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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 8287778" data-attributes="member: 18">Wth?!!?Nothing about Alternity was "proto-3E". d20 Modern was a total car-crash FYI, apart from the art and style. Everything else about it from the rules, to the tone, to the total failure at genre emulation, to the weird way it seemed to want to be solely about '80s and 90s action movies, but didn't have the balls to say so, was bad.But Alternity's rules are nothing at all like 3E. Lest anyone think I'm bullshitting, let's go through some of them:1) Dice-rolling works completely differently, with you rolling a d20 + or minus other dice, potentially multiple other dice.This stands in start opposition to 3E's approach, which was just to add giant piles of complicated modifiers. It was simple and relatively elegant and felt way more modern than 3E. It also had gradiated success, unlike 3E.2) Turns worked completely differently, being segmented.3) Damage worked completely differently, being essentially a wound-based system.I could go on - obviously there was no AC, no HP, no spell slots, no saving throws, about the only things even vaguely similar were that it had six stats roughly analogous to D&D stats, but not the same, and rated 1-10, with most PCs have 2-4 at the start of the game, and that it had levels, which were not at all like D&D levels because they were a minor power gain, not a huge one.Anyway, with that corrected, I think there's zero chance of Alternity coming back because it just wasn't ever very popular. It had a few settings, Star*Drive, which was a mediocre SF setting, and Dark*Matter, a disappointing and slightly off-beam conspiracy theory setting,where what were then quite far right conspiracy theories were often true, like "Satanists are everywhere and real in the sense that they work with demons who are also real, and both Satanists and demons have magical powers, run crime rings, abuse and kidnap people, and are running parts of the government!" (sigh, that one came back recently...), which was, er, surprising in a conspiracy-theory game, esp. as D&D had been implied to be part of that Satanic deal in the 1980s, and didn't really work because the safe nature of it and other conspiracies meant the PC organisation felt more heroic and safe than games like Conspiracy X or shows like the X-Files or Millennium, which it was clearly wanting to ape. Like you were do-gooders, with other good guys to back you up, not risk-takers trying to find out the truth (which Conspiracy X was extremely good at doing).Anyway, despite this I did run Dark*Matter because I did like a lot of the design and the Alternity system wasn't terrible but it also wasn't hugely exciting or involving.If WotC do make a sci-fi RPG, despite grogs wishing for a new Star Frontiers or w/e other games which were dead before I even got into RPGs in 1989, I think we'll see a new IP. None of the old IPs have any real draw or mystique or decent fanbases.I will say this Star Frontiers fan-art, however, is delightful.And yeah like Urriak, I would expect something more along the lines of ME or Star Trek than Star Wars. I don't think people are in the market for a counterfeit Star Wars, but I definitely know people in the market for a counterfeit Mass Effect, or Star Trek tone but without so many rules and regulations and established facts about the universe.</blockquote>

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