Star Hero fictional settings we haven't seen

[Old Man]

Re: Star Hero fictional settings we haven't seen

 

http://www.rpgarchive.com/index.php?page=adv1&advid=550

 

That's what I get. Rep to you.

[Duke Bushido]

Re: Star Hero fictional settings we haven't seen

 

Ah yes, Hal Clement....

 

The man who's inspiration to write often seemed to be simply "I wonder what could live through this!"

 

Good times, man. Good times.....

[Mantis]

Re: Star Hero fictional settings we haven't seen

 

And on a side note' date=' I wouldn't mind seeing something written up for the Aliens/Predator series'.[/quote']One never knows...

 

I also have plans for something based on Starship Troopers and/or Forever War. Don't hold your breath waiting for me to actually produce something, though!

[Citizen Keen]

Re: Star Hero fictional settings we haven't seen

 

Whenever the topic of HERO being used for sci-fi settings comes up in the wider gaming community' date=' one of the most common requests I see is for a conversion of [i']GURPS Transhuman Space[/i]. This is certainly a high-quality book with the GURPS recognition factor, and "transhumanism" is one of the more popular cutting-edge topics - sort of an evolution of the older "cyberpunk" concept. Transhumanism actually gets only brief mention in Star HERO, so there's probably plenty of room to develop it.

 

In response to this post, I was over at sjgames.com reading about Transhuman Space, and I saw this:

 

http://www.sjgames.com/gurps/transhumanspace/highfrontier/

 

Can anyone confirm or deny that that's a typo? 44 pages for $25?! Crazay!

[Dr. Anomaly]

Re: Star Hero fictional settings we haven't seen

 

The settings for Mission of Gravity' date=' [i']Nitrogen Fix[/i], and Still River by Hal Clement; indeed, anything by Hal Clement.

Funny thing...I'm currently re-reading Mission of Gravity for the upteenth time and yesterday I started putting together in my head a write-up for a Mesklinite. I intend to do it in HD, and then start a thread for posting write-ups of alien races from specific SF books/series.

 

Hope someone doesn't beat me to it.

[Susano]

Re: Star Hero fictional settings we haven't seen

 

Funny thing...I'm currently re-reading Mission of Gravity for the upteenth time and yesterday I started putting together in my head a write-up for a Mesklinite. I intend to do it in HD' date=' and then start a thread for posting write-ups of alien races from specific SF books/series.[/quote']

 

I have something like this underway:

 

Generic Morlock

Triffid

Graboids

LV-426 Life Form

 

Eventually, I want to do up the aliens from the Faded Sun series, and the Chanur series.

[G_K_Zhukov]

Re: Star Hero fictional settings we haven't seen

 

I'd love to see a setting based on the Dan Simmons' "Hyperion" (and "Endymion") novels!

 

I still wonder how is it that nobody has made it so far... But it is a very attractive universe that encompasses almost every aspect from the sci-fi genre, from cyberpunk to space opera.

[Basil]

Re: Star Hero fictional settings we haven't seen

 

Ah yes, Hal Clement....

 

The man who's inspiration to write often seemed to be simply "I wonder what could live through this!"

 

Good times, man. Good times.....

 

LOL. Yeah, some of his settings were just jaw-dropping.

[Basil]

Re: Star Hero fictional settings we haven't seen

 

Funny thing...I'm currently re-reading Mission of Gravity for the upteenth time and yesterday I started putting together in my head a write-up for a Mesklinite. I intend to do it in HD, and then start a thread for posting write-ups of alien races from specific SF books/series.

 

Hope someone doesn't beat me to it.

 

YEEEE--HAAH! Terrific! :thumbup: Thank you very many!!

 

Could you post a link from this thread to that one, once you start it, please?

[Mantis]

Re: Star Hero fictional settings we haven't seen

 

I haven't read either series of books myself, but what about Fred Saberhagen's Berserker universe, or the "Honorverse" of Honor Harrington?

 

[Yes, I know there's a Military Sci-fi theme to my suggestions here so far...]

 

On a different note, what about the crossover sci-fi/magic setting of Roger Zelazny's Amber novels?

[Curufea]

Re: Star Hero fictional settings we haven't seen

 

I don't think Hero would do a better job at the Amber series than the Amber system...

