Universe…

Well, last Friday I managed to run a session of Universe, a science-fiction RPG from a very long time ago by SPI, a company that may not have existed when I bought the game. It was the very second RPG I owned and Friday was the first time I have ever run a full session of the game. Given I bought it in 1982 or 1983, that’s a very, very long time to own a game without playing it.

Universe is a SF game set in the 24th Century. The system is, ahem, clunky. It has some wonderful touches in it, but the way it calculates skill chances can sometimes be slow. Initiative is *particularly* slow, although I’m sure it gets quicker once we know what is going on.
I ran the adventure provided in the book: Lost on Laidley. It’s not the best adventure, but it was a fairly good introduction to the system. By which I mean it showed the exploration side of the game, allowed the characters (mainly Adam’s Scientist) to make some scientific rolls, and there was a little combat.
I’ll probably be able to run one more session of it – I’d like to try two or three more sessions to see what I can make of the system – and when casting around for ideas, I decided I’d take a page from the works of Jack McDevitt, one of my favourite science-fiction authors: we’d start the next session with the PCs being made into heroes by the media; they’ve rescued a bunch of explorers, after all. So, I’d have the PCs being interviewed by talk-show hosts, having to go on parades, and so forth… and meanwhile their new-found fame is causing other storylines to start up, perhaps more with an intrigue bent…
A session with a mix of role-playing, science and combat? That’s what I’d like to run. Now to see if the system will let me…

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