An Ace of any suit indicates an asteroid field
A 2 through 10 of any suit indicates a planet ranging from 2,000 miles to 10,000 miles in diameter accordingly. A Jack indicates a planet ranging from 10,000 miles to 20,000 miles in diameter. A Queen indicates a small gas giant and a King indicates a large gas giant.
The suits indicate the densities of each planet, the Spades are the lowest density planets with densities ranging from 0.60 to 0.75, Clubs are one step up ranging from 0.76 to 0.90, hearts indicate planets with densities from 0.91 to 1.05 and diamonds indicate planets with densities from 1.06 to 1.20.
The density numbers determine the gravity at the surface of each planet with the simple formula:
Density * diameter/8,000 miles. The Earth's density by this mesure is around 1.0 giving a gravity of 1-G.
Sizes of spaceships range from Fine to Enourmous. The unit of volume is the cube where a cube is 5' on a side. So the spaceship sizes are:
Fine: 10' = 8 cubes
Diminutive: 15' = 27 cubes
Tiny: 20' = 64 cubes
Small: 30' = 216 cubes
Medium: 40' = 512 cubes
Large: 60' = 1,728 cubes
Huge: 80' = 4,096 cubes
Gargantuan: 120' = 13,824 cubes
Colossal: 160' = 32,768 cubes
Enormous: 240' = 110,592 cubes
Laser and futuristic/Modern weapons target Reflex rather than Armor Class. Primitive weapons use the D&D 4E combat rules. I find it pretty convenient that D&D has 4 different types of "Armor Classes" AC, Reflex, Will, and Fortitude. Reflex is basically AC without the Armor adjustment, thus its perfect for simulating futuristic weapons hits, armor in this case subtracts its armor value from the damage inflicted once a hit is achieved rather than reducing chances to hit as with swords and arrows and the like.
While some would like Star Frontiers revived for the new rules, there are many who would prefer the futuristic setting that was introduced for the OOP Alternity rules to be revived and continued: Star*Drive.
What does it matter what you call it?
I like the initials SF for either "Science Fiction" or "Star Frontiers", Pairs nicely with D&D "Dungeons and Dragons". Alternity sounds like a game of Alternate Universes For instance about people who travel to many different alternate universes where for example the Nazis won World War II, or the South won the Civil War, in otherwords a "Sliders" campaign. Star Frontiers spells out what it is, I'd rather have a meaningful name rather than "Alternity? Gee, what is that?"
Star Drive is a setting, I see no reason why it couldn't be a setting for Star Frontiers. Another setting is the "United Frontier" the setting for the original Star Frontiers. What I am looking for is a generic ruleset, that could be applied to multiple SF settings with perhaps some modificaltions to the existing rules.
My philosophy is the closer the rules are to actual physics without making it unplayable the better.
In Star Trek, they use Antimatter as the fuel source. Antimatter makes a sensible fuel source, but the types of ships they use in Star Trek, too much FTL, too much FTL communications, too many FTL sensors, most conventional physics is thrown out the window, and they question is, do we really need to do this to have a viable campaign?
Antimatter is the most sensible down to earth fuel source for compact spaceship, everything else Fusion, Fission, and Chemical rockets just aren't energetic enough. Fusion barely qualifies, but it turns out if you power a ship with fusion, to reach interstellar velocities, you need the bulk of the starship to be taken up with fusion fuel or you need to discard parts of the ship with every trip like fuel tanks and stages.
I like a system where you have multiple charges of antimatter and some reaction mass of say, water which takes up 25% of the ship's mass when fuelly fueled. The water is used up after every 3 weeks of acceleration at 1g, this is good for one trip from one star system to another if you assume the existance of a hyperdrive. Water is easy to find, requires little processing, and you simply pump it into the ships tanks after you land.
Antimatter is something different, it is very compact and energetic, and when it comes in contact with the water or just about any substance made of matter, it turns it into rocket fuel.
I'm not sure what StarDrive uses, Some kind of Dark matter whatever that is. the problem is we don't really know what darkmatter is, no one has ever seen it, its hypothesized to exist because 90% of the matter in the Universe is unseen, but beyond that we don't really know what it is, how it behaves or what properties it has beyond having mass. So StarDrive invents some rubber physics to suggest that it powers spaceships, but we still don;t really know what it is. Antimatter on the otherhand has been created in laboratories, very tiny amounts, but we know that it exists and how it behaves.
I think Star Frontiers should start with what we know and only resort to "rubber physics" when we have no other choice.
Now they simplest FTL system is the teleport drive, the way it functions is very simple: The starship sits on the surface of a planet, the crew gets into its postions on the bridge, and someone presses a button after making some calculations and the starship suddenly teleports to another planet that's light years away like magic, this starship never flies, at one moment its here and the next its there. This doesn't sound like much fun, in fact its little different from a Stargate campaign.
The next step up is the ship flies into space and then engages the FTl drive and poof, your orbiting the target planet. Not much fun either. I don't like teleporting spacecraft, it tends to reduce the possibilities for combat in space.
I prefer setting some requirement similar to what an actual starship would need to meet to have a realistic chance of visiting another star, 2% of the speed of light seems reasonable. At 1g of acceleration it takes 1 week to reach 2% of the speed of light. with 25% of the ship's mass as reaction mass and powered by a small amount of contained antimatter, you can reach a total of 6% of the speed of light without slowing down. I'd say this is the minimum requirement for starships, this is better than having "magic teleporting wagons".
Some other rubber physics is artificial gravity, reactionless enginess, antigravity generators, levitators etc. all these thing arise out of the simple premise that traveling to the stars is very hard. I see little need for these things. I prefer to stick with simple known physics as much as possible, and if that's not enough then we invent some rubber physics, but only use as much as we need. Get the starship out of the sunny parts of the Solar System, and that's the only place we can activate the hyperdrive.
What does it matter what you call it?
Because most gamers today would remember Star*Drive from the 90's Alternity days than one would remember Star Frontiers from the 80's defunct-TSR days.
Because most gamers today would remember Star*Drive from the 90's Alternity days than one would remember Star Frontiers from the 80's defunct-TSR days.
Then it would be something new for them, they wouldn't be aware that it came from the 1980s, To them it would seem like an original setting. I wouldn't want to bring back Star Frontiers just as it was from the 1980s either. I would like to bring back that Star Frontiers "feel", I would like to bring back the Star Frontiers races and throw in the Alternity races besides.
I would like to keep the planet Volturnus or something very much like it, basically a wild multi-species planet that the players get stranded on, but everything else would be different and new. A whole new Frontier!
You start with the players in a Sleeper Colony ship from 23rd century Earth, this is before the invention of hyperdrive. The ship is a fairly large one with thousands of colonists in suspended animation. The ship travels at 3% of the speed of light for 5,000 years to the planet Volturnus in the Frontier Sector. Little is know about the planet Volturnus except the basic facts that were gleened by space telescopes, namely that the planet is very Earthlike in broad general perimeters, has 3 quarters of its surface covered by oceans, a very Earthlike day, year, and seasons very similar to Earth. The colony planners have sifted through thousands and thousands of potential planets before embarking on the colonization mission and the perameters of the planet Volturnus seemed ideal for an interstellar colony. Of course back then it didn't occur to anyone that someone might invent a shortcut through space in the intervening 5,000 years that it took the starship to get there...
Cut to the year 7300 AD, the players, crew, and colonists awaken from suspended animation emerging from their cryonics tubes into a 5,000 year old starship. The ship is slowing down pulling into orbit, when it is suddenly attacked by pirates and human pirates at that. The pirates themselves don't realize the ship is a 5,000 year old relic from the past, all they know is the ship looks big, must contain something valuable and they want to plunder it. The ship is also poorly armed. The colony planners didn't expect much fighting upon their arrival, as far as they knew humans were the only intelligent species in the Galaxy. Well things had changed between 2300 and 7300 AD, humans and other intelligent species have spread to the stars and beaten them to the Planet Volturnus, not only that a civilization has arisen there and then fell about 500 years ago. (about 6800 AD) There are alot of ruined cities on the planet, much of the planets inhabitants have descended into barbarism except for the space pirates who consider the place to be a great hideout, a source of cheap labor and slaves, and a good place to stash their loot. The technology the players have is comparable to that which is in possession of the pirates at least when it comes to personal fire arms. Also the Sathar lurk here, they are planning an invasion into human space, they are testing out various ways of enslaving organic beings - those tests have met with mixed success. One of the results of these experiments are the Aleerans (Mechanus), human cybernetic hybrids, except that these have proven to be less than perfect slaves and they have rebelled! The Werens are also native to the planet as well as the Tsa. Basically all the old Alternity races are native to the planet Volturus and can be found on this planet somewhere. The old Star Frontier races can be found in space, but some of those can be found on Volturnus as well, basically has hostages of the space pirates or the space pirates themselves. I think much improvement can be done over the old Volturnus maps, the old one was too polygonal, basically a hex map with symbols in each hex to indicate terrain, I think a better map than that can be produced.
D20 Future has the star law campaign model, based on the star frontiers universe, and that's fine, but slapping the SF name on a completely new (mechanically) game isn't revival.
http://starfrontiers.us
That's a star frontiers revival, on the other hand.
\
Don't get me wrong, I like D20 modern, I play it. For a sci-fi spaceships and laser guns game though, I prefer original Star Frontiers, Alpha Dawn and Knight Hawks. The "feel" of SF to me is that it is fast playing and light hearted. D20 modern/future has its strengths, but to me, those are not among them.
