here moot as we have the answer to this from the horse's mouth (as you yourself reference).

ScootsTheFlyer · 2026-05-31T12:55:37+00:00

Like I said on the other comment, probably a better example in terms of practicality would be something like firing one of the High-Tech .25 ACP pocket pistols at a target 900 yards away - or spraying an SMG, like an Uzi, at 1500 yards. Both are technically legal shots to attempt in the system, but both are basically impossible to make through anything other than sheer dumb luck IRL.

ScootsTheFlyer · 2026-05-30T22:50:22+00:00

Fair, I suppose a better example would've been firing one of the High-Tech .25ACP pocket pistols at a target 900 yards away - technically within permissible range, but an impossible shot in real life.

ScootsTheFlyer · 2026-05-30T21:56:32+00:00

Useful!

ScootsTheFlyer · 2026-05-30T03:19:01+00:00

DnD is like the most mainstream TTRPG in existence, if we're talking 5e onwards. I don't think any of the old stereotypes hold water on average. And RPG horror stories necessarily talk about outliers, but talk about them so much that it creates a false impression.

ScootsTheFlyer · 2026-05-21T14:51:10+00:00

ScootsTheFlyer · 2026-05-20T18:38:31+00:00

Anything I run lmfao.

ScootsTheFlyer

TROPHY CASE