 January 30, 2025 - 1:16pm | In my explanation of the intro doc for my setting, I mentioned that my plan was to incorporate a ton of stuff from OTHER sci-fi into the Beta Dusk universe. Basically my head is an attic full of nerdy toys, and I wanted to get as many out to play with as would fit nicely in SF... When I was a kid I would frequently supplement the ranks of my Star Wars toys with G.I. Joe figures, random Crystar guys, the odd Battlestar Galactica figure...I guess this is the same mentality? I know there are people out there who loathe mash-ups; this definitely would not have been your jam if that's you. :) I found a site where a guy had added Knight Rider to HIS SF game—that's a bit over the line even for me, but hey! His game, right? Have fun how you have fun! :) The earliest intent was to bring in the Eagle from Space: 1999 because I have always loved that design. As utterly ridiculous as the 'sci' part of 1999's ''sci-fi' was on a regular basis, the equipment and set designs never failed to impress me and the Eagle was the pinnacle. So it was going to be my orbital/low-gravity workhorse for moving stuff between moons/ships/stations. It wouldn't have the capability it did on the show (no going from surface to orbit, for example—it's not designed for atmospheric flight), but it would be there in a way that fit within the SF framework. And like I mentioned, having the full plans for Moonbase Alpha meant I was probably going to be using a disguised version of the base as a location as well. I don't know that any of my target audience has ever even watched 1999, so maybe none of them would have even known what any of that stuff was! :) My plan for surface-to-orbit heavy transport was Thunderbird 2. :) It was going to be the C-130 of my universe...an older design, but EVERYWHERE because it's useful as hell, versatile, and dependable (and LOOKS like it could fly in atmosphere). :) Having decided to pull THAT in broke the floodgates open... I realized I had all this STUFF available to me that I wasn't doing anything with...why not decorate my universe with whatever I could? Again, I thought old-school phasers would be a great stand-in for an electrostunner. I've got an old weapons technical manual from the Noron Group with beautiful line art of weapons and equipment from Trek, Logan's Run, BSG, and others, and those designs would be perfect to use for various weapons in my world, so all that stuff was going in. I mentioned the X-Wing as well... The front cover for Warriors of White Light shows a ship...maybe it's supposed to be the nose of an assault scout? But it always looked X-Wing-inspired to me and that's another design I've always loved to look at. It's got a look like an F-4 Phantom or an A-10...so ugly that it becomes gorgeous! It just looks MEAN. So I planned on bringing them in as a pre-Sathar War, human-designed fighter that players might see in the background...not the frontline model anywhere, mind you, but still in service in some corners of the Frontier. A running theme for all this stuff I would bring in is that none of it would be as capable in SF as it is in its home universe, so no hyperdrive, proton torpedoes, etc... Just a fighter, it would get brought down to KH standards (and probably pretty weak at that, as it's supposed to be an older warbird, not a current top-of-the-line model). And no one would call it an X-Wing! It'd just be one of those old T-65s! ;) You can't have X-Wings without astromech droids, so R2 was getting a free pass also...again, reduced from his former glory to fit in with SF. Not a hero of the Rebellion, just a robot. But that's another great design, so you'd see SW-style maintenance robots all over the place in my universe. Another of my favorite robot designs is the ag drones from Silent Running, those were in as well! LOL |
January 30, 2025 - 1:50pm | I also mentioned the Pulse Rifle from ALIENS...I had gotten as far as starting illustration work on it and figuring out stats... It was going to be a weapon used for surface ops by my UPF Marines (in my universe, you don't use weapons with penetrating power like lasers or armor piercing projectiles on ships/stations where you care at all about the people on-board or about reusing the real estate after boarding ops are over...needlers, shotguns, stunners, etc. that are less likely to result in pressure loss/excessive damage are what get used inside vessels). And the ALIENS Technical Manual described a variant of the seen-on-screen version of the M41A, called the M41AE2, with a longer barrel and no grenade launcher (bipod instead)... I figured since I had the heavy lifting done with the original design, I would go ahead and draw up the 'E2 as well (variety is the spice of life!) and add it.  ALIENS fans who are twitching at the ammo counters being the wrong color, take note: since Vrusk don't see red, in my universe these have green ammo displays. ;) [I even considered that you could loosen the screws on the panel and underneath there'd be a switch for changing the display color, but default is green for UPF Marine use] |
January 30, 2025 - 3:10pm | Not all of my imports were going to be strictly sci-fi... A real-world gun I've always found fascinating (and apparently, I've learned, a BUNCH of other people have as well) is the near-mythical Pancor Jackhammer. It's a bullpup style, fully-automatic, drum-fed assault shotgun, and the drum can be converted into a reusable landmine. Only three were ever made and the 2nd and 3rd were destroyed, leaving only the prototype model in existence (it apparently sold at auction in 2019, not sure what it went for). Anyway, this thing certainly LOOKS sci-fi enough, and I figured why not??? Illustration started, but not ever finished...  |