I also don't have anything against fans converting the setting to D20 Future or whatever. I would have a problem with WotC releasing a new SF game that didn't use one of the original systems.
I do, though, despise 4e D&D. :P
Also, I found the systems for planet and ship sizes in the OP of this thread to be interesting. Just so I'm not totally negative :P
Then it would be something new for them,
It would be something new for today's players if WotC had revived Kara-Tur for the new Oriental Adventures but they opted for the most recent Asian-flavored setting, Rokugan from Legend of the Five Rings.
Sorry, but more of today's player would rather see Star*Drive revived since they were cheated on the short-lived Alternity line.
If you're going to revive Star Frontiers, revive it, don't convert it to the inferior new rules.
D20 Future has the star law campaign model, based on the star frontiers universe, and that's fine, but slapping the SF name on a completely new (mechanically) game isn't revival.
http://starfrontiers.us
That's a star frontiers revival, on the other hand.
\
Don't get me wrong, I like D20 modern, I play it. For a sci-fi spaceships and laser guns game though, I prefer original Star Frontiers, Alpha Dawn and Knight Hawks. The "feel" of SF to me is that it is fast playing and light hearted. D20 modern/future has its strengths, but to me, those are not among them.
I also don't have anything against fans converting the setting to D20 Future or whatever. I would have a problem with WotC releasing a new SF game that didn't use one of the original systems.
I do, though, despise 4e D&D. :P
Also, I found the systems for planet and ship sizes in the OP of this thread to be interesting. Just so I'm not totally negative :P
I've looked over the D&D 4e game, the one thing I like about it is the multiple armor classes it has Use Reflex for modern and futuristic weapons, and Armor Class for primitive weapons, I figure even in a Star Frontiers game, your going to encounter primitives from time to time. Modern Armor will likely be designed to fend off bullets and laser beams more than the unexpected stab of the sword. I like the D&D 3e game because of all the variety of primitive weapons found there, I don't know that Star Frontiers has all that many types. I'd like to use the varieties of modern weapons found in D20 Modern, as their will be planets with only a moderate technology level where the laser gun is not the standard issue firearm.
D100 has how many ability scores now? D20 has six. The main difference between a d20 role and a d100 role is that D20 has increments of 5% while the d100 has increments of 1%.
Ability Scores - d20 roll -- d100 roll
d20 -- d100 --- modifier - modifier
1 --- 05 ------ -5 ------- -23
2 --- 10 ------ -4 ------- -20
3 --- 15 ------ -4 ------- -18
4 --- 20 ------ -3 ------- -15
5 --- 25 ------ -3 ------- -13
6 --- 30 ------ -2 ------- -10
7 --- 35 ------ -2 ------- -8
8 --- 40 ------ -1 ------- -5
9 --- 45 ------ -1 ------- -3
10 -- 50 ------ +0 ------ +0
11 -- 55 ------ +0 ------ +0
12 -- 60 ------ +1 ------ +3
13 -- 65 ------ +1 ------ +5
14 -- 70 ------ +2 ------ +8
15 -- 75 ------ +2 ------ +10
16 -- 80 ------ +3 ------ +13
17 -- 85 ------ +3 ------ +15
18 -- 90 ------ +4 ------ +18
19 -- 95 ------ +4 ------ +20
20 -- 100 ----- +5 ------ +23
I figure to take advantage of the finer precision of the d20 roll, you'd increment the ability modifiers by 2.5 and then round off as I have done in the above example. Making these mechanical conversions between systems is somewhat inconvenient. Having to relearn how to do combat does deter some from trying new rpgs. That said, I don't much like how complicated the character classes of 4e D&D has become, they'd tried to make the classes more equal by giving the fighters many different ways to make a melee attack with a weapon. I don't think melee combat is a big part of Star Frontiers. A fighter class that can swing a sword and hit multiple opponents with a single slash isn't often called for.
The typical Science Fiction hero has abilities reflecting the skills and feats he selects rather than the character class he chooses. So therefore I'd say, that Star Frontiers needs only one character class with all skills and feats available to it without penalties or benefits regarding those feats and skills. With feats basically you have the feat or you don't, with skills you have a level of skill to varying degrees.
I do think Star Frontiers needs an update. I think the rockets should convert to a more realistic fuels source such as antimatter to have the performances they had in the original material. I think an actually hyperdrive needs to be added rather than just say all ships just slip into the void when they exceed a certain speed, but make that requirement contingent on the hyperdrive operating properly. Generally speaking all velocities below the speed of light are relative to each other, that is a spaceship traveling at 2% of the speed of light is only traveling 2% of the speed of light relative to specific point of reference such as a planet or star, relative to itself, that spaceship is not moving at all. I've calculated that is a starship were to accelerate at 1-g or 32 feet per second per second for 7 days, it would end up 100 light minutes from its point of origin. Since the Earth is already 8 light minutes from the Sun, this would leave the requirement that the spaceship remove itself to 108 light minutes from the Sun before it is sufficiently out of the Sun's gravity well to allow the hyperdrive to work and send the ship into the Void. The Void is just a slang term used for hyperspace, it is descriptive of what one sees when looking out a window while in hyperspace an empty blackness containing nothing or a void.
The Void is just like the vacuum of space only emptier. An astronaut can venture out into the void in his space suit. The temperature of the background radiation is absolute zero or as close as one can measure it without violating the uncertainty principle, their are no stars, no radiation, nothing. There is no indication as to how fast the ship is moving through the void either, an accelerameter and a gyroscope is required to keep track of the ship's orientation and the amount and duration of its acceleration in the void. There is no way of making an astrogation check in the void as there are no reference points. If the ship is not accelerating, everybody onboard the ship is weightless. It is only when the ship has left the void and reemerged into normal space that he learns how well he has stayed on course or has erred, the quality of the ship's accelerometer and gyroscopes determined the accuracy of trip through the void.
It would be something new for today's players if WotC had revived Kara-Tur for the new Oriental Adventures but they opted for the most recent Asian-flavored setting, Rokugan from Legend of the Five Rings.
Sorry, but more of today's player would rather see Star*Drive revived since they were cheated on the short-lived Alternity line.
It amounts to what your going to call the game system and the style of reality rules you use. I find the Star Frontiers system of space combat to be more realistic as it doesn't use Absolute Velocities and standard rates of movement as the Alternity system uses. I think the game system should follow physics and make all velocities relative and the speed of light a constant relative to all velocities, then make a special exception with regard to the hyperdrive. I'd make the void a pocket universe that contains only the stuff that went into it with the ship. There is no single void that all ships travel in, each ship creates its own void. The void is simply defined by what's in it, that is everything that's brought in by the ship that goes into it. Think of the void as a sphere of radiation surrounding the ship that expands outward at the speed of light - which is the same as in the normal universe. With each second the ship is in the void, the size of the space surrounding it increases by one light second in radius, by the end of a day it is one light day in radius. Most of this is thermal radiation emitted by the temperature of the ships hull and exhaust products emitted by the ship's engines, this defines the small universe created by the ship's hyperdrive upon entry into the void, when leaving the void the ship simply leaves this tiny universe behind and reenters normal space somewhere else.
It amounts to what your going to call the game system and the style of reality rules you use.
I doubt WotC is going to make another original RPG rulesystem, even if they revive one of the old ones.
So, you're stuck with d20 as you would with White Wolf's Storyteller or HERO Games' Hero System.
That's fine with me, d20 works just fine with increments of 5%.
I also wonder if you should limit gamers on a specific reality level, already provided in d20 Modern. Granted, one wouldn't associate Star Frontier with Superheroic reality level, but still in the end it's up to gamers within their group.
Hmm... I wonder if there should be a Reality Level label slapped on the front [cover] of every d20 Modern setting products.
I also wonder if you should limit gamers on a specific reality level, already provided in d20 Modern. Granted, one wouldn't associate Star Frontier with Superheroic reality level, but still in the end it's up to gamers within their group.
Hmm... I wonder if there should be a Reality Level label slapped on the front [cover] of every d20 Modern setting products.
I'll tell you one thing though, certain conventions of science fiction have departed markedly from what scientists actually think is possible. Lets take artificial gravity for instance. You know once I designed a starship for Alternity that used artificial gravity in a rather unique way. You know how some spaceships have multiple levels and they need lifts or elevators to get crewmembers from one deck to another. Enter my new unique invention, the Gravivator, just as each deck provides its own gravitational field in standard science fiction, why not provide the elevator cars with their own seperate artificial gravity? If you can accelerate the elevator cars by any arbitrary rate without regard to the passengers inside because they are compensated by artificial gravity fields, whats to prevent an elevator car from moving from deck one to deck ten as fast as a bullet? And while your at it, why not do the same with office buildings and subway cars? You could have real bullet trains then! In the gravivator as soon as the doors close, one microsecond later they open again and you are at you destination, it would seem to the passengers inside that they spent no time traveling from deck one to deck ten, that's almost true, if you accelerate the car at 10,000gs and you also exert an artificial gravity pull of 9,999gs in the direction of the acceleration, the passengers would perceive no movement at all, to them it would be just like teleportation, although strickly speaking their must be a clear path between their point of origin and their destination in order to arrive there safely. One can get carried away with this.
