 April 25, 2008 - 10:25am | Are any of the original authors, developers, of Star Frontiers involved on this site. If I recall Douglas Niles was really a big developer/author for TSR. Is anyone in contact with any of these folks from this site? It sure would be helpful to get there original idea on what was intended by some of the rules they developed especially for KH. |
 April 25, 2008 - 10:55am | I think some of them hang out of at http://starfrontiers.org/ FYI, Corjay interviewed Steve Winter (see Star Frontiersman Issue 7) |
 April 25, 2008 - 11:58am | Tom Moldvay is, tragically, deceased. Of all the people behind Star Frontiers, I admire his work the most. He wrote the Volturnus Series, which could very well be the best series of modules for any game, ever. (Except for that damn Lake of Fire in Part 1 where half the party falls in the lava and the fact there is no ammo until the Pirate Outpost in part 2...) |
 April 25, 2008 - 1:44pm | My solution to the ammo problem of part 1 was to have the party come across another 'lifeboat', except the lifeboat crashed and is full of bodies... gruesome, but the party would scavenge through the wreckage... I also gave some xp for taking the time to bury dead.... ...oh and I agree, that Volturnus is a true classic series of modules. It is my SF counterpart to D&D classics such as Against the Giants or Keep on the Borderlands. <insert witty comment here> |
April 25, 2008 - 3:13pm | Actually what I did, Smoot is several things: I let them find 20 "laser rifle" clips in the Serena's cargo hold, rather than 10 - and had them find them automatically. I let them loot all of the extra survival packs in the lifeboat, rather than have the thing suddenly blow up. (I just made the lifeboat completely useless, rather than blown up. The PCs got the hint and moved on.) I put 10 gyrojet pistol clips in the Serena's cargo hold - again, found automatically. And finally, I had the mushroom-stoned pirate charge into melee with his rifle - keeping his precious 50 SEU in his power beltpack intact. And even with ALL OF THAT - they still had to melee some of the pirates at the outpost! I ran the series at least 3 times, and I never had a party get to the outpost with more than 20 SEU per blaster in the party - and 8 or 9 of those jetclips expended. Moldvay dreadfully underestimated the amount of ordnance needed in his masterpiece. But hey - that's what reffing is all about. Making adjustments. |
April 26, 2008 - 7:55am | I guess we are a little off-topic but I guess my PCs had advance knowledge that a good portion of the adventure depended on 'low-tech' and survival skills... thus several had taken Melee skill, not needing so much ammo until later in the game. As 'good' weapons became available, the characters only then started to pick up skill levels in those weapons. Back on topic, has anyone specifically asked any of the early designers to write anything for the Star Frontiersman mag? <insert witty comment here> |
 April 26, 2008 - 2:47pm | I guess we are a little off-topic but I guess my PCs had advance knowledge that a good portion of the adventure depended on 'low-tech' and survival skills... thus several had taken Melee skill, not needing so much ammo until later in the game. As 'good' weapons became available, the characters only then started to pick up skill levels in those weapons. It has been decades since I ran that thing... but as I recall, that's the way my players went. Coming from AD&D they didn't much mind the melee (though that aspect of the game is under developed.) Weapons were kind of like "rods, staffs, and wands" in that they had limited use... while melee was always there. I seem to remember the stinginess of tech being one of the charms of the module. |
