I suppose, Space 1999 might work as a reskinned Star Trek, if you view the moon as a sort of drifting spaceship and the Moonbase crew as fulfilling the same sort of roles but with more scientists than security, plus a smattering of aliens - how great was Maya! And of course, no pesky Prime Directive.
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The core problem is that you have to move interstellar distances between one episode and the next, but only have a limited time to check out a planet during the episode – which needs some sort of superscience or magic because there’s no conventional physical process that’ll provide it. The early episodes of Stargate Atlantis tried something very similar: we’re stuck on this spaceship, and every so often it jumps somewhere at random, so we have to decide before the next jump whether to abandon ship and go to the planet of the week.
Thinking back, there were many great sci fi stories and ideas in lots of those 70s shows that would make great storylines or ideas for any sci fi campaign. Was difficult then to pull in ideas from recent (at the time) shows, but now is ideal to dust off plots from classic 70s/80s sci fi. I did manage to smuggle in a couple of Sapphire and Steel plots in late 80s gaming, but the guys I played with were all fans of Doctor Who and Star Trek (TOS and TNG) so those might have been spotted.
Actually, a Call of Cthulhu reworking of Sapphire and Steel might work fantastically for a GM and two players.
True, but if you want an episodic campaign it would be seem pretty suitable, especially if you have a bigger group of players who aren’t all present every session.
As a campaign I agree, it works very nicely. What I’m trying to get at is that (at least to appeal to me) you need an explicit justification for the Big Idea, rather than just saying “oh, space is like that” when we know very well that it isn’t.
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Great, now I want to stat Immortal Brian Blessed or Nightmare fuel Bernard Cribbins robots.
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How do you get “pass a new planet”? The version of Space 1889 I owned was set in a version of our own solar system, without interstellar travel. In fact if I recall correctly its ether ships couldn’t get outside the asteroid belt. I don’t think there were any new planets to be had.
I ran a campaign set in that world, focused on the adventures of a Victorian version of the Legion of Super-Heroes. It was rather fun, though it had some player/player conflict that was NOT fun. I enjoyed adding my own tweaks to nineteenth century history, particularly having Byron survive to become king of an independent Greece and bringing in Babbage to modernize its economy. In fact it was one of the influences that inspired me to offer to write GURPS Steampunk. I particularly had fun thinking about the implications of a luminiferous ether . . .
But the game mechanics was terrible! My players were constantly frustrated with it. It was one of several games that I decided after one campaign I would never run again.
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You might be mixing up Space 1889 and Space 1999 - two different “universes”.
I never found a copy of Space 1889 but the concept seemed fun yes. Hearing about the mechanics though I’m glad now that I didn’t. The mechanics for the 80s versions of Doctor Who and Star Trek were clunky too, which is also why the D6 Star Wars worked so well, being easy to explain and run, and fast to play.
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Yes, I clearly am. I hardly even remember Space 1999, and my brain filled in the familiar number. And it seemed plausible to describe the etheric physics of Space 1889 as utter rubbish . . .
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