was a science fiction role playing game published in 1980 by Fantasy Games Unlimited
. It was written by Edward Simbalist
, Mark Ratner1
, and Phil McGregor. Space Opera
was written in response to the original Traveller
and its perceived short comings. Edward Simbalist also produced the medieval role playing game Chivalry & Sorcery
, a fantasy role playing game with a highly complex combat/skill system that tried to stay truer to its medieval
roots than the Lord of the Rings/Conan
. Role playing game
designers, like mail bomb
ers, tend to stick to systems and methods they are comfortable with, and Space Opera
matched Simbalist's design philosophy.
was, of course, a wildly popular sci fi role playing game but many viewed its popularity was owing more to it being, for a while, the only (sci fi) game in town than the appeal of its system and its scope. To those who cut their teeth on a D&D system, with experience points
, levels, lots of probability matrices, rule options, and monsters, original Traveller
seemed rather minimalist. As well, those wanting to recreate Star Wars
in mom's basement found Traveller
a hard system to adapt. The Traveller
universe was a pretty lonely place, with humans being the only intelligent species. Alien races were absent, alien worlds seemed to be populated by indigenous life no more complicated, or dangerous, than a tomato plant. THE RAVENOUS SPACE CUCUMBERS OF TRAKEN IV KILLED MY AUNT AND UNCLE! THEY AND ALL THEIR GREEN SEEDED KIND WILL PAY! Those wanting to battle wampa
ice creatures, well, they had a huge whack of work before them. And forget about droid
Another limitation of the original Traveller
was starship development in the core rules didn't much go beyond constructing scout and merchant ships. Those with visions of clashing fleets of Imperial star destroyer
s, Blacksun battle wagons rushing in at ramming speed
, cloaked no-ship
s slipping past enemy picket
s to deliver a full spread of phase-quark torpedoes upon the Ishtari
Hive's flag carrier, and nimble Lord High Executioner
frigates charging through massive fusillades of sun-hot plasma
delivered up by asteroid-based Gorgon
area defense cannons to score a desperate hit on the Royal Fleet Yards of Mon Hothamon, well, you were pretty shit out of luck
with your little set of Traveller
books and your crew of mustered out Space Marines armed with surplus needle gun
s and a free B-Grade space liner ticket to Rigel 7. Didn't you look like king asshole?
resolved to give gamers a system and universe which they could mould into any popular sci fi milieu, be it Star Wars
, Larry Niven
's Known Space
, E.E. "Doc" Smith
, Battlestar Galactica
, or, if you were so damaged, Galactica 1980
. It would also create a system D&D players were familiar with and wanted: different races, experience levels, character classes, psionics
, and the like. As well, it would be a "complete" system. Ha! What role playing system is ever complete? There's always another book to buy...
I know. By complete I mean you've got everything you really need: character construction, aliens, monsters, droids, and large starship construction/combat.
Critics who liked Traveller
's lean approach with its emphasis on talking or wandering around things like a space station to figure out the space station is really a tesseract
, well, they found the system bloated, complicated, and too technical. But then, for many, that's part of the appeal of a sci fi RPG. People want to jump into repulser
driven desert skiffs with a dual mounted plasma repeater behind the rumble seat
. The wide open expanses of the Great Ordungian Sand Ocean are a place where any team of Royal Lasikian Space Marine
(Elite Class) would be foolish to cross without anything less than two fire linked plasma repeaters watching their six. And you wanted hard stats and rules for performance enhancing drug
s. Space Opera
had them too.
, like many role playing games of its day, was published in a boxed format. The box contained two 92-page booklets. Book 1 covered character generation and psionics. Book 2 covered equipment, starships, combat, and "universe building". Oh baby.
Character creation was rather complicated. Attributes ranged from 1-19. Attributes included Physique
(body size/mass), Strength, Constitution, Agility, Dexterity, Empathy
, Intelligence, Psionic, Bravery, and Leadership. In addition one generated three aptitudes attributes that determined how well a character learned certain skills. These attributes were General Technical, Mechanical, and Electronic. One also determined your home world's gravity and environment. All these contributed to ability score adjustments.
Finally, one picked a race. In Space Opera
one could be a human, transhumans (a veiled Vulcan
race), Pithecine (a monkey/wookie
like race), Canine (dog men), Feline (kzinti
duh although in later game supplements the cat race got saddled with the totally stupid name "mekpurr", a kind of sophisticated technology using feline race), Ursoides (bear
s...as in real bears not hairy gay men), Avians (bird men, hello Flash Gordon
!) and Saurian (warm blooded space lizards... this was before the V
miniseries so maybe these were for gamers itching to play a sleestak
After that, one did a process not unlike Traveller
ing out process. You picked a service, made some rolls to determine your character's career, and then you mustered out with cash and surplus equipment plus all important skills.
Combat was generally a four step process. You first determine if your character scored a hit with his chosen weapon. Things like range, size of the target, movement, and amount of cover come into play. If one scored a hit, then one rolls to determine hit location. After hit location, one then determines if the attack penetrated the armor. Finally, damage is determined.
is no longer in print, it went out of print with the demise of Fantasy Games Unlimited. The company itself kind of, sort of, still exists. Founder Scott Bizar
runs a hobby shop in Arizona
under the same name. At one point he tried to re-release Space Opera
without the consent of the original authors. The original authors, needless to say, were rather pissed and mystified by his actions. The original authors Edward Simbalist, A. Mark Ratner, and Phil McGregor were not green horns and retained their rights to the game, although not the name of the game itself. Bizar, in an attempt to prevent his rights from lapsing, did an unauthorized reprint. In the mid-90s, long after Fantasy Games Unlimited got out of game publishing, Simbalist et al asked Bizar if they could buy the full rights to the game so they could republish it on their own (Simbalist was able to secure the rights to Chivalry & Sorcery
and get it re-released by another company). Bizar said "sure, you can have the full rights for $100,000." They laughed at that as you could write your own RPG from scratch for far less. They felt $10,000 was a more realistic fee for a 15 year old game.
Mark Ratner's participation appears to have been minimal. His game miniature rule set Space Marines
was used as the basis.