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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[Duo Maxwell]

4E is scientifically and objectively the best GW, indeed.

I will not be taking questions.

And it had my favorite cover art for all their modules and accessories.

 

[aramis erak]

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.

Prime Directive 20M... still available via sjgames' warehouse23

 

[Charles Dunwoody]

Prime Directive 20M... still available via sjgames' warehouse23

I picked that up. It is good but incomplete because the starship supplement was never published or most of the other supplements. With some work, that would be a great campaign to run. But the GM would have to figure out starships on his own or swap out the Prime Directive warp drive and weapons for something right out of D20 Future.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

Hasbro has got links with Paramounts. If Mophidius lost the licence maybe WotC could be the next publisher.

But it would be interesting the idea of creating a mash-up alternate timeline where Star Treck was mixed with the aliens and factions of d20 Future and Spelljammer. Star Frontiers seemed like a setting where the most of PCs are law agents fighting against criminal organitations.

Now I try to imagine a setting inspired in new weird fiction where the zones are full of "anomalies" and then the PCs have to upgrade some vehicle. Do you know the videogames "Control", "Once Human", "Pacific Drive", "Quite a Ride" or "Outbreak Island" where the PCs faced strange anomalies? Here building a fortification or upgrading your vehicle is very important.

 

[jacleg05]

Had many of the S*D and other Alternity books. Unfortunately, my friends were 3.0 fiends.

 

[VelvetViolet]

Star*Drive is my favorite scifi space opera rpg. While the tropes it is based on are hardly original, the execution is quite novel. There’s no other setting like it. I’ve checked out Traveller and Stars Without Number, but they don’t compare. The lore is amazing and goes to extensive effort to fit in the various scifi tropes used: AIs run the infrastructure, every military has a psi corps, police employ psychic investigators, robots can be called as witnesses to court cases, everyone has a smartphone, transhuman rights disputes cause wars, etc.

I would go so far to say that it’s the best space opera setting ever and the historical end of the space opera genre. I’m so disappointed that WotC killed it for the Star Wars license. I’m peeved that nobody has made a spiritual successor.

Although it was written 27 years ago, it doesn’t feel as outdated as Traveller or Cyberpunk 2020 do because, and this is easy to miss, the average person in SD carries around a smartphone on their wrist that they use to access the internet and AIs run the infrastructure behind the scenes.

This is a good example of how the sci-fi gets old very poorly. The new generations miss technology that is normal today but there wasn't decades ago, for example the tablets and the mobiles.

Technically, SD already has smartphones, drones, and AI data centers running the economy. So it hasn’t aged as badly as it could have.

Today after buying my "Eclipse Phase" I can't imagine me in a sci-fi TTRPG without mind-upload and digital inmortality, and "surrogates" (remote-control androids). And some players would want to add the gadgets from their favorite videogame, for example exo-suits.

Despite the y2k aesthetic, SD is technically supposed to be space opera so it tunes things to support that. So while there’s lots of scifi tech, you still have conventional plots like interstellar trading, archaeology, politics, frontier colonialism, capitalism, etc. IIRC it does have SST-style combat suits, as well as a plethora of melee weapons like chainswords and the like to get around firearms regulations.

This is a setting tuned to a tech level where AIs of human intelligence require data centers to host them. Robot buddies exist, and be called as witnesses in court, but even the smartest have no emotions or ability to recognize emotions. Alien-style androids are restricted a higher tech level than the setting’s present time period. Mind uploading and spare bodies would render the setting unrecognizable.

 

[Ghost2020]

Star*Drive is my favorite scifi space opera rpg. While the tropes it is based on are hardly original, the execution is quite novel. There’s no other setting like it. I’ve checked out Traveller and Stars Without Number, but they don’t compare. The lore is amazing and goes to extensive effort to fit in the various scifi tropes used: AIs run the infrastructure, every military has a psi corps, police employ psychic investigators, robots can be called as witnesses to court cases, everyone has a smartphone, transhuman rights disputes cause wars, etc.

I would go so far to say that it’s the best space opera setting ever and the historical end of the space opera genre. I’m so disappointed that WotC killed it for the Star Wars license. I’m peeved that nobody has made a spiritual successor.

Although it was written 27 years ago, it doesn’t feel as outdated as Traveller or Cyberpunk 2020 do because, and this is easy to miss, the average person in SD carries around a smartphone on their wrist that they use to access the internet and AIs run the infrastructure behind the scenes.


Technically, SD already has smartphones, drones, and AI data centers running the economy. So it hasn’t aged as badly as it could have.


Despite the y2k aesthetic, SD is technically supposed to be space opera so it tunes things to support that. So while there’s lots of scifi tech, you still have conventional plots like interstellar trading, archaeology, politics, frontier colonialism, capitalism, etc. IIRC it does have SST-style combat suits, as well as a plethora of melee weapons like chainswords and the like to get around firearms regulations.

This is a setting tuned to a tech level where AIs of human intelligence require data centers to host them. Robot buddies exist, and be called as witnesses in court, but even the smartest have no emotions or ability to recognize emotions. Alien-style androids are restricted a higher tech level than the setting’s present time period. Mind uploading and spare bodies would render the setting unrecognizable.

Alternity wasn't specifically killed because of Star Wars at all. It was dropped because of seriously lagging sales and failed to gain a lot of traction.

The stories told that when wizards of the Coast bought TSR, there were pallets of books for the alternity line in the warehouse. It just didn't move.

 

[A2Z]

This thread made me want to try and finish my Alternity collection. Luckily I just found the Alien Compendium I on amazon for $20CAD. Winning! Alien Compendium II is really expensive though

Star*Drive is still a favourite setting of mine and I routinely pull out the Campaign Setting to look through. Wish I'd bought more of the books when they were current.

 

[Staffan]

Alternity wasn't specifically killed because of Star Wars at all. It was dropped because of seriously lagging sales and failed to gain a lot of traction.

The stories told that when wizards of the Coast bought TSR, there were pallets of books for the alternity line in the warehouse. It just didn't move.

Lagging sales sounds likely (or at least when compared to D&D), but I would be very surprised if there were pallets of Alternity books in the warehouse when Wizards bought TSR. Alternity was in the works when Wizards bought them, and a limited edition of the rulebooks was one of the first things out the door when they got things running again, but it was definitely published after the takeover.

I'll buy "It didn't move enough books to justify putting development resources into it instead of D&D", though. I seem to recall Wizards explaining something of the sort when they announced its cancellation. And to be fair, Wizards did release the stuff they had in the pipeline as PDFs (as I recall, one rule add-on for Big Ships, and one campaign sourcebook for Star*Drive about an Externals invasion of the Verge).

 

[VelvetViolet]

As I heard, Rich Baker said it sold over the moon... for publishers other than WotC. For WotC, it wasn't as much as D&D. The SW license mandated that they couldn't maintain it due to a clause restricting internal competition. So it got the axe, and couldn't even be reprinted as a new edition for d20 Modern.

I'm not gonna pretend the settings were perfect (e.g. DM uses offensive right-wing conspiracy theories that claims the Inquisition wasn't butchering innocent people by the truckload, SD has a lot of nonsensical scaling like a civilization of militant neo-amish people who can somehow maintain a population of hundreds of billions), but I can't even find any remotely comparable modern offerings. It's not because I'm biased against new games, because I found an amazing game from a couple years ago in another genre.