What if a subway tube was excavated between New York City and Miami and you installed artificial gravity within the subway cars? You could seemingly move so fast through the subway tunnel that the passengers wouldn't perceive the trip's duration, if you accelerate the subway car fast enough you can go from New York to Miami is less the time it takes to blink an eye, and passengers don't get crushed by acceleration because artificial gravity fields compensate for their enertia.
Another popular device is the "grav cannon", used for traveling in space, it is much more efficient than traveling by rocket or space ship, instead of having to accelerate some fuel along with the ship so you can accelerate some more, you only use the amount of energy required to accelerate just the passengers and payload in a projectile. The grav cannon accelerates this projectile with intense artificial gravity fields, similar in principle to a railgun or mass driver, but since the grav cannon uses gravity fields instead of magnetic fields, the passengers don't feel a thing as they sit within their cannon shell being accelerated Jules Verne Style towards their destination, then an awaiting grav cannon receives the projectile and slow it down with similar gravity fields.
Do you see what a "can of worms" the introduction of artificial gravity opens up in a Science Fiction RPG, if you used such a technology consistantly, people would want to minimize their travel time and if you eliminate the need to keep your acceleration down to what would be survivable levels without artificial gravity, you almost eliminate the need for spaceships, when you can travel in cannon balls.
I kind of like spaceships in Science fiction, although I have read science fiction that used alternate means to get to the stars. If you open up a dimensional portal and step through it onto a planet that's light years away, you eliminate all the fun of science fiction space combat. Stargate has some of this because a receiving stargate is not always where they want to go, so they picked up some alien spaceship technology along the way.
There was a classic science fiction novel, by Robert A. Helein, called A Tunnel In the Sky, that involved a similar such device but without the need for a receiving station. If you just want to get the characters there and have them deal with what's on the planet, that's perfectly acceptable, but I like spaceships and don't want to make them obsolete.
There is nothing wrong with Superheros in an RPG, but in any comic book I've read, I can't take the science too seriously because its way off the top, it is basically another type of fantasy genere, and some comic book characters do indeed use magic. "Science" and magic are often mixed rather loosely in a comic book, you have aliens doing combat with the ancient gods of Olympus, you have people casting spells on robots. You have superheroes that travel around on flying cars that they invented themselves while everyone else sticks to wheels on roads. Villains fire rayguns that quickly immobilize whole armies and only the heroes can save the day, etc...
In a serious science fiction game, things behave consistantly, if someone invents a flying car, then he markets it becomes rich and soon everybody has their own flying cars, skyways are erected with levitating signs and traffic control, various measures are enacted to prevent flying cars with failing engines from crashing through the roofs of people's homes etc...
I like science fiction with spaceships, I like the idea of people living in space and exploring and settling planets, if the speed of light is a cumbersome restriction, then I prefer a descrete way of getting around it rather than an "in your face" way as presented in Star Trek.
Do you know what Star Trek has, not only warp drive, it has subspace sensors, subspace communications, the Enterprise can detect closing warships that are 5 light years away and they will be within weapons range in five minutes! I think this is a bit much, Star Trek has a whole new means of movement, or communicating and of detecting enemies at a distance, they have photon torpedoes that move at FTL velocities and they have sensors that can detect those photon torpedoes so they can evade them. This whole thing makes that science fiction setting seem a bit unreal, the main effect is to shrink what a light year is, to a citizen of the Federation, a light year might as well be a mile, its no big deal. If their is some stranded astronaut in a spacesuit with a broken down starship, he only has to stick out his thumb and maybe a passing starship will stop, beam him up and call the Federation's equivalent to the AAA.
ID - (x, y, z) light years - # Stars - Spectral Types - Lum - Mass - Radius
0 - (-8.1, 9.9, 11.2) ---- 1 ------- G2 V ----------- 1.0 --- 1.0 --- 1.0
1 - (14.0, -9.7, 3.9) ---- 1 ------- M5 V ----------- 0.00006 - 0.1 - 0.01
2 - (-8.6, 7.5, 9.6) ----- 2 --- G2 V, K6 V ------ 1.3, 0.36 -- 1.10, 0.89 -- 1.23, 0.87
3 - (-15.0, 4.0, 0.2) ---- 1 ------- M5 V ------------ 0.00044 - 0.15 - 0.12
4 - (13.5, 7.0, 1.8) ----- 1 ------- M8 V ------------ 0.00002 - 0.20, 0.04
5 - (13.4, -1.1, 14.1) --- 1 ------- M2 V ------------ 0.0052 - 0.32 - 0.35
6 - (-14.9, 3.4, -14.0) -- 2 ----- A1 V, dA ------ 23.0, 0.0028 - 2.31, 0.98 - 1.8, 0.022
7 - (6.9, 10.0, 13.5) -- 2 -- M6 V, M6 V -- 0.00006, 0.00004 - 0.12, 0.10 - 0.05, 0.04
8 - (4.4, -8.3, -8.9) ---- 1 -------- M5 V ------------ 0.0004 - 0.31 - 0.12
9 - (15.3, 0.1, -4.7) ---- 1 -------- M6 V ------------ 0.00011 - 0.25 - 0.07
10 - (1.7, -13.2, 15.2) -- 1 -------- K2 V ------------ 0.30 ---- 0.8 --- 0.90
11 - (-9.1, -13.3, -8.0) -- 1 ------- M6 V ------------ 0.00012 - 0.25 -- 0.08
12 - (9.8, 8.9, 8.4) ------ 1 ------- M5 V ------------ 0.00033 - 0.31 - 0.10
13 - (-16.0, 4.0, 6.1) ---- 2 ---- K5 V, K7 V --- 0.063, 0.040 - 0.59, 0.50 - 0.70, 0.80
14 - (7.3, -9.9, 6.3) ----- 1 ------- K5 V ------------- 0.13 ---- 0.71 --- 1.0
15 - (-9.6, 12.3, 15.2) --- 2 -- F5 V, dF -- 7.6, 0.0005 - 1.77,0.63 - 1.7,0.01
16 - (-4.1, -11.0, -5.4) -- 2 -- M4 V, M5 V -- 0.0028, 0.0013 - 0.4, 0.4 - 0.28, 0.20
17 - (9.2, 4.1, -11.5) -- 2 -- M2 V, M4 V -- 0.0058, 0.0004 - 0.38, 0.15 - 0.38, 0.11
18 - (7.2, 1.4, 12.0) ----- 1 -------- M2 V ---------- 0.012 ---- 0.47 --- 0.57
19 - (-4.5, 15.3, -3.4) --- 1 -------- G8 V ---------- 0.44 ----- 0.82 --- 1.67
20 - (7.3, 11.9, 5.8) ----- 1 -------- M4 V ---------- 0.0014 --- 0.38 --- 0.16
21 - (12.7, 5.8, -7.6) ---- 1 -------- M5 V ---------- 0.0013 --- 0.4 --- 0.20
22 - (-6.1, -13.6, -1.0) -- 1 -------- M1 V ---------- 0.025 ----- 0.54 -- 0.82
23 - (-11.9, -1.0, -11.5) - 1 -------- M0 V ---------- 0.004 ----- 0.44 -- 0.24
24 - (4.6, 10.9, 2.1) ----- 2 --- M4 V, M6 V --- 0.0017, 0.00044 -- 0.27, 0.16 -- 0.51, 0.15
25 - (10.8, 3.1, -15.7) -- 2 -- M5 V, M9 V -- 0.0004, 0.00002 -- 0.14, 0.08 -- 0.14, 0.05
26 - (2.2, 12.2, 14.7) -- 2 -- M5 V, M8 V -- 0.0013, 0.0007 -- 0.38, 0.17 -- 0.22, 0.09
27 - (4.1, -15.5, 8.0) ----- 1 -------- dG ------------ 0.00017 -- 1.0 -- 0.0001
28 - (-14.4, -1.0, -14.2) -- 2 -- M6 V, M6 V -- 0.00014, 0.00014 -- 0.16, 0.16 -- 0.09, 0.09
29 - (-11.0, 10.2, -12.0) -- 1 -- M9 V ------- 0.00005 -- 0.00001 -- 0.01
30 - (-11.7, -13.8, -10.3) --- 1 ------- M3 V --------- 0.00058 -- 0.39 -- 0.4
31 - (-1.0, 12.9, -14.6) - 1 ------- K7 V ----------- 0.04 - 0.56 - 0.5
32 - (-2.1, 2.9, -13.6) -- 1 ------- M4 V ---------- 0.003 - 0.44 - 0.25
33 - (-8.4, 5.6, -7.3) --- 1 ------- M3 V ---------- 0.0058 - 0.37 - 0.34
34 - (-11.8, -6.6, 5.6) -- 1 ------- M5 V ---------- 0.00063 - 0.34 - 0.15
35 - (7.7, 9.8, -12.6) --- 1 ------- M8 V ---------- 0.00023 - 0.10 - 0.04
36 - (3.1, 14.1, -3.1) --- 1 ------- M2 V ---------- 0.0076 - 0.40 - 0.40
37 - (-11.5, 15.7, -12.7) - 1 ------ M3 V ---------- 0.0044 - 0.35 - 0.39
38 - (-15.6, -10.4, 7.3) - 1 ------- dA ------------ 0.0008 - 0.42 - 0.017
39 - (-6.6, 2.3, 9.4) ---- 1 ------- M5 V ---------- 0.0016 - 0.39 - 0.23
40 - (-16.0, 8.0, -12.2) - 3 -- K0 V, dA, M4 V -- 0.33, 0.0027, 0.00063 -- 0.11, 0.43, 0.21 -- 0.7, 0.018, 0.43
41 - (-1.7, -10.0, 10.6) - 1 ------- M4 V ---------- 0.0036, 0.44, 0.28
42 - (0.9, 2.2, -11.5) --- 1 ------- A7 V ---------- 10.0 --- 590 -- 1.2
43 - (1.1, -16.0, 12.3) -- 2 --- K1 V, K6 V --- 0.44, 0.083 -- 0.89, 0.68 -- 1.3, 0.84
44 - (15.3, -5.8, -13.5) - 1 ------- M4 V ---------- 0.0009 - 0.35 - 0.15
45 - (5.9, 8.7, -2.9) ---- 1 ------- M5 V ---------- 0.0021 - 0.26 - 0.24
46 - (5.6, -11.1, 5.3) --- 2 --- M5 V, dC --- 0.0008, 0.0003 -- 0.26, 0.1 -- 0.24, 0.01
47 - (-3.4, 0.1, -3.9) --- 2 --- M2 V, M8 V --- 0.007, 0.0002 --- 0.4, 0.1 -- 0.4, 0.09
48 - ( -8.4, -5.6, -12.4) - 3 -- K2 V, K1 V, K6 V - 0.26, 0.26, 0.09 - 0.77, 0.76, 0.63 - 0.90, 0.82, 0.90
49 - (7.5, 3.2, 3.0) ------ 2 -- K3 V, M5 V --- 0.20, 0.0008 -- 0.76, 0.35 -- 0.80, 0.14
50 - (9.2, 14.3, 10.7) --- 1 ------- K0 V ---------- 0.4 ------ 0.82 - 0.28
51 - (14.8, 0.0, -0.9) --- 1 -------- M4 V ---------- 0.003 - 0.44 - 0.29
52 - (5.8, 13.7, -3.9) --- 1 -------- G6 V ---------- 1.0 ---- 0.98 - 1.07
53 - (-11.2, -10.9, 9.6) - 1 -------- M2 V ---------- 0.0001 - 0.3 - 0.3
54 - (4.5, -2.5, 8.0) ---- 1 -------- M7 V ---------- 0.0001 - 0.26 - 0.08
55 - (10.5, -5.9, -4.3) -- 1 -------- M1 V ----------0.016 --- 0.46 - 0.59
The gate at Sol can be maneuvered and aimed at another gate in a different system but in order for the gate to work properly, there would have to be a functioning gate at the other end. The two gates would create a "wormhole" that a space craft could travel through. The exact science behind it could be artificial gravity or induced black holes. But the distance between the two gates would be zero.
