Hi, everybody:

Finally, I have had a little [free] time for reading this thread.

Let me introduce myself. I have been GM for many years, mostly sword-and-sorcery RPG, and I am a great fan of scifi genre, but not an expert in RPG systems. 

If you don't mind, I would like to comment some aspects of interest I have found and to make a couple of suggestions. BoV is really wonderful, and I intend to use it in a future Star Trek game I have planned to play. However, there are some points that may be improved or, at least, extended.

Firstly, I would like to say that, from my point of view, you should take into account that a major part of the potential users of BoV will be people looking for a easy-to-use flexible system to play their favourite scifi settings; e.g. Star Trek, Star Wars, Babylon 5, Battlestar Galactica, Buck Rogers, Dune, Fading Suns, Wing Commander, etc. So, I think that this fact should be taken into account. Beware that this doesn't mean that the ohe original setting proposed by Nerosfiddle is not interesting :-)

However, some of these settings are not 100% compatible (or, at least, complete) with respect to the original set of rules of BoV. I think that the solution would be to have a CORE set of rules, basically those you have been discussing here, and a small APPENDIX with some optional and/or extended set of rules. This way, when playing, you will just need to take the core rules and, if needed, the extra rules required by your setting. For example, one of my suggestions will be allow to travel through subspace or hyperspace (as in the case of Star Trek, star Wars or Babylon 5) rather than just he FTL jumps proposed by Nerosfiddle (as in the case of Dune or Battlestar Galactica). What I mean is to keep the original FTL jump rules in the core ruleset but to add a small set of rule for sub/hyper-space travel in the Appendix in case a GM prefer to use them instead of the FTL jumps. If desired, you can integrate them in the original BoV setting in a non-direct way by describing, for example, that ancient insciptions found in alien ruins of Planet-X talk about an ancient race that were able to fly through the non-space (or something like that).

Well, what about my suggestions and commentaries (forgive me about its length):

1) As I have said before, to make available an optional set of rules for subspace/hyperspace travel (as in the case of Star Trek, Star Wars or Babylon 5). It should be also considered the possibility of using specific "jump points" (e.g. Babylon 5) or not (Star Trek and Star Wars).

2) I agree with the need or convenience or adding new careers (some were already proposed by you):
   -- Noble/Politician: colony governors, ambassadors, etc. are recurring characters in many scifi settings; e.g. Star Wars, Star Trek, Dune, Fading Suns, Babylon 5, etc. either as PCs or NPCs.
   -- Scientist/scholar: science officers, exo-biologists, exo-archeologists, antropologist, etc. are also usual in sci-fi settings.
   -- Priest/missionary: Fading Suns, Warhammer 40.000, etc. have these (or similar) careers available. In fact, this career has also a lot of sense in BoV original setting (missionaries trying to take the Word of God to feral pagane worlds)

3) I miss some weapons in the armory:
   -- What about regular chemical-powered guns? I guess you are "delegating" in other rulebook (Dogs of War/Barbarians of the Aftermath?). Am I right?
   -- I think a new type of weapon between laser and plasma would be useful and it could be used as phaser/disruptors or something like that.
   -- Where are the "light sabers"!? Ooookkkkk, let's name them "power blades" :-)
   
4) I agree with changing the space battle rules for focusing more on shields. However, beware that in some settings shields do not exist (e.g. Galactica, Babylon 5, first part of Enterprise...), the rules should allow its use in both settings.

5) I agree that hull damage should be only repaired in proper facilities.

6) "Initiative" should be clarified, as you have commented before.

7) Using ¿Agilty?+Career+Thrusters-Size for piloting small starships, as Jasales suggested, looks good. You should include it.

8) By the way, I also miss a single-seat fighter among the example ships.

9) In the case of applying damage during starship combat, a random localization table would be a interesting option too.

10) The "Ion cannons" and "tractor beam" starship booms proposed by Jasales look really cool.

11) "Beam me up, Scotty!", where are the transporters!? :-) Such an optional boom should be great, together with its corresponding optional set of rules (by adapting the Teleportation rules).

12) "Limited emotions/empathy" would be an interesting character flaw (remember Spock and Data). It would be a restriction when using Charisma, for example. 

13) You really need a image cover. I know it's just a esthetics question, but when I printed BoV for reading it and taking notes, I really missed it. It will give your work a more "profesional" look ;-)

14) I think you should remove the watermark you are using as background. If you print the PDF (for taking notes and so on), it uses a lot of extra ink. A nice header and/or footpage may be nicer. 

15) Finally, I think you should add a gameplay example at the end of the rules, told as a story. I have written my own ones for same rulesets I have used and they really help to quickly understand the rules and solve doubts.

Merry Christmas!
     Moucho

Great suggestions Moucho but I'm pretty sure that BotV was just created for nerosfiddle's home game. He has provided his orginal document for anyone to modifiy. Would you like to tackle a core rules version with setting appendices? It would be great to see what you come up with.

I have done so for my own home game. I've modified BotV somewhat and added my own setting material.
This is still a draft version but you can see the sort of things I'm doing with it.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/6726829/TerminalVerge_Clipped.pdf

moucho wrote:

Please, don't missunderstand me, I am not telling nerosfiddle how to manage his game and which rules to use or not to use. I'm just telling what I think is true, that his rules (simple and effective) will be much probably used by other GMs for playing other scifi settings :-)

Oh, gosh. I didn't mean to come across that way. You just seem really creative so I was trying to nudge you into a project.

moucho wrote:

By the way, thanks a lot for sharing your rules, they're great!

Thank you. The rules are working out very well. Our playtest group has formed into an ongoing campaign group and I'll revise the document (lots of work needed) this coming summer.
 

By the way, any web where to look for sci-fi images under Creatice Commons License or something like that?

This reminds me that I have some things to do too... Sorry, I have had no time.