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!

Charlie is a participant in the Noble Knight Affiliate Program and the OneBookShelf Affiliate Program, both of which are affiliate programs that provide a means for participants to earn money by advertising and linking to Noble Knight Games and DriveThruRPG respectively. Charlie on Facebook. Posts and articles posted here by others do not reflect the views of Charlie Dunwoody. If you like the articles at EN World please consider supporting the Patreon.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

I bought Vampire 20A, Ghouls 20A and Vampire: Dark Age 20A because I love those clans. Really my favorite WoD line is Mage: the Ascension. Some times I try to imagine a mash-up version mixing Kult: Lost Divinity, WoD+CoD and Ravenloft (+Innistrad). When I started to collect comics in the 90s I bought some numbers of Morbious, this was before Blade the vampire-hunter became popular and famous thanks movies.

I reject the "scientific" or nor supernatural vampires (style Redfall videogame) or "V War"(comic and teleserie) because blood is less nutritive than meat. Also I reject "supernatural" vampires who aren't affected by holy water or sacred icons.

Astarion from Baldurs Gate 3 is a good example of how "daywalker bloodsuckers" are possible in 5e with some changes, and we have got the dhampire and reborn lineages from Ravenloft 5e.

I tried to invent a house rule about "health levels" like in storytelling system working like exhaustion levels in 5e. Other idea was mixing blood points and hunger level (in a 1-20 scale like the abilities scores). After drinking blood to earn blood points you needed some time to be asimiliate. This meant you couldn't to spend a lot of power points after just killing an enemy.

* Now I am trying to imagine a plane like New Capena but more post-apocaliptic + horror movie from 70's, in the middle between two different ages (atomic age toward digital age), and the step from childhood toward adult life.

* Let's remember some times a story could be written with "pure intentions" but after something happen in the real life and then it may become inapropiate. For example Lanshiang is a Chinese city in the videogame "Resident Evil 6" (year 2012). After the covid epidemic... China is not a right place for a story about infected people.

 

[Umbran]

Not unless they put the books in the warehouse via a TARDIS. Alternity was published after Wizards bought TSR.

Alternity was published in 1997, the same year WotC bought TSR. I will check my copy when I get home, but I believe it bears the TSR mark.

As in the thing was already printed when the purchase happened.

 

[Alzrius]

Just throwing out there that the TSR Archive website has an Alternity page, which has the year of publication for various products (albeit not the month).

 

[Kilimanjaro]

Alternity was published in 1997, the same year WotC bought TSR. I will check my copy when I get home, but I believe it bears the TSR mark.

As in the thing was already printed when the purchase happened.

It has the TSR logo, but under it in tiny print it says TSR is a subsidary of Wizards of the Coast.

 

[Staffan]

Alternity was published in 1997, the same year WotC bought TSR. I will check my copy when I get home, but I believe it bears the TSR mark.

As in the thing was already printed when the purchase happened.

Nothing was printed when the purchase happened. It was designed, and probably ready to go to the printer, but no ink had hit a page yet. The first outward sign of TSR's fall was that they were having "a problem at the printer" which delayed both regular product and magazines. The "problem" was, of course, that the printer wanted money. This happened in early 1997 – I believe January, but I'm not absolutely certain of that.
When Wizards bought TSR in mid 1997, they made a limited edition print run for GenCon. This had primarily black covers with the TSR logo on it, but Wizards' contact info and said "TSR, Inc. is a subsidiary of Wizards of the Coast." You can see a picture of the PHB in one of my earlier posts. The full release was in 1998, presumably to have time to make an actual cover and to get some marketing done before actual release.

 

[VelvetViolet]

tho' noting that neither Stephanie Meyers nor Joss Whedon id as LGBTQ, and they're the two biggest modern reimainings...

Exactly. Meyer vampires are metaphors for Mormonism. Whedon vampires are not even a reimagining imo, they're a continuation of the demonic corpse that dates back to Mesopotamia.