This idea is by no means original it has been used in the Stargate Movie and TV show, In Mekton Empire and in "The Jaunt" a short story by Stephen King.
Of course this would really depart from the Star Frontiers universe.
Gates would have to be sent through real space via interstellar craft. These ships would take centuries to reach their destinations and would require crews that possessed a hibernation technology or extreme longevity. Perhaps even cybernetic or robotic crews. Humans could be genetically altered to meet the demands of long space voyages giving them centuries-long life-spans and heightened coordination and reflexes to operate in zero-gravity. These new skinny, long-lived humanoids could have better night vision for seeing during powered-down conditions and slower metabolisms to conserve breathable air.
Another altered human could be made for the initial colonization of new worlds. Shorter and stockier for better heat retention on those cold undeveloped planets. They would have incredible stamina for working long hours under adverse conditions and would have a knack for mechanics and architecture and the making of things.
To fight in wars a third type of Humanoid could be engineered. A brute who is bellicose by nature and physically suited for combat. They have shorter life-spans than normal humans but retain their physical fitness for most of their adult life. This "soldier-race" was designed to die in battle and not in bed. And so we have a "scientific" basis for Elves, Dwarves and Orcs, whic really has nothing to do with Star frontiers at all. Sorry for derailing the post.
What if we give the same requirement for stargates as we have for the hyperdrive, in otherwords they need to be located 100 light minutes away from the gravitational influence of the Sun? The main reason for this is that the power source needed to hold open the stargate/wormhole is zero point energy, and the quantum flux of virtual particles in a vaccum requires that the vaccum be pure and far enough away from the gravitational influence of a star. At this distance, it becomes possible to create a pair of wormholes that are connected to each other. One end of the wormhole is accelerated to near the speed of light using a multi-stage matter/antimatter rocket - this is very expensive requiring that the bulk of the starship be made of this matter/antimatter fuel. One end of the wormhole after several stage seperations is traveling at near the speed of light and then slows down while approaching the destination, say in Alpha Centauri. The Stargate needs to be kept further than 200 light minutes from the pair of stars in the Alpha Centauri System - because there are two stars, and their combined mass adds up to twice that of the Sun.
Spaceships are sent through the Stargate into the Alpha Centauri system. Everytime a space ship travels through the stargate, an equal amount of mass to that of the space ship must then be sent from the Centauri System to the Solar System, because after a while if this does not happen the Stargate/wormhole eventually collapses as the perceived masses of the two ends become uneven. The end with the greater mass collapses into an non-tranversible black hole while the other end explodes.
Spaceships from Earth explore the Centauri system while cometary bodies from the Centauri system are sent through the wormhole to the Solar System to balance out this traffic - those cometary bodies are kept nearby in case any of those spaceships want to return to the Solar System. While in the Alpha Centauri system, they discover that an ancient space faring civilization once existed there, they race is now extinct, but before they went they established a network of wormholes throughout the galaxy. Other Stargates are found in the Centauri system and some are still operational, this vastly accelerates the rate of exploration, as the humans can now use this old Centaurian network and make contact with other intelligent species. Some of these planets they explore - one of which is actually Earth itself in the past - say the age of the Dinosaurs. The wormholes have some time displacement associated with them, so the explorers variously travel into the past and sometimes to the future whenever they go from planet to planet.
One good question about stargates is if we have them, what do we need starship's for?
You can only fit something so big. Besides, not all planets have functioning stargates. Like Earth, some may be buried to prevent travel.
You can only fit something so big. Besides, not all planets have functioning stargates. Like Earth, some may be buried to prevent travel.
Considering that Stargates may be modified black holes, placing them on a planet's surface may prove problematic. Even if you have a means of holding them on a planet's surface, if something goes wrong, they could fall through the containment device and start eating up the planet as it falls through the surface towards the core.
A Stargate may be an artificial wormhole, for game purposes assume that it is donut shaped, by traveling through the "hole" in the donut, you emerge from the "hole" of another donut some distance away. The distance in time and space does not matter. If you accelerate near the speed of light the effects of relativity are felt on one side of the stargate but not on the other. The stargate remains continuously open and in fact has to to maintain the connection. by traveling to the accelerated end of the donut from the unaccelerated part through the "hole", you travel to the future; by going in the reverse direction you travel to the past by the amount of the time dialation factor that the accelerated end of the stargate experienced; the same thing happens if one end is deeper within the gravitational field of a massive object such as a black hole than the other. The time dialation factor remains even after the accelerated end is decelerated.
I like to stipulate that these stargates must be kept a fair distance from the stars of each star system, thus requiring some travel by spaceship from the planet to the Stargate and from Stargate to the planet. The reason could be that the power generation requirements are such that in order to hold open the stargate, it must be kept well out of the gravitational well and "curved space" of the nearest star. I don't know if its true, but for game purposes we'll assume that zero point energy requires "empty" and "flat" space in order to extract the net energy from the virtual particle pairs. I'll say for convenience that this distance is 100 light minutes times the total masses of all the central stars in the system in Solar masses, that is masses define where the mass of our sun equals 1.0. It takes 1 week to accelerate this distance without slowing down, but with slowing down, it will take 2 weeks. A one-way journey between two single sunlike stars will take about a month in other words. Interstellar travel is not undertaken lightly in otherwords. To balance this off, travel through the stargate takes no time at all as experienced by the crew, it does not matter how far apart the two ends of the stargate are in time and space, since hardly no one ever travels from one star to the next outside of a stargate as it takes too much time and energy, the only travel time that matters is the time from planet's surface to planet's surface on a path going through the stargate.
To make this a game that includes exploration, I'm assuming an ancient civilization, that is now extinct, which has established a network of stargates throughout the Galaxy, including one to Earth. The younger civilization of humans also has the ability to build stargates. The technology of Earth and the ancient Centaurians is very similar. The Centaurians have even included Earth's Solar System as part of their network, but Earth's humans have only discovered this after building their own stargate to Alpha Centauri in the first place. Ancient ruins on the planet's surface point to the locations of the Centaurian Stargates which the humans rapidly learned how to use.
