My Perfect Sci-Fi Game FOUND!

I love the Star*Drive setting. I blogged about it last April indicating I was on the fence between GURPS, Savage Worlds, or just sticking with the original Alternity. Each offer its own benefit, but I pretty much ruled out GURPS by virtue of me getting rid of the core books.

So that left Savage Worlds vs. Alternity. Alternity was the system originally used with Star*Drive and would require the least amount of conversion, but it was also not supported any more. Savage Worlds is one of my favorite core systems but it wasn't crunchy enough - good space pulp, like Star Wars, bad for more realistic sci-fi. So I've tinkered with vehicle rules in Savage Worlds with the original intention of using them in a Star*Drive campaign.

I don't regret doing this, and I hope the vehicle rules and associated Tech Backgrounds see the light of day in some future product (such as Agents of Oblivion) but it still didn't satiate that thirst I had.

I was aware of the Traveller game in the sense that I had heard the name, and during my GURPS kick I looked seriously at the GURPS Traveller: Interstellar War for a good sci-fi game. I poked around and picked up Marc Miller's Traveller, which was the third edition of the game, at Half Price Books but didn't really look at it. It has sat on my shelf for a few months at least.

In early 2009 Mongoose Publishing released an updated Traveller ruleset. Again, I was aware it was out but never gave it a look. Well, I picked up the main book over the weekend and I've got to say - this is what I was looking for.

It's got everything I would need for a sci-fi game set in the Star*Drive universe. Excellent character background generation rules? Check. Crunchy starship construction system? Check. Random planet generator? Double check. Rules for trading and guidelines for goods and services related to the planet's statistics? Oh yeah, you know that one's checked.

I'm digging into the ruleset more to get a handle on things and I've already ordered off Amazon a number of the sourcebooks (Mongoose is nothing if not prolific) so expect more details soon. Really this time. Really.

Cowboys, Spaceships, or Cthulhu?

The Age of Worms campaign has but one session left and then it will be wrapped up. With it we will be wrapping up the general D&D campaign that has been going for almost 15 years. Quite an achievement, and certainly one worthy of praise.

But looking to the future I don't want to stop gaming on Sundays. It seems to be a pretty reliable day where nothing else goes on, so why not keep going with something? I can find no reason to not. That does leave us with the question of what to do now, however.

In answer to that question I have three possibilities. I'll outline each in brief:

1. Deadlands: I've got a couple of Deadlands scenarios I'd like to do to wrap up that campaign completely. Probably four or five sessions at most, so not terribly long. New characters welcome, as well as the existing posse.

2. Traveler GURPS: I have been itching to play a space game for quite a long time. This would be a GURPS campaign set in the Traveler: Interstellar War setting. It would have a very Firefly-esque feel to it, but would probably take the route of freelancer traders/smugglers in a wide galaxy dominated by an imperialistic regime at odds with the Terran Federation. Unknown campaign length as of now, but I envision it being more open and freestyle than others.

3. Day of the Beast: We started my Call of Cthulhu campaign a few weeks ago on a Friday, and the original idea was to play it on Fridays when we weren't playing Star Wars. Well, we seem to be playing Star Wars most weeks and the weeks we're not there's something going on occupying most of the people's time. So we could move it to Sundays as a regular game. About twelve sessions in total is what I anticipate.

So - cowboys, spaceships, or Cthulhu? What's the vote?