 March 27, 2011 - 10:56pm | I was doing some research on Gamma World today, and as I was looking through the 3rd edition Gamma World rulebook, I came across the Malthar sitting on his hover thingy on one of pages of the rulebook. So after the shock of seeing him there I started thinking of reasons why the Malthar would show up in Gamma World. Could he be hiding out there after the Dramune incident? "Hey guys I wonder what this does"-Famous last words "Hey guys, I think it's friendly." -Famous last words "You go on ahead, I'll catch up." -Famous last words "Did you here that?" -Famous last words |
 March 28, 2011 - 6:34am | The Malthar isn't a Dral as most people think, and Gamma is his homeworld. He's just visiting the nuclear ooze that gave birth to him. The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of
the strong. * Attributed to Mahatma Gandhi |
 March 29, 2011 - 2:21pm | Gamma world isn't Earth as most people assume, but was breifly featured in a Trek episode as a near-twin parallel, that sufferd an apocolyptic plauge and devastating world war, in a period that was like golden age high-tech renaissance parellel of the early 1900's, leaving few adult survivors able to understand the high-tech that was left behind. Oh humans!!  We discover a galactic community filled with multiple species of aliens, and the first thing we think about is "how can we have sex with them?".~ anymoose, somewhere on the net... so... if you square a square it becomes a cube... if you square a cube does it become an octoid? |
March 29, 2011 - 3:21pm | Going by Gamma World history between 2200-2300 there were 28 manned and unmanned missions to star systems within 20 parsec's of Sol and in 2280 the Warden the largest generation ship ledt the earth system, and was lost. This ship was supposed to have gone through a radiation cloud that caused the mutation of much of the sleepers aboard, and is known to those of us as the Generation ship in Metamorphosis Alpha. There was subsequently no other generation ships that left earth, though it is known that there was a colony on tau Ceti and there were possibly other colonies offworld that survived the Gamma World and might have had the resources to build a generation ship like the Warden, any one of which could have brought Pure Strained Humans into the Frontier sector. But that still doesn't explain how the Malthar travelled to Gamma World, and why was he smiling and lifting a glass as if to say "tadaa! Here I am!' "Hey guys I wonder what this does"-Famous last words "Hey guys, I think it's friendly." -Famous last words "You go on ahead, I'll catch up." -Famous last words "Did you here that?" -Famous last words |
March 29, 2011 - 4:40pm | I wasn't intending to offend the established timeline, I was however making a light  touch on the merging. I am sure Malthar was a wonderful character that was enjoyed by the players that established those timelines. If a full merge was intended between those timelines however, I wouldn't support it in an as is form.I am on the side of a "golden-age-rocket-sci-fi" spin off of earth, excluding the Buck-Rogers Post Apocalyptic, inserting the Space Odyssey 2001-3001 in ideal, but not the timeline. In that, I only offer a suggestion, If I were to use Malthar in a Post-Dramune Run I would keep him as an untouchable syndycate leader, and not a trans-sector interloper. The answer to the question is however likely in the retelling of one of those play-test-sessions-gone-wild, that the creators were so famous (sometimes infamous) for, and why it isn't placed directly in a timeline. Somone who worked on that game would know, wouldn't suprise me if it were considered a "touchy-subject" though, based on what I know of those games and the politics as declassified.  Also wouldn't suprise me to find out that Georgie is correct, a Dralasite can be constructed in the Gamaworld rules, but I wouldn't ever use him that way in canon SF, nor my own canon varient(s). I wouldn't have much fun, in a long-running game, where someone did. I did use a set-up similar to what I discribed though, and with those that found out what was going on, it went exceptionally well.  I considered that alternitive worth mentioning as such, maybe give someone a possability to suit their own game.Oh humans!! We discover a galactic community filled with multiple species of aliens, and the first thing we think about is "how can we have sex with them?".~ anymoose, somewhere on the net... so... if you square a square it becomes a cube... if you square a cube does it become an octoid? |
March 29, 2011 - 5:14pm | I was also making light of the situation though, but also putting in useful information. In my own campaign I have Gamma World transitioning into the Frontier, and my timeline spans over 1,000 years of Frontier history, but that's a whole nother can of worms. However the picture in Gamma World of the Malthar is just too funny to pass up. "Hey guys I wonder what this does"-Famous last words "Hey guys, I think it's friendly." -Famous last words "You go on ahead, I'll catch up." -Famous last words "Did you here that?" -Famous last words |
March 29, 2011 - 6:33pm | 1,000years...... to far for me.....  I wouldn't... couldn't..... go that far and call it by the same name.... 1,000years changes sooo much! No longer the Frontier, it's the Broken Nebula Sector, and the frontier is on the edges of eight new regions, each, yes, that much closer to another homeworld sector's own frontier..... far too much change.... cool! but sooo different!at least, thats my inital expectation based on that one short line.... and i just couldn't call that Star Frontiers anymore..... Think I'd even need to change to Alternity or something... <shudders> Bye Bye! Jet Jockson of the Rocket Roamers and Hello Acknon Novadalla of the Hyperwarp Hotel. Oh humans!! We discover a galactic community filled with multiple species of aliens, and the first thing we think about is "how can we have sex with them?".~ anymoose, somewhere on the net... so... if you square a square it becomes a cube... if you square a cube does it become an octoid? |
March 29, 2011 - 10:49pm | I used the Star Frontier's timeline as a base which covers a period from 800 years, Pre Frontier if you start from the Mechanon revolt to 111 Frontier Year as per the Zebs guide and you already have 900+ years of history. I just added 100 years and stuck in events that transpired between what I envisioned post Gamma World up to Humanity meeting the Core three races during that span of time, so the Frontier remains at it's current tech level and starting point, and Pre-Gamma World history remains largely unchanged, though I have to up the dates of things happening before the Shadow years to reflect our modern history, and moved some things around until the time line made sense to me. But fear not the Tech level of the Frontier remains the same though my Frontier is a much bigger place. I thought I'd add the link to the Time line I created. This is not the finallized version which appears in the Expanded Universe guidebook for the Star Frontiers (URS) but here it is.... http://www.starfrontiers.us/node/4323 "Hey guys I wonder what this does"-Famous last words "Hey guys, I think it's friendly." -Famous last words "You go on ahead, I'll catch up." -Famous last words "Did you here that?" -Famous last words |