Because of the nature of how Stargates are made, the Alpha Centauri System itself is the past-most end of the entire "Centaurian network". The time dialation factor between Earth and Alpha Centauri is about 5,000 years, so assuming were in the 22nd century, its possible to travel from say 2150 AD to 2850 BC, when traveling to Alpha Centauri from Earth's Present. when traveling from Earth to Alpha Centauri using the human built stargate, the time dialation factor is only 1 year, so you travel from 2150 AD to 2151 AD, and if you go from there to Earth using one of the Centaurian gates, you arrive at Earth in the year 7151 AD. Historically these time periods aren't connected at all. The Earth in the year 2850 BC bears no relation to historical records, the point of divergence in the past lies at about 5,000,000 BC, there are humans, but they still are in the stone ages at least until contacted by modern humans, the same is true of the Earth in 7151 AD, only a modern technological civilization has occured in the 2150 AD Earth. Stargates are very expensive to make, and so humans have made only one and afterwards it was cheaper simply to use the Centaurian network, a side effect is to give the modern humans access to two other historically parallel Earths, both have native humans on it, but neither has been fully explored, those dates were only arrived at by examining the positions of the planets and the stars of the two other versions of the Solar System. So there are basically 3 versions of the Solar System and 2 versions of the Alpha Centauri System. Both versions of the Centauri system are dead and abandoned, but humans still colonize them anyway as together they provide two "copies" of each destination in the Centaurian network. The economics simply don't allow for the construction of additional human-built stargates.
I would have the gate technology be ancient, as in created by an ancient race and not able to be reproduced. The "frontier" civilizations would each be studying the gates to learn how they work and how to make them but they have to be slow and meticulous about it lest they be damaged.
I further propose that the 'ancients' be human, Earth folk even and that the setting is so far in the future that their advanced civilization collapsed aeon ago and left traces of them all over the galaxy. These "humanoids" can be whatever a GM wants them to be.
Other races can be allowed as well. The galaxy being so big that we can afford to have them. I propose that we have another ancient race that warred with the humans and caused the collapse of galactic civilization as we knew it and sent all of the intelligent species of the galaxy back to the pre star-faring days, forcing them to climb back to a high tech level (or not) on their own merit.
As for the general mechanics of the game, D20 works well but we should make it classless and hit points should change very little as a character progresses. "Class" should be replaced with "Profession" and should include a skill set of 10 to 12 skills that a player may develop independently. Much like the old Star Frontiers system, except we'll be rollong d20's as opposed to d% for everything.
Dice used for the game should include only d20's, d10's and d6's. Any of the other dice seem kind of pointless and would only be used for weapon damages anyway.
Hit points will be the characters Constitution score modified by their size with Diminuitive creatures having: Con X 0.2 , Tiny: Con X .5, Small: Con X 0.75, Medium: Con X 1, Large: Con X 1.5, Huge: Con X 3, Gargantuan: Con X 5 and Colossal: Con X 10. If this makes characters hit points too low we could make HP equal Str plus Con, then add a size multiplier if desired. I am pretty flexible on this.
Experience would be granted much like the old Star frontiers game in which 1 or 2 xp were considered a lot and could boost a skill. No more thousands of xp to advance. 1 xp could represent a level 1 in a skill where in order to advance the skill to level 2, 2 experience points would have to be spent. For third level, 3 xp and so on. Some skills are harder to learn and master than others and might have a difficulty modifier of X2 or even X3. These really hard skills could have their difficulty modifier lessened by a 'skill affinity' feat.
Feats would still be present and could be bought with experience points or could be assigned to a newly generated character by the player. Some feats should only be granted at the start of a game if they depict some inborn talent or physical trait (such as double-jointedness or a Photographic memory).
Ability scores: Standard point-buy, 25-32 points, or some array (15,14,13,12, 10,8 or 16,14,14,13,12,10). Alternatively you can roll dice, 4d6 drop the lowest or some other method.
Choose a race then assign any racial modifiers to stats and note any racial feats or advantages/disadvantages, Example: a Vrusk's ambidexterity or a Yazirian's Rage and low light vision
Pick any one feat, if a human pick two.
Choose a profession: Aristocrat, Explorer, Fighter, Pilot, Scientist, Technician. A brief description of the professions is below:
Aristocrat: A person who comes from wealth, they could be nobles or the progeny of corporate hierarchs. They don't need to work for a living and gain the advantages of "Money" and "Influence". Some aristocrats are estranged from their families but they still find themselves in wealth and able to command others through sheer presence.
Explorer: Bold, intrepid beings who travel to uncharted space and explore new worlds or re-explore old ones. Their skills range from outdoor-survival to navigation to history and archaeology.
Fighter: Soldiers, bodyguards, police ofiicers mercenaries, pirates, thugs and anyone who makes a living through violence (either causing it or preventing it). Their skills are mostly weapon proficiencies with a smattering of others to help them get by in day-to-day situations when they aren't being shot at.
Scientist: A Professional who makes their living in a scientific field, such being are inventors, teachers or researchers of all levels and include members of the medical field.
Pilot: A Pilot flies or operates air or space craft.
Technician: Anyone who maintains or fixes machinery electronics or computers. Thy can be planet-bound technicians or the engineers on space craft.
Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the original Star Frontiers material, the main problem lay in what to do after you've run your parties through all the offical Star Frontiers modules. I've played through all the Volturnius modules, and the Knight Hawks scenarios, but one problem I've had with the original material was that there was very little guidelines on how to generate further adventures, there were no random tables, no guidelines on how to award those 1 or 2 xp required for advancement, I would have liked to have been able to compare it with something familiar like D&D, but the game system was too far different for me to do it. I prefer the default assumptions of d20 Modern unless specified otherwise.
The exceptions I like are the 4 different kinds of Armor Classes/Saving throws that exist in D&D 4e. For primitive weapons you target your opponent's Armor Class, for advanced weapons you target his reflex score. (which is actually derived the same as Armor Class except armor bonuses don't modify this score) The armor bonus instead would be applied as a hit point damage reduction upon a hit against Reflex, against Armor Class with primitive weapons, no such hit point deduction applies. Advanced armor would be designed more to defeat advanced weapons than the primitive sort, so the armor bonus would include a multiplier such as "5 x +4" with the "+4" being applied towards the Armor Class score and the "5 x" part ignored with primitive weapons, however with advanced weapons, you'd roll a d20 to hit versus Reflex and if you scored a hit you would deduct "5 x +4" = 20 hit points from the damage inflicted, yet natives will still have no trouble stabbing you with a sword if they liked.
I think there should be one overall class that encompasses everything a character might be in Star Frontiers, whether a primitive, a scientist, an engineer, soldier, or doctor - a characters role would be determined by the skills and feats he chooses. I have no use for the so called powers of the D&D 4e system. Star Frontiers generally is not about one's special abilities, but about skills, feats, and the equipment one has.
I think it would be useful for humans to have some understanding of how Stargate technology works, but creating such gates is very costly, and I propose that some ancient race has done all this work already, and that humans are using the technology already existant from that ancient race - this practically guarantees that every system explored either has a planet with life on it or a planet that used to have such life.
As for your ancient humans idea, I think that's a good idea. How about we take a page from the Stargate series? I propose that we use the legendary civilization of Atlantis. As I said before the Stargate technology stitches together a number of different parallel universes, in one of them Human civilization may have gotten an earlier start than on our modern day Earth. The ancient civilization once time visited our own Earth, made brief contact with the ancient Greeks and other nearby civilizations, and then departed - the reason being some great catastrophe. (Not necessarily a continent sinking beneath the waves. The Atlanteans might have established a base on Alpha Centauri for instance, and humans from Earth have traveled to Alpha Centuri on their own using slower than light methods, and constructed one such gate and they find the Atlantean's descendents living on a very Earthlike planet. Unlike Earth, this planet has some useful ruins, written in a translatable language similar to ancient Greek, that point to the existance of an extensive Stargate network. The probable cause of the Atlantean's demise would have been war between various factions and a decline in the ability to reproduce their advanced technology. (In otherwords they were no longer able to build spaceships that could reach their own gates. the gates themselves however are either just fine, or need a little repair before they would be operational again.)
A for experience points, I am only dividing the current d20 scale by 1000. It takes thousands of xp to gain a level in d20 modern. I liked Star Frontiers xp system because it was small and manageable. As for determining the right xp award, that has always been a problem even in d20 modern games. In D&D it's easy to determine the reward because you go into dungeons and fight monsters and everything has a challenge rating, in a sci fi game or a D20 modern game where it's not all about combat the GM has to be a little more imaginative, what is the challenge rating for Bribing a customs official to not inspect your starship for example? How about Solving a murder mystery without having to kill the murderer at the end of the adventure? Now that the game is all using skills to overcome problems that frankly most modern people might actually encounter, the award system should be vague in order to let the GM advance the characters at his or her own pace.
I really DO NOT think the D&D 4e skill system would work with Star frontiers. In 4e a character gets a handfull of skills and their level in those skills is directly related to their character class level. Thus a piloting skill would be 1/2 character level plus their ability modifier. In the old D20 modern system it was a bit more realistic with skill points allocated to each individual skill. The method that I am proposing would eliminate a character class level and allow a character to buy whatever skills they need with thier own experience points. My 'profession' idea was merely meant to be a skill set, not a character class and if you look in the SF expanded rules "Zebulons Guide To Frontier Space" you will see many of the ideas that I proposed above with the Enforcer, Techex, Scispec and Explorer professions. I am all in favor of using as much as we can from the old Star frontiers rules because as you have stated, it's just a great system.
I like the Stargate ideas but I think we should leave the Atlanteans out of it. if we placed the setting far enough into the future, say five or ten thousand years, we could use the sol system and real life references and make the milieu into whatever we wanted instead of having to rip off of the Stargate TV show. The Stargate TV show were not the first one to come up with the idea of gates to other realms. I think our similarities should stop there. Remember we are already proposing the elimination of Hyperspace from Star frontiers and that was a big part of the SF universe. By keeping the space ships but nerfing the interstellar travel with Star-Gates we are already making it a very different kind of universe. Now a star ship can only go to systems with a Star-Gate in it unless we allow one-way trips. Granted you can still do a lot with space craft and no FTL travel as can be seen from Joss Wheedon's Firefly show
level 1 skill: 1 xp
Level 2 skill: 3 xp
Level 3: 6 xp
Level 4: 10 xp
Level 5: 15 xp.
