Showing posts with label Machinations of the Space Princess. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Machinations of the Space Princess. Show all posts

Friday, September 04, 2020

Melee Weapons of the FUTURE!

Coming up with hand-to-hand weapons for sci-fi games is fun.  You can really let your imagination run wild with options.  While what follows are not the craziest things in the world (nothing on the level of, say, the avern flower from Wolfe's The Shadow of the Torturer), they are both easy to imagine by the players (most can be represented by pictures of real weapons from museums to give the basic idea) and yet each has a nice little sci-fi or fantasy twist.  

These, of course, are for Machinations of the Space Princess, my current RPG fascination.  I tried to give every weapon its niche, so that any of them would make sense for the PCs or their foes to use.  

Deflection-dagger - powerful deflection field adds +1 to any Defend action.

One-handed, close-combat weapon.

Damage: 1d6 penetrating or slashing.

Cost: 8 GP


The deflection-dagger is a main gauche with a powerful deflection field in its hilt.  While it can be used to attack, its true utility is in its ability to ward against incoming attacks.  If you don’t use the deflection-dagger to make an attack in the same turn, you may add +1 to any Defend actions (so +2 if Defending with one action and +4 with two Defend actions).  

Gyro-stabilized Cutlass - adds +2 to the attack roll, but skilled warriors eschew the correction for greater damage potential.

One-handed, close-combat weapon.

Damage: d6 + bonus +2 on attack rolls.

Cost: 20 GP


The gyro-stabilized cutlass is a single-edged fighting blade crafted with the neophyte warrior in mind.  Internal stabilizers guide the wielder’s hand, keeping the edge aligned with the target and promoting proper follow-through on draw cuts.  


While the guidance of the cutlass is a boon to the inexperienced, it aggravates experienced warriors who find themselves fighting against the weapon to perform anything but the most generic attacks and parries.  Because of this, the gyro-stabilized cutlass cannot be used to perform any Combat skills.   

Grav-mace - for pounding through armour.

One-handed, close-combat weapon.

Damage: d8 Impact + 2 levels of Armour Defeating

Cost: 40 GP


The grav-mace uses gravitic pulse technology to deliver crushing blows on impact while allowing the wielder to recover quickly and prepare for their next strike.  It’s a favorite among boarding parties who are likely to face heavily armoured opponents but don’t have the room to wield two-handed weapons.  


Kālakūṭa Stiletto - a dagger fashioned from poison.

One-handed, close-combat weapon.

Damage: d8 + concealable + make a Toughness save every round or take an addition 1d4 damage until they succeed on a Toughness save.

Cost: 250 GP


The kālakūṭa stiletto is fashioned from a mysterious dark stone whose depths absorb all light, though the edges are translucent and smokey.  The stone is inimical to nearly all life and beings not immune to poison often take additional damage from any wound caused by such a blade.  Mere cuts can lead to death if the wounds are not swiftly treated.  


As the stiletto has no mechanical or technological components, isn’t made of any sort of normal metal or composite, and must be sheathed in lead to be carried safely, it is completely invisible to most scanner technology, and a carefully hidden kālakūṭa stiletto is nearly impossible to detect.  

Power Hammer - generates ball of energy to cause destructive harm to target. 

Two-handed close-combat weapon.

Damage: d12 energy + 1 level of Armour Defeating or d8 piercing + 2 levels of Armour Defeating

Cost: 280 GP


The power hammer resembles the ancient lucerne hammer.  The spikes on the top and back are fashioned of the same stuff the smallsword is, while the tines of the hammer head can encase itself in a destructive sphere of energy that’s released when it strikes a target.  The wielder must pick before swinging the weapon which they wish to hit with, and may only use one side per target per turn.  


The power hammer is considered the best weapon for cracking heavy armour.  When the wealthiest powers go to war, hulking juggernauts lay into each other with power hammers, battering each other back-and-forth across the battlefield.  

Rondel Dagger - diamond-bladed for punching through armour.

One-handed, close-combat weapon.

Damage: d6 penetrating + 4 levels of Armour Defeating 

Cost: 32 GP


The ultimate in piercing through armour, the triangular “blade” of the rondel dagger is fashioned from nanocomb-reinforced diamond.  Don’t actually try to cut anything with it, however; that “blade” is actually more of a spike, ultra-specialized in punching through resistance and getting at the soft, squishy body hidden inside armour.  The big round disks at either end of the grip protect the hand from sparks, jagged bits of shattered armour, or ablative defenses, while also giving you a good grip in case the dagger gets stuck.  

