I have been scouring the internet for information and homebrew on running a futuristic D&D campaign, but have been mostly unsuccessful, so I thought I'd post here to see if any of you know of any good resources for rules for things such as interplanetary travel, Star Wars-style weaponry, and other futuristic commodities? Thank you for your time!
Pathfinder first ed has a futuristic space age spinoff called Starfinder. There's Esper Genesis for 5E.
Both of these are pretty much separate games using only the most basic mechanics of the "parent". There's a good reason for that: the classes, equipment, feats, magic etc of a high/epic fantasy RPG typically aren't suitable for easy conversion to sci-fi or space opera settings. Most of that needs to be redone from the ground up to get it right. I'd very much suggest not relying on scrounging around for homebrew options, but investing either in a full-fledged rulebook for futuristic 5E (there are several either on the market or in production but not released yet) or picking up a different game altogether in the style you're looking for. Up to you though.
Easiest way to do it in 5e and maintain balance is probably to just reskin everything. A long bow becomes a rifle. A ballista is a ship-based cannon, Plate mail is power armor, orcs are Klingons, etc.
I have been scouring the internet for information and homebrew on running a futuristic D&D campaign, but have been mostly unsuccessful, so I thought I'd post here to see if any of you know of any good resources for rules for things such as interplanetary travel, Star Wars-style weaponry, and other futuristic commodities? Thank you for your time!
Why not just skip D&D and play the Star Wars RPG, or the Star Trek RPG, or any of the other SciFi based RPGs?
Easiest way to do it in 5e and maintain balance is probably to just reskin everything. A long bow becomes a rifle. A ballista is a ship-based cannon, Plate mail is power armor, orcs are Klingons, etc.
I agree. This is probably the cheapest and easiest way to do it. The GM can also offload the some of the reskinning work to the players, and reward them with inspiration or something whenever they creatively reskin something that the GM likes.
I have been scouring the internet for information and homebrew on running a futuristic D&D campaign, but have been mostly unsuccessful, so I thought I'd post here to see if any of you know of any good resources for rules for things such as interplanetary travel, Star Wars-style weaponry, and other futuristic commodities? Thank you for your time!
Why not just skip D&D and play the Star Wars RPG, or the Star Trek RPG, or any of the other SciFi based RPGs?
Probably more difficult to find a game and get it going. Some of us already have issues getting D&D going, so I imagine getting anything else going is going to be a lot more difficult.
Probably more difficult to find a game and get it going. Some of us already have issues getting D&D going, so I imagine getting anything else going is going to be a lot more difficult.
Honestly, I don't know if "let's play sci-fi D&D using homebrew borrowed from wherever we can find something because it's cheap and we know the basic mechanics already although everything's getting changed and I want to play sci-fi" is an easier sell than "let's play the also quite popular Star Wars RPG so everyone can be a Jedi or a Mandalorian bounty hunter or a lovable smuggler or the smuggler's furry sidekick" or "let's play Starfinder, which actually is sci-fi D&D even if it based on 1st edition Pathfinder but at least is a fully developed system by a company with a proven track record".
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Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
Probably more difficult to find a game and get it going. Some of us already have issues getting D&D going, so I imagine getting anything else going is going to be a lot more difficult.
Honestly, I don't know if "let's play sci-fi D&D using homebrew borrowed from wherever we can find something because it's cheap and we know the basic mechanics already although everything's getting changed and I want to play sci-fi" is an easier sell than "let's play the also quite popular Star Wars RPG so everyone can be a Jedi or a Mandalorian bounty hunter or a lovable smuggler or the smuggler's furry sidekick" or "let's play Starfinder, which actually is sci-fi D&D even if it based on 1st edition Pathfinder but at least is a fully developed system by a company with a proven track record".
If it is just reskinning, then there is not much that people have to learn, and people can also repeat the action/item in normal terms for clarity, like "I swung at him twice with my lightsaber! That is longsword with two hands, hit 21 and 17, radiant damage 9 and 12." or "I use a Flamer to incinerate the flesh off those filthy Eldar over there! Wand of Fireball, 1 charge, 35 fire damage. Save 15."
Adding homebrew and importing mechanics can be done later if there is a need for it.
Can confirm: D&D does not reskin nearly well enough to do this. D&D with a coat of sci-fi paint is going to feel like super bizarre and awkward fantasy in spaaaaace, not like proper sci-fi. If you absolutely insist, I'd look for some of the blender books like Crystalpunk, or see if someone's made a decent Spelljammer riff. You'll still be playing fantasy, but 'Star Fantasy' is a thing. Frankly, Eberron is probably a good example as well - it's more alt-Victorian noir, but it provides a heap of useful ideas for making D&D feel about as modern as the antiquated old fantasy-hardlocked girl's ever going to.
Can confirm: D&D does not reskin nearly well enough to do this. D&D with a coat of sci-fi paint is going to feel like super bizarre and awkward fantasy in spaaaaace, not like proper sci-fi.
I think it did well with Gamma World.
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"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
Probably more difficult to find a game and get it going. Some of us already have issues getting D&D going, so I imagine getting anything else going is going to be a lot more difficult.
