Dawning Star: Helios Rising print version

[DMH]

Keep in mind that strictly speaking, none of the new races is a "descendent" of a SC race any more than humans and parrots are cousins. Some resemblances are the result of genetic seeding, others of convergent evolution. And some of the new races have markedly different traits than their "ancestor" race.

Show us, in the form of a Terraformer, how they are different. That is my request.

 

[LeeHammock]

Show us, in the form of a Terraformer, how they are different. That is my request.

We're hoping to do a Star Confederation sourcebook or some such at some point since it may all be a bit much to fit in a TERRAFORMER, but I think the aliens in it would be more what you're looking for. Hopefully we can do some sort of synopsis or oversized TERRAFORMER to get people more on the basics of the Star Confederation.

 

[Wycen]

There is a piece available in the downloads section, but you might say it is undercover, which you'll find interesting if you want to read about scientific exploration of xeno-DNA, seeding and colonization.

http://dawningstar.com/DSR-015178B-458.pdf

 

[Johnny Angel]

I'm not wild about 'Precursor Civilization' themes in science fiction, though I've enjoyed a number of settings that use this notion. One advantage of it, though, is that it give you an explanation for having a bunch of races roughly analogous to humans -- the precursors seeded it all. Plus, it gives you an excuse to bring in stuff Indistinguishable from Magic in the form of Alien Artifacts. These become plot devices in themselves.

Anthropomorphism makes for much more straightforward roleplaying and significantly reduces your FX budget for TV shows. Personally, I prefer to have aliens that couldn't be mocked up using just some prosthetic ridges on the face. I can see why they're practical to use. But I like for a setting to have some proportion of its regularly occurring alien population sufficiently inhuman that if they were on a TV show, you need puppetry or computer animation to represent them. I think Helios Rising has that much covered.

Roleplaying an alien mindset is a sufficient challenge, especially when the best the game designer can hope to do is give you a broad stereotype, since it's difficult to immerse you in the alien culture. You then individualize that stereotype, but do so out of your human experience of individuality. I can see how roleplaying may be a chance to attempt to put yourself in a truly alien mindset, but I think that a game that would be ideal for that has not been invented. The roleplaying games we play are about using a set of abilities and imagination to overcome challenges in a manner consistent with a character. Dealing with totally alien mindsets derived from totally alien physiology would demand a fairly different kind of game.

 

[Justin D. Jacobson]

Since we are now discussing content... I have a question about the Terran home system...

Does the game setting background ever deal with the Off World Terran colonies? By the late 22nd Century there should be many, many people living off Earth but still in the Sol system. Millions in fact. Most of them wouldn't be bothered by the death of Earth... You could also terraform Earth after the impact. It is in the perfect orbit after all...

We recently discussed this issue on our own message boards.

Basically that was the reasoning we were going with. Earth breaking up would introduce a huge amount of objects that could collide with Mars, plus the change in gravity would cause orbital fluctuations.

As a secondary thing, the planet they were originally heading for was supposed to be easier to terraform than Mars.

Ah the science of that one gets funky. The object was detected about 7 years before hitting earth. The speed the object had to be going was low end relativistic speeds. What does that mean to your friendly neighborhood solar system? Well that means the objects mass was higher than it normally would be(not that it wasn't big enough being roughly the size of the moon). Passing through the outer system it would drag behind it in its wake a LARGE number of ort cloud and kuiper belt objects. In other words an sudden influx of comets entering the inner solar system. Terrestrial(well martian) impacts would be suddenly become almost as common as the early solar system. That combined with orbital dynamics changing radically would be more than enough to make settlements on mars risky at best. Then toss out the large amount of planetary debry that would be ejected after impact on the earth and the planet gets basically carpet bombed and resurfaced. The good news is if the changes did not cause mars fly out of the system or stray to close to the sun it would settle in a closer orbital path to the sun making it a more viable candidate for terraforming in say 10000 years or so.

okay I read to much scifi.

 

[Tetsubo]

My wife isn't a gamer but she has always taken an interest in my hobby. She took one look at the QL cover and asked me why there was an upside-down G clef on the cover...

 

[Justin D. Jacobson]

Just a heads-up that the new books are now in to IPR. The site hasn't been updated yet but should be shortly.

 

[Tetsubo]

Just a heads-up that the new books are now in to IPR. The site hasn't been updated yet but should be shortly.

Thanks. I ordered one the other day.

 

[Justin D. Jacobson]

Thanks. I ordered one the other day.

Thank you. Let us know how you like it and, more importantly, what you're doing with it.

 

[Tetsubo]

I got my copy yesterday. This book is HUGE. It took me an hour just to flip through it and look at each page... It'll take me months to work my way through it thoroughly...