Thoughts on FrontierSpace? Compatible with BRP and Chaosium RPGs?

[Magpie]

I just ordered FrontierSpace and it's flying on its way...in 3-6 weeks, but I was able to get the PDF as well from DriveThruRPG. I read it and built a character just tonight. I can't help but wonder if it's possible with some work to make it compatible with BRP and several Chaosium RPGs? I also wonder if it is compatible with Barebones Fantasy and that might be my next purchase. I also want to know people's general thoughts on FrontierSpace here. Love it or hate it? Let me know!

[soltakss]

I hadn't heard of this before, so I have bought the rules, GM Guide and GM Screen as PDFs to see what they are like. Thanks for the tip, I'm always looking out for D100-style Sci-Fi.

[Jakob]

I started reviewing it on my blog (FS Review part 1), but kind of lost track of it ... I've only read it and really liked most of it, in the end, the equipment chapter stopped my in my tracks, it was just a little to fiddly for my taste.

I wouldn't call it BRP-compativle, though the d100 scale and it being basically a skill-based system should make it easier to convert than anything more D&Dish. But you would be in for a lot of work.

Regarding BareBones Fantasy: The bones of the system are the same, but FrontierSpace is more complex and crunches the numbers a little differently. Action economy works the same way, though.

[svensson]

There is Worlds Beyond, a d100 Traveller-esque setting available on drivethru. [link below] It's fairly simplistic and very '80' in flavor.

Someone did a BRP conversion of the 2300AD setting as well.

[link to DTRPG page for Worlds Beyond]

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/355945/Worlds-Beyond-Classic-Reprint

[Magpie]

12 hours ago, Jakob said:

I started reviewing it on my blog (FS Review part 1), but kind of lost track of it ... I've only read it and really liked most of it, in the end, the equipment chapter stopped my in my tracks, it was just a little to fiddly for my taste.

That's actually normal for most Sci-Fi RPGs as they tend to have more equipment and gears than fantasy. Shadowrun and Starfinder comes to mind. You don't have to use everything the book provides, it's all just options. For me, I'm not going to use every item listed, some of them are useless anyway and takes up too much space on the sheet.

 

12 hours ago, Jakob said:

I wouldn't call it BRP-compativle, though the d100 scale and it being basically a skill-based system should make it easier to convert than anything more D&Dish. But you would be in for a lot of work.

Regarding BareBones Fantasy: The bones of the system are the same, but FrontierSpace is more complex and crunches the numbers a little differently. Action economy works the same way, though.

Actually, I found FrontierSpace to be surprisingly simple after last night. It's front-loaded at first especially with the chargen, but once you get it down, it's really quick and smooth. I'm also able to remove a lot of the unnecessary stuff from the character sheet, making it fit just on 5x7 page. I'm also able to tweak it easily to my taste and use stuff from BRP, Mythras, etc. So not much work is really needed at all. That's probably why d100 RPGs are so modular in general.

FrontierSpace is based on the popular Star Frontiers, which is now owned by WotC. They had tight control on it, which was why FrontierSpace was born. Something like Pathfinder being derived from DnD after the DnD 4e wars.

[Magpie]

15 hours ago, soltakss said:

I hadn't heard of this before, so I have bought the rules, GM Guide and GM Screen as PDFs to see what they are like. Thanks for the tip, I'm always looking out for D100-style Sci-Fi.

How do you like it so far??

[soltakss]

On 2/27/2023 at 2:57 AM, Magpie said:

How do you like it so far??

I haven't had time to look at it, as I have a huge amount of work on at the moment.

[Atgxtg]

On 2/26/2023 at 2:16 AM, Magpie said:

I just ordered FrontierSpace and it's flying on its way...in 3-6 weeks, but I was able to get the PDF as well from DriveThruRPG. I read it and built a character just tonight. I can't help but wonder if it's possible with some work to make it compatible with BRP and several Chaosium RPGs?

It's basically Star Frontiers. Not really BRP compatible, but...if you went with CoC7 attributes, you could probably adapt it easily (or divide attributes by  5 for more pure BRP). The key question is how much like BRP do you want it? I mean you could easily port over the weapons, just change D10s to d4s to get the same sort of damage you'd see in Frontier Space. But d6s would probably be a better fit for BRP , especially when compared to BRP weapon stats. Of course, BRP combat is a bit nastier than combat in Frontier Space.

Ultimately, it's like a slider between Frontier Space and BRP game mechanics and you get to set the slider for how far you want to go towards one game or the other. At one end you got Frontier Space as written and on the other you end up recreating it under a BRP ruleset.