first game

giogionis's picture
giogionis
April 6, 2017 - 11:03pm
well im a fanboy of tsr and being a dm i must say what a great game this one is today i started my campaing with my friends and it was a blast the faced a planetary invasion and had to leave the planet after some crash and an encounter and bribing with the law 2 workers of a farm a ship and lots of adventure waiting for them :) 
Comments:

JCab747's picture
JCab747
April 7, 2017 - 6:39am
I was first introduced into role playing by a friend who bought Gamma World. Then another got AD&D.

I picked up Star Frontiers along the way.
Joe Cabadas

Shadow Shack's picture
Shadow Shack
April 7, 2017 - 6:48am
I might have been the first in my D&D group to pick up SF, which would have been rather odd considering one of the kids we played with was well-to-do/spoiled and a big Star Wars nut who had the tendency to get all the hot new toys first. I just remember we all ended up getting it within the same week without consulting each other about it. ;)
I'm not overly fond of Zeb's Guide...nor do I have any qualms stating why. Tongue out

My SF website

JCab747's picture
JCab747
April 7, 2017 - 9:54am
Shadow Shack wrote:
I might have been the first in my D&D group to pick up SF, which would have been rather odd considering one of the kids we played with was well-to-do/spoiled and a big Star Wars nut who had the tendency to get all the hot new toys first. I just remember we all ended up getting it within the same week without consulting each other about it. ;)

And you all learned about the Sathar's "secret" hypnosis ability off the bat.
Joe Cabadas

giogionis's picture
giogionis
April 7, 2017 - 9:55am
right now with my friends we are playing dnd 5e its great but too easy imo, marvel faserip :) and star frontiers if you ask Conan whats best in life im pretty sure his answer will be TSR GAMES :) oh and also casual games of Knights of Camelot by tsr as well.

giogionis's picture
giogionis
April 7, 2017 - 9:57am
if only my friends were on that lane man i wish i could play a game of gamma world with them but they are not wasteland enough for that.

Shadow Shack's picture
Shadow Shack
April 7, 2017 - 6:36pm
JCab747 wrote:
And you all learned about the Sathar's "secret" hypnosis ability off the bat.

Yep, which is why we gravitated towards pirates as the mainstay baddies. We each basically created our own pirate bands beyond the canon Star Devils to torment each other with. All in all we ended up with six additional piracy rings (plus the Star Devils) and before we knew it we were portraying our PCs as pirates usurping UPF civilians.
I'm not overly fond of Zeb's Guide...nor do I have any qualms stating why. Tongue out

My SF website

KRingway's picture
KRingway
April 8, 2017 - 10:07am
My brother and I pooled our money to buy SF in 1985, possibly '84. Before that, we'd only player AD&D at school, but none of us had any of the rulebooks. I think our buying SF meant that we were the first people in our RPG group who actually bought an RPG! We were between the ages of 12-15 and thus rarely had enough money to spend on RPG stuff.

We took turns running games, although for most of the time I was the referee. I don't recall the Sathar secret being much of an issue. I may have simply made up something else instead, and any player that thought they knew about the 'secret' may at some point have discovered it was flawed intelligence data Cool

We played regularly from '85 to '89, using a mixture of TSR modules and homebrew adventures. We started playing again in 2015, using a mixture of AD and Zeb's, and it went really well. There's a short thread about it here: http://www.starfrontiers.us/node/8697

jedion357's picture
jedion357
April 14, 2017 - 7:18pm
For me the first game of Car Wars stands out. I ran an arena deul for two friends. Point of the game was to kill the other car but Thad had his character get out of his car and shoot the other unconscious driver in the head. That shocked me. 
I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers!

JCab747's picture
JCab747
April 15, 2017 - 6:18am
jedion357 wrote:
For me the first game of Car Wars stands out. I ran an arena deul for two friends. Point of the game was to kill the other car but Thad had his character get out of his car and shoot the other unconscious driver in the head. That shocked me. 

