D&D 5E Forget d20 Star Wars...bring on Galactos Barrier as a "D&D Future" setting

[Dungeonosophy]

It's said there'll be some rules for scifi equipment in the DMG. So how about some "D&D Future" campaign settings?

Though it's sitting on a very dusty shelf, WotC already holds one intellectual property which would serve just fine as a "D&D Star Wars" campaign model--The Galactos Barrier published in 1993. The Galactos Barrier was a "universe book" (campaign setting) for TSR's short-lived Amazing Engine rpg system. It is basically a TSR knock-off of Star Wars.

The Morione Domain = The Galactic Empire
The Resistance = The Rebel Alliance
The Music of the Spheres = The Force





Besides the "universe book", there was one choose-your-own-adventure Endless Quest book:

Galactic Challenge (Endless Quest, #45; Amazing Engine) by Allen Varney
"Galactic adventurer Rogan Hayl has joined the Resistance to fight the evil Morione Domain. Now an alien life-form, the Subverter, has stolen Rogan's spaceship and made his friend a slave of the Domain. Rogan travels to the waterworld of Pellaj and the honeycombed caverns of the astroid Dvaad, facing aliens, hostile robots and the psychic magic called the Music of the Spheres."



This could serve as a fresh "D&D Future" setting with the ambiance of Star Wars, but without all the gigantic pre-established continuity and licensing hurdles.

 

[fjw70]

Not familiar with this. I will need to check it out.

 

[prosfilaes]

Oh, God, Galactos Barrier was awful. The magic system "marches to the proverbial different drummer"... if you think that crossing out law and chaos and scribbling in Harmonians and Discordians makes for a different drummer. There's nothing musical at all about the magical system. The mages have some passable magical ability, maybe comparable at the top of their power to 5th level wizard spells in D&D, and can cast a spell that destroys a planet--at the cost of their magical ability. (IIRC, that would also cost them their intelligence; I'm working from my earlier review and memory, not a copy of the book.)

I have some grudges against the geography and demographics of the book; maybe a comparison to Star Wars should dispel some of that argument, but the book hardly had Industrial Light & Magic to bury all the illogic under beautiful graphics. My greatest pet peeve is the Dyson sphere that exported food, without any Corsucant that actually needed it. A Dyson sphere is a ridiculous science fiction construct, a shell with 550 million times the surface area of Earth, that would take so much work to build neither the Federation or Star Wars's Empire or another other mainstream science fictional entity could build one; when they appear in fiction, they are almost always the work of mysterious Ancients. The Dyson Sphere had as much potential as the rest of the setting put together, but no, it exported food.

I can't remember a thing from the book that was interesting for any reason but as a source to rant about. There was nothing I would crib for any campaign.

WotC needs a Star Wars pastiche? Tell someone to write one. I would be stunned if one of their writers would produce a worse one.