After wasting two decades hoping Hasbro would do something, I've decided to write a ripoff retroclone of TSR's old Star*Drive IP.

If you don't know what that is, here's some links for newbies:
http://thefairlyunkempt.blogspot.com/search/label/stardrive
http://www.sjgames.com/pyramid/sample.cgi?1543
https://www.alternityrpg.net/onlineforums/index.php?s=0&showtopic=6577
https://rickard80.github.io/storygames/?304
https://stagingpoint.com/2010/01/14/on-the-challenge-of-giving-your-interstellar-empire-a-cool-name/
http://www.tsrarchive.com/al/al2.html

Basically, in 1998 TSR decided to write a generic scifi roleplaying game: Alternity. They published two original campaign settings for this: the ufology conspiracy thriller setting Dark•Matter and the space opera setting Star*Drive. They also released a Gamma World setting book just when the line was canceled.

Star*Drive is not an original or avant-garde setting. It was literally written to be the archetypal generic space opera setting. It uses all the tropes you could think of: flying cars, FTL travel, AIs, robots, psychic powers, mutations and genetic engineering, aliens, cyborgs, virtual reality on the space internet ("the Grid"), etc. However, it does have one unique thing going for it: it was an original space opera setting invented in the late 90s and incorporating all the scifi tropes that existed when it was written (except for mech suits). All settings are products of their time, and this is no exception. Star Trek is a product of the 1960s, Star Wars a product of the 1970s, Traveller a product of the... you get the point. Star*Drive sets itself apart from these older settings by incorporating scifi conventions postdating them, notably tropes like cyborgs, virtual reality, and even smartphones/smartwatches. Yeah, really! A basic piece of tech that almost everyone has is a wrist-mounted smartphone with internet access and a holographic interface.

The in-game history is... something. It starts with your typical "humanity advances to utopian tech levels" and then takes a swerve for the weird when the Roswell grays show up. You read that right: the Roswell grays show up. In the late 21st century the Roswell grays publicly reveal their existence and make an alliance with humanity for progress. This isn't the first time they tried making contact, but the last two times respectively resulted in myths of fairies and the ufology craze. Anyway, the grays call themselves "Fraal" and share their gravity inducer tech with humanity. Humanity independently discovers interesting facts about dark matter that they use to invent reactors powered by dark matter: since dark matter is omnipresent, this means in practice that these reactor have infinite fuel. (It's implied here that the Dark•Matter setting is a prequel, but the continuity doesn't actually fit so it's really an Easter egg reference.) By combining the gravity inducer with the mass reactor, they invent the first FTL drives or "stardrives." These are standard scifi hyperdrives: they punch a hole into hyperspace (here called "drivespace") that allows economical FTL travel. The drive operates on similar rules to the drives in Traveller: all communications travel at the rate of 11 hours per jump regardless of real space distance, and all matter (i.e. starships) travel at the rate of 11² hours per jump (i.e. 121 hours, or 5 days and 1 hour).

Humanity and the fraal expand into the thousand ly radius around Earth over the next several centuries (the setting's year 0 is ~AD2500). Humanity encounters various aliens, including ~50 intelligent species. Since humanity invented the first known FTL drives, this puts humanity at a huge advantage. All other species encountered are reduced to clients of the human polities that surround them, with their fates depending on the charity of the local polity. If the humans are nice, then the aliens get a good deal. If not, then the aliens might get enslaved (one of the core races suffered this fate and is trying to get emancipated).

Anyway, the Terran Empire grows increasingly authoritarian until the colonies rebel Jovian Chronicles-style. This rebellion becomes known as the Galactic War (and later the First Galactic War, put a pin in that for now). The Terran Empire is dissolved and a variety of new "stellar nations" are formally recognized. The population of an individual stellar nation go well into the tens of billions at least. The territory they claim is known collectively as the Stellar Ring.

