Yet another call for players
OK, this post is addressed to the gamers who live near me. In the San Francisco Bay Area. Within a reasonable driving range of the Santa Clara Valley. If you are east of Mt. Diablo, this probably is not for you. If you are east of the Mississippi, give up.
OK, are we clear? Good.
Marc Miller has a CD-ROM for sale that has everything for 2300AD. I loved this game and the setting, a hard science game of exploration, expansion, and fighting beady-eyed alien monsters that want to eat us.
Seriously. The Kafer word for human is "meat-thing."
I would *love* to run a campaign for three or four players, probably twice a month, days and times to be negotiated. I'd probably want to run a variation of my Finders, Incorporated Traveller campaign. The characters will be part of an agency that finds things for clients or helps them find things. Starships that have run out on the bank, missing persons, lost property, stolen property, anything that can go missing in the depths of space.
This would probably be an episodic game, with each job being a connected series of adventures with little attention played to downtime. I'd try to make each job unique in some way, with surprises, twists, and cliff-hanging moments. Episodic works well if we need to skip sessions for some reason (like the GM and a few players heading to That Thing In The Desert, for example.)
Characters would have to be multi-talented. Able to throw a punch, hotwire a starship, gather data, bluff past guards, and, of course, run like hell when necessary. The 2nd Edition 2300AD rules are good for this sort of thing. I would want a character generation session where we could not only roll up characters but also work out character backstories that link the characters together as a team.
We'd need a Snoop, a Techie, and a Gunslinger. Cross-skills welcome!
My favorite thing about 2300AD is the setting. The staff at Game Designers Workshop took the setting of their post-apocalyptic game Twilight: 2000; the world after WWIII and a limited strategic nuclear exchange, and played a game to advance the timeline to the year 2300. The result is a complex history where the French Third Empire is the dominant power and new nations have risen and fallen.
This gives a great foundation to build on. Faster than light travel is achieved by the Stutterwarp, a drive that teleports a ship a few hundred meters with each cycle of the drive. Cycle the drive fast enough, and you get from A to B at trans-c "velocities" while never having any velocity in the Newtonian sense. There is a limitation, drives need to discharge static electricity after 7.7 light years. Meaning that interstellar travel is a form of island hopping creating choke points. Colonies are on three main "arms", the French, American, and Chinese.
There are cybernetics, though not at the level of a cyberpunk game, and loads of fun toys to equip your characters with. For the most part, the game sticks to hard, known science. There is no artificial gravity, for example. Ships use rotating sections to create gravity. Slug-throwers are still the most effective form of weapon, although there are some advances in lasers and plasma weapons.
Planets are likewise realistic. Garden worlds are rare, and most colonies are dug into the surfaces of the inhospitable worlds they cling to. Air, radiation, potable water, and the occasional critter that hasn't figured out that humans don't taste good will all be threats in the wild.
I'm really hoping to get a face-to-face game going. Playing D&D using roll20 and Skype has been so good for my mood, and I have the itch to run a game. But I want to do it in person. Because it's more fun when we can toss dice at each other.
My home is not a candidate for hosting a game. We live in a tiny, cluttered apartment. I live close to both Game Kastle (both Santa Clara and Mountain View) and Isle of Gamers in Santa Clara. All of these have gaming space available. All three also have good food options near-by for post-game munchies, if we are so inclined. If you can host a game, that would be great.
As I said, three or four players in or near Santa Clara would be ideal. I'm almost completely open for scheduling options. If I don't get at least three interested players, I'm not going to buy the game. So please let me know if you might want to play.
Mankind is on the road to the stars! Will you join in the Great Expansion?
OK, are we clear? Good.
Marc Miller has a CD-ROM for sale that has everything for 2300AD. I loved this game and the setting, a hard science game of exploration, expansion, and fighting beady-eyed alien monsters that want to eat us.
Seriously. The Kafer word for human is "meat-thing."
I would *love* to run a campaign for three or four players, probably twice a month, days and times to be negotiated. I'd probably want to run a variation of my Finders, Incorporated Traveller campaign. The characters will be part of an agency that finds things for clients or helps them find things. Starships that have run out on the bank, missing persons, lost property, stolen property, anything that can go missing in the depths of space.
This would probably be an episodic game, with each job being a connected series of adventures with little attention played to downtime. I'd try to make each job unique in some way, with surprises, twists, and cliff-hanging moments. Episodic works well if we need to skip sessions for some reason (like the GM and a few players heading to That Thing In The Desert, for example.)
Characters would have to be multi-talented. Able to throw a punch, hotwire a starship, gather data, bluff past guards, and, of course, run like hell when necessary. The 2nd Edition 2300AD rules are good for this sort of thing. I would want a character generation session where we could not only roll up characters but also work out character backstories that link the characters together as a team.
We'd need a Snoop, a Techie, and a Gunslinger. Cross-skills welcome!
My favorite thing about 2300AD is the setting. The staff at Game Designers Workshop took the setting of their post-apocalyptic game Twilight: 2000; the world after WWIII and a limited strategic nuclear exchange, and played a game to advance the timeline to the year 2300. The result is a complex history where the French Third Empire is the dominant power and new nations have risen and fallen.
This gives a great foundation to build on. Faster than light travel is achieved by the Stutterwarp, a drive that teleports a ship a few hundred meters with each cycle of the drive. Cycle the drive fast enough, and you get from A to B at trans-c "velocities" while never having any velocity in the Newtonian sense. There is a limitation, drives need to discharge static electricity after 7.7 light years. Meaning that interstellar travel is a form of island hopping creating choke points. Colonies are on three main "arms", the French, American, and Chinese.
There are cybernetics, though not at the level of a cyberpunk game, and loads of fun toys to equip your characters with. For the most part, the game sticks to hard, known science. There is no artificial gravity, for example. Ships use rotating sections to create gravity. Slug-throwers are still the most effective form of weapon, although there are some advances in lasers and plasma weapons.
Planets are likewise realistic. Garden worlds are rare, and most colonies are dug into the surfaces of the inhospitable worlds they cling to. Air, radiation, potable water, and the occasional critter that hasn't figured out that humans don't taste good will all be threats in the wild.
I'm really hoping to get a face-to-face game going. Playing D&D using roll20 and Skype has been so good for my mood, and I have the itch to run a game. But I want to do it in person. Because it's more fun when we can toss dice at each other.
My home is not a candidate for hosting a game. We live in a tiny, cluttered apartment. I live close to both Game Kastle (both Santa Clara and Mountain View) and Isle of Gamers in Santa Clara. All of these have gaming space available. All three also have good food options near-by for post-game munchies, if we are so inclined. If you can host a game, that would be great.
As I said, three or four players in or near Santa Clara would be ideal. I'm almost completely open for scheduling options. If I don't get at least three interested players, I'm not going to buy the game. So please let me know if you might want to play.
Mankind is on the road to the stars! Will you join in the Great Expansion?