RPG Archive: Star*Drive for D&D and Traveller

Star*Drive is a science fiction setting from the end of the 90s that TSR put out at the end of its life. Despite the doom approaching TSR, the end of the 90s was filled with new ideas and RPG options in books and in Dragon Magazine. So much of this content is still usable whether you play Dungeons & Dragons, a sci-fi RPG like Traveller, or are looking for a retro sci-fi RPG to try like Alternity. And yes, the cover art for the Alternity Gamemaster Guide connects to the cover art of the Alternity Player’s Handbook!

Planet Alien Space - Free photo on Pixabay​

Alternity and Star*Drive​

Alternity is a set of rules using the Star*Drive setting as a ready example but also with other settings available. Star*Drive is a setting using the Alternity rules with some d20 rules also available in D20 Future and in Dragon Magazine using Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2E.

Star*Drive had a lot of support for PCs venturing out into frontier space in FTL ships to explore alien worlds, combat rogue killer warships, and try to earn money to keep flying. With so much content, this article will concentrate on a brief overview of the setting, two adventures also usable with Traveller, and AD&D and d20 conversions. Used copies of all these RPGs and magazines are easy to find and most are quite affordable with many at or under $30 each.

The main book covers starfaring Earth nations and corporations along with several alien species also found in the Alternity Player’s Handbook. Dragon Magazine (issues #250, #256, #261, and #263) would provide deeper dives into these aliens. Star*Drive - Alien Compendium I provides plenty of new aliens for PCs to interact with or play as a character.

Adventures Usable for Traveller, Mothership, Alternity and Other Sci-fi RPGs​

Star*Drive - The Lighthouse is a moving space station that visits system after system on diplomatic and trade missions. It houses a dark secret (no spoilers) but would be perfect for use with Mothership. If the engines are converted, The Lighthouse would work for Traveller or Spelljammer: Adventures in Space (AD&D 2E) although its secret would need to be altered. PCs could be citizens of the Rock of Bral and travel into Wildspace aboard The Lighthouse. Or play with the original Alternity rules and visit a new star system every game night.

Star*Drive - The Last Warhulk is sprawling space crawl of an adventure. It is epic in size and scope and not well known. I really enjoyed running this one for Star*Drive and would consider it well worth the effort to convert to another RPG.

There are also the Star Frontiers aliens. Converted in Annual #3 Dragon Magazine, one alien race, the dralasites (blob beings able to create a variable number of limbs), are one of my favorite PC alien options and well worth porting over to D&D or Traveller.

AD&D and D20 Future Conversions​

The aliens are converted to AD&D 2E in Dragon Magazine: #251 presents sesheyans (easily the most alien and with their nocturnal nature they would be juxtaposed nicely on The Lighthouse), #253 has the psionic fraal, and #257 covers the lightning fast reptilian t’sa. #244 also has a simple one page Alternity to AD&D idea. The reverse is also possible, with the Alternity Gamemaster Guide having rules to convert AD&D PCs to Alternity and Dragon Magazine #262 has information on converting AD&D monsters to Alternity.

D20 Future also has a short conversion of a small portion of Star*Drive that meshes better with D&D 3.5.

Star*Drive Forward​

Star*Drive has so much to offer: PC aliens, AD&D PC aliens, amazing adventures, awesome aliens, and many ideas that can transported to other RPGs or used with the original Alternity. And the prices for most of these items are less than current RPG prices so there isn’t much to lose to check out the various options.

Over twenty-five years later and I still recommend Star*Drive and Alternity. And Spelljammer: Adventures in Space (AD&D 2E) and the Rock of Bral of course!

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[Paul Farquhar]

I think Dark•Matter/d20 Modern's illuminati conspiracies can be salvaged

Conspiracies used to be fun when everyone knew they were fantasy. No there are people in positions of power who believe that stuff they are too much a reminder of the reality we are trying to escape to include in a fun leisure activity.

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

I once accidentally triggered an SVC rant about that... It's almost like he'd never watched any Star Trek...

