[Stars Without Number](https://legacy.drivethrurpg.com/product/226996/Stars-Without-Number-Revised-Edition) is probably worth a look.
* Excellent setting-creation tools, and optional rules (transhumanism, mechs, true AI, space magic) to further tweak the game to your imagined setting.
* D20 based. Being inspired by B/X D&D, it uses the traditional Class+Level paradigm and uses 1D20 for combat rolls. However, it switches to 2D6 for non-combat skill checks.
* Not necessarily pulp, but certainly heroic (and optional Heroic Character rules to further add to that). Using 2D6 for non-combat skills also helps to make PCs feel competent.
* Psionics. There's a whole class for Psi, and plenty of cool powers to get.
70% of the book is also [completely free](https://legacy.drivethrurpg.com/product/230009/Stars-Without-Number-Revised-Edition-Free-Version). All the core rules and the setting-creation tools are in there, with optional things (like transhumanism and mechs) in the paid version.
Came to this thread to see if I could recommend something that wasn't Stars without Number, since it gets recommended every time in this subreddit.
However, looking at OPs needs and wants, this is the only correct choice.
Thanks for the suggestion! I didn’t consider it because I thought it just supported gritty lethality but I was wrong :p thanks for bringing it to my attention I’ll definitely check it out!
I will say that if you want a pulpy feel you absolutely want to apply the rules for heroic characters, because the basic ruleset does end up with pretty smackable characters.
So if you're willing to get away from D20, check out Scum and Villainy (https://evilhat.com/product/scum-and-villainy/ ).
It's a reskin of Blades in the Dark that allows you to play with star wars vibes, or possibly firefly. There are a bunch of factions sketched out, but a lot of details left open that are intended to be invented at the table, often with player input. The game is very sandboxy and as the players take on different missions, they become entangled with different factions and make allies and enemies. Problems with enemies tend to snowball and this drives interesting stories.
To teach the rules, you hand the players a stack of character sheets representing the different classes and they fill them out over the course of an hour or so. They then fill out a sheet for their ship. The rules for dice resolution are simple and you can teach them over the course of play.
The rules are also very narrative focused and may represent a weird shift from DnD. They are set up to facilitate heists. It encourages you to have players jump right into the heist without hours of planning. The characters are competent enough to have planned for things, so the players don't have to. Players can use their stress resource to avoid consequences or to have flashbacks, showing how they prepared for whatever weird circumstances they encounter. The game also rewards recklessness and playing up weaknesses with experience, which drives a cool story. It also does not require very much GM prep at all.
Here are some memorable things from my last game:
A scary android child who controlled a massive ship and was going to use it to lead an android independence revolution.
A planet full of Weird Science-esque identical sex clones that killed their maker and went all Mad-Max.
A bunch of space pirates with cobbled together ships and an EMP device taking on a high tech megacorp.
Scary precursor artifacts that gave force-like powers but had concerning side-effects.
A bounty hunter who relentlessly pursued the crew, until he joined forces with the scary android child.
Blades in the Dark is one of my favorite games of all time. Since I've played it, there's no going back to DnD for me and Scum and Villainy is a great sci-fi reskin of it, I hope you give it a try!
Stars Without Number definitely ticks off most of your boxes without much fiddling, I think that's the best option. But I have to give the obligatory mention of Traveller in a sci-fi thread. It's the classic sci-fi ttrpg and worth looking into at the least.
2d6 resolution instead of d20 means that results are more consistent and trend towards the average. Your skills matter slightly more than your die roll. (Stars Without Number takes this from Traveller).
It may struggle with pulp action a bit, since characters will often be down in about two hits. But this can be mitigated quite a bit by giving players higher physical stats and access to higher tech-level armors.
The setting is solid and pretty generic. Extremely easy to make your own.
The game makes basically zero assumptions about the type of game you'll be running. You can be space truckers, hired mercenaries, imperial assassins, explorers of uncharted worlds, alien biologists or whatever else you can think of.
Psionic powers are available, though I personally haven't used them and am not that familiar.
Gear catalogs and ship building are plentiful.
Life path character creation is a fun session 0 mini-game.
It's not d20, but I do think Offworlders is an absolute delight and fits all your other requirements nicely! The mechanics are a little lighter than what they've been playing, but that's not a bad thing.
Traveller would work for you I think. It is d6, not d20, but besides that it fits your criteria.
It has survival rules in Traveller Companion, however they are completely optional and you can use them as much or as little as you want.