I have. Coming from certain fundamentalist religious groups.

How unlucky.

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.

That's describing many depictions of Mina, tho. Her infection with vampirism by Dracula and her reaction closely resembles those kinds of trauma stories.

but vampirism can also be a metaphor for many other things – particularly since vampire myth itself is so wide-ranging.

That doesn't mean it's a good metaphor. Again, blood libel.

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.

They're not used as distinct metaphors. The writers just wanted to add classes, so since it was the 90s we got those bizarre high school clique clubhouse cults.

They're drawn mostly from some vampire books and movies available to the writers at the time. The basic template for how vampires work is more or less copied from Anne Rice. There's little resemblance to myth (examples here). After exhausting the most obvious sources like Lost Boys, Nosferatu, Dracula, Vampire Chronicles, and even Necroscope, the ideas became increasingly bizarre and problematic: references to Conan or Sazan Eyes or Ars Magica, caricatures of mental illness, Catholics, Italians and Arabs, etc.

I'm very critical of the concept due to the absurd execution and negative experiences with the cultish fandom. I vastly prefer Vampire: The Requiem's take on vampire covens as actual factions with ideologies and goals, that your character chooses to join after deliberation and can decide to change membership later. My favorite implementation is probably the French game Nephilim, where (at least in the 3rd edition from the early 2000s) the vampire splat didn't have any clans (technically they had 3 "origins", but the difference was a +/-1 modifier to certain types of magic) but could choose to join any of 22 secret societies of wizards based on the Major Arcana of Tarot, each of which had their own ideologies and quests and you could change membership later if you really wanted.

But I digress.

Marvel's mutants are in a similar place.

If by that you mean "superpeople that genuinely do present an existential threat to humanity are a terrible metaphor for civil rights," then yes. While it's not straight up blood libel, it's an offensive metaphor that gives ammunition to prejudice. In reality, less advantage people are harmless. They're just as human as their oppressors. They're not a threat and cannot be, otherwise they'd be the oppressors. Superpeople have superpowers, real people do not.

Realistically, mutants would take over the world with their powers and turn muggles into second class citizens at best. Muggles would worship them as gods and welcome being oppressed by said gods, because humans are naturally drawn to worship power in the hope of benefitting by doing so.

Not only is it a bad metaphor, it's problematic.

But I digress.

---

Anyway, to bring this tangent back on topic, Alternity has rules for vampires and superheroes in the Beyond Science: A Guide to FX supplement. The vampires only get a page or two as a monster entry, but an article in Dragon expanded them into full-blown playable characters, with explanations for they operate in modern and future settings. There's only one kind of vampire given, based on the Dracula stereotype with some influence from White Wolf: the renfields are called "ghouls" for example, even though ghouls are already a different monster presented in Dark*Matter (where they're a conventional cannibal cult). One of the bits I find interesting is that these vampires will die if they enter hyperspace after becoming sufficiently old. This means that older vampires eventually become stuck on particularly planets, limiting their influence.

Nothing was printed when the purchase happened. It was designed, and probably ready to go to the printer, but no ink had hit a page yet. The first outward sign of TSR's fall was that they were having "a problem at the printer" which delayed both regular product and magazines. The "problem" was, of course, that the printer wanted money. This happened in early 1997 – I believe January, but I'm not absolutely certain of that.
When Wizards bought TSR in mid 1997, they made a limited edition print run for GenCon. This had primarily black covers with the TSR logo on it, but Wizards' contact info and said "TSR, Inc. is a subsidiary of Wizards of the Coast." You can see a picture of the PHB in one of my earlier posts. The full release was in 1998, presumably to have time to make an actual cover and to get some marketing done before actual release.

In any case, Alternity wasn't a market failure by the metrics of the other rpg companies that didn't own D&D.