March 29, 2011 - 10:50pm | Thats different then Oh humans!! We discover a galactic community filled with multiple species of aliens, and the first thing we think about is "how can we have sex with them?".~ anymoose, somewhere on the net... so... if you square a square it becomes a cube... if you square a cube does it become an octoid? |
March 29, 2011 - 11:10pm | A long long time from now, I once grabed every timeline off the net that delt with Star Frontiers, everything there was on earth from Buck-rogers and Battlestar Galactica to Cyberpunk and Cyberspace Back around to Aftermath and Tenagers From Outer Space , and folded it into a single package with great effort and many broken shoehorns, I finnaly sanded the edges to a polished sheen......... then my computer crashed, and I had a heart attack....... the peices were lost to the cold blue flames of hades...... and eaten by Yog Sothoth..... scattered to the time-stream. Oh humans!! We discover a galactic community filled with multiple species of aliens, and the first thing we think about is "how can we have sex with them?".~ anymoose, somewhere on the net... so... if you square a square it becomes a cube... if you square a cube does it become an octoid? |
March 29, 2011 - 11:42pm | I know the feeling. Over the years since I started gaming I've gone through reams of material I've created for every game I've ever played because I can't play a game without tweaking it until it barely resembles what it was originally. Of course through many unfortunate accidents I've lost everything several times, and had to start from scratch. But now that I don't have an active gaming group I've finally gotten a huge collection of new material that I've been diligently cranking out in the hopes of either one day using it, or seeing other's use it. As for the Malthar, he is an iconic Star Frontiers character as we all know, which is why seing his image used to prominantly on a product that was not Star Frontier's was shocking. Of course during that period I think Star Frontier's was in its final days and the Star Frontier's characters were scattered into other products (Like the core three appearing in Spelljammer) showed that the characters were too good to be forgotten. Hell given time they might have ended up in Alternity, and they even were recreated for D20 Future. But the real shame is that TSR's miss-management of the Star Frontier's franchise (but we don't have to go into that) allowed a great system to disappear, but their loss is our gain as the things the community has done on this site and other sites can attest to. Star Frontiers continues to endure and flourish where other Sci-Fi games have become nothing more than footnotes in Gaming history. "Hey guys I wonder what this does"-Famous last words "Hey guys, I think it's friendly." -Famous last words "You go on ahead, I'll catch up." -Famous last words "Did you here that?" -Famous last words |
March 30, 2011 - 12:06am | Indeed, there were some stories I heard in the retelling from some of those games, where an entire starship from starfrontiers and an Illithid ship from spelljammer crossed back and forth a few times in a long run cat and mouse-game......... and now that I think about it, Malthar was mentioned as well as Gamma World..... the nutty things that we do in the games when it seemd so practical at the time.  ...might have thought it fun, and pulled it on my players when I was 15...  but it seems absolutly ludicrous to me now.... In fact I have used the Squidies as an enigmatic dying precursor in some of my notes, but never really considered it prudent to use them 'as is', had to take pains to redress them into a technocracy, and describe them in ways so it was not so obvious, and wane thier dying psi abilities into gaget-reliance.... etc... Dragon Mag already issued offical re-vamed core fours for Alternity, and attributed them to spelljamer.... the Dral were skiped untill someone pointed out the mistake, and it was sort of slowly updated. I like Alternity alot, but it has a far different feel for me... it seems to favor 1950's to 1990's sci-fi, and throws off the Atomic-Rocket Jocky Jones era without even a glance in appreciation for the legends. Oh humans!! We discover a galactic community filled with multiple species of aliens, and the first thing we think about is "how can we have sex with them?".~ anymoose, somewhere on the net... so... if you square a square it becomes a cube... if you square a cube does it become an octoid? |
March 30, 2011 - 12:09am | I've always thought that the Illithid would have been great Star Frontiers enemy, and *looks over shoulder before whispering* there's rumors that they actually exist somewhere beyond the Badlands just waiting to be discovered. "Hey guys I wonder what this does"-Famous last words "Hey guys, I think it's friendly." -Famous last words "You go on ahead, I'll catch up." -Famous last words "Did you here that?" -Famous last words |
March 30, 2011 - 12:41am | Going the other way with Alternity, the T'sa , Sesheyan, and Ul-Mor are worth a look for thier cosmetic similarity to the established core four.... they would look at home next to even an extended family reunion picture of the canon races. Any of them could be an enigmatic viliany. Oh humans!! We discover a galactic community filled with multiple species of aliens, and the first thing we think about is "how can we have sex with them?".~ anymoose, somewhere on the net... so... if you square a square it becomes a cube... if you square a cube does it become an octoid? |
March 30, 2011 - 12:53am | The expanded Frontier of the URS has a place for the Alternity races and many other races besides. I think there are over 50 races in the known Frontier and I won't begin to count all the races that exist beyond the Frontier, but there are a whole lot of life out there waiting to be discovered, some good, some decidedly evil, and some that are just strange. "Hey guys I wonder what this does"-Famous last words "Hey guys, I think it's friendly." -Famous last words "You go on ahead, I'll catch up." -Famous last words "Did you here that?" -Famous last words |