[Susano]

Re: Star Hero fictional settings we haven't seen

 

I don't think Hero would do a better job at the Amber series than the Amber system...

 

I'm still working my way through The Great Book of Amber. Dunno is HERO could make it work or not. Sure does seem like a lot of people have VPPs though. Oh, and EDM would have some fun limitations.

[L. Marcus]

Re: Star Hero fictional settings we haven't seen

 

. . . Has anyone ever done a game set in any C. J. Cherryh universe?

[Susano]

Re: Star Hero fictional settings we haven't seen

 

. . . Has anyone ever done a game set in any C. J. Cherryh universe?

 

Nope. But I did swipe a lot of her aliens (from the Chanur books) for my old Champions setting.

[Dr. Anomaly]

Re: Star Hero fictional settings we haven't seen

 

I've got to agree with several ideas already put forward in this thread, and will add a few of my own.

 

First, like Nyrath, I think the setting of Blish's "Surface Tension" would make a good SF campaign. Keeping in mind that once exposed to air the micro-inhabitants cast off their water-breathing ways, you could even have a split civilzation, part above and part below the surface.

 

In a similar vein, the setting of Baxter's Flux would be interesting...submicroscopic humans living inside a neutron star, in the superfluid below the crust.

 

Like Duke Bushido, I really liked DeChancie's Starrigger books, and have in fact used them in a game...a story arc in the Amber campaign I was running at the time. I'd like to see a decent treatment of those books as an SF campaign setting.

 

I'm also a big fan of E.E. "Doc" Smith's work; his Lensman series has already been tackled, by GURPS; but to my knowledge his Skylark series hasn't been touched. Like the Starrigger stuff, I've use the Skylark setting for a dimension-hopping story arc in a game I was running, but a Champions game and not an Amber game. It occurs to me now that a lot of the Skylark stuff would be relatively simple outgrowths of a good deal of the Pulp Hero stuff.

 

The setting of Chrisotpher Priest's Inverted World strikes me as an interesting setting as well, so long as the campaign is set before the rather unsatisfying ending to the novel. In that book, the story centers around a small, mobile city that's stranded in a place where the worlds are infinite in size but the outer space around them is finite. The city must constantly move or eventually be destroyed, because the infinite land "flows" from "up north" towards "down south", and anything not native to that world that gets carried too far south gets destroyed by the warping of time, space and reality that gets worse the further south (toward the equator, with a rotation rate that exceeds the speed of light) you go.

 

Probably the one I'd like to see most, though, would be an adaptation of Robert Wilfred Franson's The Shadow of the Ship. It deals with a star-faring culture that is still in the muscle-power / beasts-of-burden stage of its development. In this universe, star travel is accomplished by shifting to subspace, a sort of peculiar endless dark "plain" rippled here and there by the gravitational distortions caused by mass in the the "real" universe. Earth, we're told, has starships that slide over this surface to their destinations, where they break through back to "starspace". The story centers around a marooned human and his catlike alien companion. They are stuck in this muscle-and-wind stage human culture, where travel between worlds is accomplished in airtight sleds that are dragged over the "meadow" my elephantine "waybeasts" who can shift into and out of subspace on their own, and take other objects with them. The complications come in that the meadow is in vacuum, so there's always that danger; any untended material object (not being maintained by being in contact with a living mind) will revert to starspace on its own, breaking down into hydrogen as it does so; and if anything -- even a person -- ever loses contact with the meadow (for example, jumping so both feet are off the 'ground'), the same thing happens...which is instant death. To further complicate things, the waybeasts can't go just anywhere...there are glowing trails that meander over the meadow, and occassionally they dip down into the conical gravity well caused by a planet. The waybeasts will only travel on the trails, so the humans in that fairly primitive culture are restricted to being able to visit the planets touched by a trail. They have no inkling of the existence of Earth, or of non-human intelligences, which causes considerable problems for the marooned Earth-human and his companion.

 

I found the description of the meadow, the trails, and the infraphysical setting to be very compelling, far more so than I was able to do justice to here. I highly reccomend the book if for no other reason that it's quite different from anything you're likely to have read before.

 

 

Oh...and if we're permitted to mention anime settings, I'd really like to see the world of Big O's Paradigm City done up as an SF setting.