Honestly, I don't know if "let's play sci-fi D&D using homebrew borrowed from wherever we can find something because it's cheap and we know the basic mechanics already although everything's getting changed and I want to play sci-fi" is an easier sell than "let's play the also quite popular Star Wars RPG so everyone can be a Jedi or a Mandalorian bounty hunter or a lovable smuggler or the smuggler's furry sidekick" or "let's play Starfinder, which actually is sci-fi D&D even if it based on 1st edition Pathfinder but at least is a fully developed system by a company with a proven track record".
If it is just reskinning, then there is not much that people have to learn, and people can also repeat the action/item in normal terms for clarity, like "I swung at him twice with my lightsaber! That is longsword with two hands, hit 21 and 17, radiant damage 9 and 12." or "I use a Flamer to incinerate the flesh off those filthy Eldar over there! Wand of Fireball, 1 charge, 35 fire damage. Save 15."
Adding homebrew and importing mechanics can be done later if there is a need for it.
Are you leaving classes like clerics, paladins and wizards as is, with a bit of an aesthetic coat of paint on top? What about future tech, like vast communication networks or cheap and fast travel for everyone? What will the average society be like? Or the decidedly not average one, for that matter? Is there going to be space combat, and if so with which rules? Why do futuristic weapons such shitty damage? Why hasn't mankind simply nuked those pesky dragons into oblivion?
I don't know about this. To me it doesn't seem like reskinning cuts the mustard here.
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Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
Can confirm: D&D does not reskin nearly well enough to do this. D&D with a coat of sci-fi paint is going to feel like super bizarre and awkward fantasy in spaaaaace, not like proper sci-fi.
I think it did well with Gamma World.
Chapter 2: Making Characters of the Gamma World rulebook, p. 30 - "The D&D GAMMA WORLD game doesn't really have character races or classes like other D&D games. There are hundreds of different intelligent species, and there's really only one character class - adventurer."
It went a little bit beyond a reskin, I'd say.
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Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
Probably more difficult to find a game and get it going. Some of us already have issues getting D&D going, so I imagine getting anything else going is going to be a lot more difficult.
Honestly, I don't know if "let's play sci-fi D&D using homebrew borrowed from wherever we can find something because it's cheap and we know the basic mechanics already although everything's getting changed and I want to play sci-fi" is an easier sell than "let's play the also quite popular Star Wars RPG so everyone can be a Jedi or a Mandalorian bounty hunter or a lovable smuggler or the smuggler's furry sidekick" or "let's play Starfinder, which actually is sci-fi D&D even if it based on 1st edition Pathfinder but at least is a fully developed system by a company with a proven track record".
If it is just reskinning, then there is not much that people have to learn, and people can also repeat the action/item in normal terms for clarity, like "I swung at him twice with my lightsaber! That is longsword with two hands, hit 21 and 17, radiant damage 9 and 12." or "I use a Flamer to incinerate the flesh off those filthy Eldar over there! Wand of Fireball, 1 charge, 35 fire damage. Save 15."
Adding homebrew and importing mechanics can be done later if there is a need for it.
Are you leaving classes like clerics, paladins and wizards as is, with a bit of an aesthetic coat of paint on top? What about future tech, like vast communication networks or cheap and fast travel for everyone? What will the average society be like? Or the decidedly not average one, for that matter? Is there going to be space combat, and if so with which rules? Why do futuristic weapons such shitty damage? Why hasn't mankind simply nuked those pesky dragons into oblivion?
I don't know about this. To me it doesn't seem like reskinning cuts the mustard here.
Reskinning is more than enough for now. There is no need to homebrew or import rules before the campaign even starts, as that is just extra work that could have gone to waste if you do not actually need it.
Magic users can simply be reskinned as Force sensitive people or Psykers. For sci-fi series without magic, they can be reflavored as advanced technology integrated into a person's suit or under their skin.
A vast communications network, cheap fast travel, and what society looks like does not really need much paint on top. If Eberron can use magic to emulate modern life, it honestly is not that difficult to take it one step further in time and reskin things to emulate sci-fi. Most sci-fi settings already have these things in spades, so it is not like the OP has to reinvent the entire wheel when they can just copy what is out there.
Weapons do relatively little damage because technology for armor and protection did not stagnate; if you want to simulate weapons technology being more advanced than armor, you can simply have everything do twice the damage or have everyone have half the HP than normal. I am not familiar with any other TTRPGs, but I highly doubt sci-fi ones have combat encounters that last significantly longer or shorter than D&D's combat encounters, and you can simply have things last longer or shorter by adjusting damage output and/or bulk.
Whether dragons exist or not is completely irrelevant to the topic. It is like as asking why the Jedi did not put more effort into destroying the Sith, or why the Tyranids are taking their damned sweet time consuming the galaxy. Whether dragons exist or not, whether they need to be killed, whether or not mankind can actually match the power of dragons, etc. is for the GM to decide, and if the GM is using an established sci-fi setting, the most popular ones do not even have dragons in it. None of these questions about lore has any bearing on mechanics, they do not even need to be answered anyways, and definitely do not need to be answered right away.
D&D also got ship combat rules that you can simply reskin for spaceship combat.