Grusome.
Joe Cabadas

Tchklinxa's picture
Tchklinxa
April 26, 2017 - 6:41pm
giogionis wrote:
right now with my friends we are playing dnd 5e its great but too easy imo, marvel faserip :) and star frontiers if you ask Conan whats best in life im pretty sure his answer will be TSR GAMES :) oh and also casual games of Knights of Camelot by tsr as well.

My 3 favorites will always be D&D, GW and SF. 

So far 5E is fun but I am worried it is too easy also... and I will be discussing this with the players, grant you it is the first learning adventure for everyone including me so some of it is me learning on the fly and not trying to over complicate it for us all, but I have discussed some thoughts I have had from DMing so far with hubby (he is a player) and even he agrees some actions take longer than 6 seconds. So tweaks are coming along with introducing the players to concepts like patrols, wandering monsters & yes you need to sleep & eat & find water make fire and so on... but 2 players are complete new folks to RPG like D&D so like I said teaching... right now focussed on combat, healing, trying out their PCs abilities and so on. Next adventure will be more difficult and require interaction with NPCs beyond "kill it!" They have to finnish the Goblin Cave and hopefully rescue Sulu... (I renamed the NPCs to reflect our Star Trek leanings and the fact the setting has been changed to Oriental Adventures basically with a wild west feel). The village in the box set will be getting a make over and people are collecting Mc Donalds Smurf houses for the village... LOL we will need to make some proper buildings but oddly the scale is not off with those smurf houses. Make do with what you got. There will be coach company that has a stop in the town, cause I got a Wells Fargo Stagecoach maybe that will come from the Yang lands which are more Western... to our no man's land of Barter Town on the edge of Kohm civilizied lands and Yang lands not really under any kingdom's protection...

Yes I am considering allowing as part of the backstory a magic plague released by powerful wizards form both sides that devistated civilization... but no one got the upper hand, just it wiped out a lot of peoples, knowledge was lost, the wilds took over with strange creatures and no sane kingdom wants magic plague again. 

Wink






 "Never fire a laser at a mirror."

jedion357's picture
jedion357
April 27, 2017 - 5:59pm
I've really liked Stars Without Number which is best described as Basic/Expert D&D converted to a sci fi setting. I was just wondering if you converted it back to fantasy but kept the character creation style/rules if it wouldn't be a worthy successor to B/X?
I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers!

KRingway's picture
KRingway
April 28, 2017 - 12:59am
jedion357 wrote:
I've really liked Stars Without Number which is best described as Basic/Expert D&D converted to a sci fi setting. I was just wondering if you converted it back to fantasy but kept the character creation style/rules if it wouldn't be a worthy successor to B/X?


I've not tried it, but do like the 'White Star' RPG, which runs along similar lines. Also, Paizo are going to launch a sci-fi version of Pathfinder called 'Starfinder', and one wonders what that will be like. A version of D&D in space I guess.

Tchklinxa's picture
Tchklinxa
April 28, 2017 - 5:28pm
Well I read some of Pathfinders planet history and part of is the crashed spaceship theme on the planet.
 "Never fire a laser at a mirror."

jedion357's picture
jedion357
April 29, 2017 - 4:55am
To be honest, I soured on D&D with the frustrations of such a slow play system as 3.5, tried 4.0 which wasn't a big improvement havent looked at the new one whatever they're calling it. I've not like D20 modern when I brushed up against it.

So I was greatly surprised when I got the free version of the Stars Without Number rules and was captivated by it. And its a D20 system!

And BTW the free version of SWoN has everything you need to play except robots, AI and some gamemaster tools so its ideal if one person buys the book and the rest of the group just gets the free download. Skyward Steel is the KHs rules for SWoN and its a great resource to own and read even if you are not going to play it- good advice and ideas for running a navel campaign.

I would mate SWoN with the setting from Battle Beyond the Stars movie. The movie fits easily into the canned SWoN setting which is a very pliable sandbox setting anyway.
I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers!