Scissor Katar - diamond-edged plus it opens up to do more damage!

One-handed, close-combat weapon.

Damage: d10 piercing/slicing + 1 level of Armour Defeating.

Cost: 45 GP


The scissor katar takes the reinforced diamond of the rondel, uses it for the edge of a broad blade, then adds a motorized scissor-action to open the blade up once it’s inside!  While nasty enough in the hands of most combatants, a skilled opponent can literally use the scissor katar to peel your armour right off you; when using the Armour Eater skill, the wielder of a scissor katar only suffers a -3 on their attack roll.  


The scissor katar continues to be favored by infantry and marine officers of the remnants of the Urlanth Matriarchy.

Shock-cestus - electrified gauntlet.

One-handed, close-combat weapon.

Damage: d6 volt + shocking (Toughness save or unable to act on your next turn.)

Cost: 3 GP


The shock-cestus is the calling card of the thug and slaver.  While its power cells and metal framework make it impossible to hide from scans or a professional search, it’s easy enough to veil by a cloak or coat.  In certain regions, thug and gang fashion is dominated by long, loose left sleeves designed to conceal a shock-cestus from casual glances.


Smallsword - favored by Urlanth nobility.  Can attack twice.  Also comes in a concealable cane version.

One-handed, close-combat weapon.

Damage: d8 + 1 levels of Armour Defeating + Double

Cost: 30 GP (80 GP for the sword cane version)


At first glance, the smallsword appears to be a rondel on steroids.  While the blade is the same shape, with its triangular cross-section and no real edge to speak of, it’s of completely different manufacture. The sandwich of memory-ceramics and harder alloys gives the smallsword impressive flexibility without sacrificing much of its penetrating power.  The blade can take a shocking amount of punishment, allowing it to parry attacks from even a sonnenbalger without snapping or melting.  The grip molds to the hand of the wielder, and the active balance gravitics in the pommel give unparalleled accuracy and speed in the hands of a skilled combatant.    


The smallsword is favored by Urlanth nobility and naval officers.  It is the default weapon for settling duels.  Note that while the prices listed represent the bare-bones options, few nobles can resist decorating their weapons in the latest styles.


The sword cane version of the smallsword is popular among well-to-do merchants and uppity middle-class sorts who might not be allowed to wear a sword everywhere they go, but feel the need for a solid self-defense option in a pinch.  Due to its lack of directly offensive tech housed in the weapon itself, a properly crafted sword cane can sneak past even alert security forces.  

Sonnenbalger - plasma-edged arming sword.

One-handed, close-combat weapon.

Damage: d10 heat

Cost: 20 GP


The ubiquitous sonnenbalger is the sidearm of choice among mercenaries and non-coms.  The sturdy weapon with its distinctive s-shaped handguard and heavy “fishtail” pommel is seen by many to be the badge of the “true” soldier, and so is affected by many who aspire to that status.


Such posers run the risk of setting their pants on fire.  The sonnenbalger projects a wave of superheated plasma along both edges of the blade, hot enough to burn through all but the heaviest armour.  The waves occasionally interrupt each other where they meet, making the sonnenbalger mediocre for thrusting.

Wailing Katana - edge shrouded in sonic wave that cuts finer than obsidian!

Two-handed, close-combat weapon.

Damage: d20

Cost: 300 GP


While there are many warrior and combat societies that swear by the deadliness of the wailing katana, there are just as many who will tell you that the weapon is over-hyped.  There are recorded instances of wailing katanas cutting off an arm or a leg from a juggernaut armour suit, but these are the acts of extremely skilled masters of the martial arts, and even they rarely get to do it twice if they’re not also heavily armoured themselves.


The cutting power of the wailing katana comes from the sonic wave it projects around its edge, allowing it to slice finer than even some monofilament weapons.  While the weapon's warbling moan isn’t so loud as to make stealth impossible, it does require an atmosphere to work properly, making the weapon useless in vacuum.  


