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pendell
2009-07-07, 10:19 AM
So I was reading a Diane Duane novel the other day -- Starrise at Corrivale -- and I was surprised to find that it was a novel expansion for a TSR game called Star*Drive (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star*Drive), published in 1998. Evidently she was supposed to do for that SF module what Salvatore did for Forgotten Realms, but evidently failed, as I'd never even heard of the game until now.

What happened to this game? Has anyone played it?

Why did it so completely disappear? It's a TSR product -- presumably the mechanics couldn't have been all that different from 2nd Ed. D&D, which would have been the current D&D product at the time.

For that matter .. then-TSR and now-Wizards of the Coast produced a lot of roleplaying games for different genres over the years. Star Frontiers. Gamma World. That's why we have D20 -- a universal roleplaying system suitable for any genre.

So why is it that D&D is routinely everyone's favorite game, but hardly anyone plays the others? The last SF group I encountered played GURPS traveller.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

Random832
2009-07-07, 10:24 AM
According to the WP article you linked, it's a campaign setting for Alternity (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternity) (linked article has some mechanics information)

sebsmith
2009-07-07, 11:00 AM
Because Traveller killed them all, then died, then was reborn, killed all the new ones, died again, and was reborn again. Don't let that keep you from playing it, Mongoose Traveller (the last version I looked at) looked quite fun.

shadzar
2009-07-07, 11:56 AM
Alternity sucked and no one liked it. So they gave Bill S the job as head of R&D for D&D and Rich Baker became some other exec, when WotC took over TSR.

Parts of Alternity were used in 4th edition, the original mechanics for the skill challenges. Bill and Rich keep trying to bring back their sucky game that no one liked and preferred D&D over, and rename the garbage that was Alternity into D&D because they have the power to do so now.

They learned the ways of Lorraine Williams and stuck with them. Try to sell a game that no one likes because you want to sell it even though nobody wants it. (Alternity and Buck Rogers RPGs both!)

How bad did Alternity suck?

Imagine playing in a Star Wars game...that is your genre. But you are only allowed to play Jar Jar Binks type characters because the system was dumber than him.

Tiki Snakes
2009-07-07, 12:03 PM
Alternity sucked and no one liked it. So they gave Bill S the job as head of R&D for D&D and Rich Baker became some other exec, when WotC took over TSR.

Parts of Alternity were used in 4th edition, the original mechanics for the skill challenges. Bill and Rich keep trying to bring back their sucky game that no one liked and preferred D&D over, and rename the garbage that was Alternity into D&D because they have the power to do so now.

They learned the ways of Lorraine Williams and stuck with them. Try to sell a game that no one likes because you want to sell it even though nobody wants it. (Alternity and Buck Rogers RPGs both!)

How bad did Alternity suck?

Imagine playing in a Star Wars game...that is your genre. But you are only allowed to play Jar Jar Binks type characters because the system was dumber than him.

This is really, really a tenuous angle. You are obsessed, man. Really, it's time to chill out a little.

(Not to mention that the Wiki article mentions a whole lot about the TSR Alternity game being largely absorbed into D20 Modern*, which I hear lots of good things about, rather than the newer DnD.)

*It mentions StarDrive being part of the D20 Future expansion, btw. So, in some form it's still around, I guess.

raitalin
2009-07-07, 12:06 PM
Yeah, Star*Drive is one of the "skeleton settings" featured in the d20 Future book. If you're interested in playing I suggest picking up the old books for fluff and using the D20 Modern ruleset.

hamlet
2009-07-07, 12:08 PM
Wow, that wasn't at all biased.

Alternity was a niche system designed in the death throws of TSR in an attempt to capatalize on the popularity of universal type systems which were then becoming very popular. Ostensibly, it was universal, but it works best when you play Star Drive or Dark matter campaigns. Otherwise, the GM will have a lot of jiggering and building to do before it's ready to go.

Despite claims above, it's not "sucky" or "terrible," though it is a little wonky at first blush and harder to wrap one's head around the first time out the gate. It still has a following and people do play and enjoy it with a moderately active fan community.

It's great strength lies in that, with proper knowledge of the system and a good flair of creativity, you can make it do whatever you want, more so than many other systems and with less headache than things like Hero or, arguably, GURPS.

Be warned, PC's are not super-hero type (barring a superhero campaign obviously) persons and are mostly "effectively human." You won't be performing any wuxia type feats in this game, really.

Yes, it was killed by that squamos horror Traveller, as it killed pretty much everything else. But moeso, it was killed by TSR's downfall.

nightwyrm
2009-07-07, 12:13 PM
I've always like the O/E/A degree of success system that Alternity had.

ghost_warlock
2009-07-07, 12:19 PM
Yes, Star*Drive was an Alternity campaign setting.

