When dealing with a RP universe, scale comes to be a question.  How big should I go?  

The way I see it is, the more advanced the tech is in terms of transportation technology, the bigger the RP should be.  Look at cultures in our world, tribal groups and bronze age societies tend to be very small and regional, iron age cultures like the Romans tend to be bigger, but also are regional as they are restricted to concrete roads and horseback.  Mind, having a large empire on horseback is very possible- just look at the mongols or centaurs, but mind these groups tend to be more nomadic and have a habit of settling into the agrarian societies.   Fantasy settings with high magic however may be able to hold much more territory, so a continent sized playground may be needed for them.  Dragons after all, do allow for a lot more mobility.  As does having a magic carpet flying police force.  Modern/Industrial  societies however, are much more apt for world spanning settings due to having access to galleys, trains and airplanes.  Also airships in many cases.  Especially airships.  

If you want a RP that spans a star system, you better have spaceships.  FTL at this point isn't necessary as a planet is only light minutes or hours away.  That's a massive distance for a person on horse, but when you have space shuttles and lasers, there really isn't much need for FTL when you can get to other planets in just a week or less.  But if you're planning to go colonize other star systems, you better pack up a worm hole at the very least.

On larger scale RPs with low speed FTL, the local stars within a few dozen light years is more than enough.  Already you have almost a hundred star systems to have space adventures on, why at times I wonder if having a massive space RP across the galaxy is overdoing it.  Think of all the star systems you pass over when you jump ten thousand light years to another civilization!  

Of course, when making a RP the size of a galaxy you pretty much make stars not into a set of worlds, but small little parts of land, with whole galactic arms becoming markers for what region of space you are in.  Space Operas tend to require large civilizations that span many star systems and have FTL that is capable of traversing the galaxy.  To not have slower FTL or no FTL will make your space RP way too massive- many RPs die within a month, imagine having to wait seventy thousand years for a response to that diplomatic message you sent!

But now this brings me to a idea I keep contemplating that is horrible and should never be made, but will bring up here any ways.

Why not a RP that spans the whole local group?

What, too big for you?

It's not really that massive a leap from a galaxy spanning space RP, is it?  300-400 Billion stars in the milky way is only seven times less than the amount of stars in the local group as a whole.  Why, the local group when you look at it is like multiple continents with lots of small islands doted all over the place, just take a look:

[img]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/57/5_Local_Galactic_Group_(ELitU).png[/img]

See?  Milky way and Andromeda are like the big continents with Triangulum being sort of like Australia, than you have large islands such as the Magellanic clouds and small spherical star associations scattered all about that are sort of like the small islands.  On this scale of RP you would get people who can make massive, galaxy spanning societies with spacecraft that can go intergalactic distances.  Perhaps large, galleon-esque spaceships who can make the trip to far off galaxies to explore and colonize.  Mind that the RP can easily be constrained to the local group, a gravitational bound association of galaxies for some reason like "the FTL that has enabled intergalactic travel is unable to leave the gravitational bonding of the local group".

I'd be like the age of exploration, but in space with advanced type-2 societies vying for dominance over the local group.  The tech cap would be enormous in a RP like this, or not.  Who knows, after all people in the year 4599 CE are still using Gauss weapons in some RPs without a problem.

I'm just posting this here mainly to see if it's been done or how other people interpret the whole idea of making a intergalactic sci-fi RP.  People in some Sci-fi RPs tend to make a species from another galaxy anyways, so having the whole local group as part of the system may actually be more balanced in some regards.