This is pretty much my go-to system to use as a baseline, but I have been working on some hacks and homebrews to make characters more powerful like newer editions for the sake of longer story-driven campaigns. But that's the beauty of TTRPGs -- you can do whatever's best for any given campaign, you don't have to use every rule every time. They're more like guidelines, anyway.

Lots of valuable advice in there! Always fun to have a peek in other soloists' treasure box. Thanks!

How "rail-roaded" the adventure needs to be? I mean do you improvise as player and GM as well?

Really good!

I used Emperor Cartagia from B5 once, that was a BLAST.

well my twisted brain seems to do ok, but i have no problem "borrowing" from other modules or game books :) i then insert them as encounters, not really over all game story. thanks for the vid another great info session, cheers, keep em rollin

Great ideas, John! Thanks for the suggestions.

Good episode with solid advice :)

Solid way to farm for ideas

Excellent and very actionable advice, with clear examples! I do the same thing. I find locations and characters to be the most important - you can extrapolate many situations from just mixing them up and finding relations!

For your Star Trek games how many of the crew do you stat out? Do you just do it on an as needed basis as the story goes along? Do you use the same “attributes”for all characters/games or customize them? Do you roll for their numbers or assign them? Good video by the way!

Catching up on your videos!

working on a solo component for my game also, this will help ty

Thank you for this video! I really appreciate the details. I don't have a lot of space for solo play either - so I have a little A5 binder with all my commonly used tables! Also, a fun tip for battle-mats - get a paper sheet protector, and you can put in any map and draw over top with markers and erase afterwards! I've even done some DIY and converted a portable snakes & ladders mini-kit into a pocketable erasable magnetic battle grid.

The "Linux" of DnD.

I wish more of our solo people out there would do what you just did thanks!!! I'm really struggling with this and your ideas and set up were helpful

I have never tried to play TTRPG solo…but you’ve got a nice setup, sir!

Great ideas, John! I haven't done solo play except Fighting Fantasy days, but I may look into it. Thanks, John!

He-Man mini FTW!

These are good tips! I have plenty of notebooks that I can use.

I'm very interested in seeing your Star Wars homebrew rules.

In hardcover I'd gladly drop 20 bucks the way I have bought a few other titles. This compares favourably with for example Bare Bones Roleplaying Game.

I play in a campaign that I am writing, and Bob runs. This game is so streamlined and easy to pick up. I play D&D and DCC. This is my favorite game system, HANDS DOWN.

It looks fun. Good overview, John.

looks like a good intro to rpgs

FASA had the trek license for a couple of years

Good of you to cover niche content

Great video. That Kozza looks like a menace!

coolio thanks sir appreciate the vid

I agree that TSR didn't really playtest this much, if at all. They wanted it out the door ASAP to compete against Traveller. That was our assessment forty years ago.

Very nice overview, John.

Star Frontiers was the 2nd-most-played RPG among my teen friend groups in the 80s (D&D being of course #1). I remember it being a great introduction for non-gamers, since sci-fi was a more approachable genre, and the percentile dice system more intuitive than AD&D's myriad action-resolution mini games. And the Basic intro game was a wonderful transition tool for bridging that board game/roleplaying game gap. The most enthusiastic group lasted into the Star Hawks release and a few years after. We ditched the far-off frontier for a loose Larry Niven/Jason Of Star Command pastiche, with the asteroid belt as the frontier (kept the aliens & equipment). We ended up with alternating RPG and space combat sessions. Individual hero characters, and named vessels. Including some that would acquire their own "character", and maybe even named crew members - assuming they survived that long, our fleets had *massive* losses and casualties! Thank you for invoking some good memories! I'm tempted to get a reprint to introduce to some current friends now

Nice! I laughed at the Taylor Swift comparison. And it's valid. With anything, like it or not, reaching omnipresence can be overwhelming for some people. People like me, for certain.

Nice, I enjoyed this one. No "fave" independent games - via the John definition? :) Thanks for sharing!

I can not overstate how much it helps us indies when someone plays our games. I have a little sci-fi RPG called The Nullam Project, which is cheap as dirt (free for PDF) and only 16 pages. The best marketing I can get for it is to have someone enjoy it and tell others. Something I do notice in the indie scene is that a lot of people who want to play indies only want to play the handful of "big" indies, which leaves many of us smaller developers our in the rain.

Agree

All cool reason

Good video, John…but wow you poked the bear!

I'd rather port the Planet of the Apes themes and tropes into my Cha'alt campaign setting.

I got into D&D long after this era (mid 80s and then fell in love with the RC, blah, blah, blah), but found myself ‘going backwards’ into OD&D by way of S&W…..but WB:FMAG has become my go-to in most cases! If not, it’s RISUS or Fighting Fantasy rpg iterations like Troika! or (far moreso) Spellzard! (Incidentally a game you’d likely really dig and ought to review actually). Thanks for reviewing and giving a good space to WB:FMAG as it deserves such!

Nice review looks like an interesting game. Going to share this

Great game, John. As you said, the system was perfect for online play. 👍🏻

FAESRIP (FACE-RIP!) is now my favourite acromym of all time.

I loved playing The Bolt!

Just to mention there are a couple of fairly active Facebook groups for people to meet other players and fan adventures etc.

Recently I bought the RPG its pretty good.

I love Star Frontiers, it is still my favourite system. Percentile rolls, you always know what your odds are. It has rules with combat modifiers to handle melee, ranged, vehicle and aerial combat all at once. For many decades it was kept alive by fans and there were even complete fan reprintings of the rules (allowable if no profit was made). But now that has been discontinued and WotC sells reprints of the originals. The game works great, but talk to fans to clean up a few errata. 9:00 The combat modifiers were learnable because not every type of modifier applied to the situation, and nothing much changed from round to round either. People could get used to the system and run combat that was both super-fast AND could adapt to new combat conditions (cover, cover removed, pursuing a target in a vehicle with fast movement that made shots harder, which made the thrill of connecting with a target in mid-air so much better). It really worked. Combat was buttery-smooth.

Enjoyed the video a lot. Homebrew Star Wars plus drawing from the old comics, what could be better?

Lots of fun, John! Thanks for running the game!

I gotta get into one of these games!!! Great recap!