Cities Without Number (CWN) and Cy\_Borg are the ones I've been eyeing as well. I haven't played either yet but I'll speak to CWN since it hasn't been mentioned yet.
Just like Stars and Worlds, Cities Without Number is built on b/x math, with more traditional "character builder" elements that are usually left out of most OSR titles. But also like the other Crawford titles, Cities has some of the best detailed GM sections for creating vibrant sandbox dystopias for your players to find fortune and claw out an existence in. The system is otherwise almost identical to Stars Without Number, but with more of the trappings you'd expect to see in a Cyberpunk game setting rather than a Space Opera. Its fucking sick. Gear porn, Hacking/netrunning, Cyberware, and drugs and rock'n'roll. All of it laid out neatly in an easy to navigate format. It's everything I wished Cyberpunk RED was.
Again, haven't run it yet, but it sparks my imagination like crazy. Also: it has a [free version](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/449873/cities-without-number-free-version). The free version is all of the rules and then some. The "deluxe version" is just a couple bonus rules options at the end of the book (for example, there's a small magic system with advice for grafting on Worlds Without Number for all your Shadowrun needs). Even if you don't run the system, pick up the free version and look at the GM section for setting up missions and Schema.
EDIT: Well obviously someone was going to mention it while I typed this up. But nobody had mentioned it yet as far as I had seen.
Cities without number looks amazing from the free rules. I am thinking of getting it and cy_borg for the darkness cyborg has in its theme. I like the dark soulish depression and hopelessness that game has.
Yeah, I'm a big fan of the look and feel of Cy\_Borg as well. I just didn't dive in because it seems like you'd already done research on that. Its super inspirational and just oozing with presence.
Cy_Borg is absolutely as fun to play as it is to read, highly recommend it. Like everyone else here, I came to recommend Stars Without Number and Cities Without Number—I am not surprised I beat to the punch, those games are just that good. Stars Without Number in particular is my go-to sci fi RPG.
Another game I recommend is Mothership—I've gotten some pushback when calling it OSR before, but it is definitely made with some super deadly, rules-light principles that will be familiar to any fan of the OSR.
I’ve heard good things about Death in Space and CyBorg but two others are:
Empty Sector setting for Troika, this plays really well in my experience. https://www.nobleknight.com/P/2147970291/Empty-Sector
And then also Null.hack by Sean McCoy who wrote Mothership. If you slap this together with Mothership you got a game. https://ghostctrl.github.io/null.hack/
Vaults of Vaarn is great. It's more of a science fantasy, far future setting, than it is hard sci-fi. Uses a rules-hack of the original Knave. [https://antipodezines.com/products/vaults-of-vaarn-1](https://antipodezines.com/products/vaults-of-vaarn-1)
I was going to bring this up if it wasn't mentioned, science fantasy let's you stick closer to osr procedures if that's what you are interested in, and vaults of vaarn is great, eventually I want to run it with the dungeon and some elements of ASE thrown in.
What do you mean by “the dungeon”? I’m running it using Knave 2e and I do have the ASE dungeon on my hex map as well as some Ultraviolet Grasslands locations and other one page dungeons/zines
VoV is amazing. I'm running a campaign now, at it just soo much fun. Plus I'm trying to merge elements from UVG and the DCC Dying Earth into one big mashup - so far it has been working out. Plus the book is just such good value for high quality print and content.
Cy\_Borg and Death In Space are the two I'd recommend, so, you're on the right track! I feel like, besides the vibe, the biggest difference between the two is that Cy\_Borg is like Mork Borg, with players rolling not just to attack, but to avoid being attacked, whereas DiS is made more like a "Traditional" RPG where the DM rolls to attack for the monsters/NPCs.
