I'm not sure if you are still doing ttrpg recs, if not please ignore this, but do you know of a good scifi rpg with high levels of customisation for characters?my goal is some kind of a cyberpunk/scifi game that doesn't rely on classes as much as it does on specific skills or feats. Almost all my rpg experience has been with fantasy, specifically 5e D&D, or with VTM or Call of Cthulhu, but I am more than happy to learn a new system.
âCyberpunk RPGs that donât rely on classesâ is a a trickier question than youâd think. Many cyberpunk RPGs are classless in theory, but in practice their character creation mechanics are structured to strongly enforce class-like archetypes, making it hard to mix roles without ending up with a character who isnât good at anything â Shadowrun and its various imitators are prime examples there.
Hm. Technoir may be a reasonable choice, though its mechanics are pretty different from anything you have prior experience with; its default mode of play also runs more toward the low-rent film noir end of the cyberpunk spectrum than the gonzo letâs-all-stick-wires-in-our-brains end, so itâs not the best choice if you were looking for something in the way of the latter. On the plus side, if you do want to delve into the nitty-gritty interpersonal side of the cyberpunk milieu, itâs got that in spades, not just in terms of character building, but in terms of explicit mechanics for how your NPC relationships affect the world.
For something thatâs a bit closer to stuff youâve played before, you might instead have a look at Interface Zero 2.0. Itâs based on Savage Worlds, which covers a lot of familiar territory â youâll definitely have an easier time leveraging prior experience than you would with something like Technoir. That upside is also the downside, though; it requires the Savage Worlds core rulebook to play, making it a pricier buy-in than most. Thereâs also a version 3.0 that successfully Kickstarted earlier this year and is (theoretically) due out in the next few months, so bear in mind that youâd be buying into a version of the game thatâs reaching the end of its support period.
If youâd like to keep fantasy elements in play (but have ruled out Shadowrun due to the aforementioned niche protection issues), you could also check out Cryptomancer. Itâs not the most accessible game out there, as it assumes a fair amount of familiarity with real-world computer networking principles, but if youâre prepared to Google some stuff as you go itâs a fascinating little genre hybrid. (Ironically, its treatment of networking and cryptrography is actually a fair bit more realistic than that of a lot of games ostensibly set in the real world!) Itâs very much âcyberpunk revolution in a fantasy settingâ rather than âfantasy elements injected into a real-world cyberpunk settingâ, though, so not a great choice if youâd prefer the latter.
(Both Technoir and Interface Zero can hypothetically do cyberpunk-with-fantasy-elements as well, with varying degrees of inconvenience. Interface Zero is compatible in principle with other Savage Worlds games, including fantasy ones, though youâd have to do a bit of tinkering to mesh them, while Technoir has a fantasy cyberpunk supplement called Hexnoir thatâs currently in playtesting and due out in a few months.)
Finally, if youâre looking for a more general purpose sci-fi system that just happens to have pretty good support for cyberpunk shenanigans, rather than a system thatâs purpose-built for cyberpunk, there are a couple of systems you could check out: Stars Without Number and Mindjammer.
Stars Without Number is actually D&D-compatible, though the version of D&D itâs based on is about four editions back from what youâre familiar with. Itâs a sandbox sci-fi game with plug-and-play rules modules for everything from cybernetics to psionics to uploading your brain into a squid. Technically class-based, though the classes are sort of peripheral â you donât even have to pick one until the end of character creation, since so little relies on them. Two caveats: first, itâs a low-powered game, and starting PCs in particular are very fragile unless certain optional rules are in play. Second, itâs explicitly intended to model 1960s and 1970s literary sci-fi, and it hews to its source material a little too closely, baking in some fairly reactionary setting assumptions: AIs will inevitably go crazy and kill everyone, altering the human genome for any reason other than fixing congenital diseases is intrinsically wrong, socialist polities are always dystopian and corrupt, and so forth. You might have to do some content scrubbing depending on what sort of game youâre running.
Mindjammer, on the flip side, is a transhuman space opera game with one of the more flexible character creation systems Iâve seen. Not just in terms of oddball professions and weird aliens, either; âsapient starshipâ is a totally valid starting character concept, for example. Like the previous rec, a couple of cautions apply here. First, the system is a Fate Core derivative, so thereâs a lot of sharing of narrative authority between the players and the GM; to an extent, this is necessary, given the broad flexibility players have to define chunks of the setting via their character building choices, but in any case itâd be a poor fit for groups who prefer to have the GM do the creative heavy lifting while the players react. Second, as you might have guessed, character creation is extraordinarily baroque. Itâs not all that complicated once you get into actual play, but the rules for creating player characters will make your eyes cross the first couple of times.
(If Mindjammerâs concept really grabs you, another game along similar lines is Sufficiently Advanced Second Edition. Itâs simpler to play than Mindjammer in many respects, and not the worst place to start as an introduction to diceless/no-randomisers RPGs, but running it is going to be a pretty big adjustment if youâre not accustomed to GMing for groups where player characters may include distributed hive minds, sapient cities, and immortal robots with nuclear bombs for hands. It gets pretty meta in places, too; weâre talking about a game that has something called âThe Rule of Ontological Inertiaâ â and yes, you will need it!)
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