Five Year Mission

A quick game inspired by early Star Trek.

Character Creation: Divid 4d (this game uses six-sided dice) between Close Combat & Ranged Combat. Each pool has must include between 1d and 3d.

Pick two specialties and divid 4d between them as above. Common specialties include Command (social interaction and leadership), Conn (navigation and ship's weapons), Engineering (ship's maintenance and jurying-rigging), Medical (diagnosis and treatment), and Science (analysis and hypothesis). Being a member of an alien species with inhuman abilities could also be a specialty (with GM approval).

Between adventures players can adjust their character's pools and even change their specialties as their characters grow and change.

Generic Skill Checks: Roll all dice and pick one. On a 1 to 3, your character fails but you get the explain what went wrong, and on a 4 to 6 your character succeeds with the GM explaining what happens as a result.

Close Combat System: Each round combatants roll 1d, the combatant with the lower roll loses that die. This continues until one side concedes or runs out of dice to roll.

Close combat typically ends with unconsciousness, though it could also end with injury or death if the victor is armed.

Ranged Combat System: Roll all dice and pick one to use for your roll. A roll of 1 to 3 miss a human-sized target but can be used to target scenery, a 4 can hit a target in the open, a 5 can hit a target behind partial cover, and a 6 can hit a target behind heavy cover. Shots are resolved in order from low rolls to high rolls.

The results of a ranged attack range from unconsciousness to death or disintegrate depending on the weapon used.

Space Combat System: Combat between ships is a little more complex than combat between individuals. Below are the three basic combat actions, though they are far from the only options available.

Once a ship's screens are down, one more salvo will disable or destroy it.

Maneuvering: Both sides roll all their dice and pick one or more dice to use first during the first round of fire. The ship with the higher total can attack while the other ship isn't in position to fire their weapons. A tie means both ships can attack at once.

Once the first round of fire has been resolved, a second or third round can be started drawing more dice from the original maneuvering roll. If one side has dice left and the other doesn't, they can execute one final round of fire.

If there's no clear winner after maneuvering dice have been spent, the battle is at a stalemate. Either ship can break off and escape the conflict, or attempt to attempt to change the situation enough to break the stalemate (which is generally followed by a new maneuvering roll).

Damage Control (if fired upon): Roll all dice and pick one to see how well your screens stand up to attack.
1-3 Screen fail
4-5 Screens weakened (or fail if previously weakened)
6 Screens hold

Fire Weapons (if able): Roll all dice and pick one to fire weapons and see how well the enemy's screens hold.
1-3 Enemy screens hold
4-5 Enemy screens weakened (or fail if previously weakened)
6 Enemy screens fail

It's suggested that one PC handles maneuvering rolls, one does damage control, a third fires weapons, and depending on the situation a forth could be using Command, Science or some of specialty to influence the battle.