Star*Drive Campaign Setting
by David Eckelberry and Richard Baker, 1998. Full-color covers and interior art. 256 pages.
This book still features the TSR logo, but all details of the company that produces it is Wizards of the Coast. I only point this out because it is a weird transitional time for the company and I can't help but think this as much as anything else sealed the fate of this game.
As with the rest of the classic Alternity material, this is out of print and there are no PDFs availble.
Chapter 1: The Star*Drive Campaign
This covers what this setting is about and some basics and a timeline of contact with the Fraal to the modern day of the 26th century (2501). Interestingly we are 100 years away from constructing the first Star Drive tech. This is roughly comparable to the timeline we would later see in Star Trek. This chapter also discusses different ways to play this game. The feel is somewhere between Star Frontiers and Traveller, with dashes of Star Trek and/or Starship Troopers added in.
Chapter 2: The 26th Century
An aside. Are we in the 26th Century because it is not the 25th century of Buck Rodgers?
Anyway. Here we get an overview of what our setting is like now. Science, Technology which includes cybertech and biotech, mutants and psionics, medicine, and even religion, is covered here. There is not a lot of game text here, this is all an overview. The religion section is interesting since it usually gets ignored by most sci-fi games. Unless it is Star Wars.
Chapter 3: Stellar Nations
This takes us into more detail of the who, what and where of this campaign setting and feels most like an extension of the Alternity rules. Note, not a lot of mechanics, but more information on material presented in the core rules. All of the species from the core are here, with their home worlds. Also, the various "Nations" in space, including the Solar Union (oddly not established in 2112).
Chapter 4: The Verge
This is the area of unexplored space and the part that gives me the "Star Trek" vibes. We are introduced to "The Lighthouse" which I will get into more detail about later on. Plenty of new worlds and systems are detailed, but the obvious thing here is that GMs will create their own worlds and systems. Still, though, there is plenty here to keep you busy. This section is the bulk of the book; over half. Game stats are largely limited to NPCs, some ships, and planets.
Chapter 5: Hero Creation
This is the most rules heavy section of the book, but that is not say a lot. It is largely additional information to what is found in the Core Rules. The additions here include Homeworld or Nation and a few new careers. Though there are a lot of new details here that can affect every career.
While there is a lot of material here, it is really all "World Building" material. While it is interesting, I don't find it compelling. Chances are very, very good that if I had played this game in the late 1990s, I would have converted it all to some sort of Star Trek-like game and used that background. In truth, I also find it less compelling than Star Frontiers, which tried to do something similar 15 years prior. I mean the Fraal are interesting, but they are no Vrusk!
Still I can't fault the game for what I want it to be, only what it is. It is somewhere between a fully realized campaign setting and a toolbox. Maybe if it had been allowed to continue on we could have seen more growth. Certainly, sites like Alternityrpg.net give credence to this idea. Their Star*Drive section certainly has enough to keep anyone busy for a long time.
Select Supplements
I don't have a lot of material for the Star*Drive Setting, but I have some. Here are a few.
Gamma World
Softcover, 192 pages. Color cover, black & white interior art. 2000. This one has a TSR prefixed product code (as did Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition) but the logo and company information is all Wizards of the Coast.
I briefly discussed this one in my discussion of post-TSR-Gamma World offerings. This softcover book by Andy Collins and Jeff Grubb takes us back to Gamma World—or at least, a Gamma World. It is still Earth, and it is still post-apocalyptic.
This book uses, but doesn't require, the Alternity Core. Also it feels like Gamma World. I think this is because the design of Alternity had Gamma World in mind. Mutants and the like are already baked in to the core so no extra rules are needed to add them, just some extra options.
While the rules are 100% Alternity, the background sort of precludes Star*Drive. Unless of course you want the Galaxy to have moved on without humans and Earth is this wasteland, OR, this is different, very Earth like planet. Imagine the shock when space travelers from Earth/Solar Union find this planet out in the Verge and there is a colasping Space Needle in a town called Seatle. This is something that would work, and work well, in Alternity.
I would say that if you like Gamma World and Alternity is your system of choice then this is the version of it to play.
Starships
by David Eckelberry. 96 pages, color covers, monochrome interior. 1999. This one has the TSR Silver Anniversary logo on the cover. Listed as copyright 1999 TSR.