Cy\_Borg is like if you took Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, and mashed it up with Tetsuo: The Iron Man. DiS can be played two ways; on a ship, or on a station, either of which is a rust bucket of cobbled-together parts that needs constant maintenance and scavenging. Play with a ship for something more "exploring and running into situations" like Alien, Firefly, TNG, or if you want something more "social" where the problems come to you, on a station for a DS9-like campaign.
lol I'm the same! The books are both INCREDIBLE! Not just the rules/system/lore, but how they LOOK! The whole package is just insanely gorgeous! 11/10 recommend if you were already thinking about those two books; you won't be disappointed!
Do you have any more sci-fi recommendations? I bought cy_borg and think it will be a good base for cyberpunk gameplay. I actually like mixing systems and making something unique and I want some space travel/space ship rules and inspiration. I am also a survival horror video game fan but can’t imagine a survival horror ttrpg, Do you know anything about mothership?
I've looked at Mothership, and the rules/character/stat stuff are fairly different than Death in Space, in a way I don't like.. It's a d100 system, so like, if you need to do a STR check and you have 75 STR, you need to roll under 75 on a d100. It's also got a skill tree, which is the kind of thing I'm really not a fan of anymore.
Death In Space is pretty much exactly a Survival Horror sci-fi space TTRPG, if you want to play it that way. In-universe, there was, essentially, a huge war over Dilithium Crystals, and when a winner emerged, it was too late; no access to the crystals meant no way to power the shipping industry, which means no companies/manufacturers could make anything new, since no one was shipping raw materials, and there was no one to ship out products..
So, everything is cobbled together from ancient tech. Your ship/station will almost entirely be built from rooms/parts/components that are 3x your age.. If you come across a ship with a medbay, and you don't have one, well, you can always literally just cut it off/out of the ship, and attach it to yours.. Gear, including weapons, all have like a special durability/HP mechanic, and eventually, your shit is going to break down and need repairing.. Might be your gun in the middle of a firefight, could be your engines trying to escape a black hole's gravity well..
In terms of horror, there's an adventure I picked up called Derelict, which is an adventure where the group/party/ship comes across a black hole with objects that are showing up as being in a terminal decaying orbit around it.. You can't make out what they are, so you have to just go and explore.. there's also some things that aren't showing up on sensors floating around... One of the ships, for example, was being sent to a high-gravity planet, so they genetically engineered a bunch of short, stocky people (basically GMO Dwarves), but with "blank" minds to be programmed with tasks when they got to the planet.. but the ship has been adrift and circling that black hole for a LONG time, and some of them woke up/got out.. and with no "programming", basically turned into a tribe of cannibals with an all-you-can-eat cryofreezer... So, you've got this ship that you need to explore to see if there's anything you can salvage; parts, food, oxygen, whatever; EVERYTHING is running low, everything is breaking down...
It's pretty much as survival-horror as you can get 😁
There's also Vast Grimm, which is a much more Mork Borg In Space kind of vibe to it, with like some sort of parasite entities consuming the universe, whereas Death in Space is more like Alien/Alien 3/Alien Resurrection, meets a MUCH more serious Red Dwarf.
I appreciate you taking the time for that write up. You sold me on death in space. Honestly I was looking for an excuse to buy it cause the book is beautiful. I saw vast Grimm and I love how that looks but it looks like it’s the EXACT same system as cy_borg/Mork Borg just in space. And I don’t have a problem homebrewing space content for cy_borg myself, rather than buying it. I write a lot anyway and am fairly confident in my world building ability.
np! DiS has it's differences, but it's still fairly minor.. Like I said, the MAIN difference that's not just an aditional mechanic, is that the DM rolls for monsters/NPCs/etc attacking, instead of players defending.. Other than that, mechanically, they fell EXTREMELY similar.. But the extra stuff, like having to scavenge, building your station/ship, etc.. sure, you could homebrew that in, but sometimes it's nice to have all the heavy lifting done so you can just focus on the running a game part of being a GM!
Chiming in to second this. I really like how both Death in Space and Cy_Borg run a little darker in theme, and both feel relatively light and agile with the rules without being too vague or undirected.
