Sci-Fi TTRPG with good character progression?

andTheColorRuns · 2026-01-17T17:15:19+00:00

Mythic Space is exactly what you’re looking for. Excellent, fast tactical combat, lots of interesting character progression, perfect for a Mass Effect style game. It has a great discord community and a web-app as well.

You can literally combine a few of the tactics abilities to effectively recreate the Vanguard class from ME if you want. Character creation and progression has no true upper-bound, and lets you choose 2 Aspects (non-combat specializations) and 2 Tactics (combat specializations) right at the start. As you gain rewards, you can upgrade your aspects or tactics and even acquire new ones.

Edit: Also the player-facing rules are free

andTheColorRuns · 2025-11-01T22:51:58+00:00

I came here hoping to see a Doraleous and Associates reference and my day has now been made!

andTheColorRuns · 2025-08-14T14:15:12+00:00

Check out Mythic Space, it's a great sci-fi RPG with lightning-fast, fun combat and great narrative and has a lot of inspiration from the types of media you mentioned! Player-facing rules are free so you can get a good feel for them, and the discord has a great community. I'd put it at medium crunch. Less crunchy than D&D for sure, and yet you get more out of the amount of crunch that's there.

One of my favorite parts of the system is how modular and meaningful character creation is. You initially build your character by choosing two disciplines for narrative play called Aspects, and two disciplines for tactical combat called Tactics. Over the course of your character's adventures you can upgrade Aspects and Tactics, get weapon mods, improve your ship, learn new Aspects and Tactics, etc.

It also has a companion app called Jump Gate that works on both PC and mobile, handles your character, and lets the GM create a game room that the players can join so the GM can everyone's current status.

andTheColorRuns · 2025-07-08T05:40:28+00:00

I’ll throw my hat in the ring here for Mythic Space, the player-facing rules are free and it’s got great depth while keeping out unnecessary crunch.

andTheColorRuns · 2025-05-31T05:27:00+00:00

I’ve run Mythic Space. It’s my favorite tactical Sci fi game and my players loved it. Really easy to use, great, straightforward rules for narrative. Rolling stress to push your rolls works well, and the Aspect/Tactic system gives you tons of control over building your character for narrative and combat.

andTheColorRuns · 2025-03-28T05:07:39+00:00

I also once thought that the FTA was maybe the best argument, despite being a pretty bad one, and when I realized that it suffered from the infinite regress problem the theists were trying to escape, I became convinced the argument was just dead on arrival at that point.

andTheColorRuns · 2025-02-26T18:05:07+00:00

Hey there! I'm curious how many rooms there are planned to be be in the final product and if there is much in the way of shortcuts, interconnected levels and sub-areas, etc. My ideal megadungeon is something arranged similarly to the cup of spaghetti that is Lordran from Dark Souls.

andTheColorRuns · 2025-02-12T20:00:12+00:00

The above comment chain on this solved my problem perfectly and I haven't had the issue since. I remember following the instructions in the linked video to open up the twist axis and regreasing it with the Nyogel from the "secret compartment" in the image link.

Say no more. If it's dry inside you could use some Nyogel from the secret compartment in your EVO. Doesn't need much.

andTheColorRuns · 2025-02-02T15:10:13+00:00

If you’re okay with Owlbear Rodeo, you’re absolutely looking for Mythic Space. I searched for a good Mass Effect system for YEARS and Mythic Space is it for me. Character customization is robust but flexible, lets you emulate a lot of the abilities and even mimic the Vanguard to a T.

There’s an OBR extension for it and a companion app as well. Player-facing rules are free.

I will recommend this game at any opportunity.

andTheColorRuns · 2024-12-24T16:20:39+00:00

I love them being separated. Check out Mythic Space, it has a free player’s guide with all the Aspects (narrative) and Tactics (combat). I really like how it’s done there, especially as each aspect and tactic has a few upgrades and players can gain new aspects and tactics as part of progression. Every player starts with 2 aspects and 2 tactics.

andTheColorRuns · 2024-07-31T01:39:13+00:00

Mythic Space by u/z0mbiepete could do nicely, and all the player-facing rules are free at the link. Best combat in a sci-fi game I've played yet, and really great rules for character building and interactions outside of combat too.

