At long last, I've played my first game of Star Frontiers. <div>All the wondering around my cousin's old boxed set, all the tentative conversations about playing the game. At last I've finally played.</div><div><br /></div><div>Although... with all the house rules and patches through the Star Frontiersman I'm not sure how much we're playing Star Frontiers vs. some mutant aberration of the game. Nevertheless, I thought it kicked ass, and can't wait to play again.</div><div><br /></div><div>What we're using:</div><div><br /></div><div>- The setting was brainstormed by the players in the first two character creation sessions, so we're making our own universe and races.</div><div><br /></div><div>- A Skilled Frontier. We're using the rules from the Star Frontiersman #9 for skills, skill advancement, and ability advancement. We've tweaked untrained skill checks to encourage characters to try anything. Skills that require specialized training can't be used untrained, but everything else (Stealth for example) can be attempted untrained. I generally like the balance of the Difficulty Classes in D&D 4e (found in the Rules Compendium by dividing each Difficulty Class by 20), which are 60% for an easy task, 40% for a moderate one, and 10% for a hard one. The Star Frontiersman #16 has a very similar rule; assuming that the average score is 50, the Star Frontiersman calculates adjustments for easy, average, and hard checks at 55% (extremely close to D&D), 40% (exactly D&D), and 25% (higher than D&D). To make SF and D&D completely analogous, I used modifiers of +35% for easy tasks, +15% for average tasks, and -15% for Hard tasks. So far, so good.</div><div><br /></div><div>- Experience Points. The Skilled Frontier article makes it really easy to advance in skills, and I think that's a good thing. Regardless, I can sort of imagine the players instantly and automatically maxing out their prime skills and then sniffing around for other stuff to raise (stuff they're not as interested in). I've been playing some indie games lately--Dogs in the Vineyard and Apocalypse World--where skills are increased in pretty interesting ways and usually depending on what happens in the game. Last night I experimented with assigning 1 XP per interesting skill use, where the skill in some way factored into the story regardless of success or failure. This point of XP is mapped to the skill that was used. I also assigned "character points," which are freeform XP assigned for good role-playing and other stuff. The result is, the characters are the sum of what they do and what they pursue. And they get XP to put toward skills of their choice. I figure an average of 4-7 XP per session.</div><div><br /></div><div>- Ablative Damage. I'm experimenting with using this for PCs because I like the way it increases the tension of the game. I think I'll use it with major NPCs too, but mostly with NPCs I'll just use the hit locations and damages in the Star Frontiersman #2. It would be a nightmare keeping track of those little boxes for <u><i>every</i></u> baddie on the board. The method presented in the SF #2 means I <i>usually</i> just have to keep track of when an adversary has been hit for over half his stamina. Then apply effects.</div><div><br /></div><div>- Humans don't get a special ability in SF, but I sorta want to encourage a human-centric universe. I've taken a page from D&D and given them an extra starting skill<i> or</i> additional skill level (player's choice). </div><div><br /></div><div>Hm, I think I'm using other stuff too, but it's been a week and I can't remember. Had to call off session 2 because two of us (including me, the GM) were sick. But I hope to return next week.</div><div><br /></div><div>At any rate, congratulations to everyone who's contributed articles to the Star Frontiersman and kept this game alive. Before I randomly stumbled across this site, I was prepared to play the game as-is, customizing as I went. I'd say the Star Frontiersman has saved me several years of work in that regard and it's made the game sing. </div><div><br /></div><div>In conclusion, I think my favorite thing about Star Frontiers at the moment is its minimalist and modular nature. At its core, it's very, very simple. The Skilled Frontier rules make it even simpler to run on the fly, they make characters infinitely customizable. Since the character sheets aren't clogged with mechanics, the players aren't looking to those mechanics to figure out what to do; they have two or three skills written down and a few ability scores--the rest is imagination and make-believe. In our session, people were ready to try anything. They didn't feel restricted or stymied. Man, it was such a great time. Very much looking forward to playing again. </div><div><br /></div><div>Thanks, everyone who's contributed, for your awesome work.</div>
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