Technology that is sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from magic. Why does something work the way it does? If it can be answered with "because magic" for fantasy settings, there is no reason why it cannot be answered with "because advanced technology" for sci-fi settings. We do not need to understand how the Weave interact with real world physics to enjoy fantasy stories. We do not need to understand how advanced technology works under the hood in fine detail either for a sci-fi setting. Reskinning is not the issue in my opinion. From how I see it, the issue is that people are refusing to suspend their disbelief simply because D&D slapped their name on a set of mechanics first, and they are unwilling to imagine the mechanics being used for sci-fi purposes.
Probably more difficult to find a game and get it going. Some of us already have issues getting D&D going, so I imagine getting anything else going is going to be a lot more difficult.
Honestly, I don't know if "let's play sci-fi D&D using homebrew borrowed from wherever we can find something because it's cheap and we know the basic mechanics already although everything's getting changed and I want to play sci-fi" is an easier sell than "let's play the also quite popular Star Wars RPG so everyone can be a Jedi or a Mandalorian bounty hunter or a lovable smuggler or the smuggler's furry sidekick" or "let's play Starfinder, which actually is sci-fi D&D even if it based on 1st edition Pathfinder but at least is a fully developed system by a company with a proven track record".
If it is just reskinning, then there is not much that people have to learn, and people can also repeat the action/item in normal terms for clarity, like "I swung at him twice with my lightsaber! That is longsword with two hands, hit 21 and 17, radiant damage 9 and 12." or "I use a Flamer to incinerate the flesh off those filthy Eldar over there! Wand of Fireball, 1 charge, 35 fire damage. Save 15."
Adding homebrew and importing mechanics can be done later if there is a need for it.
Are you leaving classes like clerics, paladins and wizards as is, with a bit of an aesthetic coat of paint on top? What about future tech, like vast communication networks or cheap and fast travel for everyone? What will the average society be like? Or the decidedly not average one, for that matter? Is there going to be space combat, and if so with which rules? Why do futuristic weapons such shitty damage? Why hasn't mankind simply nuked those pesky dragons into oblivion?
I don't know about this. To me it doesn't seem like reskinning cuts the mustard here.
Reskinning is more than enough for now. There is no need to homebrew or import rules before the campaign even starts, as that is just extra work that could have gone to waste if you do not actually need it.
Magic users can simply be reskinned as Force sensitive people or Psykers. For sci-fi series without magic, they can be reflavored as advanced technology integrated into a person's suit or under their skin.
A vast communications network, cheap fast travel, and what society looks like does not really need much paint on top. If Eberron can use magic to emulate modern life, it honestly is not that difficult to take it one step further in time and reskin things to emulate sci-fi. Most sci-fi settings already have these things in spades, so it is not like the OP has to reinvent the entire wheel when they can just copy what is out there.
Weapons do relatively little damage because technology for armor and protection did not stagnate; if you want to simulate weapons technology being more advanced than armor, you can simply have everything do twice the damage or have everyone have half the HP than normal. I am not familiar with any other TTRPGs, but I highly doubt sci-fi ones have combat encounters that last significantly longer or shorter than D&D's combat encounters, and you can simply have things last longer or shorter by adjusting damage output and/or bulk.
Whether dragons exist or not is completely irrelevant to the topic. It is like as asking why the Jedi did not put more effort into destroying the Sith, or why the Tyranids are taking their damned sweet time consuming the galaxy. Whether dragons exist or not, whether they need to be killed, whether or not mankind can actually match the power of dragons, etc. is for the GM to decide, and if the GM is using an established sci-fi setting, the most popular ones do not even have dragons in it. None of these questions about lore has any bearing on mechanics, they do not even need to be answered anyways, and definitely do not need to be answered right away.
D&D also got ship combat rules that you can simply reskin for spaceship combat.
Technology that is sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from magic. Why does something work the way it does? If it can be answered with "because magic" for fantasy settings, there is no reason why it cannot be answered with "because advanced technology" for sci-fi settings. We do not need to understand how the Weave interact with real world physics to enjoy fantasy stories. We do not need to understand how advanced technology works under the hood in fine detail either for a sci-fi setting. Reskinning is not the issue in my opinion. From how I see it, the issue is that people are refusing to suspend their disbelief simply because D&D slapped their name on a set of mechanics first, and they are unwilling to imagine the mechanics being used for sci-fi purposes.
Thank you so much for your comprehensive response! I really appreciate it. I glad you(and the user of whom you quoted) brought up the idea of reskinning already created and official magic items for sci-fi weapons and items, for some reason I had not thought of that.
In regards to magic, I am running my setting a little bit like a very low - no magic fantasy campaign would be run. To explain why, let me give you a brief rundown of the setting of my campaign. My players begin on the planet Yvellon(Yu-vel-on), which is a planet whose environment and culture is extremely similiar to that of Norse/Icelandic/Irish cultures(players wanted an odd combo of Norse mythology and sci-fi), and who, thousands of years ago, lived viking-ish lives, and worshipped what is basically a reskinning of the Norse pantheon. These ancient humans did actually have magic at their disposal(they believed their magic came from the gods, Yggdrasil, and the various realms of Norse mythology).
