My older brother introduced me to roleplaying games when I was six or seven years old. The sad truth was that he saw the Star Frontiers boxes, talked my parents into getting him the basic set (Alpha Dawn?) and once he read all the rules realized he would need someone to play with, and what are little brothers for if not to be pawns in our little games...
Anyway, I am grateful and know that he has been wanting to play in a Sci-Fi game for some time. Sure it's been over 14 years since then, but I still feel the need to pay him back. STAP seems to be my chance to do that.
I am a hard core Fantasy gamer, but I love the game as a whole and players are hard to come by, so with him and a few of his friends I have a built in group... as long as I run Sci-Fi (they currently play BattleTech).
The point of the whole post then is to convert the STAP into a SciFi campaign. Has anyone thought of this? Does it make sense?
Here is some of my thinking:
- STAP is nautical themed. Pirates and ships will port very nicely into a Sci-Fi themed campaign.
- I can make each city or island a different world. Simply take the "feel" of each city and convert it into a planet wide theme. The one key here would be that I would want to change some of the jungle environs to a variety of other environments since it would be odd to keep visiting the same type of planet over and over.
And really that is about as far as my brainstorming has come... I won't likely start running this campaign until all or at least most of the adventures are released, so I have a while.
Has anyone played the D20 Future supplements that Wizards put out? Are they any good? I would love to run my brother into a D20 based Star Frontiers game (I still have all the old books he used to run things, so I can use the world, but don't like the older systems compared to D20). If you didn't like D20 Future can you recommend another D20 based SciFi system you did like? (Star Wars, etc.)
How about once things move into other planes of existance? Off the top of my head I am thinking wormholes to other parts of the univers, ala the 'quadrant' system in Star Trek (gamma quadrent from Deep Space 9 and Alpha(?) from Voyager).
Then the very nature of the threat of the Savage Tide itself comes to mind. I am thinking it could be some sort of mutagenic weapon, or perhaps a radiation that washes over a system... I don't know enough about it in D&D to know how to convert it over... I am guessing we should know a bit more in the next adventure.
Anyway... any advice or meandering thoughts anyone has would be appreciated. Just a thought...
Sean Mahoney
How about ship based skills? In the normal version do you encourage your players to learn to pilot their own ship or will they have a crew to help them along once they get their own ship?
I guess that question would be the same for SciFi or Fantasy based gaming...
Sean Mahoney
Will do. I have been looking for another book to read coincidentally. I have tried King twice with mixed results... I wasn't overly fond of Pet Cemetery, but I love The Stand. I will give the Cell a shot and see if I have a new author to read.
Sean Mahoney
James,
I just looked at the time on your reply to my posting which was pretty late for us here in Washington State as it was... You need to get some sleep man! That Mona is working you too hard!
Sean Mahoney
Nessum Dorma... Mona-dot has decreed that none of the staff at Paizo will sleep until Chuko's true name is discovered.
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Will do. I have been looking for another book to read coincidentally. I have tried King twice with mixed results... I wasn't overly fond of Pet Cemetery, but I love The Stand. I will give the Cell a shot and see if I have a new author to read.
Sean Mahoney
Read the Gunslinger novels.
Best stuff ever.Nothing else compares.
Could the threat not be something as simple as a computer virus. That can then make the jump to living beings. (Which might be the basis of the Cell).
Or the virus simply destroys technology. The BBEG does not want to kill everyone, he wants them all to go back to a 'simplier' time.
Several things come to my mind:
- Resident Evil -> ravenous Zombies
- RE4 maybe some parasite infecting people
- Doom, there is another dimension which is in fact hell, so that concept is not uncommon for SciFi.
Would you prefer real hardcore SciFi or did you also think about a Spelljammer-like setting?
I do not know d20 Future, but you might want to have a look at Alternity, the old SciFi core system by TSR/WotC; it is not d20, but I like it and it used to be the basis of Stardrive, GammaWorld and Dark Matter. You will have to look on Ebay or buy a pdf, though, as it is out of print. But there you get even Psionics as a substitute for magic.
It wil be a lot of work to transform STAP to SciFi, but I really like the idea.
Interesting idea. Sasserine could be a water based planet with one major port city, riddled with crime (like Mos Eisely, but with water).
Demogorgon could be a bizarre alien overlord who wants to spread a virus to other worlds that randomly mutates or de-evolves people into animalistic hybrids. Very Cthulhu-esque.
For "There is No Honor" specifically, the Lotus Dragons are smugglers of alien creatures (like the Rhagodessa), but Vanthus has his sights set on greater things (which will lead him to finding the shadow pearl).
You'll want to decide whether you want undead or not in the game, and what you will do to replace them if you don't. Besides the zombies in "There is No Honor," eventually Vanthus is supposed to return as a death knight, so the question will come up.
Also, I would guess the game would have a strong "space fantasy" feel to it even if you replaced all magic with technology and all monsters with aliens. Its just a little too epic not to feel like Star Wars more than Star Trek (aka space fantasy vs science fiction--note I'm a fan of both).
The point of the whole post then is to convert the STAP into a SciFi campaign. Has anyone thought of this? Does it make sense?
It's possible, as the previous posts suggest, but it may be so darn difficult as to prevent you from actually gaming. The main reason is that you'll be waiting monthly for adventures, only to have to go through and convert everything. And if you're not already familiar with D&D and d20 Modern (Future), you have that learning curve headache.
That being said, I really like the ideas floating around a sci-fi STAP. Personally, I'm thinking of a Greyhawk "1600's" setting and Grim Tales, but I'm faced with the conversion monster and at least one reluctant player.
Has anyone played the D20 Future supplements that Wizards put out? Are they any good? I would love to run my brother into a D20 based Star Frontiers game (I still have all the old books he used to run things, so I can use the world, but don't like the older systems compared to D20). If you didn't like D20 Future can you recommend another D20 based SciFi system you did like? (Star Wars, etc.)
Both Star Wars d20 and d20 Future are great rulesets, and each has its advantages and disadvantages. The farther away from space-fantasy you get, though, the more difficult the conversion will probably be (in "feel" more than anything).
Wow! Glad to see so much feedback.
I do really want to go for more of a Science Fiction feel than space fantasy as that will appeal more to the group I am looking at.
The undead replacement is a very good point, off the top of my head I am thinking of making them, in general, crazy scientific experiments gone awry. This would have to range from experiments like Juicers from Rifts to cyborgs or genetic alterations. Another option would be a gene therapy / mutation experiment that picked up the ability to aerosolize, possibly from another virus (though virus don't share traits as redily as bacteria... but my group is more math and physics types than biologists). Really it would just be descriptions changing more than stats. (Not changing stats keeps me from having to worry about the game balance portion of things... leave it to the experts I say!).
I do think I will be waiting until most or all of the series is out before launching my campaign. That way I am well ahead of the curve when it comes to conversions and am not limited to the time it takes for an issue to come out until my group plays its next session.
Sean Mahoney
I think you'll find the cybernetics and mutations (or even robots) in d20 as good options for making future-replacement zombies. I've enjoyed the two d20 Future games I've played in, finding the d20 rules well-suited for covering such a game. The key item I've found that needs control is access to resources--if you give players unlimited access and go with a PL 8, they'll be running around invisible (photon shields) with force fields, dropping massive amounts of damage with their gadgetized weapons.