Time passes. The Second Galactic War (GW2) breaks out. It lasts for a century and devastates the Stellar Ring: by the time it ended, the population was reduced to a few trillion from... well, you get the picture. Realizing that they'll be destroyed if the war doesn't stop, the twelve surviving stellar nations sign the Treaty of Concord. This forms a new stellar known as the Galactic Concord to maintain the peace: they're basically the space UN but with their own territory and standing army.

Each of the thirteen stellar nations as of the setting's present day in 2501 have a different shtick, not unlike the factions in a 4X game like Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri. Austrin-Ontis is Space Texas NRA, VoidCorp is Microsoft, Thuldan are the Nietzscheans from Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda, Nariac is Space USSR with cyborgs, the Union of Sol are historians and historical reenactors, Hatire are militant Space Amish, etc. There were originally a lot more nations, but their independence was destroyed by GW2 and the survivors absorbed into neighboring nations. (E.g. one of the dissolved nations was CHOAM, Inc. As in, the one from Dune.)

One of the Concord's initiatives is rebuilding contact with the frontier regions, such as The Verge. The Verge was a rich and prosperous region of space colonized by multiple stellar nations that was cut off from the Stellar Ring early in GW2 and remained isolated for the next century. They still hold grudges over this.

At the same time, a number of extremely hostile alien races have suddenly appeared in the Verge. The insectoid Klicks annihilated a colony, the Kroath abduct people, teleporting weirdos in sunglasses give you scary visions of the future, etc. Eventually it's discovered that these aliens are not unrelated but members of a imperialist theocracy ruled by what seem to be Fraal! (the two groups of Fraal may be an in-joke reference to the Sathar and S'sessu from Star Frontiers, but that's just my speculation)

As if that wasn't bad enough, another alien empire is encountered in The Verge. These reptilian aliens arrived in stasis on craft traveling at sublight speed, but observers quickly discover that they have wormhole technology. The "dragons", as humanity christens them, open wormholes to their own space and start bringing in armies to subjugate the Verge!

The game had something of a metaplot that was explored through various adventures. There were a number of tie-in novels that explored different facets of the setting and in some cases elaborated on the metaplot.

In the distant past of the setting millions of years prior, there was an apocalyptic war between two alien civilizations: the Glassmakers and the Stoneburners. (These seem to be inspired by the Shaper/Artificer conflict from TSR's earlier Bug Hunters setting, which themselves seem to be inspired by the Schismastrix novel.) The Glassmakers used technology composed of silicon, hence the name, while the Stoneburners... they evolved in a flame-retardant chlorinated atmosphere that forced them to develop Lovecraftian mad science and summon demons. The text obfuscates it by saying "dimensions" and other scifi buzzwords, but they summoned demons. These demons eventually turned on the Stoneburners and slaughtered the survivors of the war before themselves being trapped. As humanity expanded, ruins of both species were found and there's a thriving black market in artifacts. The Glassmaker ruins look pretty like glass (if you can get past any automated security systems), whereas the Stoneburner ruins... they look like something out of a Lovecraft story and are just as dangerous as you would expect.

Anyway, one of the colonies in the Verge mysteriously went missing at some point prior to the present day. Somehow they woke and released the demons from the Stoneburner's prison, and these demons called on various cultists they had maintained in reserve. Like those Fraal cousins I mentioned above.

Then there's some more civilizations in distant parts of the galaxy, planned for future supplements. But that's as far TSR got before it was canceled. Bits and pieces of the material were adapted for d20 Modern and d20 Future, including a second edition of the Dark•Matter setting, but d20 Modern itself was canceled in 2008.

The books covered various topics like planets in the Verge and aliens. There were a lot of aliens and the setting had about six or seven distinct biochemistries recognized. These were apparently inspired by the book World Building by Stephen Gillett, which was recently rereleased in ebook form if you want a look.