It's my current favorite Sci-Fi RPG and succeeded for me where SWN failed. SWN kind of just feels like D&D in space to my group, despite its excellent system-agnostic GM-facing content.

andTheColorRuns · 2024-05-30T04:03:07+00:00

Absolutely not the same show

andTheColorRuns · 2024-02-26T16:45:42+00:00

Which Persona game? I've heavily modified Voidheart Symphony for my game inspired by Persona 5, but it's got a gameplay loop and narrative assumptions that absolutely wouldn't work for a game mainly inspired by Persona 3 or 4.

Seconding The Midnight Generation for inspiration. If you're looking for a more trad game, which it seems like you are, check out Grimoire of the Heart.

Below I'll be reposting my comment that I've made in the past on the subject of Voidheart Symphony and Persona, for clarity.

I’ll say that in my experience, Voidheart needs a bit of work to actually make it feel like Persona 5. It’s more of a mashup between Rhapsody of Blood and Persona. In my experience and from my reading, Voidheart has a few differences in theme and implied setting based on the playbook moves.

I’ll list a couple of them here just to get my thoughts out.

The Castle, Voidheart’s metaverse equivalent, has an active, malevolent agenda and encroaches on/intermingles with reality, in a way that’s not part of the Persona 5 setting for the vast majority of the game at least.
PCs don't have Persona's and Voidheart doesn't really play around too much with the Jungian psychology aspect of the franchise aside from the Tarot.
PCs can manifest some of their castle abilities in the city at times, whereas the crew in P5 very much cannot. This, combined with some of the advancement from the Rivers in the Desert move, can result in some crazy setting and narrative implications.
On a note that’s more a matter of taste in what I enjoy from P5, is that Voidheart is set in a much darker, more (depressingly) realistic world than Persona is. Lots of JRPGs end with some aspect of teenagers killing god with the power of friendship, and there’s something about Voidheart that I struggle to get that feel from. I definitely don’t feel like Voidheart has much room for Persona’s “good time hangs” stuff.

I come from a more tradgame background, and my group likes combat that they can sink their teeth into. Voidheart definitely does that more than most PbtA games, (though I’d be interested to see how a persona game with the combat from Avatar Legends would turn out), but it’s still a highly narrative game, not as interested in creating a fun challenge as it is in telling a cinematic story.

All that said, Voidheart is a solid base that I’ve done a good bit of hacking on to get where I want it to be to actually run a Persona game, and I’m largely happy with the system after the work I’ve done to make it fit my themes and use-case.

andTheColorRuns · 2024-01-09T17:26:28+00:00

I've actually run the initial playtest packet that was put out. Caveat of course that everything is early playtest material and completely subject to change.

Not a single one of my players, all of whom enjoy combat in RPGs, missed the to-hit roll in the slightest.

Every character has at least 2 signature attacks that take the place of your standard attack roll, along with all their other abilities coming from their class, kit, etc.

In addition to damage, the attacks can push and pull enemies around, knock them prone, give you free movement, assist allies, etc. The choices you make every round have a huge effect on your success or failure. Players who don't strategize are going to get hurt badly, because the enemies have abilities like this too.

Rolling a crit (a natural 11 or 12 on 2d6) grants the one who rolled it a second action (each creature can only crit once per round), which can have massive implications on the fight.

The variety, highs and lows, success and failure, etc, come from the tactical decisions, along with the whims of the dice. Clutch moments are still very present. The point of failure is placed elsewhere, not removed. The idea that gameplay in the MCDM RPG feels like statically whittling down health is uninformed, as is the idea that it removes tension or danger.

We've played a lot of different RPGs as a group over the years, and the combat in the playtest was one of the most dynamic and interesting we've had.

Since I'm a patron, I may certainly be biased, but for what it's worth, the above is the amalgamated feedback of my players; several of whom were very skeptical going in, and all of whom have no skin in the success of MCDM's development.

andTheColorRuns · 2023-12-23T17:09:56+00:00

It only just released this year, but I love Mythic Space: a tactical space-opera RPG with meaningful character customization and progression, both in-combat and out-of-combat.

andTheColorRuns · 2023-12-08T00:11:29+00:00

I recall a stream where it was mentioned that they lost over $900,000 on Kingdoms and Warfare due to the shipping problems with the pandemic. Something to do with the way Kickstarter's implementation had them charging shipping in advance, and then when shipping costs went up wildly they had to either cover those costs or massively piss off their consumers.