My group never really used anything from it but the Arms & Equipment guide, though. We were too busy using Alternity to play badass ALIENS vs. Predator and StarGate games. :smallcool:

Even today, Alternity is our preferred system for sci-fi games; such as recent Mass Effect and Fallout-inspired games.

shadzar
2009-07-07, 12:38 PM
This is really, really a tenuous angle. You are obsessed, man. Really, it's time to chill out a little.

(Not to mention that the Wiki article mentions a whole lot about the TSR Alternity game being largely absorbed into D20 Modern*, which I hear lots of good things about, rather than the newer DnD.)

*It mentions StarDrive being part of the D20 Future expansion, btw. So, in some form it's still around, I guess.

I never liked the system, nor the people that wrote it, nor that they keep trying to bring parts of it back when it was such a bad system overall.

It was made as a blatant rip=off as a Star Wars/D&D crossover. TSR couldn't get a license for a Star Wars RPG so LW decided to throw Alternity out there to in part capitalize on Star Wars, and in LW's interest of stirring up interest in space based RPGs within the company to try to make more Buck Rogers crap games that people didn't want either.

I may be a little hostile to those LW types as well as LW, but I think in part they deserve it.

There isn't a thing with his name on it (http://www.pen-paper.net/rpgdb.php?op=showcreator&creatorid=96) that I like other than the character sheets for all the humanoids in the back of CBoH.

Like some people don't like Salvatore just because they don't like Drizzt...I just don't like Bill S's works. Put his name on it, I will likely put it back on the shelf and buy something else. :smallyuk:

For those novels, they probably just lost to the many D&D novel lines since it was a surviving system that WotC kept as a system and left the other things die off or go to other people during 2.x era, and possibly nobody wanted to work further on Stardrive novels.

hamlet
2009-07-08, 06:42 AM
I never liked the system, nor the people that wrote it, nor that they keep trying to bring parts of it back when it was such a bad system overall.

It was made as a blatant rip=off as a Star Wars/D&D crossover. TSR couldn't get a license for a Star Wars RPG so LW decided to throw Alternity out there to in part capitalize on Star Wars, and in LW's interest of stirring up interest in space based RPGs within the company to try to make more Buck Rogers crap games that people didn't want either.

I may be a little hostile to those LW types as well as LW, but I think in part they deserve it.

There isn't a thing with his name on it (http://www.pen-paper.net/rpgdb.php?op=showcreator&creatorid=96) that I like other than the character sheets for all the humanoids in the back of CBoH.

Like some people don't like Salvatore just because they don't like Drizzt...I just don't like Bill S's works. Put his name on it, I will likely put it back on the shelf and buy something else. :smallyuk:

For those novels, they probably just lost to the many D&D novel lines since it was a surviving system that WotC kept as a system and left the other things die off or go to other people during 2.x era, and possibly nobody wanted to work further on Stardrive novels.

A crossover between D&D and Star Wars? Really?

You must have a different set of books than anybody else then.

And just because you didn't care for it doesn't make it objectively bad.

Dixieboy
2009-07-08, 06:54 AM
Because Traveller killed them all, then died, then was reborn, killed all the new ones, died again, and was reborn again. Don't let that keep you from playing it, Mongoose Traveller (the last version I looked at) looked quite fun.
However it's mongoose so take it with a grain of salt.

Swordguy
2009-07-08, 09:11 AM
I never liked the system, nor the people that wrote it, nor that they keep trying to bring parts of it back when it was such a bad system overall.


Dude, offhand, I don't recall you liking anything on any topic I can think of in these forum.



In any event, Alternity was a first-generation system in that it never really "matured" into later and cleaner-running editions (largely due to the death of TSR). Alternity existed partially as the very first attempt to fix some of the more annoying issues introduced by AD&D, and the lessons learned would later go on to influence the 3e design team - which is not a bad thing.

It has some initially fairly clunky mechanics, and is significantly more complex "out of the box" than the very streamlined stuff it was competing against - especially stuff from White Wolf. It was similar in complexity and non-intuitiveness to Earthdawn, but doesn't offer the inherently rewarding story that ED does (which gives you mechanical bonuses for a heavily RP'd character in the "naming" mechanics). However, Alternity did answer some of the annoying issues that 2e AD&D had - namely the "degrees of success" idea with the O/E/A system, and once the learning curve was overcome, it flowed pretty smoothly.

I've played it as both Dark Matter and Star*Drive campaigns, and far preferred the Star*Drive setting. Alternity failed in that it wasn't mature enough to be the universal system that was its goal - it had the potential, but never got the chance to get there. But for playing a fairly generic sci-fi setting that the GM can easily adapt to what he wants, there's far worse games out there.