Eventually as these peoples began to gather and form settlements and permanent civilizations, they began to erect portals that led to Yggdrasil; to allow for better travel between the realms(the realms being filled with wealth, magic, and monsters as well as gods, the honored dead, and much more). Unfortunately, in the long run, this ease of access to the realms proved bad for "the weave", as human troops soon slaughtered all monsters in every realm, looting, pillaging, and burning as they went. This created a kind of imbalance in the fabric of the universe and magic, causing Yggdrassil, the world tree, to become poisoned and eventual die, therefore deactivating all the portals to every realm, and separating Asgard from Midgard.
These now magic-less humans now had to struggle through life without magic, and instead, over millenia, began to replace magic with technology, leading up till the present, where lightsaber like weapons, guns, and space travel are accessable. However, for as long as the portals of Yggdrasil remain broken, no one will ever be able to use magic, nor have any contact with the gods or the realm of the dead. Apologies for the long rant.
To akwardly cap this post off, I do also agree with you that the issue is not that D&D does not have the ability to be used for a sci-fi setting, or any other genre for that matter, but that many people are simply unwilling to accept that D&D can be anything but classic fantasy. This does not mean that I am disregarding all the other TTRPG's out there, some of which I am sure have very good mechanics for use in sci-fi settings, its simply that I have neither the time, patience, or money to learn any other system currently, and I find D&D to be reasonably adequate for my needs.
I mean...you're basically saying that you're playing D&D, but without any of D&D's magic, any of D&D's character classes, any of D&D's fantastical items, or any of the like are available. You're pretty much just bolting the Six Sacred Scores and a basic d20 resolution mechanic in place and discarding eighty percent of the actual game of D&D.
If that works for you? Coolio. It would not be sufficient for me, but I'm a different person.
If you have your heart set on running a sci-fi 5e campaign, Pangurjan already mentioned Esper Genesis, and there's a 5e Star Wars conversion I've been itching to try out as well.
I mean...you're basically saying that you're playing D&D, but without any of D&D's magic, any of D&D's character classes, any of D&D's fantastical items, or any of the like are available. You're pretty much just bolting the Six Sacred Scores and a basic d20 resolution mechanic in place and discarding eighty percent of the actual game of D&D.
If that works for you? Coolio. It would not be sufficient for me, but I'm a different person.
Reskinning things just means magic is called something else, classes are called something else, magic items are called something else, etc. Everything is practically the same except for the names. 99.99% of D&D is still there, and the 0.01% that is not there is just the names and lore.
Probably more difficult to find a game and get it going. Some of us already have issues getting D&D going, so I imagine getting anything else going is going to be a lot more difficult.
Honestly, I don't know if "let's play sci-fi D&D using homebrew borrowed from wherever we can find something because it's cheap and we know the basic mechanics already although everything's getting changed and I want to play sci-fi" is an easier sell than "let's play the also quite popular Star Wars RPG so everyone can be a Jedi or a Mandalorian bounty hunter or a lovable smuggler or the smuggler's furry sidekick" or "let's play Starfinder, which actually is sci-fi D&D even if it based on 1st edition Pathfinder but at least is a fully developed system by a company with a proven track record".
If it is just reskinning, then there is not much that people have to learn, and people can also repeat the action/item in normal terms for clarity, like "I swung at him twice with my lightsaber! That is longsword with two hands, hit 21 and 17, radiant damage 9 and 12." or "I use a Flamer to incinerate the flesh off those filthy Eldar over there! Wand of Fireball, 1 charge, 35 fire damage. Save 15."
Adding homebrew and importing mechanics can be done later if there is a need for it.
Are you leaving classes like clerics, paladins and wizards as is, with a bit of an aesthetic coat of paint on top? What about future tech, like vast communication networks or cheap and fast travel for everyone? What will the average society be like? Or the decidedly not average one, for that matter? Is there going to be space combat, and if so with which rules? Why do futuristic weapons such shitty damage? Why hasn't mankind simply nuked those pesky dragons into oblivion?
I don't know about this. To me it doesn't seem like reskinning cuts the mustard here.
Reskinning is more than enough for now. There is no need to homebrew or import rules before the campaign even starts, as that is just extra work that could have gone to waste if you do not actually need it.
Magic users can simply be reskinned as Force sensitive people or Psykers. For sci-fi series without magic, they can be reflavored as advanced technology integrated into a person's suit or under their skin.
A vast communications network, cheap fast travel, and what society looks like does not really need much paint on top. If Eberron can use magic to emulate modern life, it honestly is not that difficult to take it one step further in time and reskin things to emulate sci-fi. Most sci-fi settings already have these things in spades, so it is not like the OP has to reinvent the entire wheel when they can just copy what is out there.
Weapons do relatively little damage because technology for armor and protection did not stagnate; if you want to simulate weapons technology being more advanced than armor, you can simply have everything do twice the damage or have everyone have half the HP than normal. I am not familiar with any other TTRPGs, but I highly doubt sci-fi ones have combat encounters that last significantly longer or shorter than D&D's combat encounters, and you can simply have things last longer or shorter by adjusting damage output and/or bulk.