Thursday, August 27, 2020

Caudle Paper for Machinations of the Space Princess and other RPGs


Over at his blog, the Alexandrian, Mr. Alexander has recently waxed philosophical about coinage in RPGs.  He opines that the sweet spot is three to four different currencies:


So why track three or four currencies instead of two or ten or forty? In my experience, that’s generally the sweet spot where you get the benefits of flavor and logistics before hitting diminishing returns. What you’re generally looking for is: A poor currencyOne or two currencies in the range of what the PCs typically useA rich currency denoting unusual wealth or powerWith those relative values, you’ve gained the bulk of the semantic/narrative meaning to be milked from currency. In D&D that’s copper, silver, gold, and platinum. In a campaign where the PCs are drug dealers, it’s the scale from garbage bags full of dirty $1 bills that need to be laundered to flashing Benjamins at the club.

Machinations of the Space Princess has but a single currency: the cleverly named grams, palladium (aka GP).  It is, of course, easy to divide such things into fractions of a gram, and Desborough mentions such divisions, as well as larger coins.

But there’s no romance in that.  So I’m adding two new common units of currency to my Machination’s campaigns. 

The first is a common psychoactive drug that simultaneously induces euphoria and sedation.  It’s commonly produced in thin, translucent, square paper-like sheets roughly 7 cm on a side (slightly smaller than a post-it note).  Because these squares are the color of cinnamon bark, it’s sometimes called cinnamon paper, but its proper name is caudle paper for its regenerative properties (aka, CP; see, I can play this game too! ;D ).  Nobody will be shocked to hear that the common price for CP is 100 sheets for a GP.

Smoking a CP will restore a single hit point.  No additional hit points can be regained this way within the same hour.  Hedge-witches and back-alley medics are rumored to have techniques to boost the restorative powers of a CP, but strange side-effects are common.  You can also find CP holders and pipes that claim to boost the effects of smoking CPs.  None of these claims have been verified, though they do make you look more elegant. 

Still need to figure out what my PPs are going to be…

Friday, August 21, 2020

Implied Setting of Machinations of the Space Princess


Yeah, more about Machinations.  One of the things it does really, really well is implied setting.  There’s enough there to work with, but not so much there it’s going to feel like you’re guessing what the truth really is.

So, how does MotSP do implied setting?

OVERT

Sometimes, it just out-and-out tells you.  There are a few short paragraphs about the fall of the Urlanth Matriarchy and the 99 space princesses battling for the throne.  The same page mentions mega-corps and guilds and criminal organizations rising to fill the void, while entire star systems go rogue or rebel.  It’s described as “a chaotic whirl of violence and opportunism.”

The next page mentions a few themes the game was designed around.  The first is that the universe is ridiculously huge.  Desborough throws around the numbers, and they’re the sort that make the mind of normal folk glaze over.  One death is a tragedy; a million is a statistic.  But the billions upon billions of stars, each with its attendant constellation of planets, moons, comets, meteors and what-not?  Even as statistics, they are too colossally huge to do anything useful with.  The universe isn’t infinite, but there’s room for just about anything you and the players want to stick in it.  Hell, our galaxy is probably big enough for that, with three-hundred billion stars in it, and there are another one-hundred-and-seventy billion galaxies that we’ve seen so far. 

In short, feeling crowded isn’t something the Machinations GM should feel.  You’ve got more than enough room to toss in everything, the kitchen sink, and whatever else the players come up with that might strike your fancy. 

This Machinations universe, like our own, isn’t just ridiculously big, it’s also ridiculously old at over 13 billion years.  Where Machinations might deviate from the real galaxy is in the amount of intelligent life.  Like the Star Wars universe, the universe of MotSP is teaming not just with life, but intelligent life, and this life isn’t so alien that the different species can’t communicate, trade, and come together in polyglot empires.  As Desborough says,

There is plenty of time and space for empires to rise and fall, for many different intelligent species to take their turn hauling ass out of the primordial muck and having a go at being interstellar traders and empire builders fora while and all without necessarily bumping into each other. The universe may be full of these kinds of goings on, but it’s also so massive as to allow for backwaters where primitive planets go unmolested and pocket empires of several stars cling on, thinking themselves to be masters of the universe.

PLAYFUL HINTS

There are also these little one or two sentence snippets at the bottom of every page.  These are things like:

The two-headed asp of Belton-3’s heads are actually antennae. Its brain is in the trunk. 

Evolution moves slower than technology. Get your instincts corrected surgically! 

Proot the Unkillable moves from planet to planet and slaughters their populations. 