I spent a few years looking around for various scifi settings that could be used to do similar things to SD, and I came up blank. SD isn't just a space opera setting, it's a tabletop space opera setting that was designed as a setting first rather than how typical prose scifi is stories about characters, it was written in the content of the 90s scifi zeitgeist, and it was written to incorporate all the scifi tropes. These were specific criteria that went into its development, and I couldn't find any other scifi settings that could replicate it. I've googled for years, asked people in chats and forums... nothing!

So that's why I started this thread. I'm gonna brainstorm my own setting intended to fulfill the same criteria and replicate similar results. To prevent my work from dying out like SD, I'm gonna release my work into creative commons, the public domain or whatever is necessary to keep it from dying out. If anybody wants to give their own input, then feel free!

I'm tired right now, so I'm gonna end this post here.

I would give one solid recommendation.  Don't do it "system neutral."  I would think that doing a Cepheus Engine and a Stars Without Numbers editions would sell pretty well.  I buy up a lot of Cepheus Engine stuff for myself.  You might also look at Open D6 and Black Star as OD6 has a large following and Black Star seems to be taking on a lot of the OD6 crowd.

Contact WotC and ask them how much for the license for Star Drive. If you do your research on how much of a SD fanbase exists, that would help you determine your negotiation point.

Quote from: BadApple on August 22, 2023, 09:43:49 PM
I would give one solid recommendation.  Don't do it "system neutral."  I would think that doing a Cepheus Engine and a Stars Without Numbers editions would sell pretty well.  I buy up a lot of Cepheus Engine stuff for myself.  You might also look at Open D6 and Black Star as OD6 has a large following and Black Star seems to be taking on a lot of the OD6 crowd.

What's OD6?

Quote from: Aglondir on August 23, 2023, 03:30:05 AM

Quote from: BadApple on August 22, 2023, 09:43:49 PM
I would give one solid recommendation.  Don't do it "system neutral."  I would think that doing a Cepheus Engine and a Stars Without Numbers editions would sell pretty well.  I buy up a lot of Cepheus Engine stuff for myself.  You might also look at Open D6 and Black Star as OD6 has a large following and Black Star seems to be taking on a lot of the OD6 crowd.

What's OD6?

Open D6 or WEG D6

Quote from: BadApple on August 22, 2023, 09:43:49 PM
I would give one solid recommendation.  Don't do it "system neutral."  I would think that doing a Cepheus Engine and a Stars Without Numbers editions would sell pretty well.  I buy up a lot of Cepheus Engine stuff for myself.  You might also look at Open D6 and Black Star as OD6 has a large following and Black Star seems to be taking on a lot of the OD6 crowd.

The ideal rules to use would be the original Alternity, but since those are only available via used books market or piracy, I can't expect people to have it available. I'm making it systemless until I can find a generic scifi genre rpg that can replace Alternity. Every single scifi game I checked isn't generic enough. D20 Future is the closest and is currently available on drivethrurpg, but since it's dead I can't expect people to touch it either.

So just use whatever system suits your group. I'm just trying to keep the spirit alive.

Quote from: Spinachcat on August 23, 2023, 03:15:39 AM
Contact WotC and ask them how much for the license for Star Drive. If you do your research on how much of a SD fanbase exists, that would help you determine your negotiation point.

If they were opening to licensing their IPs, then somebody else would've done it already. They're an evil corpo. They don't give a flying fuck about art and culture. So fuck WotC. I hope Hasbro kills themselves trying to chase the mobile market.

The history, the nations, and the aliens

So the first worldbuilding I wanna brainstorm is the history, the nations, and the aliens. I have a rough outline and idea for what I want to accomplish: First contact with the Roswell grays, the invention of FTL, expansion across a 1000ly radius sphere around Earth, first contact with alien biospheres and ~50 intelligent species, the first galactic war where the colonies gain independence from Earth, the second galactic war resulting in the formation of Space UN and the current political situation. And that's before stuff like the frontier and the incursions by outsider species.

