Big 2300AD fan from way back in the days of Traveller:2300. Won't be picking up this version, as it's way too expensive for a PDF. Still have all of the original stuff for it anyway, but not played for years as its hard to a find a group around here (West Yorkshire in the UK) who are interested in playing old timey SF games.

Quote from: TheAsimovian on September 08, 2021, 11:59:02 AM
Big 2300AD fan from way back in the days of Traveller:2300. Won't be picking up this version, as it's way too expensive for a PDF. Still have all of the original stuff for it anyway, but not played for years as its hard to a find a group around here (West Yorkshire in the UK) who are interested in playing old timey SF games.

Greetings!

Asimovian! Welcome to the boards here!

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: TheAsimovian on September 08, 2021, 11:59:02 AM
Big 2300AD fan from way back in the days of Traveller:2300. Won't be picking up this version, as it's way too expensive for a PDF. Still have all of the original stuff for it anyway, but not played for years as its hard to a find a group around here (West Yorkshire in the UK) who are interested in playing old timey SF games.

Similar here, although I probably wouldn't try and run the original system for the setting anyway. The system was never the selling point. I remember the combat example from the 2300AD core book - I could barely follow it on the page, let alone try and run it! So many modifiers for this, that and the other.

I'd like to use BRP. There is a nice conversion doc someone worked up knocking around on my hard drive.

Quote from: Marchand on September 08, 2021, 10:34:26 PM

Quote from: TheAsimovian on September 08, 2021, 11:59:02 AM
Big 2300AD fan from way back in the days of Traveller:2300. Won't be picking up this version, as it's way too expensive for a PDF. Still have all of the original stuff for it anyway, but not played for years as its hard to a find a group around here (West Yorkshire in the UK) who are interested in playing old timey SF games.

Similar here, although I probably wouldn't try and run the original system for the setting anyway. The system was never the selling point. I remember the combat example from the 2300AD core book - I could barely follow it on the page, let alone try and run it! So many modifiers for this, that and the other.

I'd like to use BRP. There is a nice conversion doc someone worked up knocking around on my hard drive.

TBH, I just went and looked at the actual mechanics for the first time in years, and yes, perhaps not the best (must be nostalgia kicking in, as I remembered them being not that bad). BRP sounds likes a good call to replace the mechanics with. I think there was also a GURPS SF conversion floating about for ages.

Quote from: SHARK on September 08, 2021, 07:50:59 PM

Quote from: TheAsimovian on September 08, 2021, 11:59:02 AM
Big 2300AD fan from way back in the days of Traveller:2300. Won't be picking up this version, as it's way too expensive for a PDF. Still have all of the original stuff for it anyway, but not played for years as its hard to a find a group around here (West Yorkshire in the UK) who are interested in playing old timey SF games.

Greetings!

Asimovian! Welcome to the boards here!

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Thanks! Will need to contribute more!

Quote from: Marchand on September 08, 2021, 10:34:26 PM

Quote from: TheAsimovian on September 08, 2021, 11:59:02 AM
Big 2300AD fan from way back in the days of Traveller:2300. Won't be picking up this version, as it's way too expensive for a PDF. Still have all of the original stuff for it anyway, but not played for years as its hard to a find a group around here (West Yorkshire in the UK) who are interested in playing old timey SF games.

Similar here, although I probably wouldn't try and run the original system for the setting anyway. The system was never the selling point. I remember the combat example from the 2300AD core book - I could barely follow it on the page, let alone try and run it! So many modifiers for this, that and the other.

I'd like to use BRP. There is a nice conversion doc someone worked up knocking around on my hard drive.

May not be what you're looking for, but M-Space is a recently-popular BRP sci-fi ruleset.

Quote from: Marchand on September 05, 2021, 05:53:41 AMBut the package overall remains by far and away the most interesting SF setting I'm aware of. It's just a shame Mongoose production values are so poor, particularly relative to cost.

What would you say makes this setting so interesting? From what I've read it seems super generic and not much different from the vanilla Traveller setting.

I enjoyed playing the original but no way am I paying that price for a pdf however much I want to have a look at it.

2300AD is an ok setting if you are into Twilight: 2000AD's setting (where both the US and CCCP are nuked) and you are ok with the French travelling to the stars first and claiming the good stuff. Think UN in space. But worse.

Quote from: hedgehobbit on September 10, 2021, 08:42:18 AM
What would you say makes this setting so interesting? From what I've read it seems super generic and not much different from the vanilla Traveller setting.

You can definitely do your typical SF campaigns, military or technothriller (there is a transhumanist terrorist faction) or even cyberpunk back on Earth. But because of the work the designers did on the worlds and aliens, it actually supports exploration based campaigns where there are meaningful player-level puzzles to explore. Not just "I make a Science roll".

The main draw for me is the aliens. The designers made them hard-SF plausible and actually gameable. Generally each species has some biology-based factor that explains why it behaves in a puzzling / threatening way. As in thinks as well as a human, but differently. Probably the best aliens I have seen in any setting, whether RPG, film or book.