Gamma ray bursts have increased on the fringes and seem to be coming inward. 

Far from any star the Dark Tower imprisons the ancient gods in a matrix of orgone. 

Xanak worker caste were biological robots, until some bastard uplifted them.

In short, a collection of local color, GM inspiration, and adventure hooks.  Nearly every page has one of these at the bottom.  Most of the topics referenced (like Proot the Unkillable) are never mentioned again.

THE RULES

But the technique I find most interesting is how the rules build the setting.  Unlike Yoon-suin, there are few random tables allowing you to build locations, organizations, or individuals.  But that doesn’t mean there isn’t implied setting.  There’s actually a TON of implied setting in the rules. 

The most obvious place is the race creation rules.  This is a universe full of varied life.  Sure, humanoid is the default, but it’s not the only option.  We’ve got rules for ammonia-based floating bags that live in the cloud layers of gas giants; rock-encrusted, radiation-loving boron-based lifeforms; poison-guzzling chemosynthetic races; beings of pure energy; steamy metal-oxide based life; petro-swilling methane-based life; and two versions of silicon-based life.  You can be a parasite that lives in other organisms, a cyborg, an AI, an emergency medical hologram, or even deceased!  Plus, we’ve got all the classics: cat-people, dog-people, plant-people, bat-people, insect-people, gestalt swarm people, psionic space elves, fungus-people, octopus-people, noble warrior races, resolute pacifist races, spiritually enlightened races, barbaric races, and pretty much all the other sci-fi clichés you can think of.  



And with space being so ridiculously, impossibly big, your wonderfully bizarre snowflake of a race might be from some distant corner of this, or some other, galaxy. 

Or even another universe altogether!

But it actually starts with the stats.

MotSP adds Comeliness to the traditional six.  Now, on the face of it, this is the last game that should use a Comeliness stat.  Especially when you look at the race-creation rules.  Combine the two, and what you end up with is a universe where an ammonia-based lifeform that looks like a giant jellyfish can appreciate the beauty of Monica Bellucci.  And a universe where plain ol’ human you can appreciate the ammonia-based lifeform that looks like a giant jellyfish’s version of Monica Bellucci.

This is a universe where potent enough beauty crosses not just cultural but species lines, where Captain Jack Harkness is seducing everything with a pulse (and some things without) as he hip-thrusts his way across the galaxy. 

In a game that encourages everyone at the table to go absolutely gonzo with creating new and bizarre alien races, you’d be completely justified in questioning the idea of a universally applicable Charisma stat.  Machinations of the Space Princess scoffs at your pedantry and doubles down with Comeliness. 

The most blatant bit of rules-describing-setting is force fields.  They come in two flavors.  One basically increases the difficulty of hitting you while the other absorbs a certain amount of damage per combat (recharging basically at the end of each fight).  In either case, they only work against ranged attacks and do nothing against melee attacks.  And they’re cheap!  You can get a +1 to your Ranged Defense (effectively your AC vs. ranged attacks) for a mere 5 gp.  Money well spent!  Especially since they never run out of charge or the like.  Your forcefield defense is good forever.

This, of course, is why swashbuckling about with swords (lazer or otherwise) makes sense in the MotSP universe.  You can plink a lot of shots at someone from a distance and have them deflected harmlessly away, but that won’t happen when you poke them with a sharpened stick.  Ranged weapons also potentially suffer running out of ammo/charge/whatevers.  How often you need to reload is based on a saving throw you roll for the weapon at the end of every fight.  


RANDOM TABLES

There aren’t as many as you’d think.  They’re all big.  The first is a d100 table the Psion class characters roll on to generate their witch mark, some strangeness caused by the character’s deviant genetics or possibly the source of their unusual powers.  Some are baleful, others beneficial.  (Shockingly, there’s no “overcharge” mechanic that forces Psions to roll again for pushing their powers too far.)  The results range from eh to potential coolness.  The results are things like:

Mushtool: You are infested with a psychicfungal symbiote which covers you in faintly glowing growths and tendrils. -1 Com. 

Inedible: You are poisonous, anything biting you or tasting your blood or flesh must make a Toughness Save or suffer d6 damage. If you’re already poisonous step up the damage by a dice type. 

The Fog: Your body surrounded you with a fine mist that obscures you from direct view.+1 Ranged Defence. 

For the Birds: Instead of hair you havefeathers like a bird. -1 Charisma. 