He tends to be allergic to the mention of Trek canon IME (which I've had rather more of than I care to for one lifetime). His reflexive response is to deny any connection to the IP except the narrow legally-allowed one his deal with Franz Joseph Designs grants, and he's very insistent about how the SFU is different and distinct from Trek.

Which it is, but the situation is downright absurdist at times as he tries to pretend that's not a TOS Constitution-class on the cover of his game while also hoping the familiar image draws in a few more sales.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

Other point is after the past popularity of World of Darkness now if a setting has got vampires or other type of humanoid monsters some players want to be no-humans. And then if the PCs are supernatural monsters the GMs could invent a new mythology about how to defeat those monsters, for example the Rose of Guadalupe. ( = a supernatural Mexican soap opera).

Other risk is supernatural monsters used as allegories of some real group, and this may be dangerous, hidden hate speech.

 

[aramis erak]

Other risk is supernatural monsters used as allegories of some real group, and this may be dangerous, hidden hate speech.

That is an unpreventable risk. People prone to that will work it into anything they play. There is no ruleset or setting book that can prevent hate from hitting play... even when it is counter to the intent of the designers.

This is inherent to RPGs. One can encourage toxicity, but cannot prevent it if the GM wants it there.

 

[VelvetViolet]

Kromosome still feels years instead of its time

Ditto. I like biopunk settings like that and GeneTech from Polyhedron/d20 Future. They’re rare and each one is wildly different from the next.

Atlas' Pandemonium was the ultimate tabloid news reporter RPG and needed no imitators.

I’ll have to check that out.

Other point is lots of players would rather enemy factions not linked to groups from the real life. And if an urban fantasy franchise has got lots of supernatural factions then to explain the reason because ordinary people know nothing is more difficult.

Werewolf: The Forsaken and Mage: The Awakening both tried doing this, especially compared to their predecessors, and got hated for it. While I respect the effort, I think they tried too hard and ended up being too disconnected.

Chaosium’s Nephilim is a lot better about this than Dark•Matter, without losing grounding in real beliefs. It has mainstays like the Rosicrucians, Templars, Assassins, Bavarian Illuminati, etc., but it isn’t right-wing about it. American history is the result of secret wars between mortal and immortal initiates, but the Jewish-coded Nephilim (their magical theory is Kabbalah, in the text itself) are generally Indiana Jones-esque good guys protecting humanity from power-crazed psychopaths like the Nazis.

One of the reasons why Changeling: The Lost was a sleeper hit is because it drew on fairy tale archetypes found across the world that most people are familiar with from childhood.

if a setting has got vampires or other type of humanoid monsters some players want to be no-humans.

Well, the Dark•Matter rulebook already contains provisions for playing some Strangers. Vampires aren’t playable, but you can play as outcast sandmen, Roswell greys, and (in the d20 edition) moreaus that the Hoffmann Institute grows in its secret labs.

Other risk is supernatural monsters used as allegories of some real group, and this may be dangerous, hidden hate speech.

I’ve said the same thing in the past. Vampires are a terrible metaphor for LGBTQ+. That comparison reads like blood libel.

That is an unpreventable risk. People prone to that will work it into anything they play. There is no ruleset or setting book that can prevent hate from hitting play... even when it is counter to the intent of the designers.

In my experience, the people writing vampires as a metaphor for LGBTQ+ are themselves LGBTQ+. I have never seen any propaganda comparing them to vampires. That’s what makes it so strange. Lots of LGBTQ+ folks see themselves in vampires. Reads like internalized bigotry to me.

 

[Staffan]

In my experience, the people writing vampires as a metaphor for LGBTQ+ are themselves LGBTQ+. I have never seen any propaganda comparing them to vampires. That’s what makes it so strange. Lots of LGBTQ+ folks see themselves in vampires. Reads like internalized bigotry to me.

I think I can see the appeal, at least with some vampire archetypes and some LGBTQ+ subcultures/backgrounds. There are drives not accepted by society that make you lead hidden lives that are often considered decadent by outsiders. If people find out, you'll be outcast and possibly hunted, but there's comfort to be had among your own kind. The Venn diagram has some overlap, but it's more like an 8 than a circle.

