Space Opera was a science fiction role playing game published in 1980 by
Fantasy Games Unlimited. It was written by
Edward Simbalist, Mark Ratner
1, and Phil McGregor.
Space Opera was written in response to the original
Traveller and its perceived short comings. Edward Simbalist also produced the medieval role playing game
Chivalry & Sorcery, a fantasy role playing game with a highly complex combat/skill system that tried to stay truer to its
medieval roots than the Lord of the Rings/
Conan inspired
D&D.
Role playing game designers, like
mail bombers, tend to stick to systems and methods they are comfortable with, and
Space Opera matched Simbalist's design philosophy.
Traveller was, of course, a wildly popular sci fi role playing game but many viewed its popularity was owing more to it being, for a while, the only (sci fi) game in town than the appeal of its system and its scope. To those who cut their teeth on a D&D system, with
experience points, levels, lots of probability matrices, rule options, and monsters, original
Traveller seemed rather minimalist. As well, those wanting to recreate
Star Wars in mom's basement found
Traveller a hard system to adapt. The
Traveller universe was a pretty lonely place, with humans being the only intelligent species. Alien races were absent, alien worlds seemed to be populated by indigenous life no more complicated, or dangerous, than a tomato plant. THE RAVENOUS SPACE CUCUMBERS OF TRAKEN IV KILLED MY AUNT AND UNCLE! THEY AND ALL THEIR GREEN SEEDED KIND WILL PAY! Those wanting to battle
wampa ice creatures, well, they had a huge whack of work before them. And forget about
droids.
Another limitation of the original
Traveller was starship development in the core rules didn't much go beyond constructing scout and merchant ships. Those with visions of clashing fleets of Imperial
star destroyers, Blacksun battle wagons rushing in at
ramming speed, cloaked
no-ships slipping past enemy
pickets to deliver a full spread of phase-quark torpedoes upon the
Ishtari Hive's flag carrier, and nimble
Lord High Executioner Class
meson frigates charging through massive fusillades of sun-hot
plasma delivered up by asteroid-based
Gorgon area defense cannons to score a desperate hit on the Royal Fleet Yards of Mon Hothamon, well, you were pretty
shit out of luck with your little set of
Traveller books and your crew of mustered out Space Marines armed with surplus
needle guns and a free B-Grade space liner ticket to Rigel 7. Didn't you look like king asshole?
Space Opera resolved to give gamers a system and universe which they could mould into any popular sci fi milieu, be it
Star Wars,
Larry Niven's
Known Space,
Dune,
E.E. "Doc" Smith's
Lensman,
Battlestar Galactica, or, if you were so damaged,
Galactica 1980. It would also create a system D&D players were familiar with and wanted: different races, experience levels, character classes,
psionics, and the like. As well, it would be a "complete" system.
Ha! What role playing system is ever complete? There's always another book to buy... I know. By complete I mean you've got everything you really need: character construction, aliens, monsters, droids, and large starship construction/combat.
Critics who liked
Traveller's lean approach with its emphasis on talking or wandering around things like a space station to figure out the space station is really a
tesseract, well, they found the system bloated, complicated, and too technical. But then, for many, that's part of the appeal of a sci fi RPG. People want to jump into
repulser driven desert skiffs with a dual mounted plasma repeater behind the
rumble seat. The wide open expanses of the Great Ordungian Sand Ocean are a place where any team of Royal Lasikian Space
Marine (Elite Class) would be foolish to cross without anything less than two fire linked plasma repeaters watching their six. And you wanted hard stats and rules for
performance enhancing drugs.
Space Opera had them too.
Space Opera, like many role playing games of its day, was published in a boxed format. The box contained two 92-page booklets. Book 1 covered character generation and psionics. Book 2 covered equipment, starships, combat, and "universe building". Oh baby.
Character creation was rather complicated. Attributes ranged from 1-19. Attributes included
Physique (body size/mass), Strength, Constitution, Agility, Dexterity,
Empathy, Intelligence, Psionic, Bravery, and Leadership. In addition one generated three aptitudes attributes that determined how well a character learned certain skills. These attributes were General Technical, Mechanical, and Electronic. One also determined your home world's gravity and environment. All these contributed to ability score adjustments.
Finally, one picked a race. In
Space Opera one could be a human, transhumans (a veiled
Vulcan race), Pithecine (a monkey/
wookie like race), Canine (dog men), Feline (
kzinti duh although in later game supplements the cat race got saddled with the totally stupid name "mekpurr", a kind of sophisticated technology using feline race), Ursoides (
bears...as in real bears not hairy gay men), Avians (bird men, hello
Flash Gordon!) and Saurian (warm blooded space lizards... this was before the
V miniseries so maybe these were for gamers itching to play a
sleestak).
After that, one did a process not unlike
Traveller's military/
mustering out process. You picked a service, made some rolls to determine your character's career, and then you mustered out with cash and surplus equipment plus all important skills.
Combat was generally a four step process. You first determine if your character scored a hit with his chosen weapon. Things like range, size of the target, movement, and amount of cover come into play. If one scored a hit, then one rolls to determine hit location. After hit location, one then determines if the attack penetrated the armor. Finally, damage is determined.
Space Opera is no longer in print, it went out of print with the demise of Fantasy Games Unlimited. The company itself kind of, sort of, still exists. Founder
Scott Bizar runs a hobby shop in
Arizona under the same name. At one point he tried to re-release
Space Opera without the consent of the original authors. The original authors, needless to say, were rather pissed and mystified by his actions. The original authors Edward Simbalist, A. Mark Ratner, and Phil McGregor were not green horns and retained their rights to the game, although not the name of the game itself. Bizar, in an attempt to prevent his rights from lapsing, did an unauthorized reprint. In the mid-90s, long after Fantasy Games Unlimited got out of game publishing, Simbalist et al asked Bizar if they could buy the full rights to the game so they could republish it on their own (Simbalist was able to secure the rights to
Chivalry & Sorcery and get it re-released by another company). Bizar said "sure, you can have the full rights for $100,000." They laughed at that as you could write your own RPG from scratch for far less. They felt $10,000 was a more realistic fee for a 15 year old game.
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1Mark Ratner's participation appears to have been minimal. His game miniature rule set
Space Marines was used as the basis.