Whether dragons exist or not is completely irrelevant to the topic. It is like as asking why the Jedi did not put more effort into destroying the Sith, or why the Tyranids are taking their damned sweet time consuming the galaxy. Whether dragons exist or not, whether they need to be killed, whether or not mankind can actually match the power of dragons, etc. is for the GM to decide, and if the GM is using an established sci-fi setting, the most popular ones do not even have dragons in it. None of these questions about lore has any bearing on mechanics, they do not even need to be answered anyways, and definitely do not need to be answered right away.
D&D also got ship combat rules that you can simply reskin for spaceship combat.
Technology that is sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from magic. Why does something work the way it does? If it can be answered with "because magic" for fantasy settings, there is no reason why it cannot be answered with "because advanced technology" for sci-fi settings. We do not need to understand how the Weave interact with real world physics to enjoy fantasy stories. We do not need to understand how advanced technology works under the hood in fine detail either for a sci-fi setting. Reskinning is not the issue in my opinion. From how I see it, the issue is that people are refusing to suspend their disbelief simply because D&D slapped their name on a set of mechanics first, and they are unwilling to imagine the mechanics being used for sci-fi purposes.
Thank you so much for your comprehensive response! I really appreciate it. I glad you(and the user of whom you quoted) brought up the idea of reskinning already created and official magic items for sci-fi weapons and items, for some reason I had not thought of that.
While I do encourage people to support TTRPGs more, I think it makes sense to exhaust all the free options first before spending any more money. D&D touts itself to be able to play a variety of settings and genres, and also encourages people to flavor and reskin things as they wish, so I think people should take full advantage of that more often.
D&D touts itself to be able to play a variety of settings and genres, and also encourages people to flavor and reskin things as they wish, so I think people should take full advantage of that more often.
Yes and no. If you look at it as a pure, unflavored system then sure you can do a lot with it, but that pretty much goes for all RPG systems when stripped to their bare mechanics. That doesn't make it particularly suitable for any given genre though. If you look at the DMG and the new Van Richten's Guide, you'll see that they advise extra mechanics (Honor, Sanity, Stress) in order to run a horror game using the D&D rules. In other words, either you expand on the core system to capture a genre better, or you probably get a watered down experience. FFG has their narrative rulesets for this, for instance. Boldly Go! has drama points and promotion points to emulate the Star Trek feel, Star Trek Adventures spends a lot of time on bridge positions and tasks, AEG's L5R has Honor to tap into the feel of romanticised samurai, CoC has actual Sanity rules, and so on.
D&D is great for the beer & pretzels zany type of gaming, because it's simple and straightforward. You can certainly do high epic drama or horror or heavy intrigue or anything else as well with it, but then those aspects will come from how you roleplay, from the DM's presented aesthetics and possibly from additional mechanics - but not from using the core system as is.
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Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
I write this as someone who does a lot of reskinning. While I think a lot of folks think it's sort of a "yeah, whatever" approach, done rightly it's a careful practice. Adaptation involves amputation usually on both ends of the splice, and I think a lot of the advocates here think it's something that can be done because we can just say it and do it, where there's a lot of should to consider in terms of loss and gain.
D&D is not at all a universal game system. "Reskinning" D&D into Star Wars (OP did invoke space opera) is not playing Star Wars. It's not even D&D characters cos playing Star Wars. It's D&D characters playing those kid Halloween costumes from the 1970s and 80s which consisted of a branded plastic apron and a vague semblance of a character mask.
What gets reskinned for star fighters or the Millennium Falcon? What gets reskinned to handle a flight away from or a full on attack onto a Star Destroyer. There is nothing in D&D RAW that would give I guess "mounted" or "vehicular" combat the flavor of star fighter dogfights or the trench run or a chase through an asteroid field (there's a cool aerial combat system recently published in MCDM's Arcadia, but that still embraces more fantasy tropes than space opera ... i.e. aerial mounts engaging in melee combat with each other in flight, though that is a thing I believe is also present in SW RPG too.
Best way to see how Star Wars can and should be done different is compare WotC Star Wars Saga edition to D&D 3.5. Yes they share a mechanical core, but are also pretty different games. The ability to recognize that is the difference between careful and sloppy reskinning.
Really if someone is truly a sophisticated reskin ninja, they could pick up any of the SW starter sets (which you can get used for dang cheap, bout $20, they retail for $30 but I see them discounted a lot, the set also comes with a full dice set which is $15 on its own, a price point that doesn't seem to move much and I've seen some vendors even try to gouge upwards) and use their reskin talents to reverse engineer character generation and options from the other two games (SW RPG was technically released as three overlapping games) with not too much work. The game, while it's sort of in print limbo right now, does have a very active and supportive fan community too (the only _really_ out of print can't find it anywhere other than at least 4x it's value at auction is the bounty hunter advance book, but those books don't have essential bang for their buck beyond what's in the core rules, you can also recover the info in the card sets that some folks favor to splatbooks). Once past character generation SW RPG has a very beer and pretzels feel to it too, and actually with a some practice the character gen is pretty quick too. With beer I'd even argue it's easier and more fun to decipher and count the explosion icons on Star Wars dice than it is crunching numbers in D&D between fistfuls of pretzels.