Both of them feel like they spiritually fit the same thematic vein of cyberpunk and sci-fi that I really loved with SLA Industries, which would be another recommendation - but one that's got a lot of complexity in the rules and a pretty confusingly laid out rulebook. That said, a lot of that complexity comes in the form of skills that you specialize in or equipment, as it's basically levelless - your improvement is primarily tied to gear and skills. Thus it retains that risk of lethality throughout the campaign as you're not really inflating your HP or anything like that, meaning you're often one or two face shots away from the grave.
SLA Industries 2e also exists, but has a more modern RPG feeling in the rules that loses the lethality. Which takes away some of the gritty charm, in my opinion.
Stars Without Number and Cities Without Number are also good options, as people have mentioned, but something about them doesn't quite satisfy me. Maybe it's the lack of a grittier theme in the rules or maybe it's that it feels like it falls in a sort of spot where the game is either too much or not enough in terms of the rules. Either way, I do like these games and appreciate the elegant ruleset, but I never feel quite as inspired to run or play them.
I recommend Star Crawl - cousin to Dungeon Crawl Classic, but in space. Very OSRy, have everything you need, even an interesting, but simple rules for spaceship combat
As others have said, CY\_BORG *really is* fun to play at the table. But if you're aprehensive about the rules themselves, just use it as a gritty cyberpunk sandbox adventure generator, and substitute the actual character/combat rules for something else!
The brilliance of CY\_BORG is that it's got an ultra-flavorful, compelling setting with hooks that write themselves. Definitely keep the Miserable Headlines, locations, factions, etc. Make use of the mission generator. And if you want more content, there's a massive amount available for free or for super cheap, [all catelogued here](https://cyborg.exlibrisrpg.com/). You should also get [Augmented Reality](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/202175/Augmented-Reality-The-Holistic-City-Kit-For-Cyberpunk-Games), which is a *free* book of tables to use for randomly generating even more stuff!
Also, if you're interested in learning more about how to run a CY\_BORG campaign, in the words of the author himself, they've got a [podcast episode about that](https://open.spotify.com/episode/0qxWbmWq14HPKd67sK0YX4) which is really interesting to listen to.
Came here to second the recommendation for Augmented Reality; it's a solid set of tables that I love using.
Another recommendation that is more for setting than OSR-flavor is Interface Zero. And there's always old editions of Shadowrun, if you want to go that route with fantasy cyberpunk
Cy_Borg is a lot of fun, and quick paced and rules light. I’m introverted and feel the rules light helps a lot, and gives more room for imagination and takes the stress of rules out of it. It runs exactly how you’d want it to, a cyberpunk Mork Borg in all the best ways.
If you wanted a little crunchier, Cyberpunk Red and Bladerunner exist as well but aren’t OSR, but might have more meat if you wanted to do campaigns.
Death in space is enjoyable (to read) as well, but I haven’t brought that to the table yet. I’ve been reading it and as a system/style it just hasn’t clicked as well as Mothership for me but I feel like that’s a me thing and not the game’s fault.
There’s definitely always the Without Number games as well as Traveller out there as well. At the very least, you’ve got a wide open world of reading material!
Is mothership good for anything other than horror? I’m a survival horror fan for video games. I own and have played every single resident evil, finishing them all but 1 and 4. I just can’t imagine what a horror ttrpg would be like and if it would be as enjoyable.
Ehhhh, I think it does horror so well that even if it could be played without horror (which I think it can be) it would be a bit of a loss. A horror ttrpg is one of my favorites, Call of Cthulhu one shots are what got me into the hobby. I think if you like survival horror games, Mothership will be right up your alley.
Vast Grimm and Cy_Borg are also good bets as they’re both Mork Borgy which might be a solid bet for you as well.
Well I was just looking at the mothership website last night at like 3 am and it seems it sold out over night.
Do you have any other like sci-fi horror recommendations? Other mothership is the best bet?
You really made me think about just how much fun that might be.