[Nyrath]

Re: Star Hero fictional settings we haven't seen

 

There was an amusing SF setting in a couple of short stories by Harry Turtledove: "The Road Not Taken" and "Herbig-Haro ".

 

(The Road Not Taken was in Analog magazine Nov 1985 and collected in Warrior edited by Jerry Pournelle. Herbig-Haro appears in Analog Oct 1984 and is collected in The Stars At War edited by Jerry Pournelle. http://www.bookfinder.com is your friend)

 

In this setting, there is a simple scientific experiment you can do which will give you the key to FTL travel and antigravity. Very simple. Like something which could have been discovered by people living in the medieval Dark Ages. Most races in the galaxy make the discovery.

 

Unfortunately, the discovery is a dead end. It so warps scientific thought that they never make any further breakthroughs. So they never discover things like electricity, magnetism, or nuclear energy.

 

So the galaxy is full of star-faring races armed with the latest deadly flint-lock rifles and cannons. And horse cavalry stowed belowdecks. There were some races who made their starships out of bronze, because they hadn't discovered yet how to smelt iron. Here on Earth, we never seemed to have stumbled over the FTL discovery, it is "the road not taken".

 

And one fateful day, an unlucky alien privateer decides to invade Earth.

 

They land in Washington DC, march out their troops and cavalry, then open fire with flint-locks. The US army responds with automatic weapons, rocket-propelled grenades, tanks, et al.

 

The ship is easily captured. And now Earth has FTL like everybody else. However unlike everybody else, Earth has radar, nuclear weapons, computers, and all the other benefits of high technology. The other races reel in terror as Earth come out conquering the galaxy like angry gods.

[Old Man]

Re: Star Hero fictional settings we haven't seen

 

Which is as it should be.

[TheRavenIs]

Re: Star Hero fictional settings we haven't seen

 

There was an amusing SF setting in a couple of short stories by Harry Turtledove: "The Road Not Taken" and "Herbig-Haro ".

 

(The Road Not Taken was in Analog magazine Nov 1985 and collected in Warrior edited by Jerry Pournelle. Herbig-Haro appears in Analog Oct 1984 and is collected in The Stars At War edited by Jerry Pournelle. http://www.bookfinder.com is your friend)

 

In this setting, there is a simple scientific experiment you can do which will give you the key to FTL travel and antigravity. Very simple. Like something which could have been discovered by people living in the medieval Dark Ages. Most races in the galaxy make the discovery.

 

Unfortunately, the discovery is a dead end. It so warps scientific thought that they never make any further breakthroughs. So they never discover things like electricity, magnetism, or nuclear energy.

 

So the galaxy is full of star-faring races armed with the latest deadly flint-lock rifles and cannons. And horse cavalry stowed belowdecks. There were some races who made their starships out of bronze, because they hadn't discovered yet how to smelt iron. Here on Earth, we never seemed to have stumbled over the FTL discovery, it is "the road not taken".

 

And one fateful day, an unlucky alien privateer decides to invade Earth.

 

They land in Washington DC, march out their troops and cavalry, then open fire with flint-locks. The US army responds with automatic weapons, rocket-propelled grenades, tanks, et al.

 

The ship is easily captured. And now Earth has FTL like everybody else. However unlike everybody else, Earth has radar, nuclear weapons, computers, and all the other benefits of high technology. The other races reel in terror as Earth come out conquering the galaxy like angry gods.

 

Wow this is a great idea. Repped. Stolen with many thanks.

[sinanju]

Re: Star Hero fictional settings we haven't seen

 

The ship is easily captured. And now Earth has FTL like everybody else. However unlike everybody else' date=' Earth has radar, nuclear weapons, computers, and all the other benefits of high technology. The other races reel in terror as Earth come out conquering the galaxy like angry gods.[/quote']

 

I've read that story. I liked it.

 

I also like David Brin's UPLIFT universe. Humans get out into the universe and discover that it is not[/i] a vast empty frontier waiting to be conquered--it's more like New York City, and we've spent our entire lives in one tiny apartment, completely oblivious to the world around us.

 

We're also the only race which has (apparently) achieved sentience without being genetically engineered ("uplifted") by a mentoring race. Seeing as how being a mentor is how a species acquires prestige in this billions-of-years-old galactic civilization, it's a darn good thing we'd already tampered with chimps and dolphins. That meant we were...well, not the equals of the other mentor races, certainly, but we couldn't be indentured for a 100,000 years while our betters "improved" us into worthy citizens of the galaxy.