Omnomnom: You are covered in tiny mouths that chatter and whisper blasphemies, lies and the occasional hard truth. -2 Cha and Com.

There’s also a d100 table of cool adventure hooks happening on a planet:

The planet produces a unique mineral/resource/drug. 

The planet is a suspiciously calm and gentle utopia. What’s going on? 

Look out! Space locusts! 

A postphysical entity on the world demands sacrifices. 

The planet is only just making first contact with greater galactic society. Hijinx ensure. 

The space navy is in ‘town’ with thousands of astronauts and space marines on leave on the planet. 

Zombies.

And finally, there’s a random table for planets that’s very Star Wars, as it includes: Desert World, Plains World, City World, etc. 

There’s a bit more set-dressing stuff about star colors, asteroid belts, moons, etc.  Basically, these things exist, as you’d expect.

It’s kind of interesting how little Machinations does with random tables, considering how much use they get in Lamentations’ stuff.  So many of the ideas in the unweighted d100 tables are never going to be seen, and so much of it is pretty standard sci-fi TV show fare, the sort you’d expect from an episode of Star Trek or the ‘80’s Buck Rogers, that it just reinforces what’s already there. 

CONCLUSIONS

Instead, the real world-building is in the rules that are going to come up repeatedly.  And I could discuss more, especially all the broad range of stuff that falls under the Scholar skills which is likely to make characters with what amounts to post-graduate skills extremely rare in the game (and how many of those skills are one-upped by psionic powers). 

The fun thing is all the handles this gives you when designing your campaign.  You can easily narrow down the options for races; you can remove personal shields to make guns more potent; you can replace space ships with star gates without breaking a thing.

Though I’m not sure why you’d want to, honestly.  As is, Machinations gives you a great little set-up for classic rollicking space opera shenanigans.  Much better, I think, to do a Session Zero and pick out the themes your players are most interested in and design characters and adventures that focus on those.

Tuesday, August 18, 2020

Machinations of the Space Princess: What it Is


For reasons I don’t really recall, I was recently reminded of Machinations of the Space Princess, “Grim” Jim Desborough’s science-fantasy remake of the Lamentations of the Flame Princess RPG. 

So that makes it a remake of a remake?  Yeah.

First off, this would not exist but for Raggi’s attempt to do a shotgun spread of new projects on Kickstarter lo these many years ago.  Originally, Machinations was intended to be a single adventure.  But the shotgun spread idea backfired; with so many cool projects, I think only two got funded.  The rest diluted the pledges too thinly, and Machinations was one of those that didn’t get funded.

So Desborough teamed up with Satine Phoenix and took his tin cup to Indiegogo where he asked for a cool kilobuck US to make it happen.  He got over $4k and so we got a game full of full-color art by Phoenix.

I heard something about this via the G+, but I didn’t pay it much mind at the time.  Partly because I didn’t really realize what Desborough was up to.  While I wasn’t expecting a one-to-one port of LotFP to sci-fi, with lazer swords and plasma crossbows and psion-elves, I was at least expecting MotSP to keep what I saw as the coolest innovations and themes of Lamentations.  This included the character-sheet based encumbrance system, the strong focus on human characters, the weird and disturbing magic, and a general theme of survival horror that is the hallmark of LotFP adventures.

That is (mostly) not at all what Desborough and Phoenix created. 
I was expecting Saturn 3 and ALIEN and Pitch Black and the ’72 Soviet Solaris.  Not really my bag beyond one-shots and the like (though I do rather enjoy the Free League ALIEN RPG, much to my shock).

But that’s not what we get.  What we get is something more like Buck Godot: Zap-gun for Hire meets Barbarella meets Flash Gordon meets The Sword’s Warp Riders. 

And that is totally my thing.

Now, this is not some giant stops-bullets book like Lancer.  This is a “mere” 240 pages in a 6” x 8” paperback format.  This is a construction-set of an RPG, very much like Star Siege or GURPS.  However, unlike those two games, Machinations doesn’t really give two flips for balance.  MotSP doesn’t pretend to know what your games are going to be about.  Your game could be about blaster-slinging space cowboys, a team of highly skilled mercs taking on the most challenging jobs in a galaxy dominated by heartless megacorps, swashbuckling radium-cavaliers living and dying for honor and love, tomb-raiders cracking open the trapped vaults of the Elder Races, or super-powered psions staying one step ahead of the Psi-Pstasi.  MotSP isn’t here to tell you how to play your game.

