Home Forums Sci Fi General Sci-Fi No Stars in Sight. What all will be in there?

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  • #13363
    Avatar photoIvan Sorensen
    Participant

    As things creep towards completion of the text, I figured I’d give those of you who haven’t bought the beta a run down of what will be in there:

    *Game rules, very slightly adapted from No End in Sight. Intention is to keep things as similar as possible to allow players to move back and forth without any problem.

    There’s a few clarifications and rewordings and the group move rule was added.

    *Futuristic weapons. These are intended as broad battlefield archetypes so they can be renamed to whatever works. In addition to the customary autocannon, tank guns and rockets, you also get rapid firing, multi-target missile packs, particle guns, infantry portable energy weapons, wasp grenades that act like a launched, precision detonated claymore, mass drivers, multi-purpose drones, automatic defense guns and probably some other things I forget.

    I made the decision to focus on a near-future “150 years out” approach and keep the tech fairly humble. There’ll be plenty of time for space-fantasy guns later on 🙂

    *Units covered include grav tanks, infantry in exo-suits, powered armour (and they’re pretty buff, more reminiscent of Traveller Battledress than warhammer space marines), droid infantry (think the droids from Mass Effect).

    *Scenario generator with the option of generating random support troops for your platoon.

    *Special rules are mostly the same as No End in Sight, though there’ll be additions for alien battlefields. I didn’ rewrite these sections to avoid accidentally introducing contradictions.

    *Campaign rules and character generation hasn’t changed much from No End in Sight. There will be one main campaign style and some special tables for space opera battles.

    *Not sure what style of quotes to use for the chapter headers. No End in Sight had anti-war quotes so maybe cautions about technology for this one?

    Otherwise I was going to mine famous astronomers and scientists for interesting quotations.

    *At my count, 10 or so alien archetypes, along with a build-your-own trait system.

    *No points system, unless someone wants to give me some hardcore bribes. There’ll be check list systems to go through, to put together vehicles and whatnot.

    I don’t think I’ve had a single person ask for a points system in No End in Sight though for scifi games, maybe that’ll be more of an expectation.

    *Illustrations will be a mix of some clip art and will feature photos of at least one company’s toy soldiers, possibly more. (If you sell scifi miniatures, this is a GREAT time to pop me an email).

    #13364
    Avatar photokyoteblue
    Participant

    Hum.

    #13365
    Avatar photoNathaniel Weber
    Participant

    RE: Quotes—Hawking has some good ones

    We are in danger of destroying ourselves by our greed and stupidity. We cannot remain looking inwards at ourselves on a small and increasingly polluted and overcrowded planet.

    I believe alien life is quite common in the universe, although intelligent life is less so. Some say it has yet to appear on planet Earth.
    If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn’t turn out well for the Native Americans.
    Arthur C Clarke too:

    “Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.”</div>

    T.E. LAwrence: Mankind has had ten thousand years experience of warfare and if he must fight he has no excuse for not fighting well.</div>

    Considering how much Dune reads like a reimaginging of Lawrence’s various writings, you could probably mine Lawrence’s stuff for a lot of good sci-fi applicable quotes.

     

    #13369
    Avatar photoshelldrake
    Participant

    *No points system, unless someone wants to give me some hardcore bribes. There’ll be check list systems to go through, to put together vehicles and whatnot. I don’t think I’ve had a single person ask for a points system in No End in Sight though for scifi games, maybe that’ll be more of an expectation. 

    No point system please.  If someone does give you a huge bribe, take it, then I will run a ‘kickstarter’ to bribe you to not make a point system

    #13371
    Avatar photoshelldrake
    Participant

    . *Not sure what style of quotes to use for the chapter headers. No End in Sight had anti-war quotes so maybe cautions about technology for this one? Otherwise I was going to mine famous astronomers and scientists for interesting quotations. 

    You could hold a friendly competition where people submit a quote from their favourite sci-fi book, and the best ones make it in to the rules.