Midnight puts it very well indeed - "reskinning" takes a lot more work than people think for anything but the most minor and forgettable of trifles. Turning a game like D&D into an entirely different kind of game is a Herculean task; even the people who make the game recommend switching to a different system rather than doing that. All of D&D's top people tell folks that D&D is a fantasy game. It can do star fantasy (see Spelljammer), it can do noir fantasy (see Eberron), it can do dark fantasy (see Ravenloft). It can do low fantasy, though 5e is actually quite bad at low fantasy. But even though it can do those things, it takes effort and understanding to get the ruleset there. It takes real work to bend this ruleset out of the genre it's so heavily baked into, and the further you go from High/Epic Fantasy the more D&D has to contort weirdly to make it work.
Just slapping a new name on everything means your game will feel exactly like Midnight described - like D&D in a cheap Halloween costume. It doesn't matter how imaginative your players are or are not - the game wasn't designed to accommodate the play experience and game feel a sci-fi campaign is looking for and with absolutely no work done to bridge the gap, your players will be able to tell.
Even if you don't use other game systems, look them up. Check out their rules. See where they diverge from D&D and ask yourself why. Ask yourself how those mechanics may help convey the feel of a freewheeling space adventure that D&D is so very, very not prepared to give you.
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Dear Fellow D&D Players and DM's,
I have been scouring the internet for information and homebrew on running a futuristic D&D campaign, but have been mostly unsuccessful, so I thought I'd post here to see if any of you know of any good resources for rules for things such as interplanetary travel, Star Wars-style weaponry, and other futuristic commodities? Thank you for your time!
View my Homebrew Here:
Spells | Monsters | Magic Items | Races
Pathfinder first ed has a futuristic space age spinoff called Starfinder. There's Esper Genesis for 5E.
Both of these are pretty much separate games using only the most basic mechanics of the "parent". There's a good reason for that: the classes, equipment, feats, magic etc of a high/epic fantasy RPG typically aren't suitable for easy conversion to sci-fi or space opera settings. Most of that needs to be redone from the ground up to get it right. I'd very much suggest not relying on scrounging around for homebrew options, but investing either in a full-fledged rulebook for futuristic 5E (there are several either on the market or in production but not released yet) or picking up a different game altogether in the style you're looking for. Up to you though.
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Easiest way to do it in 5e and maintain balance is probably to just reskin everything. A long bow becomes a rifle. A ballista is a ship-based cannon, Plate mail is power armor, orcs are Klingons, etc.
Why not just skip D&D and play the Star Wars RPG, or the Star Trek RPG, or any of the other SciFi based RPGs?
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I agree. This is probably the cheapest and easiest way to do it. The GM can also offload the some of the reskinning work to the players, and reward them with inspiration or something whenever they creatively reskin something that the GM likes.
Probably more difficult to find a game and get it going. Some of us already have issues getting D&D going, so I imagine getting anything else going is going to be a lot more difficult.
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Honestly, I don't know if "let's play sci-fi D&D using homebrew borrowed from wherever we can find something because it's cheap and we know the basic mechanics already although everything's getting changed and I want to play sci-fi" is an easier sell than "let's play the also quite popular Star Wars RPG so everyone can be a Jedi or a Mandalorian bounty hunter or a lovable smuggler or the smuggler's furry sidekick" or "let's play Starfinder, which actually is sci-fi D&D even if it based on 1st edition Pathfinder but at least is a fully developed system by a company with a proven track record".
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If it is just reskinning, then there is not much that people have to learn, and people can also repeat the action/item in normal terms for clarity, like "I swung at him twice with my lightsaber! That is longsword with two hands, hit 21 and 17, radiant damage 9 and 12." or "I use a Flamer to incinerate the flesh off those filthy Eldar over there! Wand of Fireball, 1 charge, 35 fire damage. Save 15."
Adding homebrew and importing mechanics can be done later if there is a need for it.
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Can confirm: D&D does not reskin nearly well enough to do this. D&D with a coat of sci-fi paint is going to feel like super bizarre and awkward fantasy in spaaaaace, not like proper sci-fi. If you absolutely insist, I'd look for some of the blender books like Crystalpunk, or see if someone's made a decent Spelljammer riff. You'll still be playing fantasy, but 'Star Fantasy' is a thing. Frankly, Eberron is probably a good example as well - it's more alt-Victorian noir, but it provides a heap of useful ideas for making D&D feel about as modern as the antiquated old fantasy-hardlocked girl's ever going to.
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I think it did well with Gamma World.
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Are you leaving classes like clerics, paladins and wizards as is, with a bit of an aesthetic coat of paint on top? What about future tech, like vast communication networks or cheap and fast travel for everyone? What will the average society be like? Or the decidedly not average one, for that matter? Is there going to be space combat, and if so with which rules? Why do futuristic weapons such shitty damage? Why hasn't mankind simply nuked those pesky dragons into oblivion?
I don't know about this. To me it doesn't seem like reskinning cuts the mustard here.
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Chapter 2: Making Characters of the Gamma World rulebook, p. 30 - "The D&D GAMMA WORLD game doesn't really have character races or classes like other D&D games. There are hundreds of different intelligent species, and there's really only one character class - adventurer."
