Darrin Drader
Explorer
Hi all!
You may already know me from the boards, or recognize my name from the covers of such books as The Book of Exalted Deeds, Forgotten Realms: Serpent Kingdoms, Forgotten Realms: Mysteries of the Moonsea, D20 Apocalypse, or one of the many Oathbound books. I recently finished writing a new space opera setting book for Reality Deviant Publications called Reign of Discordia. Maybe you've heard it mentioned by now.
Since we're getting closer to the release of the setting, and it is my baby, I want to open up some real discussion about it on these boards with a Q&A.
Feel free to ask me any questions and I'll give you the most straightforward answers I can, assuming that its something I'm able to talk about - and if it's not something I can talk about, I'll just say so without dancing around the topic.
So what exactly is Reign of Discordia? It is a space opera setting for the True20 system. The easiest way to explain it is to think of the fall of Rome, in space, with aliens. It is a star spanning setting where the core book provides you with over 50 core worlds, seven unique alien species (assuming you count humans), around twenty major organizations (all of which are loaded with adventure hooks) and tons of campaign models you could employ.
My philosophy when writing this was to provide a setting that was more about adventure than hard science fiction, although an attempt is made to explain complex technology like faster than light travel rather than simply hand waving it away. It also serves as kind of an everything and the kitchen sink type of setting. If you like Firefly and want to run a gritty game where your job is to get a job and get paid, you're covered. If you want to run something a little more military, you're covered. If you want to run something where you're battling a seemingly unstoppable force - yep, it has that too. There's even areas and reasons to do some classic dungeon delving with a scifi twist.
With regards to the art, I'm still waiting for it to come in, to be honest, but the idea behind it was to go retro-future. I'm really interested in using the type of scifi images that were popular back in the late 1970s rather than the CGI look of today. I come from a certain generation that was raised with science fiction that had a certain style, and I hope that this will come through in the final product.
I'm very happy with the material that's making its way into the core book because it represents a style of adventure heavy science fiction gaming that I particularly enjoy.
So feel free to ask away!
Also, we've gotten some preliminary artwork in, though I have put in for some revisions. The only thing here that is actually final is the space station map. And yes, that is a different space station in that other picture.
You may already know me from the boards, or recognize my name from the covers of such books as The Book of Exalted Deeds, Forgotten Realms: Serpent Kingdoms, Forgotten Realms: Mysteries of the Moonsea, D20 Apocalypse, or one of the many Oathbound books. I recently finished writing a new space opera setting book for Reality Deviant Publications called Reign of Discordia. Maybe you've heard it mentioned by now.
Since we're getting closer to the release of the setting, and it is my baby, I want to open up some real discussion about it on these boards with a Q&A.
Feel free to ask me any questions and I'll give you the most straightforward answers I can, assuming that its something I'm able to talk about - and if it's not something I can talk about, I'll just say so without dancing around the topic.
So what exactly is Reign of Discordia? It is a space opera setting for the True20 system. The easiest way to explain it is to think of the fall of Rome, in space, with aliens. It is a star spanning setting where the core book provides you with over 50 core worlds, seven unique alien species (assuming you count humans), around twenty major organizations (all of which are loaded with adventure hooks) and tons of campaign models you could employ.
My philosophy when writing this was to provide a setting that was more about adventure than hard science fiction, although an attempt is made to explain complex technology like faster than light travel rather than simply hand waving it away. It also serves as kind of an everything and the kitchen sink type of setting. If you like Firefly and want to run a gritty game where your job is to get a job and get paid, you're covered. If you want to run something a little more military, you're covered. If you want to run something where you're battling a seemingly unstoppable force - yep, it has that too. There's even areas and reasons to do some classic dungeon delving with a scifi twist.
With regards to the art, I'm still waiting for it to come in, to be honest, but the idea behind it was to go retro-future. I'm really interested in using the type of scifi images that were popular back in the late 1970s rather than the CGI look of today. I come from a certain generation that was raised with science fiction that had a certain style, and I hope that this will come through in the final product.
I'm very happy with the material that's making its way into the core book because it represents a style of adventure heavy science fiction gaming that I particularly enjoy.
So feel free to ask away!
Also, we've gotten some preliminary artwork in, though I have put in for some revisions. The only thing here that is actually final is the space station map. And yes, that is a different space station in that other picture.
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