Level 6: 21xp
Level 7: 28 xp
Level 8: 36 xp
Level 9: 45 xp
Level 10: 55xp
Level 11: 66xp
Level 12: 78 xp.
If you'll notice, the xp to raise a skill to it's next level costs a number of XP equal to that skills next level. if I have 20 skill points invested into my Piloting skill that would make my current skill level 5 for Piloting. If my character gains 1 more experience point and I apply that point to my piloting skill then I'll have 21 xp devoted to that skill and will be level 6 in piloting.
I propose that experience once gained MUST be applied to a skill, ability score or Feat to show that the character is actually investing time in training in that skill/ability/feat.
Now I have not discussed the cost of feats and even which ones we should use. A feat should cost anywhere from 5 to 10 xp to reflect the nature of this special ability. I have not set an exact number because the whole system I am proposing is in it's experimental stage right now. It has not been play tested so it's all up in the air and frankly, I am not sure if anyone is even interested in my proposed changes.
The feats should include all of those from d20 modern/future that don't conflict with the above systems. Anything that mentions a class or level should be exempt from the list. As I do not currently have my D20 modern/future books in front of me I can not provide a reasonably accurate list of feats to be used. But it's safe to say that most feats such as Great Fortitude or Ambidexterity or Dodge can be used. A character who is aiming to buy a feat should invest xp into it. If for example a character is trying to become a two-weapon fighter, then he or she should be investing xp over time to buy the feat as it will be unlikely that the character will get all 10 xp required to buy the feat up front.
Increasing an ability score should cost an amount of xp equal to the new stat score X2. Thus if I want to increase a character's Dexterity from 17 to 18 I will have to pay a total amount of 36 experience points to bring that stat up by 1. This reflects the value of increasing a stat and being able to apply that bonus universally to all of the skills that are tied to that stat.
For initial character generation the total number of skill points alloted to the character to purchase initial skills would be the sum of their Intelligence and Wisdom scores. I have chosen these to reflect the characters ability to learn and the willpower to actually apply themselves to their studies. Lets say my character has the following Int and Wis scores of 12 and 10 respectively. The sum would be 22 points with which to buy skills is a measure of how much education and training the character has gained up until the point of their creation. 22 points is not so much when you consider that 10 points would buy a character a level 4 skill. In fact it might even be a bit low by d20 modern standards so you could also include Charisma in the total sum of skill points available to the starting character. If my character's stats were Int:12, Wis: 10 and Cha:14 then I would have 36 points to buy skills with initially. It all really depends on how low you want to keep the beginning character's skills and how quickly you want them to advance in experience and skill.
Unrealistic as it is, I think higher level character should be harder to kill, that means more hit points upon increasing a level.
So basically 1 new experience point equals 1,000 old experience points. The question is how many experience points do you get for defeating a particular foe?
As many as the GM wishes to award. My 1000:1 analogy is not exactly correct. My point is to use the old SF experience method because it's easier to keep track of what experience goes to what skill/feat//ability score. You could easily multiply my suggested xp costs by 100 or 1000 or some other number and use the old d20 method for
Unrealistic as it is, I think higher level character should be harder to kill, that means more hit points upon increasing a level.
In D20 modern all you had to do was 20 points of damage to any character and if they failed their saving throw then they were toast. In this system that i propose, a character may buy the toughness feat as many times as they like and add 3 hp to their total.
What criterion should the GM then use for awarding this 1 xp for each player character? Should he keep track of the number of such creatures that they kill, lets say 15 for example. Ok, so now each player writes a number on his character sheet keeping track of the number of creatures he kills until he reaches the magic number of 15, then he signals the GM and says, "Ok I've killed 15 of these creatures, do I get an experience point and advance one level?"
Of course not all creatures and opponents are the same, they will probably be seperated into levels, thus 15 first level opponents would be worth 1 xp, while 15 second level opponents would be worth 2 xp. How is this an improvement over the old system which required the character to accumulate 1,000 xp to advance a level, because in your system, instead of counting experience points, you end up counting creatures killed or defeated?
One can assign story awards I guess. The GM can say, if they stop X from happening or they achieve Y then they get 1 xp each. The difficulty of stopping X or achieving Y is variable and not entirely clear. If the GM overestimates this difficulty, then he awards too many xp, if he underestimates this, then he awards too little. It would be nice if you can simply plug in some formula and derive the difficulty ahead of time in planning the adventure so characters don't advance too quickly or too slowly for the plot the GM intended.
The GM could simply say, that "at this point in the adventure all the characters should be second level," for instance, thus when the players characters reach that point in the adventure, say by walking into a particular room for example, the GM suddenly announces, "You have all now reached second level, begin advancing your characters now!" The players look at each other a bit confused and say, "What have we done?" The GM replies, "At this point of the adventure you should all be at second level, so therefore you are."
In your example a party of four first level characters each kills an opponent. If the GM awards each player with 1 experience point then they players may apply that point toward any skill or feat or ability score. Just like in the old Star frontiers game, each skill is to be advanced separately. That means that one experience point may either buy a new skill at level one or be applied to another skill in the hopes of raising it later. What I am proposing here is a radical departure from the normal D20 way of doing things, but the method is by no means new. Skill advancement is used in numerous other sci-fi games such as: Traveller, Space Opera, Any Gurps game, any Chaosium game. A skill based system works better for a 'realistic' feel because it stops characters from having too many hit points and it also provides a logical advancement to skills where some skills will have high levels and some won't as opposed to this new 4 e system where at 10th or 20th level, every skill you ever had is really high, there's no middle ground, if a high level character buys a new skill he or she is already an expert in that skill because there's only one way to determine how good a character is with a skill (1/2 Xlevel plus ability modifiers) as opposed to the old d20 system of skill ranks which were added as a character advanced.
I think that if we use any of the 4e d20 stuff then we should at the very least keep the old skill system where points were awarded per level and the player added those points to the character's skills. The 4e method (and Star Wars Saga method) of advancing skills is entirely dependent of a character's level. The old Star Frontiers system was more realistic because each character didn't spontaneously get better at everything, the characters improved only in specific areas that they concentrated on developing. Thus you didn't have run away Hit Points (Stamina) unless the character concentrated on improving their stamina. Even NPC's and Villains were subject to this limitation.
The main flaw of Star Frontiers was the difficulty of designing adventures for it. After you run through the main published modules it all ends, the GM is left grasping for straws without much guidance from published materials about what to do next. D&D has a whole set of tables for random encounters given the power levels of various PC parties. Without standardization, it becomes hard to make a generalized adventure without going into alot of detail about what skills and abilities and power levels are required of the PCs - you don't have a simple party level and number of characters to describe it all. If your PCs don't have the right set of skills at the right skill levels, they really can't enjoy the adventure. This is alot of work for the GM.
In this case I would use the D20 Modern system because i like the way skills are handled. One issue I do have is with base attack bonuses. I would rather have Weapon proficiencies as skills that can be added to as a player advances in levels. This might work for your "One class fits all" method that you propse. i also believe that hit point gains should not get out of control. Yes, they can get more hit points as they gain levels but if we are looking for convincing realism then the character should not be able to wade through a hail of bullets and grenades without impunity. it works in a game like D&D where you are expected to go toe-to-toe with beasties but in a sci-fi setting, combat should have a high risk. An example of what i am talking about is in Return Of The Jedi when Luke Skywalker has his fight with the Rancor. Notice that he has to evade every blow or else he will be creamed. It doesn't matter what his "character level" is, if the Rancor had landed a blow Luke would have been dead meat. What kept Luke alive was his ability to evade. The ability to dodge a blow (or a bullet, or a laser blast) should increase reasonably as the character gains more experience, but stuff that would vaporize a normal person should only be able to be survived by the toughest of characters.
Now realize that Evasion (armor class or defense or whatever you want to call it) won't be the same for every character, but it should improve nonetheless to keep high level characters from getting wasted where less experienced ones would fall.
I would go so far as to resurrect the professions from Zebulon's Guide as d20 classes (with Spacer added from Knight Hawks) to offer some variety and guidance to a player.
Size -------- Avg Hit Points ------------ Cost
Fine -------- 1 ------------------------ $0
Diminutive -- 2 or (1d3 + Con Adj) ------ $1,000
Tiny -------- 4 or (1d8 + Con Adj) ------ $2,000
Small ------- 8 or (2d8 + Con Adj) ------ $5,000
Medium ---- 16 or (4d8 + Con Adj) ------ $13,000
Large ------ 32 or (8d8 + Con Adj) ------ $34,000
Huge ------- 64 or (16d8 + Con Adj) ---- $89,000
Gargantuan - 128 or (32d8 + Con Adj) --- $233,000
Colosal ----- 256 or (64d8 + Con Adj) --- $610,000
Enourmous - 512 or (128d8 + Con Adj) -- $1,597,000
A character would start with a net value measured in dollars or credits or whatever, in any case we use the $ sign. The point is this, in a science fiction campaign, equipment is alot more important than a character's innate abilities.