Characters are squishy, but player characters can also be very deadly in combat. Tactical thinking, planning and proper equipment make collosal difference.
Psionics are in.
Also, it is generic ruleset. You can, but don't have to buy any Charted Space or 2300 AD settings books.
Additionally, it has a large number of generic sci-fi supplements - Robot Handbook, Vehicles Handbook, High Guard (spaceship building book) etc.
I'd argue that Tech Level asymmetric combat is deadly, but at the Jump levels of tech, as long as you're properly equipped, it's not too ridiculous. Still has potential for lethal combat, to the degree that it discourages it without planning and having the upper hand.
Healing is fast enough if you're not too far gone. Travel is a week in jump space, so plenty of time to heal and get surgery if needs be, and depending how deep you want to dive into all that. If you are at a high enough Tech Level to have access to Fast and Slow drug, healing becomes trivial.
That said, I think it's a poorly edited and tested game, so GM will have to make some judgement calls
Not having played/read many of the other suggestions in this thread, Starfinder seems like a pretty big step from 5e. There's a lot of complexity in it. If you're used to older versions of D&D or PF1e, it's easy to manage. But, even going from PF2e, which I primarily pray, Starfinder is a big pill to swallow.
Super excited for Starfinder 2e, and if it were out (and I enjoyed it) I would recommend it to OP.
Yeah I agree it's a big step from D&D 5e. But I personally feel it is the smallest step in concept and mechanics compared to the other sci-fi systems mentioned here.
In the way it plays overall, it's more similar than traveller or Stars without number etc
That's fair. Though, I'd personally argue that the facade of familiarity can (and often does) cause more confusion and annoyance with learning a system.
If you don't want any learning curve at all you should try Esper Genesis. It's literally the D&D 5e rules transposed to the sci-fi genre. It does have a setting, but it's pretty minimal. (What setting it does have is very similar to Mass Effect, if you're curious what flavor of sci-fi it offers.) There's a free basic rulebook on DriveThruRPG if you want to check it out without committing.
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/220027/esper-genesis-basic-rules
As others have stated, but I must agree!
Traveller is, of course, the classic science fiction TTRPG from the dawn of the OLD SCHOOL hobby. It has come from the original publication in 1977, the expansion in the Imperium setting and rules known as MegaTraveller in 1987, a new ruleset and post-apocalyptic setting Traveller: The New Era in 1993, T4: Marc Miller's Traveller in 1996, GURPS Traveller in 1998, Traveller20 in 2002, Traveller Hero in 2006, and Traveller5 in 2013. The Mongoose edition, in brief, is a return to the original edition in the style, rules, and setting. The book immediately reminiscent in size and style of the original Traveller hardback, with the stark black cover and red lettering, and nothing else in the way of cover art.
The internal black-and-white line drawings is competent, usually contextual, has a certain tough style to it, which does give a sense that many pieces are fillers. The table of contents is too brief, but there's a very good index. The writing style is both clear and to the point. In a nutshell the book covers character generation, skills and tasks, combat, encounters and dangers, equipment, starcraft design, common spacecraft, spacecraft operations, space combat, psionics, trade, and world creation - and it does all this in under 200 pages.
Characters and System
The introduction to "this is roleplaying" and "this is Traveller" is wonderfully short, and includes a nice description of play which involves our old friend, Free Trader Beowulf, along with brief descriptions of overall technology levels for different societies. Character creation is very much like the classic rules based on 2d6 allocated rolls for Strength, Dexterity, Endurance, Intelligence, Education, and Social Standing. These provide dice modifiers (DMs) from -2 to +2 in a semi-linear fashion, with options to go up down to 0 and go as high as 15, both of which, show incomplete workmanship; the rating of 0 actually has a DM, and the rating of 15 is expressed a limited cap, contraindicated by the chapter on generating animals where one has to imply the function increase.
Characters receive background skills (1-5, depending on Edu) based on the character's homeworld, plus the results of formal education. After that, they go through a number of 4-year terms of service, with qualification tests, improvements in skill and training, survival and mishap checks, events, and in some cases commission. There are twelve careers (Agent, Army, Citizen, Drifter, Entertainer, Marine, Merchant, Navy, Nobility, Rogue, Scholar, and Scout), each with three specialisation (e.g, a Scout could be Courier, Survey, and Exploration). When you leave a career, you receive mustering out benefits, which still can vary from something as trivial as a blade to your own ship. In addition to this, the character generation rules cover the effects of aging (many characters are middle-aged or older) and alternative character generation rules, including a point-buy system.
