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Cypher System Stats for Star Trek Starships

August 22, 2017 /

The Cypher System core rules has four stats for Star Ships: Level, Weapon Systems, Health, and Damage.

I like how Ryan Chaddok converted the common Star Trek ships (using the most excellent Last Unicorn Games book as a source).

There’s a starship vehicles table on page 255 of the CSR.  Importantly, it has Levels and a column called Weapon Systems, indicating the number of different target the ship can attack at once. Looking at the starships in the Star Trek game by Last Unicorn ships happen to be on a size scale from 1 to 10, ranging from shuttlepod at 1 to Romulan Warbirds at 10.  This would seem to be a perfect way to convert:  Size = Level.  Rather than going all the way up to 36 Weapon Systems as the CSR does, let’s just go with Level +1 for ships above Level 3.

ShipLevelWeapon SystemsHealthDamage
Romulan Warbird10113010
Federation Galaxy class89248
Klingon Negh’Var class89248
Ferengi D’Kora Maurader78217
Cardassian Galor class67186
Romulan Scout3193
Shuttlecraft2162
Shuttlepod1030

Source

Check out Ryan Chaddok’s blog and also The Translation Codex for Cypher elements you can fold into your custom campaigns.

Star Trek and Star Wars Cypher System Pregens

August 18, 2017 /

I’ve been thinking about pre-gens for potential Cypher System Star Trek and Star Wars one-shots. Nerdarchy has a great post which stats out the most popular characters in both franchises. This will serve as a great way to create pregens (just take the character sentences, and make them all Tier 1 characters).

The Cypher Rules System ranks character power in Tiers from 1 to 6. (For Star Wars, the Jawa that sold Uncle Owen R2-D2 and C-3PO would be Tier 1. Darth Vader would be Tier 6.)

Here is the current conversion –

STAR WARS

  • Leia Organa – Tier 5 Noble Speaker who Defends the Weak
  • Han Solo – Tier 4 Brash Explorer who Looks for Trouble
  • Chewbacca – Tier 3 Strong Explorer who Stands Like a Bastion
  • Lando Calrissian – Tier 4 Lucky Speaker who Fights with Panache
  • Boba Fett – Tier 4 Sharp-eyed Warrior who Masters Weaponry
  • Poe Dameron – Tier 3 Swift Warrior who Pilots Starcrafts
  • Finn – Tier 4 Virtuous Explorer who Never Says Die
  • Captain Phasma – Tier 3 Calm Explorer who Metes Out Justice

STAR TREK

  • Jean-Luc Picard – Tier 5 Resilient Speaker who Masters Defense
  • William T. Riker – Tier 4 Clever Warrior who Defends the Weak
  • Worf – Tier 4 Strong-willed Warrior who Hunts with Great Skill
  • Data – Tier 3 Mechanical Adept who Entertains
  • James T. Kirk – Tier 6 Impulsive Warrior who Leads
  • Spock – Tier 5 Intelligent Adept who Calculates the Incalculable
  • Odo – Tier 3 Perceptive Adept who Solves Mysteries
  • Kathryn Janeway – Tier 4 Driven Speaker who Leads

Here’s the full post.

Polls Results for Favorite Star Wars Edition

August 17, 2017 /

Yesterdays announcement of a 30th year anniversary reprint of “Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game” has prompted some discussion of which Star Wars RPG edition was the best. I did some polling this last year and have some interesting insights on this topic.

Favorite Star Wars RPG Sytem (d6, d20, FFG, etc.)

I ran a poll here which asked “For those of you who’ve run or played a Star Wars RPG campaign in the last four years, what system did you use? By campaign, I mean 5 or more game sessions.” The population I polled were the few thousand people who follow me on Google+. Here were the results.

Favorite Star Wars d6 Edition (1e, 2e, 2e R&E)

I then ran a poll here looking at the different d6 editions. I asked “Which d6 ‘Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game’ edition is your overall favorite? (Whether to run or to play; I’ll assume 1e includes rules errata or retroclones, and 2e Revised and Expanded includes REUP).” The population I polled was the Star Wars d6 Google+ group. Here were the results.

 

Conclusions

There is probably some selection bias (for those into statistically significant polling techniques) but nonetheless the results are interesting.

Generally, even though it’s out of print, Star Wars WEG d6 still has a very strong following and is for a large population, their favorite Star Wars RPG ever.

About half the folks active in the Google+ Star Wars d6 community like Star Wars WEG d6 like the final edition (2e Revised & Expanded) the best, but the rest of the folks like the earlier d6 versions better.

Anecdotally, most of the Con games I’ve seen that run WEG d6 use the easier, simpler 1e version (which doesn’t have a Wild Die, has a much simpler skills list, etc.). I suspect casual gamers like the simpler system.

So is the FFG 1e reprint the harbinger of fuller WEG d6 support? I doubt it. It’s likely ‘one and done’, meant mostly to sell as a sourvenir.

For my part though, this one two-book set is all I need though. The rest of the material I already own or can get off eBay. My players can buy an in-print copy to play Star Wars WEG 1e, which is truly remarkable, and will enable me to run a  Star Wars WEG 1e campaign, something that previous to this announcement was very hard to do!

— Stan

 

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