Why ‘NOMAD Confederation Space’?

Recently I wrote up a proposal for a campaign using Faster Than Light: Nomad by Stellagama Pubishing, based on my Confederation Space setting. Somehow I feel compelled to explain myself.

Why Confederation Space?

So why Confederation Space? I designed it to be broadly compatible with any general space game, including Nomad, Classic Traveller, current Traveller, Cepheus Deluxe (also available from Stellagama), Scum and Villainy, etc. It pretty much hits the Classic Traveller vibe I prefer: an overarching government too far away to really interfere, individual settled worlds ripe with adventure, a human-dominated cosmos, etc.

So why not my other settings?

• Dominion of Man would require a lot of work on the Elders, the Artificial Sophont Collective, the space knights (forgot what I called them), and so forth.
• Life in Theta Priori worked for the Fate-based Diaspora, but is more of a place to come from than a place to adventure.
• Coriolis has been my “white whale” setting/system for a while, but it’s a bit intimidating to GM a non-Western future culture without descending into cliche or Orientalism. Plus it has its own system, and I specifically wanted to try FTL: Nomad.
• Stellar Alliance, as said in a footnote on the main article, has been bogging me down. Too much to prepare. Plus it’s in the Galactic Technological Age, whereas I suspect the Interstellar Age is more Nomad’s sweet spot.

Why Faster Than Light: Nomad?

The short answer is that I’ve been obsessed with this RPG since I read it.

The long answer:

• I’ve played a lot of Cypher System. A lot. Quite apart from a need for a break, I’ve found that every Cypher System game feels more like a Cypher System game than, well, the genre it’s trying to emulate. (At least from this player’s perspective.) The fact that the GM can simply make up a few numbers off the top of their head is one of the game’s strengths, but players still build off the same classes types with the same abilities, no matter the genre.

• Coriolis, as said previously, is a game I’m dying to try, but it has its own brilliant but intimidating baked-in setting.

• Eclipse Phase I’ve tried, and I’m not keen. The percentile system is fine, but there’s something about the setting – the fact that nobody really dies, for example, or that there’s so many ways to mess with everyone’s computer brains – that makes me wonder what the stakes are.

• Mini-Six has the same problem with system that I was having with settings: you have to invent or interpolate enough setting to make the system mean something.

• Quantum has the same problem as Mini-Six, but even worse.¹

• Starfinder is … no. Just no.

• Traveller/Cepheus has too many fiddly details and moving parts. I cut my teeth on Classic Traveller; you can fit an entire character onto an index card, but modern players may not grok it. Modern Cepheus character sheets seem to be getting longer, with all the possible skills you can learn, gear you can use, combat statistics you need to track, and other bits and pieces you’d need at the table.

  Nomad, on the other hand, comes from a publisher that has written entire Cepheus systems, and has found how to reduce them to seven Skills, an Archetype, one or more Talents, and a Stamina pool. All those fiddly modifiers become Advantage and Disadvantage dice. And so on.

I’m sure I’ve missed your favorite (space) RPG system (Savage Worlds? D100?). But this is my choice, and I’m sticking with it.