The interstellar nationstates provide backgrounds for PCs. Each one has its own shtick that provides a free benefit to PCs of that background. These nation concepts aren't set in stone, but they provide a decent enough foundation for character hometowns.

• Space Texas: You're good with firearms.
• Clone College: You're good at history.
• Butlerian Jihadists: You can call upon your faith to get a minor benefit once per session.
• The Pirate Party: You're good with computers and surfing the web.
• Cyberpunk USSR: You start with a free cybertech implant that doesn't count toward cyberpsychosis. Unfortunately it comes with a tracker that Space Stalin uses to keep tabs on you.
• Space Eagleland: You're good at interacting with people of different cultures.
• Those weirdos who think God resides in Hyperspace: you're good at astronavigation and physical sciences.
• Space Ancapistan: You're rich.
• Space Westworld: You're good with all vehicles including starships.
• Mutant Empire: You're physically superior.
• Historical Lifestylers: You're better at whatever other stuff you chose and you're a historical lifestyler. Pick any historical concept to base your costume around.
• Space Microsoft: You're good at business, games and competition.
• Space UN: The Space UN's territory was donated from various destroyed and surviving nations and many citizens are migrants from wartorn regions. By default you're luckier than others. If you specify your nation of origin, then you may get that benefit instead.

The alien concepts should be fairly diverse. I would point to JBR's page to serve as a potential list of prompts. But I'll list some basic recognizable ideas below:

• Roswell grays: exactly what the name implies. The entire species are gifted psychics and every individual begins play with a free psychic power. May or may not have an "evil" sibling race waiting to be discovered.
• Reformed Borg: these guys have integrated cybercircuitry and nanobots into their biology to the point where it is self-replicating. They have a higher tolerance for cyberpsychosis and can interface with computers directly using their built-in USB cable.
• Proud Warrior Race Guys: giant furry musclebound hulks. They're good at physical combat and poetry.
• Totally not the Salarians from Mass Effect: giddy reptilians who are good with anything involving fine manipulation.
• The ones with wings: They can fly, or at least glide on patagia. Not much else to say, really. You should probably combine them with another concept like the Proud Warrior Race Guy or invent further details.
• Blob people: giant talking amoebas.
• Ant People: giant talking ants with lots of limbs ending in fine manipulators. Not a group mind, but their highest virtue is filial piety.
• Cyberpsychotic: Not actually a race, but a mental illness that's regular enough to be considered its own society. You installed so many implants that it overloaded your feeble meat brain and turned you into a machine-worshiping psycho dedicated to destroying organics.
• Land squids: exactly what it says on the tin. These guys evolved from cephalopods that learned how to breathe and move on land.
• Totally not the Ur-Quan: evolved from annelid worms or similar niches. They're genocidal invaders that butcher all attempts at diplomacy. May or may not have a "good" sibling race that already lived in known space.
• Imperialistic Reptiles: reptilian aliens that rule an expansionistic empire. They enslave other species rather than exterminating them, so they're easier to deal with than the Not!Ur-Quan.

I'll just leave this here to come back to later.

EDIT: Yeah, you might notice some of these alien concepts reference Star Frontiers. While the settings aren't identical, SD is flexible enough to replicate a fair amount of SF's shtick. The intro adventure Incident at Exile reads exactly like a Star Law intro adventure.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on August 23, 2023, 09:31:14 AM

Quote from: BadApple on August 22, 2023, 09:43:49 PM
I would give one solid recommendation.  Don't do it "system neutral."  I would think that doing a Cepheus Engine and a Stars Without Numbers editions would sell pretty well.  I buy up a lot of Cepheus Engine stuff for myself.  You might also look at Open D6 and Black Star as OD6 has a large following and Black Star seems to be taking on a lot of the OD6 crowd.

