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Traveller or Star Frontiers?
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<blockquote data-quote="trancejeremy" data-source="post: 2689027" data-attributes="member: 924"><p>Traveller is definitely more popular. I mean, heck, it's still in print in various forms (d20, Gurps and in a way, even the original), while Star Frontiers is long dead, save for a rather mangled (IMHO) revision in d20 Future and I think a Dragon article for Alternity.</p><p></p><p>I say that as someone who has pretty much every product for both Star Frontiers and the original Traveller (multiple copies in some cases, I have 3 copies of Knight Hawks for SF, just because it's so great).</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Anyway, I don't think Star Frontiers was ever meant to be a rip-off of Traveller. It's quite a bit different actually.</p><p></p><p>Traveller was largely based on semi-hard science fiction of the 50s-60s. H. Beam Piper, Asimov, Laumer's Retief. Big galactic empire, lots of intrigue, planets were generally self ruling, movement was fairly free, starships are very expensive. PCs generally were either "thugs in space" or free traders.</p><p></p><p>Star Frontiers on the other hand is more late 70s/early 80s-ish. The big influences I think were probably both "Buck Rogers" and "Battlestar Galactica" the TV shows. The style anyway. But in the original set, the PCs were "Star Law Rangers" battling pirates and Sathar spies or explorers. </p><p></p><p>Later on, in Knight Hawks and in some of the adventures, SF took on almost a cyberpunk feel (though they predated cyberpunk by several years), as the PCs in many cases were essentially "Shadowrunners", being hired by one megacorp to do something nasty to another megacorp, or getting caught up in criminal syndicate shenanigans. (Though being traders was another option.)</p><p></p><p>SF also had much cooler aliens. Traveller had aliens, but was largely humanocentric.</p><p></p><p>Traveller = big empire; Star Frontiers = very small area, actually.</p><p></p><p>Traveller = High tech; Star Frontiers = low tech (for the most part, they didn't even have artificial gravity)</p><p></p><p>Traveller was sort of static. I mean, there were wars and such, but not an all out war (not until Megatraveller). In Star Frontiers, there was the ever present danger of invasion by the dreaded Sathar and the entire region was in danger of being wiped out.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="trancejeremy, post: 2689027, member: 924"] Traveller is definitely more popular. I mean, heck, it's still in print in various forms (d20, Gurps and in a way, even the original), while Star Frontiers is long dead, save for a rather mangled (IMHO) revision in d20 Future and I think a Dragon article for Alternity. I say that as someone who has pretty much every product for both Star Frontiers and the original Traveller (multiple copies in some cases, I have 3 copies of Knight Hawks for SF, just because it's so great). Anyway, I don't think Star Frontiers was ever meant to be a rip-off of Traveller. It's quite a bit different actually. Traveller was largely based on semi-hard science fiction of the 50s-60s. H. Beam Piper, Asimov, Laumer's Retief. Big galactic empire, lots of intrigue, planets were generally self ruling, movement was fairly free, starships are very expensive. PCs generally were either "thugs in space" or free traders. Star Frontiers on the other hand is more late 70s/early 80s-ish. The big influences I think were probably both "Buck Rogers" and "Battlestar Galactica" the TV shows. The style anyway. But in the original set, the PCs were "Star Law Rangers" battling pirates and Sathar spies or explorers. Later on, in Knight Hawks and in some of the adventures, SF took on almost a cyberpunk feel (though they predated cyberpunk by several years), as the PCs in many cases were essentially "Shadowrunners", being hired by one megacorp to do something nasty to another megacorp, or getting caught up in criminal syndicate shenanigans. (Though being traders was another option.) SF also had much cooler aliens. Traveller had aliens, but was largely humanocentric. Traveller = big empire; Star Frontiers = very small area, actually. Traveller = High tech; Star Frontiers = low tech (for the most part, they didn't even have artificial gravity) Traveller was sort of static. I mean, there were wars and such, but not an all out war (not until Megatraveller). In Star Frontiers, there was the ever present danger of invasion by the dreaded Sathar and the entire region was in danger of being wiped out. [/QUOTE]
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