And so Machinations doesn’t lose much sleep in crafting a fully “balanced” experience.  It’s very Old School in this respect.  Sure, there are some nods towards niche protection, echoes from B/X D&D in what your character is good at and how quickly they go up levels and stuff like that.  But there’s nothing stopping you from cobbling together a Frankenstein’s monster of abilities and powers. 

Take, for instance, race creation.  There are dozens (maybe over a hundred) options for racial characteristics you can use to build your character’s race.  The list of race traits you can pick is 20 pages long and might be the longest single section in the book.  They’re organized by theme, but you don’t need to stick with the theme; there’s nothing to stop you from taking the blob-creature’s ability to rip off chunks of itself and send them scurrying about as miniature versions of you, and combining that with the ammonia-based life’s slow metabolism ability and the reptile’s scales. 

If you love lots of character options, this is your game.  Want to craft a team of bizarre creatures who band together to bring peace to a fractious galaxy?  Want the flexibility to build a tentacle monster with poor understanding of personal boundaries or a Space Pirate Amazon Ninja Catgirl who carves said tentacle monsters up into calamari?  Want the challenge of crafting the ultimate mechanical bad-ass by pushing the rules to their limit and then hurling your creations into the deadliest dungeon the GM can devise to see who emerges victorious? 

Machinations can do that.

And it doesn’t stop at race-building.  While there’s relatively little customization in the four classes (Killer, Specialist, Scholar, and Psion), everything else oozes with customization options.  For instance, each weapon category, from Small, One-handed Close Combat Weapons to Rifles/Shotguns is further divided in what amounts to a Small, Medium, and Large category.  On top of that, you can pile on the added modifications, from concealable to larger magazines to a selector for different damage types to “vicious” levels of damage.  In short, there’s no list of races with pseudo-clever names like Ignians and Reptiliods, or guns like ARES Predator Mk II or AK-97.  What we get instead is a fun tool kit you can use to build your own universe.

Want to build the ZF1 from Fifth Element with the net launcher, poisoned arrows, rocket, flame-thrower, and “all new ice-cube system?”  Yeah, Machinations can do that, too.

As you’d expect from something built on the LotFP chassis, the mechanics are a mish-mash of stuff.  We’ve got D&D 3.x’s d20-roll-higher for attacks, LotFP’s d6-roll-under for skills (of which there are many more in this game) 5e’s a-save-for-ever-stat and your choice of roll over or under for saves.  Your poor dice won’t know which way to go!

And on top of that we’ve got psionics (complete with a randomly chosen “witch’s mark” that can either be a (usually pretty weird) boon or bane), a wide array of cybernetics (which can cause psychosis if you take too many), and vehicles ranging from one-person bikes up to space battleships. 

What surprises is the stuff left out.  Most especially, encumbrance.  Not even mentioned.  Ditto for logistics; ammo is managed by saving throws (you need to reload when your weapon fails its save) and most tech doesn’t appear to need recharging of any kind.  The cigarette-pack standard-energy-clips of Star Frontiers are nowhere to be found here.  Because it’s Desborough, we do get some rules for dealing with exposure to vacuum or radiation (that doesn’t include a mutations table), but the guidelines for generating planets are all about what sort of adventures you can have on them, rather than orbital radius or axial tilt.   

The result is a rules-lite, cinematic game that you could go beer-and-pretzels with but has enough heft to it for long-term campaign style play.  Don’t play it if your group isn’t united in their goals; munchkins can craft real curb-stompers from the race options while your story-gamers will devise original and shocking personalities that are mechanically incoherent.

But do play if you’re looking for something flexible and not very demanding.  You can pick up all the mechanics in an afternoon and you can craft your first adventure over a lazy weekend (be sure to give yourself time to create gear and aliens and maybe a ship or two).  If you and your players love sharing world-building responsibilities, you’re going to love all the options available to you.  And if you instead want to keep firm control over the setting and factions, it’s easy enough to build a cheat-sheet for the players and some pre-made races and go to town.

In short, it’s as flexible as B/X and possibly even more rules-lite.  Character creation isn’t as quick but offers greatly expanded variety.  If you’re looking for a science-fantasy rules set to craft your own fun on, check this game out.