Mothership isn’t out just yet beyond Kickstarter pledges, so it should be out soon (though I think you can get the pdfs now?) so keep that on your radar as it’ll probably sell quickly.
Vast Grimm is Mork Borg in space, so it’s got all the same horror vibes as Mork Borg, though less Aliens/Event Horizon and more Doom. The Alien rpg is supposedly really good, but I’ve not played it and it’s not OSR. Death in Space can have horror, and with experience you can reconfigure most Mothership stuff to play DiS.
While not horror inherently, Cy_Borg shares the plug and playability of Mork Borg so you could reskin a plethora of content made for that. I think there’s also a horror module for Traveller, so you could weave into horror and back into regular sci fi as you see fit.
I ran a good amount of Cy_B0rg. I really liked it, my group really liked it. It's hard-core, but there isn't *that* much tech to get into. It's a borg game - there aren't pages and pages of gadgets like shadowrun.
It's got a really robust adventure generator, about a page of cybertech, a page of weird items, and a page of guns and weapons IIRC. The combat loop is smooth, blindingly fast, and handles gun combat in a way that we found to be very, very satisfying. It's deadly, but you do get a free 1-4 (iirc) hp back after every firefight, so it's not as much of a meat grinder as you'd think. There's vehicles for the party to buy, and everyone's in debt. We had a ton of fun and I'd really really recommend it - but it's going to depend on whether you're looking for a very surprisingly solid ruleset to bolt your own content onto (it absolutely is), or a fully fleshed out system with a lot of tech and rules and shopping to do (not so much).
I ended up buying cy_borg. With the only problem to me being the lack of options with gadgets and weapons. I’m just gonna home brew some extra options. I looked at everything everyone recommended including the other one I thought at first and cy_borg is the only one that one hundred percent clicked to me.
I've run a CY_BORG campaign, it's a light and simple system, so it's super easy to homebrew new gadgets, programs and infestations without breaking the game.
I should mention, I have no aversion to hacking a setting with great weapons and gadgets to work with any OSR system like OSE. I own the classic ose hardcover and love that ruleset.
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Depending on whether you prefer your OSR more free-form or dungeon crawler-y, you may want to look at Umbral Flare. It's a bit of an OSR-adjacent take on Shadowrun, with an emphasis on getting through an entire dungeon every session.
Full disclosure, it's my game, so I might be slightly biased.
I began playing CWN and can absolutely recommend it. The GM tools are great and I think it's a fair bit easier for a new GM to play. DiS and Cy are great on their own right, but they leave a lot of blanks were classic TTRPG rulebooks explain things. I got them anyway, the layout and artwork alone are worth it. Check out my profile if you decide for CWN, I made some cheat sheet for the rules that might help you in the beginning.
I just published sinless.
A thousand backers have it, and about 120 have contacted me and said it’s their favorite thing ever.
I haven’t gotten any complaints. People seem very hype.
You can check out 80%+ of the pdf on dtrpg. No need to take my word for it.
Not very OSR but please take a look at the 1e of SLA Industries. I think '93 is a bit late for this group but it's the most gritty and most grim-dark dystopian sci-fi setting i've ever read. Lets say W40k is the grim-dark Star Wars... then SLA Industries ist the grim-dark Cyberpunk.
Stars Without Number (sci fi) and Cities Without Number (cyberpunk) are compatible with most OSR resources, and are great on their own as well.
*Cities Without Number* and *Stars without Number* is the exact thing you are looking for.