This one is fun. Not only do we get some cool spacehips (always a plus in my mind) but there are alternate FTL systems listed here so you can have the kind of game you want. Me? I would have seen the section on Warp and never looked back. Though there are some other good options here including relativistic travel with time dialation effects. And get out your scientific calculators, because in relativistic flight you will need to caluclate gamma changes. Yes. This is a selling point to me.
We cover basic spaceship operations, technology, some skill uses and most importantly Spaceships! The last third of the books covers ships and deck plans with costs. Again, not sure how acurate the costs are, but who cares! Spaceships!
The Lighthouse
by David Eckelberry. Color covers, mono-chrome interior. 1998. 64-pages. Features the TSR logo of the late 90s. Contact information is all Wizards of the Coast.
This is the space station mentioned in the Campagin setting. The cover come free (like the old adventure modules) and has deck plans for all (well most) 200 decks. The feel is a cross between a Star Trek Starbase and Babylon 5.
The history of the lighthouse is discussed including why it was built. We get some details on it's various systems and who lives there. It is be necessity a broad overview, but there is enough here to let me really dive into it.
One of the reasons I have kept this one around becuse the plans are really perfect for my various Ghost Tower/Ghost Station of Inverness ideas [1][2][3]. For this reason alone I am glad I have held on to this.
--
Alternity Star*Drive has a lot going for it. If you are a fan of the system then I think this is a must aquire set of books. It doesn't do anything above and beyond what we have seen in Star Frontiers, Traveller or many other games, BUT it has a great flavor and the oprotunity to add material from Gamma World, Starcraft and even their other campaign setting, Dark*Matter.
Sadly all of this was superceded by the d20 system. Much of Star*Drive (and Dark*Matter) would go on to live in d20 Modern and d20 Future. I will deal with those in another time. Likely next May.
I can't say for sure, but I have the feeling that Alternity was never given the chance it needed to survive. Cut off early and not supported. We saw the leel of support WotC could give to d20, which was in truth their darling. Alternity was the lost and forgotten older sibling of d20. I am happy to see it has support online and that it still has fans out there.
3 comments:
The weirdest thing about the Star*Drive campaign book to me is the enormous amount of space devoted to the home territories of the stellar nations when compared to the section on their holdings in the Verge. Yes, it's nice to have all that info and avoids one of the problems with Star Frontiers - that is, if this is the Frontier, where is everything else and why isn't their trade to and from the (presumably) core systems of civilization? Star*Drive tells all that in considerable (I would even call it tedious in spots) detail, with many distinct cultures, a recent history that explains why some are hostile to one another, and even light coverage of polities that ceased to exist in the last big war.
And then the rest of the range does absolutely nothing with all that. Every adventure, every novel, even the "monster manual" alien book are focused squarely on the Verge and the unexplored regions just beyond it. There's nothing set back in the core territories, much less anything in the other frontier zones of human civilization's expansion. Hundreds or thousands of worlds, many inhabited, many more barely explored or formerly inhabited but ruined or abandoned in the last war, almost all the real political maneuverings, social tensions and religious clashes talked about in the book just wasted in favor of a tiny chunk of space that's so isolated that traveling to and from it is something that might happen once in a lifetime - and even then only by the well-connected and usually as a one-way trip.
Really seems like good support for the argument that there was a lot more material planned than ever came out, and the excessive corespace detail was meant to lay a foundation for that.
I remember this book. I assumed that Star*Drive was supposed to be the default setting of old Alternity, sort of like a Forgotten Realms in space. That was mostly because of the way the lore about the frail so easily fits into the timelines.
As for the lack of Star Frontiers species, I assume that was because Alternity was written specifically for the 1990s. The frail exist because Communion was popular at the time. One sector of the Star*Drive galaxy was tailor made for Starship- Troopers-style bug hunts. They had a space station so you could play a B5/DS9-style campaign, etc.
I have almost the complete Star*Drive line, and I really love it. I wish Alternity had been given the chance to thrive, or that I could have played more than a few games of it.
I can't compare it to Star Frontiers, since I haven't read it, but can definitely see how they were trying to make it generic enough that you could run a wide variety of sci-fi type games.
Post a Comment