 

Of course, in a galaxy that crowded, ecology is very, very important. And destroying potential uplift stock is a terrible crime. So it's a good thing that manatees (and dodos and passenger pigeons and other such critters) were always as mythical as unicorns. Yep, I can't believe how imaginary they were. Really! (And if they found out we were still experimenting with genetic engineering of ourselves, well, that would really make it hard to argue that even we thought we were ready for prime time, so let's not mention that....)

 

Oh yeah--and "research" for the galactic races consists of looking things up in the Galactic Library. Billions of years of accumulated knowledge, yours for the taking. Why on earth would you piddle around trying to figure things out by trial and error when you can just look it up? The humans' answer: because we understand how OUR technology works. Uhm, plus, we're not entirley sure that the library access we've been given is...uncensored (not that we'd dare to suggest any chicanery was going on).

 

It's an interesting universe.

[Basil]

Re: Star Hero fictional settings we haven't seen

 

There was an amusing SF setting in a couple of short stories by Harry Turtledove: "The Road Not Taken" and "Herbig-Haro ".

{snip}

And one fateful day, an unlucky alien privateer decides to invade Earth.

 

They land in Washington DC, march out their troops and cavalry, then open fire with flint-locks. The US army responds with automatic weapons, rocket-propelled grenades, tanks, et al.

 

The ship is easily captured. And now Earth has FTL like everybody else. However unlike everybody else, Earth has radar, nuclear weapons, computers, and all the other benefits of high technology. The other races reel in terror as Earth come out conquering the galaxy like angry gods.

 

Sounds rather like the reverse of the premise in The High Crusade.

 

Neat idea. I'll have to look for those stories.

[Nyrath]

Re: Star Hero fictional settings we haven't seen

 

I also like David Brin's UPLIFT universe.

That is an interesting universe. And in the world-book GURPS:Uplift, as a free bonus is included a system for randomly designing the psychology of alien races.

[John Desmarais]

Re: Star Hero fictional settings we haven't seen

 

So I was just perusing the rather cool set of Star Hero conversion links, and it got me thinking...

What are some other fictional Sci Fi settings that we haven't seen conversions from yet, or better yet, what are folks' fave settings that haven't been touched on yet?

 

Sector General by James White. The pubished stories tend to focus on the hospital station, but it's a well developed universe with a plethora of interesting aliens.

[keithcurtis]

Re: Star Hero fictional settings we haven't seen

 

Land of the Giants, the Murray Leinster novelizations. Much better than the TV series. The players would need to learn an entirely different method of conflict resolution since they will never be physically effective.

 

Colossus: the Forbin Project would make a good short-lived campaign.

 

The Witches of Karres might be a good setting for a Space Opera campaign.

 

Well of Souls has a lot of cool races, powers and reasons for conflict. It even mixes magic and tech.

 

Keith "Four from the top of my head" Curtis

[Nyrath]

Re: Star Hero fictional settings we haven't seen

 

TITAN, WIZARD, and DEMON by John Varley were almost tailor-made as an SF setting. Weird civilizations inside a sentient L5 colony around Saturn.

 

Lilith: A Snake in the Grass, Charon: A Dragon at the Gate, Medusa: A Tiger by the Tail, and CERBERUS: A Wolf in the Fold by Jack Chalker are similarly almost tailor-made. These are the planets where an interstellar civilization inters its mega-criminals. Each has some weird planetary phenomenon that approximates some type of magic.

 

And Keith, I agree that The Witches of Karres is an excellent background.

[TheRavenIs]

Re: Star Hero fictional settings we haven't seen

 

[Nyrath]

TITAN, Lilith: A Snake in the Grass, Charon: A Dragon at the Gate, Medusa: A Tiger by the Tail, and CERBERUS: A Wolf in the Fold by Jack Chalker are similarly almost tailor-made. These are the planets where an interstellar civilization inters its mega-criminals. Each has some weird planetary phenomenon that approximates some type of magic.

 

I reread those all the time, as well as Well-World. Your right it would be a good setting.

 

You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to Nyrath again.