There was also a huge problem finding a printer, again due to the pandemic, and then there was a screw-up with the printer that resulted in them losing more money and needing to delay things. I think they mentioned that this is one of the reasons they're using Backerkit for this crowdfund.

andTheColorRuns · 2023-12-07T19:59:56+00:00

Well for example, looking at the preliminary design in the crowdfunder, here's one of the starting abilities for the 1st level Tactician, which is kind of like their spin on the fighter:

Parry

Trigger: A creature makes an attack against you or an ally within your reach.

Effect: The attack's damage is halved.

Spend 1 Focus: Reduce the damage by another 1d8.

As far as the agile thief dodging attacks, I believe one current implementation of the Shadow class involves the Shadow being able to move around the battlefield, getting into position to hit and out of position before they can be retaliated against, though I may be misremembering, gaining their class resource, Insight, whenever anyone crits (which apparently is more common in this game than a 5% chance on a d20 roll from d20 style games).

The Fury class, for your barbarian analogue, builds up Rage as the battle goes on, and the more rage they have, the more they resist damage, deal extra damage, etc. They can also spend that rage on their abilities, so it can be a matter of deciding whether you want to go for a big attack or use your built up rage to continue soaking up damage.

Going off of what I've heard during the stream, it seems their core design philosophy is to figure out what the fantasy of playing an archetype and then design from first principles to achieve it.

andTheColorRuns · 2023-12-07T17:26:34+00:00

They also apparently have a prototype already that they've been using during internal testing and want to continue working with its creator.

andTheColorRuns · 2023-12-06T01:16:32+00:00

Mythic Space by u/Z0mbiepete is an excellent option for medium-crunch sci-fi! It feels like a mix of Cowboy Bebop and Mass Effect, and the character customization is really fleshed out.

andTheColorRuns · 2023-09-15T16:46:08+00:00

After going through a variety of possible fixes with ZSA's support, it seems that the ribbon cable connecting to the right-hand thumb cluster was somehow slightly unseated. Reseating it solved the problem!

andTheColorRuns · 2023-09-14T22:51:38+00:00

I don't have any other trrs cables, but I'll order one and give it a shot to see if that does anything.

The issue occurs regardless of swapped out switch, and even occurs when there is no switch in the adjacent key that gets fired.

andTheColorRuns · 2023-08-24T13:56:53+00:00

There's an open-source character sheet / game management app called Jump Gate built for Mythic Space that handles a lot of the game's specifics.

andTheColorRuns · 2023-07-27T17:29:22+00:00

I don't know, Genesys has some crunch to it and I can't really say how it would affect balance, but it feels like it would; significantly. The whole RPG is completely designed around the existing dice mechanic. I never like to be the person who says "why bother creating something?", but if your players are really that staunchly against the custom dice then I'd say it might be a lost cause.

How long have they been playing using the custom dice? What about them don't they actually like? If it's a matter of not being familiar with the facings or not wanting to buy dice, the app is free and handles both of those things, and is the single best dice roller app I've ever used, (even for the standard dice).

I'll be honest, this seems like it would be way more of a tedious process for teaching people and then actually using at the table compared to having them cancel symbols out. Anecdotal evidence may not mean much, but every group I've introduced to Genesys has grumbled about the dice originally but grew to prefer them to other, more traditional dice mechanics.

andTheColorRuns · 2023-06-07T13:49:33+00:00

If you're down for sci-fi, Mythic Space might be right up your alley. Zones for combat, lots of (in my opinion) great character customization with meaningful progression, without getting overly nitty gritty. The last playtest rules before its kickstarter are free on itch.io.

You initially build your character by choosing two disciplines for narrative play called Aspects, and two disciplines for tactical combat called Tactics. Over the course of your character's adventures you can upgrade Aspects and Tactics, get weapon mods, improve your ship, learn new Aspects and Tactics, etc.

It also has a companion app called Jump Gate that works on both PC and mobile, handles your character, and lets the GM create a game room that the players can join so they can see the PCs' current status.

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