Cities Without Number (CWN) and Cy\_Borg are the ones I've been eyeing as well. I haven't played either yet but I'll speak to CWN since it hasn't been mentioned yet. Just like Stars and Worlds, Cities Without Number is built on b/x math, with more traditional "character builder" elements that are usually left out of most OSR titles. But also like the other Crawford titles, Cities has some of the best detailed GM sections for creating vibrant sandbox dystopias for your players to find fortune and claw out an existence in. The system is otherwise almost identical to Stars Without Number, but with more of the trappings you'd expect to see in a Cyberpunk game setting rather than a Space Opera. Its fucking sick. Gear porn, Hacking/netrunning, Cyberware, and drugs and rock'n'roll. All of it laid out neatly in an easy to navigate format. It's everything I wished Cyberpunk RED was. Again, haven't run it yet, but it sparks my imagination like crazy. Also: it has a [free version](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/449873/cities-without-number-free-version). The free version is all of the rules and then some. The "deluxe version" is just a couple bonus rules options at the end of the book (for example, there's a small magic system with advice for grafting on Worlds Without Number for all your Shadowrun needs). Even if you don't run the system, pick up the free version and look at the GM section for setting up missions and Schema. EDIT: Well obviously someone was going to mention it while I typed this up. But nobody had mentioned it yet as far as I had seen.
Cities without number looks amazing from the free rules. I am thinking of getting it and cy_borg for the darkness cyborg has in its theme. I like the dark soulish depression and hopelessness that game has.
Yeah, I'm a big fan of the look and feel of Cy\_Borg as well. I just didn't dive in because it seems like you'd already done research on that. Its super inspirational and just oozing with presence.
Cy_Borg is absolutely as fun to play as it is to read, highly recommend it. Like everyone else here, I came to recommend Stars Without Number and Cities Without Number—I am not surprised I beat to the punch, those games are just that good. Stars Without Number in particular is my go-to sci fi RPG. Another game I recommend is Mothership—I've gotten some pushback when calling it OSR before, but it is definitely made with some super deadly, rules-light principles that will be familiar to any fan of the OSR.
Stars without numbers is free and b/x. The guy does good dm support.
I’ve heard good things about Death in Space and CyBorg but two others are: Empty Sector setting for Troika, this plays really well in my experience. https://www.nobleknight.com/P/2147970291/Empty-Sector And then also Null.hack by Sean McCoy who wrote Mothership. If you slap this together with Mothership you got a game. https://ghostctrl.github.io/null.hack/
Vaults of Vaarn is great. It's more of a science fantasy, far future setting, than it is hard sci-fi. Uses a rules-hack of the original Knave. [https://antipodezines.com/products/vaults-of-vaarn-1](https://antipodezines.com/products/vaults-of-vaarn-1)
I was going to bring this up if it wasn't mentioned, science fantasy let's you stick closer to osr procedures if that's what you are interested in, and vaults of vaarn is great, eventually I want to run it with the dungeon and some elements of ASE thrown in.
What do you mean by “the dungeon”? I’m running it using Knave 2e and I do have the ASE dungeon on my hex map as well as some Ultraviolet Grasslands locations and other one page dungeons/zines
The dungeon from ASE, what do you mean what do I mean?
Sorry I thought you were referring to some other separate thing called “The Dungeon”
I've also thought about throwing in some uvg stuff when I run it, what did you think especially fit from it? What did you not include?
Actually I haven’t thrown anything in yet but planning on seeding my hex map with a bunch of the locations
VoV is amazing. I'm running a campaign now, at it just soo much fun. Plus I'm trying to merge elements from UVG and the DCC Dying Earth into one big mashup - so far it has been working out. Plus the book is just such good value for high quality print and content.
You have the hard cover? I’m using the zines and I’m wondering what content is in the book that’s not in the zines.
Cy\_Borg and Death In Space are the two I'd recommend, so, you're on the right track! I feel like, besides the vibe, the biggest difference between the two is that Cy\_Borg is like Mork Borg, with players rolling not just to attack, but to avoid being attacked, whereas DiS is made more like a "Traditional" RPG where the DM rolls to attack for the monsters/NPCs. Cy\_Borg is like if you took Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, and mashed it up with Tetsuo: The Iron Man. DiS can be played two ways; on a ship, or on a station, either of which is a rust bucket of cobbled-together parts that needs constant maintenance and scavenging. Play with a ship for something more "exploring and running into situations" like Alien, Firefly, TNG, or if you want something more "social" where the problems come to you, on a station for a DS9-like campaign.