Many of the colony worlds are well detailed - to just the right level that gives them an independent character and provides built-in adventure potential. Aurore (which got its own sourcebook) and Cold Mountain in particular. The official Traveller universe did that for a handful of worlds but 99%+ of them are just bare-bones seven-digit codes that the Ref has to do the work to make vivid and interesting. Obvs the Ref still has to do some work in 2300 but the designers give you more to work with.

It's a much harder SF feel than classic Traveller - movie references would be something like Alien (1-4), Predator or Outland. Ships have spin modules for gravity. The main departure from plausibility are FTL and the number of intelligent aliens within about 50ly of Earth.

If you want a flavour, I would say pick up the original Aurore book by GDW on Drivethru for ten dollars or whatever they are charging (site won't load for some reason). Most of it is system neutral. At the worst you will have a world you could drop into Traveller or whatever that would support a campaign's worth of play.

Quote from: Shawn Driscoll on September 10, 2021, 07:42:32 PM
2300AD is an ok setting if you are into Twilight: 2000AD's setting (where both the US and CCCP are nuked) and you are ok with the French travelling to the stars first and claiming the good stuff. Think UN in space. But worse.

The setting has little to do with Twilight 2K except in that the T2K nuclear war happened 300 yrs beforehand. As a result, the main players are not the usual ones e.g. France is (just about) top dog, but is on the wane and faces pressure from rising powers like Manchuria (a successor state from part of what is now China). Mixing up the geopolitics makes it a bit fresh, I think.

If you are somehow personally offended as an American that a spacegame doesn't make future America the biggest power, then yeah, you probably won't like it.

Getting rid of America is pretty frequent trope in sci-fi minis fames. Jon Tuffly's Full Thrust, Dirtside II, and Stargrunt has them as a satellite of the New Anglians except for the free CalTex which he made when people whined about it. I think the USA collapsed into unrest and the British came in to stabilize things and eventually the people in the former USA just decided to join back up. Which is kind of weird when a HUGE population joins a middle sized one as a client. I dunno, maybe the unrest was so bad that most of the population didn't make it?

Corvus Belli's Infinity has the nascent PanOceanian power probably setting off a nano-weapon in the USA ending it as its own autonomous power and it is unclear whose weapon it was but the USA is just part of the Pan Oceanian complex with an independent remnant in a lost colony founded by Americans, Kazaks, French, and Scots on a world with valuable minerals which has a bit of a native werewolf problem probably due to Tohaa meddling in their quest to create one more warrior race to help them fight the Combined Armies of the EI. The Europeans who didn't like Pan-O went into space and formed the Nomads who are sort of the cyber punk hacker mafia and vice power. The reason the left was a hatred of the AI Aleph and its connections to the Catholic church which is a powerful and militant Pan Oceania faction.

What happened to the USA in the future is almost a mini-gamer joke. 

But an important part of how all the various nations in 2300AD ended up where they were is the fact that it wasn't arbitrary. It was the result of a complex, grand-strategic game called The Game that played out the 300 years between Twilight 2000 and 2300. That's a crucial part of both the history of the game and of the setting. The USA MIGHT have ended up as the major power, but they didn't, because of what happened in The Game. It wasn't an arbitrary decision.

Quote from: TheAsimovian on September 11, 2021, 03:01:17 AM
But an important part of how all the various nations in 2300AD ended up where they were is the fact that it wasn't arbitrary. It was the result of a complex, grand-strategic game called The Game that played out the 300 years between Twilight 2000 and 2300. That's a crucial part of both the history of the game and of the setting. The USA MIGHT have ended up as the major power, but they didn't, because of what happened in The Game. It wasn't an arbitrary decision.

Yes. Bad card dealing and diplomacy generated the time-line and setting used by 2300. Not really a writer's decision. I'm just not a fan of communist dictators somehow ending up with high-tech countries that have the means and money and know-how to travel to other stars.

Quote from: Shawn Driscoll on September 11, 2021, 02:54:39 PM

Quote from: TheAsimovian on September 11, 2021, 03:01:17 AM
But an important part of how all the various nations in 2300AD ended up where they were is the fact that it wasn't arbitrary. It was the result of a complex, grand-strategic game called The Game that played out the 300 years between Twilight 2000 and 2300. That's a crucial part of both the history of the game and of the setting. The USA MIGHT have ended up as the major power, but they didn't, because of what happened in The Game. It wasn't an arbitrary decision.

Yes. Bad card dealing and diplomacy generated the time-line and setting used by 2300. Not really a writer's decision. I'm just not a fan of communist dictators somehow ending up with high-tech countries that have the means and money and know-how to travel to other stars.

IIRC, communism has never been mentioned in 2300, not in the original or even the later versions (including 2320, the aborted T20 version). The individual nations internal political structures have never been described in detail.

Quote from: TheAsimovian on September 11, 2021, 03:01:17 AM
But an important part of how all the various nations in 2300AD ended up where they were is the fact that it wasn't arbitrary. It was the result of a complex, grand-strategic game called The Game that played out the 300 years between Twilight 2000 and 2300. That's a crucial part of both the history of the game and of the setting. The USA MIGHT have ended up as the major power, but they didn't, because of what happened in The Game. It wasn't an arbitrary decision.

Taking the setting of one game then using a second game to advance that setting by 300 years and then using the results of that game to make the setting for a third game is the most arbitrary way of making a game setting that I've ever heard of.