It went a little bit beyond a reskin, I'd say.
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Reskinning is more than enough for now. There is no need to homebrew or import rules before the campaign even starts, as that is just extra work that could have gone to waste if you do not actually need it.
Magic users can simply be reskinned as Force sensitive people or Psykers. For sci-fi series without magic, they can be reflavored as advanced technology integrated into a person's suit or under their skin.
A vast communications network, cheap fast travel, and what society looks like does not really need much paint on top. If Eberron can use magic to emulate modern life, it honestly is not that difficult to take it one step further in time and reskin things to emulate sci-fi. Most sci-fi settings already have these things in spades, so it is not like the OP has to reinvent the entire wheel when they can just copy what is out there.
Weapons do relatively little damage because technology for armor and protection did not stagnate; if you want to simulate weapons technology being more advanced than armor, you can simply have everything do twice the damage or have everyone have half the HP than normal. I am not familiar with any other TTRPGs, but I highly doubt sci-fi ones have combat encounters that last significantly longer or shorter than D&D's combat encounters, and you can simply have things last longer or shorter by adjusting damage output and/or bulk.
Whether dragons exist or not is completely irrelevant to the topic. It is like as asking why the Jedi did not put more effort into destroying the Sith, or why the Tyranids are taking their damned sweet time consuming the galaxy. Whether dragons exist or not, whether they need to be killed, whether or not mankind can actually match the power of dragons, etc. is for the GM to decide, and if the GM is using an established sci-fi setting, the most popular ones do not even have dragons in it. None of these questions about lore has any bearing on mechanics, they do not even need to be answered anyways, and definitely do not need to be answered right away.
D&D also got ship combat rules that you can simply reskin for spaceship combat.
Technology that is sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from magic. Why does something work the way it does? If it can be answered with "because magic" for fantasy settings, there is no reason why it cannot be answered with "because advanced technology" for sci-fi settings. We do not need to understand how the Weave interact with real world physics to enjoy fantasy stories. We do not need to understand how advanced technology works under the hood in fine detail either for a sci-fi setting. Reskinning is not the issue in my opinion. From how I see it, the issue is that people are refusing to suspend their disbelief simply because D&D slapped their name on a set of mechanics first, and they are unwilling to imagine the mechanics being used for sci-fi purposes.
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Thank you so much for your comprehensive response! I really appreciate it. I glad you(and the user of whom you quoted) brought up the idea of reskinning already created and official magic items for sci-fi weapons and items, for some reason I had not thought of that.
In regards to magic, I am running my setting a little bit like a very low - no magic fantasy campaign would be run. To explain why, let me give you a brief rundown of the setting of my campaign. My players begin on the planet Yvellon(Yu-vel-on), which is a planet whose environment and culture is extremely similiar to that of Norse/Icelandic/Irish cultures(players wanted an odd combo of Norse mythology and sci-fi), and who, thousands of years ago, lived viking-ish lives, and worshipped what is basically a reskinning of the Norse pantheon. These ancient humans did actually have magic at their disposal(they believed their magic came from the gods, Yggdrasil, and the various realms of Norse mythology).
Eventually as these peoples began to gather and form settlements and permanent civilizations, they began to erect portals that led to Yggdrasil; to allow for better travel between the realms(the realms being filled with wealth, magic, and monsters as well as gods, the honored dead, and much more). Unfortunately, in the long run, this ease of access to the realms proved bad for "the weave", as human troops soon slaughtered all monsters in every realm, looting, pillaging, and burning as they went. This created a kind of imbalance in the fabric of the universe and magic, causing Yggdrassil, the world tree, to become poisoned and eventual die, therefore deactivating all the portals to every realm, and separating Asgard from Midgard.
These now magic-less humans now had to struggle through life without magic, and instead, over millenia, began to replace magic with technology, leading up till the present, where lightsaber like weapons, guns, and space travel are accessable. However, for as long as the portals of Yggdrasil remain broken, no one will ever be able to use magic, nor have any contact with the gods or the realm of the dead. Apologies for the long rant.
To akwardly cap this post off, I do also agree with you that the issue is not that D&D does not have the ability to be used for a sci-fi setting, or any other genre for that matter, but that many people are simply unwilling to accept that D&D can be anything but classic fantasy. This does not mean that I am disregarding all the other TTRPG's out there, some of which I am sure have very good mechanics for use in sci-fi settings, its simply that I have neither the time, patience, or money to learn any other system currently, and I find D&D to be reasonably adequate for my needs.
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Spells | Monsters | Magic Items | Races
I mean...you're basically saying that you're playing D&D, but without any of D&D's magic, any of D&D's character classes, any of D&D's fantastical items, or any of the like are available. You're pretty much just bolting the Six Sacred Scores and a basic d20 resolution mechanic in place and discarding eighty percent of the actual game of D&D.
If that works for you? Coolio. It would not be sufficient for me, but I'm a different person.
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If you have your heart set on running a sci-fi 5e campaign, Pangurjan already mentioned Esper Genesis, and there's a 5e Star Wars conversion I've been itching to try out as well.