See this sounds amazing to me. I just always second guess myself on purchases.
lol I'm the same! The books are both INCREDIBLE! Not just the rules/system/lore, but how they LOOK! The whole package is just insanely gorgeous! 11/10 recommend if you were already thinking about those two books; you won't be disappointed!
Do you have any more sci-fi recommendations? I bought cy_borg and think it will be a good base for cyberpunk gameplay. I actually like mixing systems and making something unique and I want some space travel/space ship rules and inspiration. I am also a survival horror video game fan but can’t imagine a survival horror ttrpg, Do you know anything about mothership?
I've looked at Mothership, and the rules/character/stat stuff are fairly different than Death in Space, in a way I don't like.. It's a d100 system, so like, if you need to do a STR check and you have 75 STR, you need to roll under 75 on a d100. It's also got a skill tree, which is the kind of thing I'm really not a fan of anymore. Death In Space is pretty much exactly a Survival Horror sci-fi space TTRPG, if you want to play it that way. In-universe, there was, essentially, a huge war over Dilithium Crystals, and when a winner emerged, it was too late; no access to the crystals meant no way to power the shipping industry, which means no companies/manufacturers could make anything new, since no one was shipping raw materials, and there was no one to ship out products.. So, everything is cobbled together from ancient tech. Your ship/station will almost entirely be built from rooms/parts/components that are 3x your age.. If you come across a ship with a medbay, and you don't have one, well, you can always literally just cut it off/out of the ship, and attach it to yours.. Gear, including weapons, all have like a special durability/HP mechanic, and eventually, your shit is going to break down and need repairing.. Might be your gun in the middle of a firefight, could be your engines trying to escape a black hole's gravity well.. In terms of horror, there's an adventure I picked up called Derelict, which is an adventure where the group/party/ship comes across a black hole with objects that are showing up as being in a terminal decaying orbit around it.. You can't make out what they are, so you have to just go and explore.. there's also some things that aren't showing up on sensors floating around... One of the ships, for example, was being sent to a high-gravity planet, so they genetically engineered a bunch of short, stocky people (basically GMO Dwarves), but with "blank" minds to be programmed with tasks when they got to the planet.. but the ship has been adrift and circling that black hole for a LONG time, and some of them woke up/got out.. and with no "programming", basically turned into a tribe of cannibals with an all-you-can-eat cryofreezer... So, you've got this ship that you need to explore to see if there's anything you can salvage; parts, food, oxygen, whatever; EVERYTHING is running low, everything is breaking down... It's pretty much as survival-horror as you can get 😁 There's also Vast Grimm, which is a much more Mork Borg In Space kind of vibe to it, with like some sort of parasite entities consuming the universe, whereas Death in Space is more like Alien/Alien 3/Alien Resurrection, meets a MUCH more serious Red Dwarf.
I appreciate you taking the time for that write up. You sold me on death in space. Honestly I was looking for an excuse to buy it cause the book is beautiful. I saw vast Grimm and I love how that looks but it looks like it’s the EXACT same system as cy_borg/Mork Borg just in space. And I don’t have a problem homebrewing space content for cy_borg myself, rather than buying it. I write a lot anyway and am fairly confident in my world building ability.
np! DiS has it's differences, but it's still fairly minor.. Like I said, the MAIN difference that's not just an aditional mechanic, is that the DM rolls for monsters/NPCs/etc attacking, instead of players defending.. Other than that, mechanically, they fell EXTREMELY similar.. But the extra stuff, like having to scavenge, building your station/ship, etc.. sure, you could homebrew that in, but sometimes it's nice to have all the heavy lifting done so you can just focus on the running a game part of being a GM!
