Have you played Stardrive for Alternity?

[Herolover]

Stardrive was the setting used by WOTC's Alternity system before they dumped it in favor of Star Wars.

I am just wondering how popular it was/is and if I tried to use it as a campaign who would recognize were the material came from. I played in a couple of adventures and collected all the books, but that is all I ever got to do with it.

[Starwolf]

I think Stardrive would make a great backdrop for Star Hero. I too have all things Alternity but since the game is no longer published I have trouble finding players that are interested. So here is a question for those that are so inclined....how would you write up the Stardrive races from alternity in Hero terms?

[Herolover]

Wow. I actually got a reply. I was worried the thread would die with nothing said so thanks for saving me starwolf.

To answer your question I am not sure. It doesn't seem that it would be very difficult at all to make up racial packages for the Fraal, Weren, and (the fast little rat things, can't remember their name now.) The only real problem would IMO be the Mechalus. For them I feel you would need to make up a lot of cyberware and let the player choose a certain amount of points for their character.

I too belive that the StarDrive universe would make a great Star Hero campaign. I am like you and have all the books, but as you said since it is a dead game there are no players.

However, I am planning/working on, a campaign as we speak that uses much of the StarDrive material.

TIM STOP READING HERE.

I loved the basic idea of StarDrive so I am setting up my own campaign. The reason for the poll above is I wanted to see how many people would recognize my material. Here is my basic idea. (Note nothing is in stone this is first draft kinda stuff.)

About 200-250 years from now humans have explored out from earth, founded colonies, and discovered several other races. It is at this point that disaster struck. No one knows from where the nanovirus came, but a nanotech machine virus was unleashed that attacked mechanical systems. It mutated and began to attacking biological races many of which had no defenses agaisnt the virus. For 120 years the virus raged destroying machines, information, and acting as a plague upon galaxy. (I call this the "mini long night").

10 years ago (game time) the nanotech virus went inert. It is still there, but the machines are no longer active and no one knows why. Now the Alliance (a sorta union of worlds) is out exploring and re-establishing contact with long lost colonies.

This is where I will start by running the first to "prologue" adventures from StarDrive. If you don't know what they are I can quickly sum them up if needed.

[Starwolf]

As far as saving your post.....Anytime, thats what we do aboard the Triton Corsair . I look forward to reading some of your ships logs

[Tim]

Originally posted by Herolover

TIM STOP READING HERE.

Okay, I'll stop reading this thread.

It's probably one of the more interesting here for me, and not because you're dicussing campaign possibilities.

I've read the Alternity rules but not the StarDrive rules. Didn't know they existed. I have seen the Alternity rules for creating characters for a Starcraft campaign.

TimS.

[TheEmerged]

I used, and loved, the Alternity rules. They're *very* underestimated, in my opinion.

However, I ran a homebrew campaign instead of StarDrive. It just didn't impress me.

[Herolover]

Originally posted by TheEmerged
I used, and loved, the Alternity rules. They're *very* underestimated, in my opinion.

However, I ran a homebrew campaign instead of StarDrive. It just didn't impress me.

I agree that the Alternity rules were very underestimated. I think they were very innovative and it is a shame they have gone away.

As far as StarDrive the books they put out on it did not do the setting justice. The two "introductory" adventures they put out are the best two "prologue adventures" I have seen in close to 20+ years of gaming.

The StarDrive novels also gave the universe far more flavor than the actual game books ever did.

[WilyQuixote]

I bought the Alternity GM book and the PHB when they came out but mine were published by good ol TSR. Maybe this was during the transistional months of the WOTC buy out, I dont know honestly. I just see the TSR logo on the bindings of my books on my shelf right now. I also bought the Star drive alien compendium as well. I dont remember being all that impressed with the system though but it did have some good ideas which I ended up taking for use in my own backburnered sitting sci-fi galaxy. Maybe I'm way off base here but I recall that game system being just awful and couldn't find anyone who was playing it at all around my area. I never did get to use those books for anything other than idea resources. Everyone's mileage varies though I suppose.

[Herolover]

Your right they were published under the TSR logo although shortly after that WOTC bought TSR.

The system isn't really well liked. I liked it because:
a) it was the most innovative system at that time and still does things that no other system has ever done.
b) easy and quick to use.

Though it still doesn't beat the HERO system, but I figure that doesn't even really need to be said.

The Star*Drive setting wasn't horrible and as you have done I am stilling some stuff from it for use in my own home-breweed wackiness.

[TheEmerged]

To me, what struck me most was their randomization mechanic -- takes a little getting used to, but once you've got it down it's a wonderful middle-ground between a straight system (like d20) and a curved system (like HERO).

One of its other charms was that in many ways it was "DnD with HERO leavening". The whole idea of levels was easily ignored -- of the three people (self included) I've talked to that used Alternity, all three bypassed levels and just used points. Its interesting "action" system was clearly an attempt to randomize HERO's SPD chart. It's FX system had potential (but see below).

It had its flaws too, though. The "broad" skills were too expensive (and you were limited in how many you could select) and the "untrained" penalty too steep, and as a result characters tended toward specialization. The benefits of increased skill ranks wasn't always spelled out well enough in the core books; they spread this out far too much (AKA "The $ in T$R"). One of the most popular house rule request I ran into was some way to buy specialty skills without having to purchase the broad skill first. Disappointingly, its FX system just never worked as well as it looked.

[ShadowRaptor]

I like Alternity also. I think it has one of the best die systems ever invented, vastly superior to the current d20 system. Star Drive was cool also. I wouldn't mind seeing a revision for HERO for SD.

[Jhereg]

I really enjoyed the Star*Drive universe as well. I dug out the old Alternity books last year to give the players a little something new (well, new for them). We had a ball, soooo I took the next logical step and converted it to Hero System (Buying STAR HERO was actually the catalyst). It's been a big hit. Like most groups, we have several ongoing campaigns at any given time, but Alternity Hero is one we keep coming back to.

To preserve the realism (realism at least compared to many Sci-fi universes), we play as Competant Normals (50 Base +50 Disads) w/ no point cost for equipment/cybernetics. We enough limitations, Psionics and mutations are affordable to 100-pointers. It works well for us. If anyone wants to know some of the details, um, well, I guess that's waht discussion boards are for.

The ill-fated bastard son of TSR lives on w/ HERO System!

[Jhereg]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by TheEmerged
The whole idea of levels was easily ignored -- of the three people (self included) I've talked to that used Alternity, all three bypassed levels and just used points. [QUOTE]

Before I converted the system, I also disregarded leveling. That's 4

[Southern Cross]

Fair enough,a level-based system may work for computer games,but point-based roleplaying (Thank You Champions!) rendered it obsolete years ago.