The ideal rules to use would be the original Alternity, but since those are only available via used books market or piracy, I can't expect people to have it available. I'm making it systemless until I can find a generic scifi genre rpg that can replace Alternity. Every single scifi game I checked isn't generic enough. D20 Future is the closest and is currently available on drivethrurpg, but since it's dead I can't expect people to touch it either.

So just use whatever system suits your group. I'm just trying to keep the spirit alive.

Quote from: Spinachcat on August 23, 2023, 03:15:39 AM
Contact WotC and ask them how much for the license for Star Drive. If you do your research on how much of a SD fanbase exists, that would help you determine your negotiation point.

If they were opening to licensing their IPs, then somebody else would've done it already. They're an evil corpo. They don't give a flying fuck about art and culture. So fuck WotC. I hope Hasbro kills themselves trying to chase the mobile market.

You know that mechanics aren't IP controlled, right?  The words used to describe them are but not the actual system. 

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on August 22, 2023, 08:35:37 PM
I spent a few years looking around for various scifi settings that could be used to do similar things to SD, and I came up blank. SD isn't just a space opera setting, it's a tabletop space opera setting that was designed as a setting first rather than how typical prose scifi is stories about characters, it was written in the content of the 90s scifi zeitgeist, and it was written to incorporate all the scifi tropes. These were specific criteria that went into its development, and I couldn't find any other scifi settings that could replicate it. I've googled for years, asked people in chats and forums... nothing!

So that's why I started this thread. I'm gonna brainstorm my own setting intended to fulfill the same criteria and replicate similar results. To prevent my work from dying out like SD, I'm gonna release my work into creative commons, the public domain or whatever is necessary to keep it from dying out. If anybody wants to give their own input, then feel free!

I came up with this in the 90s and messed with it off and on over the years. I originally thought about making it hard sci-fi but shifted it over to a more space opera vibe in recent years.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1p3FBX9dFdY8uII3d3srsTxi5YL9K5q35/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=116753362008267799901&rtpof=true&sd=true

Hope this helps.

What year it is?
The year is 2425.

What is the status of humanity?
Humanity has spread out in a 200 light year sphere centered on Earth and the core worlds of Sol Sector. Human Society is still divided into multiple nation states and colonies. Many worlds have multiple governments. There has been limited exploration out to 500 light years. Hundreds of inhabitable worlds are known. The vast majority of which are terraformed worlds that were created by a dinosaurian civilization dating from 65 million years ago.

Dinosaurs?
It appears that the ancient dinosaurian civilization terraformed any remotely inhabitable world within their range of exploration. The limits of which haven't been reached yet. On some, the terraforming faded causing the earth-based ecology to die off and the world to revert back to its original state. This is mostly true of the smaller worlds that have been terraformed. On the larger world, the earth-based ecology continued to evolve.

On some the descendants of dinosaurs still roam. On others they died out, mammals or other animal orders have taken their place. On several worlds, sentient life developed and created their own civilization.

Humans not born of Earth?
Over 100,000 years ago a spacefaring civilization took humans from Earth and scattered them across several worlds. Currently, 11 worlds are known where humans have been placed. Two of them have advanced spacefaring civilizations, and one has an industrial civilization on par with early 20th-century Earth. One more lies within Earth-controlled space and has a Neolithic society developing agriculture.

 
The most important starfaring civilization is the Yaminaw Ardapar or Undying Empire, dominated by a human culture calling themselves the Tokyane loosely translated as Imperial Ones. The Undying Empire appears to be a century ahead of Earth in technology and controls a sphere of space over 400 years in diameter.

The dominant Tokyana culture is ruled by a seemly immortal emperor, the Kayra. The Empire has conquered seven other worlds with human civilizations, along with conquering a civilization dominated by a sentient dinosaurian race known as the Amyoya. There are other alien races that have also been conquered by the Undying Empire.

First contact was nearly 50 years ago in 2376 and it was with a group of humans and Amyoya calling themselves the Dhana or Commonwealth. The Commonwealth is composed of dissidents and refugees who have fled beyond the borders of imperial space.