ExileInParadise's picture
ExileInParadise
April 29, 2017 - 10:58am
@jedion357 I'd have to second your view of Stars Without Number. My intro to it was the Hardlight module - which was a pretty class act of an adventure setting packed with hooks. I'd love love love to be able to convert it to Star Frontiers as an example one-off module to drop into one of the empty systems of the Frontier map. Of course, I just only thought of that as you mentioned SWoN here.

jedion357's picture
jedion357
April 29, 2017 - 8:08pm
ExileInParadise wrote:
@jedion357 I'd have to second your view of Stars Without Number. My intro to it was the Hardlight module - which was a pretty class act of an adventure setting packed with hooks. I'd love love love to be able to convert it to Star Frontiers as an example one-off module to drop into one of the empty systems of the Frontier map. Of course, I just only thought of that as you mentioned SWoN here.


i wrote a few conversion articles in the SFman for it
I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers!

Tchklinxa's picture
Tchklinxa
April 29, 2017 - 9:30pm
Well it looks like they have tried to speed up  D&D but I am still muddling through the changes and some are really hard to wrap the mind around.... one is healing rates are faster. You don't die at 0 per say. Oh and you get 3 saving throws before dying.... as we play we will see how it compares to various versions. 

 "Never fire a laser at a mirror."

Shadow Shack's picture
Shadow Shack
April 30, 2017 - 7:23am
Tchklinxa wrote:
You don't die at 0 per say.

Wasn't that in AD&D as well? IIRC the "death at -10" rule hailed from 1e.
I'm not overly fond of Zeb's Guide...nor do I have any qualms stating why. Tongue out

My SF website

JCab747's picture
JCab747
May 3, 2017 - 1:37pm
Tchklinxa wrote:
Well it looks like they have tried to speed up  D&D but I am still muddling through the changes and some are really hard to wrap the mind around.... one is healing rates are faster. You don't die at 0 per say. Oh and you get 3 saving throws before dying.... as we play we will see how it compares to various versions. 



Brings to mind a Monty Python movie.

Image result for monty python holy grail i'm not dead yet
Joe Cabadas

JCab747's picture
JCab747
May 21, 2017 - 6:14pm
Image result for monty python holy grail merely a flesh wound
Joe Cabadas

Stormcrow's picture
Stormcrow
May 5, 2017 - 8:05am
jedion357 wrote:
To be honest, I soured on D&D with the frustrations of such a slow play system as 3.5, tried 4.0 which wasn't a big improvement havent looked at the new one whatever they're calling it. I've not like D20 modern when I brushed up against it.

You're playing the wrong versions.

Dungeons & Dragons if can figure it all out yourself.
Basic Dungeons & Dragons and Expert Dungeons & Dragons if you want the rules spelled out neatly for you.

Now that they're legally and cheaply available, there's no reason not to go back to them.

Shadow Shack's picture
Shadow Shack
May 5, 2017 - 6:01pm
Stormcrow wrote:
Basic Dungeons & Dragons and Expert Dungeons & Dragons if you want the rules spelled out neatly for you.

Now that they're legally and cheaply available, there's no reason not to go back to them.

I never left them.

Well, only to play Star Frontiers that is...
I'm not overly fond of Zeb's Guide...nor do I have any qualms stating why. Tongue out

My SF website

Tchklinxa's picture
Tchklinxa
May 21, 2017 - 11:01am
Well the games have been interesting... lol. Most of the experienced players are like are you sure? Becuase they are all we are hosed, what were not hosed? But we are talking 1970-80 players. Meanwhile the DM is wondering what the hell WOTC was thinking in several side adventures give me exp rewards for the PCs killing everything but no stats for the Bad Boss in the module and on premade modules this is not what I am used to at all and last session had no time to realize that before the game. Some of these bad guys should be a TPK if annoyed... like if the PCs kill all his minions is it really realistic that he would not attack them but instead be all hey that's cool, or what if the PCs are stupid and attack something they should not... I mean as a group we hit the computers, cell phones, and pads to try and hash out stats as I don't have all the books yet, just to have a clue what these bad boss guys might look at if WOTC had bothered to include how deadly they are... good thing so far the group has not been to stupid since their first ass kicking. 5e is faster, I never played the 4e or 3.5e stuff but when compaired to OD&D it is less deadly in my oppinion. I will probably have one night where we do one quicky lets all die the old school way just to show the new to RPG folks how different the OD&D is from 5E. 






 "Never fire a laser at a mirror."