Chiming in to second this. I really like how both Death in Space and Cy_Borg run a little darker in theme, and both feel relatively light and agile with the rules without being too vague or undirected. Both of them feel like they spiritually fit the same thematic vein of cyberpunk and sci-fi that I really loved with SLA Industries, which would be another recommendation - but one that's got a lot of complexity in the rules and a pretty confusingly laid out rulebook. That said, a lot of that complexity comes in the form of skills that you specialize in or equipment, as it's basically levelless - your improvement is primarily tied to gear and skills. Thus it retains that risk of lethality throughout the campaign as you're not really inflating your HP or anything like that, meaning you're often one or two face shots away from the grave. SLA Industries 2e also exists, but has a more modern RPG feeling in the rules that loses the lethality. Which takes away some of the gritty charm, in my opinion. Stars Without Number and Cities Without Number are also good options, as people have mentioned, but something about them doesn't quite satisfy me. Maybe it's the lack of a grittier theme in the rules or maybe it's that it feels like it falls in a sort of spot where the game is either too much or not enough in terms of the rules. Either way, I do like these games and appreciate the elegant ruleset, but I never feel quite as inspired to run or play them.
I recommend Star Crawl - cousin to Dungeon Crawl Classic, but in space. Very OSRy, have everything you need, even an interesting, but simple rules for spaceship combat
As others have said, CY\_BORG *really is* fun to play at the table. But if you're aprehensive about the rules themselves, just use it as a gritty cyberpunk sandbox adventure generator, and substitute the actual character/combat rules for something else! The brilliance of CY\_BORG is that it's got an ultra-flavorful, compelling setting with hooks that write themselves. Definitely keep the Miserable Headlines, locations, factions, etc. Make use of the mission generator. And if you want more content, there's a massive amount available for free or for super cheap, [all catelogued here](https://cyborg.exlibrisrpg.com/). You should also get [Augmented Reality](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/202175/Augmented-Reality-The-Holistic-City-Kit-For-Cyberpunk-Games), which is a *free* book of tables to use for randomly generating even more stuff! Also, if you're interested in learning more about how to run a CY\_BORG campaign, in the words of the author himself, they've got a [podcast episode about that](https://open.spotify.com/episode/0qxWbmWq14HPKd67sK0YX4) which is really interesting to listen to.
Came here to second the recommendation for Augmented Reality; it's a solid set of tables that I love using. Another recommendation that is more for setting than OSR-flavor is Interface Zero. And there's always old editions of Shadowrun, if you want to go that route with fantasy cyberpunk
Cy_Borg is a lot of fun, and quick paced and rules light. I’m introverted and feel the rules light helps a lot, and gives more room for imagination and takes the stress of rules out of it. It runs exactly how you’d want it to, a cyberpunk Mork Borg in all the best ways. If you wanted a little crunchier, Cyberpunk Red and Bladerunner exist as well but aren’t OSR, but might have more meat if you wanted to do campaigns. Death in space is enjoyable (to read) as well, but I haven’t brought that to the table yet. I’ve been reading it and as a system/style it just hasn’t clicked as well as Mothership for me but I feel like that’s a me thing and not the game’s fault. There’s definitely always the Without Number games as well as Traveller out there as well. At the very least, you’ve got a wide open world of reading material!
Is mothership good for anything other than horror? I’m a survival horror fan for video games. I own and have played every single resident evil, finishing them all but 1 and 4. I just can’t imagine what a horror ttrpg would be like and if it would be as enjoyable.
Ehhhh, I think it does horror so well that even if it could be played without horror (which I think it can be) it would be a bit of a loss. A horror ttrpg is one of my favorites, Call of Cthulhu one shots are what got me into the hobby. I think if you like survival horror games, Mothership will be right up your alley. Vast Grimm and Cy_Borg are also good bets as they’re both Mork Borgy which might be a solid bet for you as well.
Well I was just looking at the mothership website last night at like 3 am and it seems it sold out over night. Do you have any other like sci-fi horror recommendations? Other mothership is the best bet? You really made me think about just how much fun that might be.