One of the first things a player purchases is his character's body, add this to whatever equipment he has and the total value of character + skills + feats + equipment determines how advanced the character is.
For example if you encounter a character who attacks you with his bare fists, this would be less of a challenge and worth less experience points that one who attacks you with a laser rifle, and this in turn would be less of a challenge than an opponent that attacks you from a spaceship using the ship's weapons. Let is just say that experience points can be converted to a $ value on a 1:1 basis in the game. Your level of experience is equal to your total net worth in the game. There is alot more to buy in an Science Fiction game and equipment matters alot more.
As for skills, you pay for those by paying for the training, Feats are the same deal, the main difference is that with skills you have a level of expertise and Feats are either something you have or don't have. There is some amount of time involved in aquiring skills and feats through training. The money is spent and the training occurs between adventures.
The average character is medium sized, this costs $13,000. So lets say the character starts with $500,000, and thus he spends $13,000 to get an average human body with no cybernetic enhancements, no equipment and no skills, this leaves him with $487,000 to spend on equipment. This $487,000 is the characters net worth after subtracting the cost of his body, in the actual campaign, the body is not usually bought, but is born. Now as the character advances, he can improve himself and his combat ability by buying new skills, new feats, or new equipment, all of these enhance either his combat ability or his power. The equipment he buys doesn't have to be grafted or implanted in his body, but they are a part of his character just the same and his combat statistic reflects the presence of this equipment on his person.
You see with a Science Fiction role playing game, you don't really need experience points when you have money, this is a rather abstract concept, but the important thing is, you start the game with the total net worth of your starting character, you decide what kind of creature you want to play, and in a science fiction setting there are many. The size of the creature plus the cost of its racial abilities is the cost you pay, subtract this from your total net worth and the rest is available for training, and equipment purchases.
May I suggest that we use the Weapon Proficiency feats as skills where a character would have to buy a BAB for each weapon proficiency and train in each WP separately in order to advance?
I like this idea of yours. Buying your character's...everything. So there wouldn't really be a character level so much as a character's net worth? Brilliant!
May I suggest that we use the Weapon Proficiency feats as skills where a character would have to buy a BAB for each weapon proficiency and train in each WP separately in order to advance?
Sounds like a great idea! We'll have to come up with prices for each skill level. I think they ought to be scaled similar to the advancement tables for character level, but since were only talking about an Attack adjustment for a specific type of weapon the price ought to be cheaper than advancing a level. How about this?
Weapon Attack Adj. --- Cost
-2 -------------------- $0
+0 -------------------- $100
+1 -------------------- $200
+2 -------------------- $500
+3 -------------------- $1,300
+4 -------------------- $3,400
+5/+1 ----------------- $8,900
+6/+2 ----------------- $23,300
+7/+3 ----------------- $61,000
+8/+4 ----------------- $159,700
Laser Pistol, Cost $600, ammo 60 charges per energy cell,
Range Increment: 150 feet, weight 1.5 pounds
Setting - Charges expended - Damage - Equipment Attack Bonus
1 ------- 1 ----------------- 1d4 ----- +1
2 ------- 2 ----------------- 1d8 ----- +2
3 ------- 3 ----------------- 1d12 ---- +3
4 ------- 4 ----------------- 2d8 ----- +4
5 ------- 5 ----------------- 2d10 ---- +5
6 ------- 6 ----------------- 2d12 ---- +6
Laser Rifle, Cost $1,200, ammo 120 charges per energy cell
Range Increment: 600 feet, weight 5 pounds
Setting - Charges expended - Damage - Equipment Attack Bonus
1 ------- 1 ----------------- 1d6 ----- +1
2 ------- 2 ----------------- 1d12 ---- +2
3 ------- 3 ----------------- 3d6 ----- +3
4 ------- 4 ----------------- 3d8 ----- +4
5 ------- 5 ----------------- 3d10 ---- +5
6 ------- 6 ----------------- 3d12 ---- +6
Star Frontiers M20
http://copycat042.googlepages.com/Starfrontiersm20v.03.pdf
based on microlite20
http://www.microlite20.net
try this:
Star Frontiers M20
http://copycat042.googlepages.com/Starfrontiersm20v.03.pdf
based on microlite20
http://www.microlite20.net
Lots of interesting information there. Of particular interest is the list of planets. Suppose we connected them all with stargates based on the edge of each system? The Stargates wouldn't have to be close to each other in either space or time, they would just be where ever they happened to be in time and space. You would ignore all the other uninteresting stars and planets that don't have life on them as they wouldn't be connected by stargates. You'd just have to keep a list of which star systems connect to others via stargates. You could even have different versions of humanity, perhaps over two or three parallel Universes with parallel timelines. You could even have 21st century Earth in the mix, say it is discovered by Frontier Starships through the network of Stargates.
PLANETS OF THE FRONTIER
Star (Sp. Cl)
Planet PR Pop TR Grav Day Sat Moons Uses
UPF WORLDS
Araks (G4) Hentz Y Hvy I 0.7 25 FSS,DS,TS None
Athor (K2) Yast Y Mod A 1.0 15 None Exib
Ime (A) None
Cassidine (G8) Rupert's Hole Triad H* Mod Hvy I IT 0.9 1.1 20 30 ASS,TS ASS,DS None Evergleem C
Devco (F9) Cass Co Lt R 1.6 12 None None
Dixon's Star (G0) Laco H Mod I 1.4 60 None Saucer None
Dramune (K1) Inner Reach Outer Reach D* Mod Mod AI IR 0.8 1.0 20 35 ASS,TS ASS,RRS Pell Kard Tars Etric Tolk A R R None None
Fromeltar (G5) Groth Terledrom D D/V Lt Hvy A I 1.2 1.0 45 60 ASS ASS None Wikk Leen C I None Masg
Gruna Garu (G8) Hargut Y Hvy BR 1.1 20 ASS Trefrom C
K'aken-Kar (K8) Ken'zah-Kit V Mod A 0.9 25 FSS None
Kizk'-Kar (G2) Zik-Kit V Mod IR 1.0 65 ASS,TS None
K'tsa-Kar (K0) Kawdl-Kit V Lt E 0.7 30 ASS,RRS None
Liberty (G1) Snowball Spec Lt E 0.9 32 Spec Akhala C
Lynchpin (K2) Moonworld H Hvy M 1.3 25 SF,DS Pen Ringold Dillon Hachiman Ares Huan-Ti Huitz Nuada Enlil C R B M M M M M M
Madderly's Star (G3) Kdikit H Mod IA 1.0 30 SF,DS,TS Shang-Ti Tsukiy Zeus Jupiter Odin I None None B None
Mechan (K7) Mechano Me Hvy IT 2.0 30 None(?) None
New Streel (G2) Corpco Co Lt AT 1.0 35 None None
Pan-Gal (G8) Exodus Genesis Co Co Mod Out IT E 1.3 0.8 20 25 None None None Asperon Belv M E
Prenglar (F9) Gran Quivera Morgaine's World* H Hvy Mod BI BIA 1.0 1.5 15 4 FSS SF,DS RSS,TS None Grey Gold White Black R None M None
Rhianna (G6) Alcazzar Co Lt R 0.8 V None A 1-7 ?
Scree Fron (K7) Hakosoar Histran Y Y Mod Out AI E 0.9 0.6 50 25 None None Inti Infi A-G E R None
Sol (G2) Earth H 1.0 24 1 Luna Inner Mercury Venus Mars Outer Asteroids Jupiter Saturn Uranus Neptune
Solar Major (F3) Ringar V Mod B 1.5 40 None None
Solar Minor (F8) Circe Kir'-Kut H/V H/V Lt Lt A I 1.0 1.2 20 18 RRS,ASS TS Ulysseus None M
Sundown (K9) Starmist * Out E 1.0 25 None None
Theseus (G1) Minotaur H Hvy BI 1.2 15 FSS None
Timeon (G5) Lossend H Lt AI 0.7 70 ASS None
Tristkar (K0) Kraatar V/H Lt AIT 0.6 18 None Tivalla Setarz None None
Truane's Star (G7) New Pale Pale H* Lt Hvy A IR 1.4 0.9 20 50 ASS SF,DS,TS None Dan Joe Sven C M None
Waller Nexus (G0) Mahg Mar * Out E 0.9 24 None None
White Light (F7) Golloywog H Hvy R 1.0 50 SF,DS None
Zebulon (G2) Anker Volturnus * * Mod Lt E BI 0.9 1.0 20 24 RRS ASS Plato Leo Lulu None None None
It would have to capture the feel just right, which would be difficult because of the nostalgia related to the game.
For example, I am also a huge fan of Gamma World. Especially 4th edition.
When I heard a D20 version was being released I could not wait to see it.
When I finally got it and read it I was extemely disappointed.
The background and character options were nothing like the earlier editions.
It was not the game I grew up playing.
And there is no way it could have been. They were updating it with today's scientific and technological theories, instead of yesteryear's "raditiation creates mutants and talking animals" comic book simplicity.
The authors took a more grim and serious approach, where I expected a wild fantasy approach.
I'm sure there must be fans of it, but it was not for me.
If worse comes worse and nothing "official" ever comes out again, it seems like you have a bunch of fantastic ideas of your own anyway.
Just be careful what you wish for...
For example, I am also a huge fan of Gamma World. Especially 4th edition.
When I heard a D20 version was being released I could not wait to see it.