Reskinning things just means magic is called something else, classes are called something else, magic items are called something else, etc. Everything is practically the same except for the names. 99.99% of D&D is still there, and the 0.01% that is not there is just the names and lore.
While I do encourage people to support TTRPGs more, I think it makes sense to exhaust all the free options first before spending any more money. D&D touts itself to be able to play a variety of settings and genres, and also encourages people to flavor and reskin things as they wish, so I think people should take full advantage of that more often.
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Yes and no. If you look at it as a pure, unflavored system then sure you can do a lot with it, but that pretty much goes for all RPG systems when stripped to their bare mechanics. That doesn't make it particularly suitable for any given genre though. If you look at the DMG and the new Van Richten's Guide, you'll see that they advise extra mechanics (Honor, Sanity, Stress) in order to run a horror game using the D&D rules. In other words, either you expand on the core system to capture a genre better, or you probably get a watered down experience. FFG has their narrative rulesets for this, for instance. Boldly Go! has drama points and promotion points to emulate the Star Trek feel, Star Trek Adventures spends a lot of time on bridge positions and tasks, AEG's L5R has Honor to tap into the feel of romanticised samurai, CoC has actual Sanity rules, and so on.
D&D is great for the beer & pretzels zany type of gaming, because it's simple and straightforward. You can certainly do high epic drama or horror or heavy intrigue or anything else as well with it, but then those aspects will come from how you roleplay, from the DM's presented aesthetics and possibly from additional mechanics - but not from using the core system as is.
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I write this as someone who does a lot of reskinning. While I think a lot of folks think it's sort of a "yeah, whatever" approach, done rightly it's a careful practice. Adaptation involves amputation usually on both ends of the splice, and I think a lot of the advocates here think it's something that can be done because we can just say it and do it, where there's a lot of should to consider in terms of loss and gain.
D&D is not at all a universal game system. "Reskinning" D&D into Star Wars (OP did invoke space opera) is not playing Star Wars. It's not even D&D characters cos playing Star Wars. It's D&D characters playing those kid Halloween costumes from the 1970s and 80s which consisted of a branded plastic apron and a vague semblance of a character mask.
What gets reskinned for star fighters or the Millennium Falcon? What gets reskinned to handle a flight away from or a full on attack onto a Star Destroyer. There is nothing in D&D RAW that would give I guess "mounted" or "vehicular" combat the flavor of star fighter dogfights or the trench run or a chase through an asteroid field (there's a cool aerial combat system recently published in MCDM's Arcadia, but that still embraces more fantasy tropes than space opera ... i.e. aerial mounts engaging in melee combat with each other in flight, though that is a thing I believe is also present in SW RPG too.
Best way to see how Star Wars can and should be done different is compare WotC Star Wars Saga edition to D&D 3.5. Yes they share a mechanical core, but are also pretty different games. The ability to recognize that is the difference between careful and sloppy reskinning.
Really if someone is truly a sophisticated reskin ninja, they could pick up any of the SW starter sets (which you can get used for dang cheap, bout $20, they retail for $30 but I see them discounted a lot, the set also comes with a full dice set which is $15 on its own, a price point that doesn't seem to move much and I've seen some vendors even try to gouge upwards) and use their reskin talents to reverse engineer character generation and options from the other two games (SW RPG was technically released as three overlapping games) with not too much work. The game, while it's sort of in print limbo right now, does have a very active and supportive fan community too (the only _really_ out of print can't find it anywhere other than at least 4x it's value at auction is the bounty hunter advance book, but those books don't have essential bang for their buck beyond what's in the core rules, you can also recover the info in the card sets that some folks favor to splatbooks). Once past character generation SW RPG has a very beer and pretzels feel to it too, and actually with a some practice the character gen is pretty quick too. With beer I'd even argue it's easier and more fun to decipher and count the explosion icons on Star Wars dice than it is crunching numbers in D&D between fistfuls of pretzels.
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Midnight puts it very well indeed - "reskinning" takes a lot more work than people think for anything but the most minor and forgettable of trifles. Turning a game like D&D into an entirely different kind of game is a Herculean task; even the people who make the game recommend switching to a different system rather than doing that. All of D&D's top people tell folks that D&D is a fantasy game. It can do star fantasy (see Spelljammer), it can do noir fantasy (see Eberron), it can do dark fantasy (see Ravenloft). It can do low fantasy, though 5e is actually quite bad at low fantasy. But even though it can do those things, it takes effort and understanding to get the ruleset there. It takes real work to bend this ruleset out of the genre it's so heavily baked into, and the further you go from High/Epic Fantasy the more D&D has to contort weirdly to make it work.
Just slapping a new name on everything means your game will feel exactly like Midnight described - like D&D in a cheap Halloween costume. It doesn't matter how imaginative your players are or are not - the game wasn't designed to accommodate the play experience and game feel a sci-fi campaign is looking for and with absolutely no work done to bridge the gap, your players will be able to tell.
Even if you don't use other game systems, look them up. Check out their rules. See where they diverge from D&D and ask yourself why. Ask yourself how those mechanics may help convey the feel of a freewheeling space adventure that D&D is so very, very not prepared to give you.
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