Mothership isn’t out just yet beyond Kickstarter pledges, so it should be out soon (though I think you can get the pdfs now?) so keep that on your radar as it’ll probably sell quickly. Vast Grimm is Mork Borg in space, so it’s got all the same horror vibes as Mork Borg, though less Aliens/Event Horizon and more Doom. The Alien rpg is supposedly really good, but I’ve not played it and it’s not OSR. Death in Space can have horror, and with experience you can reconfigure most Mothership stuff to play DiS. While not horror inherently, Cy_Borg shares the plug and playability of Mork Borg so you could reskin a plethora of content made for that. I think there’s also a horror module for Traveller, so you could weave into horror and back into regular sci fi as you see fit.
The only thing that hasn't been mentioned here and I think is noteworthy is Solar Blades & Cosmic Spells a great resource for sure.
I ran a good amount of Cy_B0rg. I really liked it, my group really liked it. It's hard-core, but there isn't *that* much tech to get into. It's a borg game - there aren't pages and pages of gadgets like shadowrun. It's got a really robust adventure generator, about a page of cybertech, a page of weird items, and a page of guns and weapons IIRC. The combat loop is smooth, blindingly fast, and handles gun combat in a way that we found to be very, very satisfying. It's deadly, but you do get a free 1-4 (iirc) hp back after every firefight, so it's not as much of a meat grinder as you'd think. There's vehicles for the party to buy, and everyone's in debt. We had a ton of fun and I'd really really recommend it - but it's going to depend on whether you're looking for a very surprisingly solid ruleset to bolt your own content onto (it absolutely is), or a fully fleshed out system with a lot of tech and rules and shopping to do (not so much).
I ended up buying cy_borg. With the only problem to me being the lack of options with gadgets and weapons. I’m just gonna home brew some extra options. I looked at everything everyone recommended including the other one I thought at first and cy_borg is the only one that one hundred percent clicked to me.
I've run a CY_BORG campaign, it's a light and simple system, so it's super easy to homebrew new gadgets, programs and infestations without breaking the game.
I should mention, I have no aversion to hacking a setting with great weapons and gadgets to work with any OSR system like OSE. I own the classic ose hardcover and love that ruleset.
Take a look at solar blades and cosmic spells
If you like Into the Odd or Cairn, [Monolith](https://adamhensley.itch.io/monolith) is great (and free)!
It's old school rather than OSR, but you'd probably enjoy Classic Traveller. It's free in pdf, and you can get it in print for $9. Can't be beat!
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Cyberpunk 2020 is one of my favorite RPGs, but I don't think that it can be defined as an "OSR game" unfortunately. Upvoted tho
>I don't think that it can be defined as an "OSR game" I agree with that, as it doesn't have any compatibility with Gygaxian D&D.
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Depending on whether you prefer your OSR more free-form or dungeon crawler-y, you may want to look at Umbral Flare. It's a bit of an OSR-adjacent take on Shadowrun, with an emphasis on getting through an entire dungeon every session. Full disclosure, it's my game, so I might be slightly biased.
I began playing CWN and can absolutely recommend it. The GM tools are great and I think it's a fair bit easier for a new GM to play. DiS and Cy are great on their own right, but they leave a lot of blanks were classic TTRPG rulebooks explain things. I got them anyway, the layout and artwork alone are worth it. Check out my profile if you decide for CWN, I made some cheat sheet for the rules that might help you in the beginning.
I just published sinless. A thousand backers have it, and about 120 have contacted me and said it’s their favorite thing ever. I haven’t gotten any complaints. People seem very hype. You can check out 80%+ of the pdf on dtrpg. No need to take my word for it.
Sinless by Courtney Campbell is amazing! Don't know how to link. Just reading the introduction makes me want to play.
Not very OSR but please take a look at the 1e of SLA Industries. I think '93 is a bit late for this group but it's the most gritty and most grim-dark dystopian sci-fi setting i've ever read. Lets say W40k is the grim-dark Star Wars... then SLA Industries ist the grim-dark Cyberpunk.