Anyone still playing Dawning Star?

[Psion]

Some books like Revalation Space got me in the frame of "Frontier SF".

I never really got into because I felt I'd have to retool much of it... and when I start down that road, I get to the point that I'd rather make my own thing. Particularly, I found the inner system stuff in Helios Rising to be a bit thermodynamically naive.

 

[genshou]

...thermodynamically naive.

Huh?

 

[The Black Kestrel]

For those interested in Dawning Star, rumor has it Justin will probably be making a Dawning Star related announcement soon.


Salcor

I certainly hope so. I was crushed when BDG never produced any of the other announced supplements

 

[Johnny Angel]

For those interested in Dawning Star, rumor has it Justin will probably be making a Dawning Star related announcement soon.

I hope the words "Savage Worlds" or "Modern20" are involved.

 

[Wycen]

I wish one of us had given the writers of Battlestar Galactica a copy of Dawning Star OQL, then perhaps the finale would have worked.

 

[pawsplay]

I don't claim to know what Justin has up his sleeve. I really enjoyed my small part in making Dawning Star what it became. It was exciting to be in the loop for the development of an RPG project of that scope.

It's too bad that Dawning Star was just about the first and last thing to make a splash with the d20 Modern rules. It would be cool to see more happen with DS. Myself, I've sometimes pondered a GURPS conversion.

 

[Erekose]

I'm quite new to Dawning Star but would like to sense check my first impressions with more experienced people based on looking through Dawning Star: Operation Quick Launch.

For me it seems like a combination of Firefly/Serenity, 2001, and Star Trek Voyager (in that order).

Just wondered if there was conscious effort to take the central conceit of Firefly but project it in a different direction to the TV series?

 

[Johnny Angel]

Although the connection between westerns and planet-hopping sci-fi go way back, Firefly did carve out a special niche for western motifs in modern science fiction, and Dawning Star availed itself of that and I'm sure it occurred to them that this would appeal to the fans of Firefly. I'm not sure in what sense you'd compare it to 2001 except in a sort of general influence, and I don't see it as very Star Trek-like, though I consider tech level as a signature element of Trek-iness. Important ways that Dawning Star differs from Firefly show in the use of alien races, particularly the indistinguishable-from-magic alien artifacts of pre-cursor races making their influence felt in human events.

 

[Erekose]

Thanks for the reply!

. . . I'm not sure in what sense you'd compare it to 2001 except in a sort of general influence, and I don't see it as very Star Trek-like, though I consider tech level as a signature element of Trek-iness . . .

Probably just my ignorance of the setting based on what I've read so far!

I guess I was just keying into the comparisons with the monolith(s) in 2001 and the jumpgate left behind by Tentaari in our solar system. As for Voyager, I admit on reflection that's tenative at best and just based on the premise of being thrown dramatically off course . . .

 

[pawsplay]

Just wondered if there was conscious effort to take the central conceit of Firefly but project it in a different direction to the TV series?

Lee might be able to tackle that one. From my perspective, no. The term "space opera" is a play on "horse opera," going back to the old serial shows. Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon very much followed the cowboy movies, so that vein has always been there. In terms of the sociological elements, my comments to Lee were informed by Heinlein's books to a great degree, which often deal with frontier situations. I'm pretty sure, "David Starr, Space Ranger" also factored into the conception. Dawning Star is explictly multi-genre, designed to incorporate as many styles of play, and as much technology from d20 Future, as possible. I pointed to the Lensman series and the Heechee books as good sources for the precursor civilizations, but Lee's vision of the Star Confederation is very much his own.

Justin wanted DS to be smart sci-fi, which is how I entered the project, as a technical advisor. Although a lot of the setting is fantastic, we could took a lot of care to make the real stuff as real as possible.