In your opinion, what PbtA game has the best large spaceship combat rules?

In your opinion, what PbtA game has the best large spaceship combat rules?

In your opinion, what PbtA game has the best large spaceship combat rules? Why? In particular, what game does the best job at making sure that every player has something to do during combat? I guess this question can also go beyond PbtA games.

20 thoughts on “In your opinion, what PbtA game has the best large spaceship combat rules?”

  1. I’ll throw a vote in for Andrew Medeiros’s in-development Battlestar World. Mind you, I haven’t actually played many sci-fi PbtA games, but I really like where Drew is going with the space combat in his. It feels action-packed, but still fairly abstracted. The moves ensure all characters, from pilots to officers to engineers, can contribute and have something to do.

  2. I’ll throw a vote in for Andrew Medeiros’s in-development Battlestar World. Mind you, I haven’t actually played many sci-fi PbtA games, but I really like where Drew is going with the space combat in his. It feels action-packed, but still fairly abstracted. The moves ensure all characters, from pilots to officers to engineers, can contribute and have something to do.

  9. (Non PbtA) Swashbucklers of the 7 Skies had a great naval battle system. It was for fantasy flying ships but I guess the principle is the same. The players picked a captain. The captain assigned roles to the other players (helm, gunnery, repelling boarders etc), they rolled against a GM-set target number, and any successes they got generated dice for a pool that the captain rolled to combat the enemy ship. Sounds complicated. Totally wasnt. Everyone felt like they had something to do, with everything funnelling down into the captains roll.

  10. (Non PbtA) Swashbucklers of the 7 Skies had a great naval battle system. It was for fantasy flying ships but I guess the principle is the same. The players picked a captain. The captain assigned roles to the other players (helm, gunnery, repelling boarders etc), they rolled against a GM-set target number, and any successes they got generated dice for a pool that the captain rolled to combat the enemy ship. Sounds complicated. Totally wasnt. Everyone felt like they had something to do, with everything funnelling down into the captains roll.

  11. Andrew Medeiros That’s pretty interesting. It took me a while to get it. Am I reading it correctly that a player can take any fictionally appropriate action and on a hit will make progress towards victory in the battle?

  12. Andrew Medeiros That’s pretty interesting. It took me a while to get it. Am I reading it correctly that a player can take any fictionally appropriate action and on a hit will make progress towards victory in the battle?

  13. The rules in Mounted Combat could work for spaceships (just as they work with naval ships); however, I suspect if you really cared about spaceship combat a lot, you’d want a bit more meat in them.

  14. The rules in Mounted Combat could work for spaceships (just as they work with naval ships); however, I suspect if you really cared about spaceship combat a lot, you’d want a bit more meat in them.

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