There are probably some people who are tired of my tirades against that Old School Darling, Star Frontiers. Specifically, they're probably thinking:
"JB...you say things like 'the system is deplorable'...but what exactly have you done better? Sure, you're serializing a supplement for X-Plorers (tl;dr, just BTW), but what exactly have you offered as a substitute system? Where's the space opera micro-game? If it's so damn easy, and everyone else is so darn stupid, why aren't you putting your money where your mouth is?"The proles, of course, have a valid gripe. So here it is:
FRONTIER SPACE
Your one-page micro-game, free-o-charge. Fairly easy to expand upon, you can use it as the basis for your own Star Frontiers game OR adapt it to a different setting, if that floats your goat.
BTW: there are no gyrojet weapons since, per wikipedia, real world gyrojet weapons are "long out of production" due to their expense and limitations of design. Hey, if we don't use 'em, I'm not putting 'em in a "futuristic society." But you can, of course, add them if you like.
As always, comments are appreciated. If I see enough download activity, I'll consider adapting Knight Hawks (that would probably necessitate a 2nd page). Have a good weekend, folks.
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| Bunch o SF fans getting ready to jump me... |
Looks like it would work, for someone who has Star Frontiers in order to get the setting info.
ReplyDelete@ Dennis:
DeleteWhat do you mean, man? The "setting info" is outlined on the page (in broad strokes anyway).
In all seriousness, there's not much "setting material" in the SF books. More info on the races (like dralasites "like old jokes and puns") and a cheap-o star map of the Frontier (made up names on a sheet of paper). A person really could (probably) come up with more interesting stuff than what's published in the books. Really.
And if not, the books are easy enough to come by in PDF form.
Deletehttp://www.starfrontiers.com/
@ OrcStomp:
DeleteThat's where I get MY e-copies (my original books are still back in Seattle).
; )
Don't get me wrong, I think it would be easy enough to run something with this that the GM just makes up. And maybe it's because I also had several of the modules (saw in your most recent post that you've been looking through them), and years of play back when we were young to develop the Frontier in our games, but there's a fair amount of stuff in the book.
ReplyDeleteI'm not criticizing Frontier Space, I'm saying you could take the setting info from Star Frontiers and replace the mechanics with what you present here, and run a fun game of Star Frontiers (the setting IS the game in my mind...am I weird?).
@ Dennis:
DeleteI was being facetious, but I really don't think there's that much setting that couldn't be replicated or expanded upon by a person...if you developed the setting in your own years of play, well, that's kind of my point.
Take out the Volturnas modules (which really only develop a single planet), take out the fairly terrible 2001 "tribute" module (sorry Frank Mentzer!), take out...well, never mind. There IS some interesting setting stuff to be mined (mostly in Knight Hawks I'd say), but it's some hardcore digging that's required. The Mutiny on the Eleanor Moraes has an interesting idea on the explorer corp (or whatever it's called), but the Manchurian Candidate, Sathar post-hypnotic thing is kind of lame. I suppose I find a lot of the "Sathar threat" to be a bit lame, though.
thanks, neat. If I'd not already got a Traveller ultralite version, this would be tempting.
ReplyDelete