STAR FRONTIERS is baaaaack!

STAR FRONTIERS was TSR's RPG science fiction entry in 1982. &nbsp;It was a game of settled and unexplored planets, initially with no spaceship rules. &nbsp;The initial box was later called Alpha Dawn . Spaceship rules came out as a box called&nbsp; KNIGHT HAWKS . &nbsp;Finally, ZEBULON'S GUIDE TO THE FRONTIER was a perfectbound book with a rules revamp (using a color-coded Action Table which was a mid-80's fad that TSR also used for GAMMA WORLD and MARVEL SUPER-HEROES RPGs, but I believe originally invented by ex-TSR staff who formed Pacesetter Inc.). The game uses only 10-sided dice (and the occasional 1d5 derived from a d10). &nbsp;All skill rolls are d100 percentiles (01 best, 00 worst) and so the odds are easy to grasp. A fan named Bill Logan re-edited the books, adventure modules and also offers the maps and counters. &nbsp;It is all available as free .pdf files. &nbsp;The books, adventures, and his slick STAR FRONTIERSMAN magazine can also be ordered in print form for a mild cost on the print-on-demand site lulu.com . <a href="http://starfrontiersman.com/downloads/remastered" rel="nofollow">http://starfrontiersman.com/downloads/remastered</a> It is still my favourite game because: --It has a fast combat system incorporating melee weapons, ranged weapons, vehicle combat and destruction, and aerial combat and destruction on the same scale (6-second combat turns, scales of 1" = 2 m or for vehicles 1" = 5 m.) &nbsp;Also a touch of rules for wrestling and martial arts. --It has extensive notes for the beginner game master (they called it a "referee") on designing and running a game. &nbsp;And in the 80's we were all beginners. &nbsp;The lessons I learned have stuck with me and maximize my fun to this day. Enjoy!

+1

So, Pierre will be running this, yes? &nbsp; **grins hopefully**

I dunno, Chris! &nbsp;I must learn this Roll20 stuff first, and then look over the old handwritten binder. &nbsp;Not everything I wrote as a young university man 30 years ago may appeal to me now. &nbsp;Things will be reworked. &nbsp;But stick around. I'd also like to see about getting an on-screen spreadsheet to calculate the Melee and Ranged Attack Modifiers. &nbsp;You would go along selecting radio buttons, stick half your DEX score plus 10% per Level of Weapon Skill for Ranged attacks, or either half your DEX or STR score plus 10% per Level of Weapon Skill for Melee attacks: &nbsp;stick that on top, punch buttons for the other modifiers down the list and the percentage chance pops out at the bottom. &nbsp;Excel spreadsheets can be saved as a web-page useable spreadsheet even if someone doesn't have Excel. FYI there is a long-standing typo in the rules. &nbsp;TSR told me in a letter that the speed of an attacker's vehicle and a target's vehicle should be equally bad to throw off aim. &nbsp;So it should have been Attacker in Slow Vehicle &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; -10% Attacker in Fast Vehicle &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; -20% Target in Slow Vehicle &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;-10% Target in Fast Vehicle &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;-20% The modifiers are cumulative (exception: &nbsp;no modifier if vehicles are moving DIRECTLY toward or away from each other), and Fast is anything faster than 150 meters per turn (90 km/h), ground or aerial. I would do the combat Alpha Dawn style with % rolls rather than Zebulon's Guide with the colour-coded Action Table. &nbsp;The system was already fast enough. &nbsp;I once ran player-characters against 8 or 9 pirates, aided by 40 melee-ing Kurabanda in a Volturnus adventure module -- without going nuts.

(cross-posted) Hey, this Roll20 works much easier than I thought!&nbsp; For STAR FRONTIERS I uploaded and properly gridded several of the generic maps in the original box and saved them, and they look colourful and simply great!&nbsp; The large Port Loren city map I could not transfer, though; it keeps cutting off almost all the right half of it (63 x 42 squares is the original size.) I haven't found images of the original counters, where they provided many half-inch counters in the original box.&nbsp; If I do it will be easy to make classic counters into tokens. If you stick the "Initiative Modifier" (IM) in the Characteristics column of a character sheet, you can easily make an Initiative Ability to roll for Initiative.&nbsp; Every player will have this as a roll, and should also set up what their particular weapon damage-rolls will be as Abilities.&nbsp; For most melee weapons, you can add the Punching Score (PS) to damage.&nbsp; Examples: Initiative&nbsp;&nbsp; /r 1d10+@{IM } Automatic_Rifle_(burst)&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; /r 5d10 Vibroknife&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; /r 1d10+@{PS } Players should wait to choose&nbsp;either a pre-generated character sheet from a set I will provide, or generate their own starting characters from an unfilled template I will also provide. &nbsp;