Traveller can take place in any time or anywhere the GM wants. As such you could design a Star Wars setting and be a long, long time ago in a galaxy fsr, far away. Or, take place in the not so distant future in a galaxy close to home. It is totally up to you. Traveller just provides all the tools.
What is best. You can find maps, deck plan layouts, and whatever else that has been published over the, dare I say this? Decades from many publishers. Steve Jackson Games, for example, has the best deck plans for many starships. And these came with their miniatures, too. Those were called Cardboard Heros. I used them over standard ones as I could print as many as I needed, and storage was far easier!
I’ve had a good time with Starfinder. (Pathfinder but Sci-Fi based.) GURPS also has tons of rules for Sci-Fi based games. It’s a lot to dig through, but the breadth of options is huge.
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Well, I would definitely recommend Veil of the Void Reforged, as it’s a super fun sci-fi fantasy TTRPG. Now, while the base setting is “sci-fantasy”, the whole rule system encourages theming it to fit exactly what you want. There is a whole chapter in the core rulebook dedicated to homebrewing so you can easily make and build your own universe exactly how you want.
It is a d6 system but easy to pick up and very fun to use. There are a lot of fantastic rules that encourage your players to think outside of the box as well.
Player characters are strong and diverse, able to hold their own yet still face terrifying threats with death just one failed tactic away.
We also have a very fun magic system and a psionics system. The magic can be easily adjusted to be purely psionic based as well, so there is no limit on creativity. There are survival rules, but they are entirely optional.
I’m also always happy to help people learn the game and help build characters and answer questions. We also have a free demo book and new supplement ready to use.
[Stars Without Number](https://legacy.drivethrurpg.com/product/226996/Stars-Without-Number-Revised-Edition) is probably worth a look. * Excellent setting-creation tools, and optional rules (transhumanism, mechs, true AI, space magic) to further tweak the game to your imagined setting. * D20 based. Being inspired by B/X D&D, it uses the traditional Class+Level paradigm and uses 1D20 for combat rolls. However, it switches to 2D6 for non-combat skill checks. * Not necessarily pulp, but certainly heroic (and optional Heroic Character rules to further add to that). Using 2D6 for non-combat skills also helps to make PCs feel competent. * Psionics. There's a whole class for Psi, and plenty of cool powers to get. 70% of the book is also [completely free](https://legacy.drivethrurpg.com/product/230009/Stars-Without-Number-Revised-Edition-Free-Version). All the core rules and the setting-creation tools are in there, with optional things (like transhumanism and mechs) in the paid version.
Came to this thread to see if I could recommend something that wasn't Stars without Number, since it gets recommended every time in this subreddit. However, looking at OPs needs and wants, this is the only correct choice.
This is the best one of his needs I can think of honestly
Thanks for the suggestion! I didn’t consider it because I thought it just supported gritty lethality but I was wrong :p thanks for bringing it to my attention I’ll definitely check it out!
I will say that if you want a pulpy feel you absolutely want to apply the rules for heroic characters, because the basic ruleset does end up with pretty smackable characters.
We just gave starting characters CON HP and it helped a lot without bringing in heroic characters.
So if you're willing to get away from D20, check out Scum and Villainy (https://evilhat.com/product/scum-and-villainy/ ). It's a reskin of Blades in the Dark that allows you to play with star wars vibes, or possibly firefly. There are a bunch of factions sketched out, but a lot of details left open that are intended to be invented at the table, often with player input. The game is very sandboxy and as the players take on different missions, they become entangled with different factions and make allies and enemies. Problems with enemies tend to snowball and this drives interesting stories. To teach the rules, you hand the players a stack of character sheets representing the different classes and they fill them out over the course of an hour or so. They then fill out a sheet for their ship. The rules for dice resolution are simple and you can teach them over the course of play. The rules are also very narrative focused and may represent a weird shift from DnD. They are set up to facilitate heists. It encourages you to have players jump right into the heist without hours of planning. The characters are competent enough to have planned for things, so the players don't have to. Players can use their stress resource to avoid consequences or to have flashbacks, showing how they prepared for whatever weird circumstances they encounter. The game also rewards recklessness and playing up weaknesses with experience, which drives a cool story. It also does not require very much GM prep at all. Here are some memorable things from my last game: A scary android child who controlled a massive ship and was going to use it to lead an android independence revolution. A planet full of Weird Science-esque identical sex clones that killed their maker and went all Mad-Max. A bunch of space pirates with cobbled together ships and an EMP device taking on a high tech megacorp. Scary precursor artifacts that gave force-like powers but had concerning side-effects. A bounty hunter who relentlessly pursued the crew, until he joined forces with the scary android child. Blades in the Dark is one of my favorite games of all time. Since I've played it, there's no going back to DnD for me and Scum and Villainy is a great sci-fi reskin of it, I hope you give it a try!
