CarlZog said:
It definitely tops my list of most underrated settings of all-time. But since it was sometimes disregarded as a "too-generic" space opera setting, I'd be curious to hear what in particular impressed you.
Carl
Well, firstly the Meta-Reasons. They took
everything in the core book, and turned it into a unfied whole. That's toguh to do without it looking stupid or forced. StarDrive made everything in the core book useful, and did it witha certain amount of flair.
Its own merits were many though. First off: Scale. StarDrive managed to convey a setting with a number of Stellar nations, eache with upwards of a thousand worlds and still keep it playable.
I'm not sure what a critic would mean by calling it "generic", but I certainly thought it was a great work of imagination.
The writing was top-notch, the art was beautiful, and the utility as a
SF gaming resource was pretty much unmatched at the time (I love traveller, but the Imperium is near-useless in comparison to StarDrive and basically flavourless in the same comparison).
I'm glad I have the whole line now.