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!

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[Reynard]

I don't know about that. The 7th ed spun off of the D&D 4e mechanics was not well received when new IME, even if it (like 4e itself) has aged well as people got past how divergent they both were from what came before. I rather liked it myself because it embraced its own absurdities, but I was (and may still be) very much in the minority.

It was a fun beer and pretzles kind of over the top game, but I don't think it captured GW well.

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

It was a fun beer and pretzles kind of over the top game, but I don't think it captured GW well.

I'd say it actually did a little too good a job of capturing GW's gonzo nonsense and trying to explain it all. The whole "we accidentally broke the fabric of the universe with a particle collider" was not only topical at time of release, it was the best explanation any edition had for the setting winding up looking like it always has. Chucking any semblance of realism out the window with a "reality is different, cope with it" explanation is kind of mad genius - but it reads as a parody to a lot of people.

Not my favorite edition of GW, but I do think it has the cleverest apocalypse of any of them even if it's all very tongue in cheek.

 

[Reynard]

I'd say it actually did a little too good a job of capturing GW's gonzo nonsense and trying to explain it all. The whole "we accidentally broke the fabric of the universe with a particle collider" was not only topical at time of release, it was the best explanation any edition had for the setting winding up looking like it always has. Chucking any semblance of realism out the window with a "reality is different, cope with it" explanation is kind of mad genius - but it reads as a parody to a lot of people.

Not my favorite edition of GW, but I do think it has the cleverest apocalypse of any of them even if it's all very tongue in cheek.

GW is a post nuclear game set in the exceedingly far future. It doesn't need a clever apocalypse.

 

[Charles Dunwoody]

I don't know about that. The 7th ed spun off of the D&D 4e mechanics was not well received when new IME, even if it (like 4e itself) has aged well as people got past how divergent they both were from what came before. I rather liked it myself because it embraced its own absurdities, but I was (and may still be) very much in the minority.

Oh yes, the ironically named Big Mistake that kicked off another edition. Gamma World using D&D 4E rules was wild but worked surprisingly well. I think the powers approach of D&D 4E translated into mutations a lot better than spells did.

The random collectable nature of the cards for an RPG was, well, absurd. But I remember a promo card that was basically a dehydrated scientist that you could rehydrate to solve science problems for you. That was pretty cool:

"The scientists of the Empire of Ishtar were tasked with a means of insuring the survival in stasis of certain high value personnel. The result was a process of dehydration that reduces a subject to a jar of white powder that can be reconstituted simply by pouring it out onto the floor. Whether it was a flaw of the technology (perhaps explaining why its use was so rare) or a symptom of decades of physical decay, those restored from dehydration do not last long--long enough to perhaps answer a few questions or complete a specific complex task. The results once the subject's reanimation has expired are unpleasant."

 

[BiblioTek]

Yeah, years ago I had the notion of trying to retro-clone Alternity and came up with some alternate names for the species, IIRC...

Grey (Fraal)
Atavus (Weren/Sasquatch)
Saurian (T'sa/Kinori)
Cybrid (Aleerin/Mechalus/Sandman)
Xenobug (Sesheyan/Mothman)

Neat! Mine were:

Fraal: Gray
Mechalus: Mechanoid
Sesheyan: Flitter
T'sa: Iguanoid
Weren: Squatch

I was trying to capture the idea behind the original species. Not terribly imaginative, but they worked for me.

 

[Charles Dunwoody]

Neat! Mine were:

Fraal: Gray
Mechalus: Mechanoid
Sesheyan: Flitter
T'sa: Iguanoid
Weren: Squatch

I was trying to capture the idea behind the original species. Not terribly imaginative, but they worked for me.

Grabbing Iguanoid for a future villain name. Maybe a lizard king.

Also grabbing Squatch. Good bartender name.

 

[Reynard]

I know this is only tangentially related, but man -- now I miss D20 Modern/Future. Probably my favorite thing WotC did, to be honest.

 

[Charles Dunwoody]

I know this is only tangentially related, but man -- now I miss D20 Modern/Future. Probably my favorite thing WotC did, to be honest.

D20 Future really needed a complete setting book. That would make it so much easier to pick up and run even all these years later.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

Other point even the space fantasy is perfect for Lovecraftian monsters, for example the necromorphs from Dead Space and the biovphages from Callisto Protocol. Do you remember the videogame "System Shock"?

Now I remember a relatively unknown and forgotten videogame Spacelords: Raiders of the Broken Planet. At least in the lore there are several factions.

The setting of Star*Drive was more a cluster of stereotypical factions.

The campaigns need special design because they can be "plague control" soldiers (Helldivers, Warframe, Destiny, Halo..) or civilians surviving the (robot or zombie) apocalypse.

* I wonder if some players would dare to convert the classes from Starfinder for this hypothetical Alternity 2.0. or special gadgets by their favorite characters from some hero-shooter videogame like Apex Legends.

 

[aramis erak]

Reaching satellites - and even the ISS - is a very doable thing for ham operators today. Power is not the biggest issue; compensating for Doppler shift and tracking are.

It's been that way since the 1960s for base station radios; reliable handheld less so until the 1980's; now, handhelds capable of >200km LOS are inexpensive...

In July of 1969 a ham radio operator and amateur radio-astronomer by the name of Larry Baysinger, W4EJA, accomplished an amazing feat. He independently detected radio transmissions from the Apollo 11 astronauts on the lunar surface.[/q]
Odds are good that W4EJA probably could have broadcast to orbit; he was able to receive from the moon, so had a good enough antenna.