 

[VelvetViolet]

I think I can see the appeal, at least with some vampire archetypes and some LGBTQ+ subcultures/backgrounds. There are drives not accepted by society that make you lead hidden lives that are often considered decadent by outsiders. If people find out, you'll be outcast and possibly hunted, but there's comfort to be had among your own kind. The Venn diagram has some overlap, but it's more like an 8 than a circle.

Yeah, but the whole blood libel makes me inherently revolted by the comparison.

I think the best metaphor is addiction. Vampires are addicted to blood and driven to feed their addiction, even to the point of acting irrationally or against their best interests. They can share with their addiction with others, turning them also into addicts. This metaphor is versatile: vampirism as addiction meshes with vampires as evil rich people if you see rich people as addicted to wealth, siphoning wealth/blood from the poor to feed their addiction.

The bizarre and inconsistent behavior of vampires in a lot of stories when it comes to satisfying or resisting their bloodthirst makes so much more sense when you think of it in terms of addiction metaphors. A lot of stories lose sight of this by turning vampires into outright superheroes and reducing the impact of the bloodthirst, but I'm gonna ignore those examples for clarity and brevity.

 

[aramis erak]

In my experience, the people writing vampires as a metaphor for LGBTQ+ are themselves LGBTQ+.

I tend to agree for literature... tho' noting that neither Stephanie Meyers nor Joss Whedon id as LGBTQ, and they're the two biggest modern reimainings...

I have never seen any propaganda comparing them to vampires.

I have. Coming from certain fundamentalist religious groups.

That’s what makes it so strange. Lots of LGBTQ+ folks see themselves in vampires. Reads like internalized bigotry to me.

Yeah. But let's not forget: many 70's and 80's views of vampirism were as a way of writing about rape trauma, and/or sexual abuse trauma, and the "resultant" stockholm syndrome.

Doesn't fit well for Rice's Interview... but it was a thing. Just not a mainstream take.

 

[Staffan]

Yeah, but the whole blood libel makes me inherently revolted by the comparison.

Which is completely understandable.

I think the best metaphor is addiction. Vampires are addicted to blood and driven to feed their addiction, even to the point of acting irrationally or against their best interests. They can share with their addiction with others, turning them also into addicts. This metaphor is versatile: vampirism as addiction meshes with vampires as evil rich people if you see rich people as addicted to wealth, siphoning wealth/blood from the poor to feed their addiction.

The thing about using metaphors is that they're flexible depending on what you want to use them for. Vampirism as addiction is a good one, but vampirism can also be a metaphor for many other things – particularly since vampire myth itself is so wide-ranging. I'm pretty sure that's why there are so many clans in Vampire: the Masquerade – myth has many different types of vampires, so the clans are a way to cover both the punk vampires of Lost Boys, the tragic romance figures of The Vampire Chronicles, and aristocratic overlords.

Marvel's mutants are in a similar place. The original intent was that they were a metaphor for the Civil Rights movement and racism, with Professor X being a stand-in for Martin Luther King and Magneto for Malcolm X (how well that metaphor works is debatable). Others have used it as a metaphor for LGBTQ+ issues – the X-Men movies probably lean more heavily on this than the comics, both with the scene where either Iceman's or Pyro's (can't recall which) parents ask him "Have you tried not being a mutant?" and Storm telling Rogue "No, they can't cure you because there's nothing wrong with you." Jay Edidin of Jay & Miles X-Plain the X-Men have drawn parallells to disability activism, particularly for mutants whose mutations have potentially undesirable side effects (e.g. Cyclops, Rogue, Beast).

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Yeah. But let's not forget: many 70's and 80's views of vampirism were as a way of writing about rape trauma, and/or sexual abuse trauma, and the "resultant" stockholm syndrome.

Dracula is often interpreted as being about the Victorian fear of female sexuality.

Bram Stoker was likely gay.

It's complicated.