Playing Star Frontiers (SF) with Frontier Space (FS) is easy since you only use the setting information and species. Yes, they were called species in this game, and for a sci-fi game, that feels right.
- Dralasite: STR+5, AGIL-5, elasticity, 5% lie detection.
- Yazirian: AGL+5,STR-5, battle rage, gliding.
- Human: as-is
- Vrusk: INT+5, STR-5, ambidexterity, comprehension.
- Sathar: INT-5, WIL+5, hypnotism.
Many new and "create a species" options in Frontier Space can be used as different species options, and you can even use your favorites from Starfinder or other settings.
The Frontier Space equipment list is better, and most of everything you need is there, including a more varied assortment of vehicles.
Starships
Here is where it gets tricky. Star Frontiers has a fantastic space wargame called Knight Hawks (KH). If your memories of Star Frontiers are complete with these ships, use the ships and make skill rolls with the FS system.
However, FS has an excellent section of ships, but they feel a bit more summarized and less detailed than the KH versions. The KH ships also are lower technology than FS, where FS tends to be the more TV and movie starships with artificial gravity, KH is a bit lower technology with no artificial gravity at all. Most 1980s sci-fi RPG assumed artificial gravity, even Traveller and Space Opera, and KH was one of the few which took the hard sci-fi route and did "gravity by acceleration," which means you accelerate at 1G towards a planet and have gravity on that half of the trip. At the mid-point, you flip the ship's orientation so the engines point at your destination, and everything goes weightless. Then, for the second half of the trip, decelerating provides 1G of gravity on the second half of the trip.
If your ship is in orbit, you are weightless inside. Only a rotating space station in orbit has gravity. Your ship may be designed with a "rotating ring" to provide gravity, but that would only be useful when the ship is in orbit or not accelerating.
We never really played SF like this and assumed artificial gravity, but it would be fascinating to play the game this way. I am tired of modern sci-fi and all its cheap artificial gravity, and adding a layer of difficulty and realism to space travel appeals enormously to me, especially for replaying Star Frontiers.
Modules
These I would play, especially the Volturnus series, since that feels like "home" to me. I would extend the campaign too, and put a lot more corporate and political infighting past the original campaign, along with another Sathar invasion. I would make the bad-guy corporation Streel own the rights to Volturnus and do all sorts of shady things with mercs and pirates, and have the characters fight to reveal these activities and try to move PGC in when word gets out of what is happening here. There may be times when the star system is cut off due to Sathar fleet activity in Truane's Star, and the system would be isolated (with the characters and factions there) for months or even years and be forced to fend for themselves. Players could build fast starships to break the Sathar blockade, and that would be a tremendous higher-level arc to play.
It would be the version of the campaign I wished I had run with my brother. Don't go anywhere else; just stay here and enjoy the world we were given and make it the center of our campaign. And since the Frontier Space rules are a more modern interpretation of 1d100 sci-fi, everything would feel right at home.
If I introduced new races, these would be "unlocked" via Volturnus module-like arcs and saved for later. I would not go crazy and add every idea first, just stick to Volturnus for now and add things later.
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