January 31, 2025 - 6:40am | To continue on with my borrowed stuff... This is one is a bit weird (I guess even for me...?), and I'll have to spiral into it: When the book covers robot body types, it mentions anthropomorphic as 'bodies that look like one of the four major species' [well, it says 'races' in the original text, but I subbed in 'species' everywhere in my text because it sounds more science-y and less 'jackass in a white sheet']... In my universe, humans are really the only species who build robots that like look them. Yazirians mostly DON'T build robots at all (but when they do, they're industrial-type 'bots made for specific tasks like you might see in a factory), Vrusk build robots that most definitely have insectoid characteristics, but don't necessarily look like Vrusk themselves, and Dralasites build some weird stuff... But! When you see Dralasites drawn, they're mostly drawn with three legs and I ran with that, and postulated that when they build machines that WALK, those machines would ALSO be three-legged. Hmmm...three-legged walking machines... So a bit of trivia in the BD universe (that the players may not have ever had any reason at all to have ever discovered/been aware of and certainly that no one living there is) was that The Great Meeting was actually NOT the first time that Dralasites and Humans encountered one another... Several hundred years before, Dralasites had experienced a period of intense technological development AND turmoil on their homeworld during a time when they weren't as humorous and philosophical as the ones we know today. At the close of that time of strife, a ship full of exiled, warlike outcasts fled the planet, having failed to dominate their world (shades of Khan, no...?). This is well before the miracle of the Void had been discovered, so they relied on cryo beds and planned on a looooooong journey to get anywhere (and really weren't sure WHERE they were headed, but they weren't welcome at home anymore, so...). Things went awry when a system failure caused their engines to far exceed normal rated output, resulting in the deaths of the 'awake' crew and pushing the ship—accidentally and uncontrollably—into Void space for an unprecedented First Jump that the 'sleeping' crew weren't even aware of. With ship's systems in disarray and no one at the wheel, the ship tumbled through space before the engines burnt out, allowing the ship to drop back into normal space. It hurled along still at fairly enormous velocity until, over years, it slowed enough from extremely lucky passes by large bodies of gravity and collisions with stellar objects that, when it finally impacted on the fourth planet of an unknown system, a small number of the crew and some of their equipment actually survived the crash! All was NOT well, however, as this world they had inexplicably ended up on (no one awake to explain, no computer working to provide any detail for the situation) wasn't habitable and the clock was ticking. There was one hope: with what could be salvaged from the wreckage, they could rig a launcher that could propel some of their crew and machines to the THIRD planet, which looked like it could sustain life. The first test was a success... The trip there was grueling for the single Dralasite chosen, atmospheric entry was unbearable and suffocating, and when it finally unsealed the travel tube—COOL AIR—it found disgusting, unsettling THINGS crawling around the crash site. Awkward, primitive, sticklike limbs...unchanging. HIDEOUS! It radioed back to the survivors and communicated what it had seen so far of this INHABITED world; the orders that came back were unambiguous: Get your machine up and start wiping them out. We're already launching the next tube. Ultimately the crash survivors are able to launch only a half-dozen or so cylinders before the launcher itself fails and annihilates the crash site, the wreckage, and the remaining survivors completely. Already weakened by radiation, hunger, stress, and shock from the journey and subsequent mishap, the ones who made it to the third planet of the system succumb to an unknown illness and perish after wreaking havoc on the utterly unprepared Humans they had unwittingly invaded. The government of the nation state which bore the brunt of the invasion decides that Humanity is not ready to face the implications of what has happened. The incident becomes the greatest cover-up of Human history; vocal witnesses are silenced, survivors die off, evidence is destroyed. After decades of mostly fruitless study of the machines left when the invaders die, they're dumped into the ocean, and the whole thing becomes a legend, fiction! War of the Worlds has always fascinated me. John Christopher's Tripods books are favorites as well—think WotW, but they won—and the books were loosely adapted into a flawed but enjoyable BBC TV series (The Tripods) in the early 80s. I had planned on using the walker design from the show as a Dralasite machine for something at some point and then the idea just fell together. |
January 31, 2025 - 6:52am | Quick recap for anyone trying to keep score, the ingredient list so far for my Beta Dusk casserole: Space: 1999 Star Wars Star Trek (The Original Series) Thunderbirds ALIEN/ALIENS Silent Running a bit of obscure real-life weaponry and War of the Worlds + The Tripods (with a sprinkling of "Space Seed" from ST:TOS) Stay tuned, it's going to...get weirder? Stay as weird? I dunno, I can't gauge this stuff! LOL But there's more! |
January 31, 2025 - 7:19am | I had mentioned not having developed Star Law very far...I DID have a direction I in which I was headed. I'm not sure why, but it clicked into place for me that a Star Law agent's personal craft should be the Thunder Fighter from the Buck Rogers TV series... It's a fine design and comes in two models: a two-seater (the one you see most often on the show) and a four-seater version, which I felt gave it some flexibility for use as a 'squad car' kind of vehicle. I jumped from there to deciding that the 'desk job' personnel in Star Law would wear a uniform based on the white Earth Defense Directorate one Buck wears in most of season 1. Agents though... In my setting, a Star Law Ranger is the absolute highest form of law enforcement there is on the Frontier. There are very few people in the UPF with the power to reign these guys in, UPF military assets are at their disposal, they have TREMENDOUS authority and act autonomously. They are the law. So, hell yes, a Star Law Ranger is going to look like Judge Dredd. [Raise your hand if you had a Buck Rogers/Judge Dredd mashup on your bingo card (everyone put your hands down)] ;) Dredd is so grim and brutal; Buck Rogers was so campy and fun...there's something delightful to me in making a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup out of those two insanely different things, but—at least in my head—it works fantastically and fits seamlessly against the SF backdrop. <shrugging> I am, quite possibly, completely bonkers...? Also getting pulled in from the 25th Century was the Twiki robot design, which you would see in my world as a service robot in shops, hotels, casinos, etc... The show was ridiculous (I still loved it), but had a ton of great designs, costumes, etc., so I'm sure more was going to end up getting pulled in [in fact, I already had an adventure idea based on a BR episode that mashes BR, ST:TNG (Ferengi!), Dracula/Nosferatu, and Palladium Books' Rifts (Vampire-overrun Mexico!)]. |