Alien races?
The first are the Kang'rits. They look like a cross between a kangaroo and a hairless bear. They were first contacted a century ago by the United States in 2331 and their technology was a century behind humanity.

When first contacted they were at war with the Lupiyana, a relatively recently evolved sentient race of dinosaurians. The United States entered the war as allies of the Kang'rits and was able to expel the Lupiyana from the Kang'rit system.

Since then, the Kang'rit have slowly integrated into the larger human community and now have a handful of colonies of their own.

The Lupiyana technology level is on par with that of Earth. Their dominant culture appears to be comprised of competing clans. The Lupiyana loosely translated is known as the White Banner Clan. There are other clans with different colored banners and collectively they control a dozen systems including their homeworld.

After the conclusion of the war, a neutral zone was created from the system lying between the Kang'rit system and Lupiyana space.  So far the truce has held but the Lupiyana remain hostile to humans and Kang'rit alike.

This part is more flexible can be done away in favor of something more like the list you proposed.

What is the status of Earth?
Currently the Earth in the beginning of an ice age due to the cataclysmic explosion of the Tambora volcano in Indonesia during the middle of the 22nd century. This tipped the global climate into an ice age. It is projected that the ice age will reach its maximum stable extent by the year 3,000 with a 100 meter drop in sea level. Currently, the oceans of the world have experienced a 10 meter drop.

The Northern Hemisphere ability to support a high population has been greatly reduced. This caused a massive diaspora of humanity outward that is ongoing today. Currently, the Earth has a population of 2 billion people with 800 million living in India.

Politically the Earth is controlled by a single world government called the Earth Union. It is a federation of nation-states dominated by India.


Who are the major powers?
The Earth Union is only one of the six major powers of human space. The others are the United States centered on Alpha Centauri. The United Kingdom, the French Union, and the German Bund (Federation) centered on Epsilon Eridani. Along with the Chinese People's Republic centered on Epsilon Indi.

There are numerous smaller independent powers as a result of the human diaspora. It is not uncommon for worlds and star systems to be divided into multiple independent nations and colonies.

What are the United Colonies?
The United Colonies are a loose association of major and minor powers. It is similar to the 20th/21st century United Nations but more focused on managing certain interstellar organizations than being a diplomatic forum.

The two most important organizations it manages are the Astroguard and the Interstellar Astronomical Union (IAU). The Astroguard is a multi-national military dedicated to exploration, search & rescue, and anti-piracy patrols. They function as an interstellar Coast Guard.

Over the centuries a series of treaties and conventions has established that groups and nations can only own a claim that they can exploit. That an entire world can't be claimed unless it is fully exploited. The IAU registers, publishes, and adjudicates these claims. It also publishes the survey information that the Astroguard gathers. Because of this, the IAU has also evolved into an ombudsman investigating and publicizing human rights violations.

Quote from: BadApple on August 23, 2023, 12:11:16 PM
You know that mechanics aren't IP controlled, right?  The words used to describe them are but not the actual system.

I know. There's an Alternity retroclone that snatched up the trademark and had the original authors involved, before they crashed and burned after realizing they couldn't use the original IPs.

Use Cepheus Engine, Stars Without Number, Sasquatch's Alternity, whatever. That's not why I'm doing this.

Quote from: estar on August 23, 2023, 01:03:57 PM
I came up with this in the 90s and messed with it off and on over the years. I originally thought about making it hard sci-fi but shifted it over to a more space opera vibe in recent years.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1p3FBX9dFdY8uII3d3srsTxi5YL9K5q35/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=116753362008267799901&rtpof=true&sd=true

Neat.

---

Anyway, some of the speculative scifi stuff that SD uses are technology levels and biochemistry series.