WotC owns more IPs than they know or care what to do with. Even when they do remember them, we got stuff like the terrible 5e sourcebooks for Planescape and Spelljammer that are unplayable unless you buy and read the 2e books for reference. Even then, there's still plenty of conversion work necessary due to the cosmology changes. Do the 2e Eladrin even still exist in 5e? What about Guardinals? Are they fey or celestials? Where do Rilmani fit since they're not fiends or celestials? Are they aberrations like Slaad?

But I digress.

I don't understand why WotC doesn't extend their GM vault program to cover their non-D&D IPs. It would be hugely helpful in reviving interest in those forgotten properties. Maybe.

 

[Umbran]

But I digress.

But I digress.

But I digress.

Mod Note:
Yes, rather.

This thread is supposed to be about Star*Drive. Not about White Wolf, vampires, or what constitutes a good or bad metaphor in whose mind.

Please keep it on topic, folks. Thanks much.

 

[aramis erak]

I don't understand why WotC doesn't extend their GM vault program to cover their non-D&D IPs. It would be hugely helpful in reviving interest in those forgotten properties. Maybe.

Simply put: Not all the rights are unencumbered.
Several were licensed.
Some have royalties owed if used.

Marvel, Conan, Buck Rogers, Indiana Jones: Licensed Games. Licenses died in the 90's.

DragonLance: limited rights, exact details not released. Technically, owned by WotC/HasBro via purchase of TSR.

Star Frontiers: there was sufficient fan support and there was an attempt to that they took notice and revoked the fansite PDF license.

Mystara, Dark Sun and Birthright have licensees providing free versions... and have setting elements that make WotC leadership decidedly uncomfortable. Even the PDF versions have warnings that they don't reflect WotC values.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

WotC could publish in D&D-Beyond free articles like Magic Planeshift about forgotten franchises with the intention to recover brand power.

I don't advice to mix gothic horror and space opera because advanced technology could be too powerful to hunt the classical monsters. If the players are vampire-hunters then they could ask an Ultraviolet Grenade (Blade II) or Abigail laser bow (Blade Trinity). Or a player may want a vegan vampire who eats plasme fruit (sims 3). In the future producing blood by means of clon tissues should be as easy as milking a cow.

The monsters from horror fiction are created intentionally to be relatively overpowered for game standars. And monsters from space horror means a different level of menace if the humans are ordinary civilians without weapons or soldiers with enough ammo. A killer robot in the first movie in the sequel can becomes the bodyguard of the innocent who has to be saved.

Hasbro has got lots of own IPs. We aren't talking about licences. Other point is they don't want to do it because hey would rather a licence by other company. For example Mattel stopped the production of Ever After High dolls because Disney doesn't want a rival franchise for its princesses.

* Now I remember a cancelled videogame with a retro sci-fi style, the Amazing Eternals, and Crucible, other cancelled extracion hero-shooter. I mean the lore of those titles could be "recycle" for your homemade sci-fi settings. couldn't they?

 

[VelvetViolet]

I don’t actually trust modern WotC to do Alternity justice at all. Their first attempt with a few perfunctory d20 conversions wasn’t great. Now they can’t even do updates of Planescape and Spelljammer. The 5e Spelljammer doesn’t even have rules for navigation or ship to ship combat. The Shadow of the Spider Moon feature in Dungeon Magazine 20-something years ago was able to accomplish that.

They refuse to touch settings like Dark Sun because it features uncomfortable topics like slavery, as befits a grimdark postapoc setting. We can’t feature uncomfortable topics anymore or it might hurt people’s feelings.

Can you imagine what they would do to Star*Drive? The Union of Sol would be axed for cultural appropriation, Austrin Ontis would be axed for being Confederate apologia, the Thuldan Empire would be axed because they’re mutant supremacists, the Exeat and Medurr would be axed because they’re imperialist conquerors, Sesheyans and VoidCorp would be axed because of the slavery subplot… The only approved playstyles would be going to prom and working as baristas.

But I imagine that Exodus will be allowed to feature problematic topics like slavery and genocide as much as it wants, because nothing says holding the moral highground like being hypocrites.