Tell me about Dawning Star

[Jürgen Hubert]

So I looked over the news page of Eruvian.Com while busily uploading Urbis, and I came across a news item that Eruvian.Com is now engaged in a partnership with Blue Devil Games with the intent to host fan material for a setting called "Dawning Star: Operation Quick Launch".

From what I've gathered, Dawning Star is an SF setting about group of colonists stranded on a star system far, far away from Earth, which does sound intriguing for an old "Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri" fan like me. It also was apparently nominated for an ENnie five times.

So, to those who have bought the setting: What can you tell me about it? What are its strengths and weaknesses?

 

[C.W.Richeson]

I have detailed reviews of the whole product line, if you're interested. Here's a link to my review of Dawning Star: Operation Quick Launch.

 

[Voadam]

I own Dawning Star: Helios Rising. It is massive, lots of alien races (racial paragon classes for a lot), lots of sci fi equipment, lots of interplanetary politics and plot material to work from. I use it for material for my fantasy D&D game and like it.

I don't however own Quick Launch.

 

[jdrakeh]

Add me to the list of interested parties (I guess I could just haunt the author over at Story Game, but what good would that be for ENWorld). I nearly picked this up last payday but Adamant's MARS won out due to it being a self-contained game.

 

[Wycen]

I'm a contributing author for the DS line of products and I'd be happy to answer questions.

Dawning Star has elements similar to themes of Firefly, with rustic cowboys herding "cattle" and adventuring through ruins. A little nod to Lost in Space in the fact that they are truly lost in space, Earth being long gone and the rest of humanity is scatted, astray in their own parts of the universe. Then the Shadows from Babylon 5 might have given some inspiration to the Vaasi, the alien enemy lurking at the periphery of your vision.

Operation Quick Launch covers that much and Helios Rising expands information to the other planets in the system and their native and/or transplanted inhabitants.

While the star system the game takes place in might seem densely packed with alien beings and thus similar to Star Wars and Star Trek, travel between stars is a long process, unless super technology is involved. Of course if you participated in the charity game at Gencon Indy this year you might have seen some of that in action.

We tried to follow 2 rules in creating the setting.
1. It must be fun.
2. It must be believable. In fact we have a technical advisor who's helped with this rule, RJ Grady. If however rule 2 starts to take away from the first rule, we try to go with what's fun.

Chad

 

[Justin D. Jacobson]

Hi, James. Ironically, I just posted my "Hollywood Pitch" for DS over in Fred's Story-Games thread: "It's Battlestar Galactica landing on Earth 2 populated by Aliens leading to a Battle Beyond the Stars."

For those with interest, we have so much free material on line these days, you should be able to get a good idea of whether DS is for you, including our free downloads page and the individual product pages.

If you have any specific questions, fire away.

 

[physicscarp]

I was lucky enough to find a copy of Dawning Star: OQL at GenCon for half off, and I've been slowly (stupid new job!) been reading through it. So far, it's not only interesting, but well put together from a production stand point.

 

[pawsplay]

While it is at heart a space opera setting, my part in things as technical advisor was to keep it grounded in the real world and real science we know. I like to think of it as Voyage of the Space Beagle meets Rendezvous with Rama meets The Lone Ranger. A big part of the setting was the problem of marrying amazing technology to stories of amazing, rugged individuals. The idea of a society building itself in a new world lends it to "frontier adventure" stories, with scarcity and distance creating situations where super-technology may exist, but isn't available to solve just any problem. I can claim more credit for keeping things out of Dawning Star than putting them in.

Working on DS has been a lot of fun, and I am frankly blown away by the production value of the books.