The Technology Levels are recapped in d20 Future and I won't repeat them here. Humanity's current level is a 7 out of 10, or the "Gravity Age" characterized by the dark matter reactor and the gravity generator being combined to make economical FTL drives. It's a really speculative subject given that we only have our own history as a basis so it's really just a measurement of how our own history went, then past that it goes into pure speculation. In general SD is fairly soft scifi since it not only has FTL but it also has psychic powers and literal demons. The tech level progression is also broken by the introduction of civilizations that have some kinds of tech but not the others assumed by the tech level, or have tech that isn't anywhere on the list. One of the civilizations doesn't have FTL drives or dark matter reactor, but they do have zero point energy generators that power their wormhole generators. Etc.

The biochemistries seem to have been based on a direct reading of Stephen Gillet's World Building non-fiction book. They're numbered in general order of how much of an extremophile it is compared to us. I'm gonna summarize these here:

• Terrestrial standard. Breath oxygen, drink water, carbon-based. All the major alien species have this. This is overwhelmingly the most common biochemistry. Chirality is not mentioned to my knowledge, and it seems to be assumed that everyone can live in similar conditions and eat the same food.


• Europan standard. They on planets where all water is frozen and their solvent is ammonia, similar to the conditions found on Europa. See this page: https://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/A/ammonialife.html


• Chlorine life. Evolved on planets with similar conditions to Earth, except with lots of dissolved chlorine that life was forced to adapt to. See this video: https://youtu.be/fwauz9uIl9M?si=HVx-YhaHAQLUq6Mp


• Ionian life. Their ocean is made of sulfur dioxide and smells like rotten eggs, similar to conditions on Io, and they breathe sulfur trioxide because Gillet mentioned it in his book. I could only find them mentioned in passing here: https://planetpailly.com/2016/11/18/sciency-words-thalassogen/


• Silicon Venusian life. Their oceans are made of pure sulfuric acid above the boiling point of water, similar to conditions on Venus. Bizarrely, they breathe oxygen despite the well-known problems with that. See here: https://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/S/siliconlife.html


• Liquid sulfur life. They live on planets so hot that the oceans are liquid sulfur, they respire sulfur dioxide, and their biological macromolecules are based on fluorosilicones (on Earth we use this to make rubber). This biochemistry is just so bizarre that I cannot find relevant articles on Google


• Misc/Other/Unknown. All other biochemistries are much rarer, not common enough to get their own entry on the list, and just thrown in series 7 for brevity. These organisms are extremely rare, exotic, and many live in extremely hostile conditions like the vacuum of space. One of the systems hosts a whole space-based ecosystem.

It's pretty obvious that the writers weren't chemists or biologists and the internet wasn't developed enough at the time for them to easily research whether these biochemistries held up as much as they assumed. I've put a fair amount of thought into these sorts of things and would incorporate that into my own takes.

For example, this essay on hypothetical Titanian life: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/321074597_Oxygen-Free_Biochemistry_The_Putative_CHN_Foundation_for_Exotic_Life_in_a_Hydrocarbon_World or these pages from Orion's Arm: https://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/494398e092234
Etc: https://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/aliens.php#notasweknowit http://www.xenology.info/Xeno.htm

In any case, speculative biology and evolution is such an idiosyncratic subject that I don't fault the original writers for being biased towards terrestrial standard. It's hard enough to speculate how life using our own biochemistry could evolve, much less other biochemistries.

Quote from: BadApple on August 23, 2023, 07:29:21 AM

Quote from: Aglondir on August 23, 2023, 03:30:05 AM

Quote from: BadApple on August 22, 2023, 09:43:49 PM
I would give one solid recommendation.  Don't do it "system neutral."  I would think that doing a Cepheus Engine and a Stars Without Numbers editions would sell pretty well.  I buy up a lot of Cepheus Engine stuff for myself.  You might also look at Open D6 and Black Star as OD6 has a large following and Black Star seems to be taking on a lot of the OD6 crowd.