    #13403
    Avatar photoEli Arndt
    Participant

    I have left my mark. I have no further input 🙂

    -Eli

    -Eli

    #13404
    Avatar photokyoteblue
    Participant

    Wait wait don’t tell me……um….never mind I got nothing.

    #13405
    Avatar photoIvan Sorensen
    Participant

    No point system please. If someone does give you a huge bribe, take it, then I will run a ‘kickstarter’ to bribe you to not make a point system

    So er…. unknown people who I totally can’t name just offered me like a thousand dollars to write a points system.
    They also said that they’d totally go up to 10 grand if “that shell drake guy” had anything to say about it.
    Totally.
    For reals.

    #13409
    Avatar photoshelldrake
    Participant

    Let me know once the money is in your bank account (all 10 g worth) and then I can start the kickstarter…. I would laugh my butt off if anyone actually put funds in though.

    #13414
    Avatar photoIvan Sorensen
    Participant

    Any moment now 🙂

     

    In other news, three alien races done and the fourth on the way.

    Warriors (orcs, turian, klingons etc.) for any warrior-culture type of aliens

    Converted (Mass Effect Husks, Borg, Strogg) for tech-zombie types.

    The Swift (Droyne from Traveller) for skittering, winged alien with a caste system

     

    And currently working on Precursors (40K Eldar or Mass Effect Asari), the enlightened space elves with slightly weird abilities.

     

    MUCH more to follow but we’re nearing the end stage.

    #13415
    Avatar photokyoteblue
    Participant

    Where are my not Kzin ????

    #13416
    Avatar photoIvan Sorensen
    Participant

    I’d actually rate them as Warriors BUT I have “Ferals” on the list coming up 🙂

    #13417
    Avatar photoEli Arndt
    Participant

    How about Anthros as a class for all humanoid animal alien types? Subclasses become pretty much a list of plugins for different animal types.

    -Eli

    -Eli

    #13418
    Avatar photoIvan Sorensen
    Participant

    There’ll be a list of traits that can applied to build your own, along with a “humans in rubber suits option”.

    So you can tweak or build your own. I wanted to provide a good selection of “ready-to-go” aliens that cover the most common types though.

    If you’ve played FAD, it’ll be similar to the traits in that game, though there won’t be quite as many.

    #13419
    Avatar photoEli Arndt
    Participant

    You might want to make special note in your supplement for doing forces with mixed species.

    These could simulate anything from the Federation to the Dominion to the Covenant. It could also work for the Tyranids.

    Instead of having one army with  singe set of alien traits you would assign different roles in the army to different alien types.

    -Eli

    -Eli

    #13420
    Avatar photoIvan Sorensen
    Participant

    Ahead of you 🙂

    Mostly, mixed species units get it a bit harder since they can’t use each others leaders (unless playing a setting where two species are closely cooperating). Humans get it as a special ability that they are exempt from that (they can also use alien gear provided it’s been studied by the boffins in white coats)

    #13445
    Avatar photoEli Arndt
    Participant

    Many mixed species forces, especially bad guy aliens, usually have higher species in charge of lower ones.

     

    -Eli

    -Eli

    #13446
    Avatar photoIvan Sorensen
    Participant

    Ah yeah. That may have to be a setting specific thing, but I’ll put in some notes about “Boss” species.

    #13447
    Avatar photoArmiesArmy
    Participant

    shields….spaces shields and power swords….

     

     

    not unlike…erm…my next lot of Enemy Uknown…

     

    not one to plug like…

     

    Really looking forward to these! 🙂

     

     

    #13461
    Avatar photoIvan Sorensen
    Participant

    I did add a melee weapon in.

     

    Today’s alien done is “Ferals” which will cover barbarian, animal-like humanoids. There’s quite a few cat/lizard/beast-people figures out there to pick from.

    They get more angry when you shoot at them 🙂

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