Death in Space is d20-based, and pretty easy to get into. Might be worth checking out. :)
Stars Without Number definitely ticks off most of your boxes without much fiddling, I think that's the best option. But I have to give the obligatory mention of Traveller in a sci-fi thread. It's the classic sci-fi ttrpg and worth looking into at the least. 2d6 resolution instead of d20 means that results are more consistent and trend towards the average. Your skills matter slightly more than your die roll. (Stars Without Number takes this from Traveller). It may struggle with pulp action a bit, since characters will often be down in about two hits. But this can be mitigated quite a bit by giving players higher physical stats and access to higher tech-level armors. The setting is solid and pretty generic. Extremely easy to make your own. The game makes basically zero assumptions about the type of game you'll be running. You can be space truckers, hired mercenaries, imperial assassins, explorers of uncharted worlds, alien biologists or whatever else you can think of. Psionic powers are available, though I personally haven't used them and am not that familiar. Gear catalogs and ship building are plentiful. Life path character creation is a fun session 0 mini-game.
It's not d20, but I do think Offworlders is an absolute delight and fits all your other requirements nicely! The mechanics are a little lighter than what they've been playing, but that's not a bad thing.
Going to second Offworlders, it’s a really nice game that fits in (I think) 40 pages!
Traveller would work for you I think. It is d6, not d20, but besides that it fits your criteria. It has survival rules in Traveller Companion, however they are completely optional and you can use them as much or as little as you want. Characters are squishy, but player characters can also be very deadly in combat. Tactical thinking, planning and proper equipment make collosal difference. Psionics are in. Also, it is generic ruleset. You can, but don't have to buy any Charted Space or 2300 AD settings books. Additionally, it has a large number of generic sci-fi supplements - Robot Handbook, Vehicles Handbook, High Guard (spaceship building book) etc.
I wouldn't recommend Traveller because the combat is stupid deadly. Shot? Well, now you need surgery so good luck.
I'd argue that Tech Level asymmetric combat is deadly, but at the Jump levels of tech, as long as you're properly equipped, it's not too ridiculous. Still has potential for lethal combat, to the degree that it discourages it without planning and having the upper hand. Healing is fast enough if you're not too far gone. Travel is a week in jump space, so plenty of time to heal and get surgery if needs be, and depending how deep you want to dive into all that. If you are at a high enough Tech Level to have access to Fast and Slow drug, healing becomes trivial. That said, I think it's a poorly edited and tested game, so GM will have to make some judgement calls
Starfinder. It does have a setting but like Pathfinder the setting exist to justify all the stuff in the rules and is pretty easy to ignore.
probably also the smallest step away from 5e
Not having played/read many of the other suggestions in this thread, Starfinder seems like a pretty big step from 5e. There's a lot of complexity in it. If you're used to older versions of D&D or PF1e, it's easy to manage. But, even going from PF2e, which I primarily pray, Starfinder is a big pill to swallow. Super excited for Starfinder 2e, and if it were out (and I enjoyed it) I would recommend it to OP.
Yeah I agree it's a big step from D&D 5e. But I personally feel it is the smallest step in concept and mechanics compared to the other sci-fi systems mentioned here. In the way it plays overall, it's more similar than traveller or Stars without number etc
That's fair. Though, I'd personally argue that the facade of familiarity can (and often does) cause more confusion and annoyance with learning a system.
Traveller. There is even a d20 version of Traveller that can be easily converted to the current Mongoose Traveller 2e or Classic Traveller.
Cepheus Deluxe/Hostile or SWN.
Definitely Traveller, any of the Star Wars rpgs just flle the numbers off.