When I finally got it and read it I was extemely disappointed.
The background and character options were nothing like the earlier editions.
It was not the game I grew up playing.
And there is no way it could have been. They were updating it with today's scientific and technological theories, instead of yesteryear's "raditiation creates mutants and talking animals" comic book simplicity.
The authors took a more grim and serious approach, where I expected a wild fantasy approach.
I'm sure there must be fans of it, but it was not for me.
A wild fantasy approach to the post-apoc genre?
:evillaugh
Just be careful what you wish for...
I did wished for a new OA. I got one with Rokugan.
Here is my scheme:
The Map of the Frontier on the Copycat website listed above is actually the location of stargates within a single star system, the "Hub" in Universe Contra. Universe Contra, as determined by telescopic observations is about 13 billion years old, about 1.5 billion years younger than our own Universe which we will call Universe Alpha. The main thing you need to know about Universe Contra is that it is an antimatter universe, all the stars, planets, nebula, and gasses in this universe are made out of antimatter. This particular star system resides in a galaxy that's very similar to the Milky Way.
All the "stars" you see on this map are actually the locations of stargates leading to the star systems in question. Each square on the map represents the distance covered after accelerating at 1g for 12 hours and decelerating at 1g for 12 hours for a total of 1 day's journey, this is 11,310,545 miles across the length of a square on the map. All the stargates are located in a single plane along the rotational axis of this star system. The central star of the Hub System is a Type G0 antimatter star located 1000 squares to the right of this map this central star is so distant that the location of the stargates remain relatively fixed with respect to each other as measured by any timescale that's relevant to the player characters. The Star called Hub star appears as a very bright star, a bit dimmer than what our own Sun would appear from the surface of Pluto.
Of course one of the hazards of travelling through the Hub System is coming in contact with antimatter. Fortunately at this distance the amount of antimatter one encounters in the vacuum of space is not sufficient to destroy starships or endanger the crew. Much of this antimatter is mined in the locations indicated by gas clouds on the map. Special minning ships using lasers and magnetic fields collect and store this antimatter in magnetic bottles at temperatures close to absolute zero. Antimatter forms the basis of much of the Frontier economy.
One can determine the distance between stargates by measuring the distance between any two in squares using the pythagorean theorem Sqrt((x1-x0)^2 + (y1-y0)^2) Take the square root of this computed distance and that will be the travel time in days between the gates. Each gate is a donut shaped portal about 100 miles in diameter with a solid outer ring thats an additional 50 miles thick. Travelling through the inside of this donut will lead to either Universe Alpha, Universe Beta, or Universe Gamma.
Universe Alpha is our universe set 10 years in the future or 2018 AD.
Universe Beta is a parallel history of our universe set in 66,000,000 BC or thereabouts
Universe Gamma is a parallel future history of our universe set the year 111 PF, that is 111 years after the founding of the United Frontier.
The Earth is a special case, it has a stargate located close to the Zebulon Gate, this Earth is of the Alpha Universe (Sol) and is 10 years in our future (circa 2018 AD). The Solar System circa 2018 AD is actually a past version of the "Earth" where the "Frontier" humans originated from. Sol-Gamma is the gate that leads to the system containing Gamma World, a planet populated by Muntants, intelligent Robots, mutated animals, and various artifacts of all sorts. The Gate leading to Gamma World is actually a future version of the planet the Frontier Humans left, some of the artifact technology is even more advanced than Standard for the Star Frontiers Setting. Sol-Beta is the system of Terra-Cretaceous a past version of Earth set in the year 66,000,000 BC.
The following letter coordinates have the following values:
A = -1, B = -2, C = -3, D = -4, E = -5, F = -6, G = -7, H = -8, I = -9, J = -10, K = -11, L = -12, M = -13, N = -14, O = -15, P = -16, Q = -17, R = -18, S = -19, T = -20, U = -21, V = -22, W = -23, X = -24, Y = -25, Z = -26
The listed stargates from the Hub System are as follows:
Araks (G4) Hentz (Q,6) - Alpha
Athor (K2) Yast (K,1) - Gamma
Cassidine (G8) Rupert's Hole, Triad (H,0) - Gamma
Devco (F9) Cass (L,7)-Beta
Dixon's Star (G0) Laco (C,D)- Alpha
Dramune (K1) Inner Reach, Outer Reach (I,3) - Alpha
Fromeltar (G5) Groth, Terledrom (Q,5) - Gamma
Gruna Garu (G8) Hargut (H,11) - Alpha
K'aken-Kar (K8) Ken'zah-kit (17,E) - Beta
Kizk'-Kar (G2) Zik-kit (13,O) - Beta
K'tsa-Kar (K0) Kawdl-Kit (14,E) - Beta
Liberty (G1) Snowball (26,19) - Gamma
Lynchpin (K2) Moonworld (5,19) - Gamma
Madderly's Star (G3) Kdikit (7,E) - Alpha
Mechan (K7) Mechano (P,G) - Gamma
New Streel (G2) Corpco (11,8) - Gamma
Pan-Gal (G8) Exodus, Genesis (C,9) - Alpha
Prenglar (F9) Gran Quivera, Morgaine's World (0,0) - Gamma
Rhianna (G6) Alcazzar (M,15) - Alpha
Scree Fron (K7) Hakosoar, Histran (Q,E) - Gamma
Sol (G2) Earth (J,K) - Alpha
Sol-Beta (G2) Terra-Cretaceous (K,K) - Beta
Sol-Gamma (G2) Gamma world (K,I) - Gamma
Solar Major (F3) Ringar (22,F) - Gamma
Solar Minor (F8) Circe, Kir'-Kut (23,10) - Gamma
Sundown (K9) Starmist (W,1) - Alpha
Theseus (G1) Minotaur (16,11) - Beta
Timeon (G5) Lossend (3,7) - Alpha
Triskar (K0) Kraatar (17,4) - Gamma
Truane's Star (G7) New Pale, Pale (C,H) - Gamma
Waller Nexus (G0) Mahg Mar (21,18) - Beta
White Light (F7) Golloywog (12,I) - Alpha
Zebulon (G2) Anker, Volturnus (I,K) - Gamma
Araks (G4) Hentz {Y Hvy I 0.7 25 FSS,DS,TS None} (Q,6) - Alpha
Athor (K2) Yast {Y Mod A 1.0 15 None Exib-A Ime-None} (K,1) - Gamma
Cassidine (G8) Rupert's Hole {H Mod IA 0.9 20 ASS,TS None}, Triad {* Hvy IT 1.1 30 ASS,DS Evergleem-C} (H,0) - Gamma
Devco (F9) Cass {Co Lt R 1.6 12 None None} (L,7)-Beta
Dixon's Star (G0) Laco {H Mod I 1.4 60 None Saucer None} (C,D)- Alpha
Dramune (K1) Inner Reach {D Mod AI 0.8 20 ASS,TS Pell-A}, Outer Reach {* Mod IR 1.0 35 ASS,RRS Kard-R Tars-R Etric-None Tolk-None} (I,3) - Alpha
Fromeltar (G5) Groth {D Lt A 1.2 45 ASS None}, Terledrom {D/V Hvy I 1.0 60 ASS Wikk-C Leen-I} (Q,5) - Gamma
Gruna Garu (G8) Hargut {Y Hvy BR 1.1 20 ASS Trefrom-C} (H,11) - Alpha
K'aken-Kar (K8) Ken'zah-kit {V Mod A 0.9 25 FSS None} (17,E) - Beta
Kizk'-Kar (G2) Zik-kit {V Mod IR 1.0 65 ASS,TS None} (13,O) - Beta
K'tsa-Kar (K0) Kawdl-Kit {V Lt E 0.7 30 ASS,RRS None} (14,E) - Beta
Liberty (G1) Snowball {Spec Lt E 0.9 32 Spec Akhala-C} (26,19) - Gamma
Lynchpin (K2) Moonworld {H Hvy M 1.3 25 SF,DS Pen-C Ringold-R Dillon-B Hachiman-M Ares-M Huan-Ti-M Huitz-M Nuada-M Enlil-M} (5,19) - Gamma
Madderly's Star (G3) Kdikit (7,E) - Alpha
Mechan (K7) Mechano (P,G) - Gamma
New Streel (G2) Corpco (11,8) - Gamma
Pan-Gal (G8) Exodus, Genesis (C,9) - Alpha
Prenglar (F9) Gran Quivera, Morgaine's World (0,0) - Gamma
Rhianna (G6) Alcazzar (M,15) - Alpha
Scree Fron (K7) Hakosoar, Histran (Q,E) - Gamma
Sol (G2) Earth (J,K) - Alpha
Sol-Beta (G2) Terra-Cretaceous (K,K) - Beta
Sol-Gamma (G2) Gamma world (K,I) - Gamma
Solar Major (F3) Ringar (22,F) - Gamma
Solar Minor (F8) Circe, Kir'-Kut (23,10) - Gamma
Sundown (K9) Starmist (W,1) - Alpha
Theseus (G1) Minotaur (16,11) - Beta
Timeon (G5) Lossend (3,7) - Alpha
Triskar (K0) Kraatar (17,4) - Gamma
Truane's Star (G7) New Pale, Pale (C,H) - Gamma
Waller Nexus (G0) Mahg Mar (21,18) - Beta
White Light (F7) Golloywog (12,I) - Alpha
Zebulon (G2) Anker, Volturnus (I,K) - Gamma