Dead Stars is a sci-fi/horror setting that is the defailt setting of the
Universal Decay alternate d20 rules system.
The setting takes place long after mankind went to the stars and formed a far-reaching empire. As it turned out, they reached
too far and became noticed by the answer to the Fermi Paradox...the Necrol. This race of intelligent biological computers makes a practice of consuming and digesting any sapient species they happen across, and they have been doing it for millions fo years. When they noticed humanity, they put the human race on their dinner menu. In the span of one day the core 13 star systems of the Gaean Empire where conquered.
With the technological and philosphical foundation of the Empire gone, the surviving members of the Gaean Military struck back. Having been bred and engineered for generations to be the perfect fanatical soldiers, they took all the annie pods they could find (a type of gaseous matter/antimatter converter that powers itself off its own reactions), stuffed 13 scout ships to the gunwales with them, and launched them at the Core Systems. Their goal was to fly into the corona of the respective stars, with
all the annie pod safeties removed!
Now Sol, and the 12 stars closest to it, are nothing but expanding highly radioactive gas clouds with floating debris from the outer solar systems. For the first time in over a million years, the Necrol had been defeated. but it was a phyrric victory at best, with the destruction of the Core Systems the Empire fragmented and many of its worlds spun down into decay and death thanks to lack of vital shipments. It took generations for civilization to even
begin to rebuild itself, and the aid of several alien species.
You see humanity is not alone in the universe, but thanks to the depredations of the Necrol it is rare for one species to locate another before it is anihilated. 13 main-sequence stars simultaneously going nova however tends to attract a
lot of attention! With the staggered arrival of other races into human space, society was able to reassemble itself into a semi-stable state. A chaotic mix-mash of interlocking fueds and debts that more serves to contain the struggles over resources and political power rather than eliminate it, but still a society.
That is not to say that the arrival of the aliens was entirely a good thing. While they are in awe that humanity managed to DEFEAT the Necrol, they are also in fear of human-kind REPLACING the Necrol. If anything the actions of humanity has caused social rifts among the aliens, with many beleiving that we should be wiped out before we have a chance to regain the technological and social status that lead to the Necrol's defeat.
In addition to this, the Necrol are still "out there", often cropping up inside human space in small numbers. These
alien aliens are organized more like an ant hive than a society, with each colony being a sepperate entity in its own right. While the Core Systems explosion destroyed the particualr Necrol invading us, it also alerted the other nearby Necrol to our presence. Now they each are sendng in small scouting and opportunistic forces to try and establish a presence, without weakening themselves enough for the otehr Necrol to consume them in turn.
Then there are the leftovers of the Gaean Empire itself, both beneficial and malign. While the Empire
was an indisputably powerful organization, with nearly god-like technology, it was also an incredibly draconian organization that ruled the colony worlds with a mixture of fear and enforced technological inferiority. Many of the weapons and experiments that the Gaean Empire used to maintain this control are still in existence, only now they lack the direction of the Empire to rein in thier actions!
UNIVERSAL DECAY SYSTEM
The system used is based on the d20 system. It has been heavilly modifed for both realism and flexibility.
Among these changes is the incredible technology system. For instance rather than publish a book with a couple dozen weapons and armor combinations, then make money by selling books of extra gear, I wrote a system for weapon and armor
creation that allows for over 15,000 different types of hand-held death in the span of 12 pages! (in addition to a couple dozen examples, of course) This technology system does not stop at weapons and armor of course, but extends the full gamut of techno-dodads from primitive poking sticks, to cybernetic implants, to almost every concievable type of common-use vehicle in any era (vehicles are going to be in the
Rule Book, not the
Character Primer, due to space and usage considerations).
Another change is a radical re-design for character advancement, that keeps the overall "feel" of d20-style levelling but allows for a much more realistic use of it. The main two changes are the switch from the typical "break point" leveling scheme to a "purchase cost" system, where you save up then
spend your XP on class levels, feats, and ability score adjustments. This means that characters who are more interrested in class abilities than feats can gain levels faster than other charcters, and provides a feasible reason that races have more members of their "preferred" classs than others (since levels in that class are cheaper for them). The system is also far more skill-driven than regular d20 games, and the only way to get skills is with class levels, so in essence gaining class levels is more of a side-effect of getting the desired skills than the point of levelling
![:]](http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/devious.png "Devious :]")
A tangent to the XP spending system is the concept of "Gear Level". Essentially this means that a character's level for purposes of XP awards is NOT the sum of their class levels, but instead the sum of their class levels and the
level value of their gear, divided by two. This allows characters who have less gear than other characters to not be unduely penalized for it in-game, since they will be earning more XP to make up for it (resulting in thier overall ECL balancing out since they will have more class levels but lower gear level). In addition to this, the system allows low-level players to earn realistic XP even though they are using high-level gear, without breaking the system!
Finally comes alterations to the combat system, mainly the way damage is dealt and tollerated. Simply put: characters are bags of putty with bones inside, even at high levels, not granite blocks of flesh-looking smacksticks with more HP than most
anvils! Armor absorbs damage rather than deflecting attacks (and must be repaired or it loses effectiveness). There is no "critical hit" system, but instead a damage bonus is gained for having a high attack roll; and a particularly good hit can result in "special damage" like broken bones or blindness. This basic alteration to the combat system allows for more dramatic combats, instead of endurance tests, and makes it so that
everybody wants the best armor they can get (and since armor has a gear level...)
Now to make this even better, I am also expanding the rules to cover the basics of OTHER genres and settings! Thats right in the finished rules you will be able to find material on everything from cinematic fantasy, to super-heroes, to wild west settings. Not enough to form an entire game, but enough to let you make and start playing in your own worlds using these rules. According to customer feedback (one of the reasons I'm here) I will be writing setting/sourcebooks for the most often requested genre. So far, oddly enough, the #1 requested genre for the next
Universal Decay book is fantasy
Of course these are not the only alterations to the system, far from it. These are only the highlights. The "version 1.0" of these rules are in the
Dead Stars Rule Book, which is a free pdf. The "version 2.0" of these rules (with added material) is in the
Universal Decay: Dead Stars Character Primer, but this only contains some setting data and the material that players will be using most often. More setting data and the material for
both players and GMs will be in the
Universal Decay: Dead Stars Rule Book, once it is finished.