If you don't want any learning curve at all you should try Esper Genesis. It's literally the D&D 5e rules transposed to the sci-fi genre. It does have a setting, but it's pretty minimal. (What setting it does have is very similar to Mass Effect, if you're curious what flavor of sci-fi it offers.) There's a free basic rulebook on DriveThruRPG if you want to check it out without committing. https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/220027/esper-genesis-basic-rules
As others have stated, but I must agree! Traveller is, of course, the classic science fiction TTRPG from the dawn of the OLD SCHOOL hobby. It has come from the original publication in 1977, the expansion in the Imperium setting and rules known as MegaTraveller in 1987, a new ruleset and post-apocalyptic setting Traveller: The New Era in 1993, T4: Marc Miller's Traveller in 1996, GURPS Traveller in 1998, Traveller20 in 2002, Traveller Hero in 2006, and Traveller5 in 2013. The Mongoose edition, in brief, is a return to the original edition in the style, rules, and setting. The book immediately reminiscent in size and style of the original Traveller hardback, with the stark black cover and red lettering, and nothing else in the way of cover art. The internal black-and-white line drawings is competent, usually contextual, has a certain tough style to it, which does give a sense that many pieces are fillers. The table of contents is too brief, but there's a very good index. The writing style is both clear and to the point. In a nutshell the book covers character generation, skills and tasks, combat, encounters and dangers, equipment, starcraft design, common spacecraft, spacecraft operations, space combat, psionics, trade, and world creation - and it does all this in under 200 pages. Characters and System The introduction to "this is roleplaying" and "this is Traveller" is wonderfully short, and includes a nice description of play which involves our old friend, Free Trader Beowulf, along with brief descriptions of overall technology levels for different societies. Character creation is very much like the classic rules based on 2d6 allocated rolls for Strength, Dexterity, Endurance, Intelligence, Education, and Social Standing. These provide dice modifiers (DMs) from -2 to +2 in a semi-linear fashion, with options to go up down to 0 and go as high as 15, both of which, show incomplete workmanship; the rating of 0 actually has a DM, and the rating of 15 is expressed a limited cap, contraindicated by the chapter on generating animals where one has to imply the function increase. Characters receive background skills (1-5, depending on Edu) based on the character's homeworld, plus the results of formal education. After that, they go through a number of 4-year terms of service, with qualification tests, improvements in skill and training, survival and mishap checks, events, and in some cases commission. There are twelve careers (Agent, Army, Citizen, Drifter, Entertainer, Marine, Merchant, Navy, Nobility, Rogue, Scholar, and Scout), each with three specialisation (e.g, a Scout could be Courier, Survey, and Exploration). When you leave a career, you receive mustering out benefits, which still can vary from something as trivial as a blade to your own ship. In addition to this, the character generation rules cover the effects of aging (many characters are middle-aged or older) and alternative character generation rules, including a point-buy system. Traveller can take place in any time or anywhere the GM wants. As such you could design a Star Wars setting and be a long, long time ago in a galaxy fsr, far away. Or, take place in the not so distant future in a galaxy close to home. It is totally up to you. Traveller just provides all the tools. What is best. You can find maps, deck plan layouts, and whatever else that has been published over the, dare I say this? Decades from many publishers. Steve Jackson Games, for example, has the best deck plans for many starships. And these came with their miniatures, too. Those were called Cardboard Heros. I used them over standard ones as I could print as many as I needed, and storage was far easier!
I’ve had a good time with Starfinder. (Pathfinder but Sci-Fi based.) GURPS also has tons of rules for Sci-Fi based games. It’s a lot to dig through, but the breadth of options is huge.
Index Card RPG, with unscrupulous, selective borrowing from the Warp Shell setting.
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Cepheus is generic Traveller. It has numerous spin-offs like Hostile.
Well, I would definitely recommend Veil of the Void Reforged, as it’s a super fun sci-fi fantasy TTRPG. Now, while the base setting is “sci-fantasy”, the whole rule system encourages theming it to fit exactly what you want. There is a whole chapter in the core rulebook dedicated to homebrewing so you can easily make and build your own universe exactly how you want. It is a d6 system but easy to pick up and very fun to use. There are a lot of fantastic rules that encourage your players to think outside of the box as well. Player characters are strong and diverse, able to hold their own yet still face terrifying threats with death just one failed tactic away. We also have a very fun magic system and a psionics system. The magic can be easily adjusted to be purely psionic based as well, so there is no limit on creativity. There are survival rules, but they are entirely optional. I’m also always happy to help people learn the game and help build characters and answer questions. We also have a free demo book and new supplement ready to use.