What's OD6?

Open D6 or WEG D6

Thanks, should have caught that.

Different biochemistries are interesting but (besides the hard especulative thing), they present a serious challenge or two:

How can two different species interact when their atmosphere is poison for the other?

What is there of value in the world of one or the other for their counterpart to create conflict or commerce?

Why would we be able to communicate with them given that their tech evolved in a very different envoronment for very diferent senses?

There might be other reasons to avoid it or embrace it if you feel inclined to take up the challenge.

Exactly. Particularly in a roleplaying context it just creates additional bookkeeping if players need to separately keep track of food, atmo, etc.

IIRC it was only really used for alien animals and antagonists. The n'sss were intelligent jellyfish who had to wear suits because the pressure differential everywhere else would kill them Byford dolphin-style. The stoneburners evolved on a chlorine planet devoid of oxygen, which is what prompted their tech development into demonology.

I checked google, and apparently you can make fire in an atmosphere of chlorine, fluorine or nitrous oxide. So the statement about chlorine atmosphere being flame-retardant is factually wrong. Oxidizers by definition create fires by reacting with fuels. https://www.scienceabc.com/nature/can-fire-occur-non-oxygenated-reaction.html

The writers seem to have been confused by the use of chlorinated flame retardants. These don't use chlorine gas, they use compounds with very different properties. For comparison, human are mostly oxygen but we don't react with fuel to produce fires. Our oxygen is bound up in a ton of other molecules. https://www.flameretardantfacts.com/about-flame-retardants/not-all-flame-retardants-are-the-same/chlorine/#:~:text=However%2C%20chlorine%20also%20has%20properties,for%20furniture%2C%20and%20other%20materials.

Indeed, halogens are stronger oxidizers than oxygen. https://chem.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Analytical_Chemistry/Supplemental_Modules_%28Analytical_Chemistry%29/Electrochemistry/Redox_Chemistry/Comparing_Strengths_of_Oxidants_and_Reductants

In Gilet's worldbuilding book, and repeated by SD, he posits that chlorine would be merely tolerated while the life would prefer oxygen. But there's no reason to believe that would be the case. If there was sufficient chlorine that the biosphere could evolve to use it, then chlorine breathers would outcompete oxygen breathers because they get more energy from food pound for pound.

This applies to the plants too. Altho plants produce their own food from ambient materials, they still respire like animals in order to release the energy from it. Oxiziders are inherently reactive: they cannot exist on their own long enough to produce a breathable atmosphere without being constantly replenished by autotrophs like plants. All oxygen in our atmosphere is produced by plants splitting water: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_splitting

In actuality, the stoneburners' atmosphere would need to have large amounts of carbon dioxide or something to prevent the invention of fire. At least 30% or more. https://blog.koorsen.com/all-about-co2-fire-suppression-systems#:~:text=At%20CO2%20levels%20of%2030,concentration%20levels%20of%2050%25%20CO2.

I took some chemistry classes in school, but speculative biology and evolution goes way beyond my education.

IIRC Chlorine is also corrosive, you need special containers for it. Glass I think, so Starships made of what? Precious gems? I mean a gigantic ruby carved and shaped to become the fuselage (or maybe syntethic ruby moulded), same for the rockets to achieve orbit the first times they go into space, or you need to postulate them stumbling onto anti-grav BEFORE developing rockets.

Then there's the Commerce vs Conquest thing. The different species need a reason to do either of those, for conquest well maybe they are running out of space and need to "terraform" (not really if their atmosphere is chlorine) planets, but for commerce? I mean I can find reasons for conquest but what do earth like planets have that the chlorine guys need/want and what do they have we need/want and both species need to have about the same level of tech (mutual assured anihilation) and not be raging psychos or xenophobes to establish commerce. War is easier than peace.

It's way too much effort to speculate on what their tech would be so I'm just not gonna bother. It's carbon chauvinism for me!