Chthonian Stars and Traveller, not totally dead

Wildfire has finally made the announcement on the future of Chthonian Stars and it is not a total loss for those of us who looked forward to the game being available for the Traveller rule system.

Chthonian Stars Set For Release!

Fans have been eagerly awaiting the release of Chthonian Stars: the Cthulhu Saga I, an original Lovecraftian sci-fi/horror setting for the classic Traveller roleplaying game. This project was to be published by Mongoose Publishing, though developed by WildFire, the team that created the award-winning CthulhuTech. Over the last month, these two companies have agreed to part ways.

There's good news for Traveller fans, however, as WildFire will be releasing both the Chthonian Stars Core Setting and the Horrors of the Void monster books as PDF's on DriveThru RPG – with the option for physical copies through OneBookShelf's new print-on-demand program. The Core Setting is scheduled to be released in April 2011, as originally planned, with Horrors of the Void following in June 2011.

On the other hand, WildFire will be taking Chthonian Stars in its own new direction, starting in June 2011. Through their partnership with Sandstorm Productions, WildFire will be re-tooling the product for proprietary release. The brand new Chthonian Stars will likely see a name change, and be home to a brand new system. The entire product will have a focus on accessibility, making it easy for new players to pick up and play the game.

The new Chthonian Stars Core Book will be available as a complete roleplaying book in June 2011, through standard distribution and retail. The revised Horrors of the Void monster book will be available as the first supplement in September. The rest of the line will follow in 2012, starting in January.

Details about these books final sizes, page counts, and price points will be available as they are solicited.

The pdf releases of the core book and the first supplement are welcome concessions to us Traveller fans. Beyond that, there is no mention of Framewerk, so I will give the game a look. Hopefully, they will use a system I am already familiar with, but if it's FATE or Savage Worlds, I'll have to give it a pass.

-Rognar-

2300 AD is coming back...and it's Traveller!

Back in the '70s and especially the '80s, Game Designers' Workshop (GDW) was a big player in the tabletop rpg and wargame business. They had some major successes, most notably Traveller, and some stinkers (anyone remember Dangerous Journeys?). They introduced the steampunk genre to gaming with Space: 1889 and played on our worst Cold War fears of nuclear annihilation with Twilight: 2000. Since the group I played with throughout the '80s was not interested in playing anything except AD&D, I never had much of an opportunity to try out any GDW games until years after their initial release. The only one that really caught my attention was MegaTraveller. My reaction to that game was lukewarm and with so many other games to try, such as GURPS and Call of Cthulhu, I never really went back to GDW.

Well, recently I have rediscovered Traveller, thanks to the new coat of paint it has received from Mongoose. The folks from Swindon have really breathed new life into the Traveller game engine by adapting the rules to a number of IPs including Babylon 5 and Judge Dredd. Later this month, Traveller will meet Lovecraft with the release of Chthonian Stars and I have just learned that next year, Mongoose intends to revive another GDW classic with the release of 2300 AD, again using the Traveller game system.

I never tried the original back in the '80s, but the setting intrigued me. It takes place a few centuries after the Twilight War (the nuclear war described in the Twilight: 2000 game). France, which chose to sit out the war (insert cheese-eating surrender monkey joke here), is now the most powerful country on earth and has created a sizable interstellar empire. The Americans and the Chinese, having had to rebuild after the war, also have interstellar empires, though smaller than that of the French. In addition to their own mutual hostilities, the human space empires have to deal with an alien race which has a biological imperative to make war. All of this takes place in a much smaller milieu than the Third Imperium setting of Traveller, something I much appreciate. I will be watching closely for this one.

-Rognar-

What excites me in 2010?

This year has so far been a bit of a bust for me as far as cool new releases go. Paizo has just released the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game: GameMastery Guide, the first core rulebook of 2010 and as far as what I look for in a rulebook, this offers nothing. On top of that, the problems over at Catalyst Game Labs have done a real number on the release schedule for Eclipse Phase. Posthuman Studios, the creator of Eclipse Phase, is back on track with a new publisher, but the release date of Sunward: The Inner System is still something of a mystery (fingers crossed for GenCon).

Fortunately, the second half of 2010 looks a lot more promising. These are the upcoming releases I am particularly excited about:

Chthonian Stars - Wildfire and Mongoose Publishing (expected release: Oct., 2010)

It is a good time to be alive. The nations of the world still exist, but they have become more civilized. Countries resolve their disputes through the forum of the United World Council. Colonies of mutual cooperation exist throughout the solar system. We have stretched to the edge of our known world.

But, alas, it is not to be our time.

Something approaches, a thing on an orbit from far away. Seemingly a large shard of dark matter, this object is known in obscure prophecy as the Chthonian Star. It is a thing that has been traveling through the universe on its oblique trajectory for millions, if not billions, of years. It is a part of the natural cycle of things, on its eon-long orbit. The Chthonian Star is the thing that caused the end of the dinosaurs, among other things. Now, again, it is awakening things long thought lost or dead, things that have slumbered awaiting its return.

Created by WildFire, the team behind the award-winning CthulhuTech, Chthnonian Stars is an original setting for Traveller. It brings a Lovecraftian flair to the Traveller family of products, in a near future setting where mankind has expanded out into our solar system, where old things are beginning to awaken.

This is the core setting book, with everything a new players needs (other than the Traveller Core Rulebook). It includes robust setting material, including a look at the planets and colonies of our solar system, new technology and starships, and a peek behind the curtain at the occult history of our part of the galaxy. It also includes new optional rules for character generation, including point allocation and half-terms, and new rules for psychology and combat.

Traveller Book:9 Robot - Mongoose Publishing (expected release: Oct.,2010)

From the characterful and sophisticated droids of film to simple drones, this book will allow players to construct and play a variety of robots covering all Traveller universes. From the Third Imperium to Judge Dredd, robots rapidly become ubiquitous items on high technology worlds, and this book will allow you to construct, outfit and modify robots of any type with a simple to use yet comprehensive system.

And of course:

Pathfinder Roleplaying Game: Advanced Player's Guide - Paizo Publishing (expected release: Aug., 2010)

Explore new and uncharted depths of roleplaying with the Pathfinder RPG Advanced Player’s Guide! Empower your existing characters with expanded rules for all 11 Pathfinder Roleplaying Game core classes and seven core races, or build a new one from the ground up with one of six brand-new, 20-level base classes. Whether you’re designing your own monstrous helpers as an enigmatic summoner, brewing up trouble with a grimy urban alchemist, or simply teaching an old rogue a new trick, this book has everything you need to make your heroes more heroic.

The Pathfinder RPG Advanced Player’s Guide is a must-have companion volume to the Pathfinder RPG Core Rulebook. This imaginative tabletop game builds upon more than 10 years of system development and an Open Playtest featuring more than 50,000 gamers to create a cutting-edge RPG experience that brings the all-time best-selling set of fantasy rules into the new millennium.

The 336-page Pathfinder RPG Advanced Player’s Guide includes:
Six new base classes: the monster-hunting inquisitor, the explosive alchemist, the noble cavalier, the prophecy-haunted oracle, the monster-crafting summoner, and the hex-weaving witch

More than a hundred innovative new feats and combat abilities for characters of all classes, including Steal, Point-Blank Master, and Bouncing Spell

Variant class abilities, rules subsystems, and thematic archetypes for all 11 core classes, such as the antipaladin, the hungry ghost monk, and the urban ranger

Hundreds of new spells and magic items, from phantasmal revenge to the Storm King’s Cloud Castle

A wealth of fantastic equipment, such as fireblast rods and fortune-tellers’ cards

New prestige classes like the Master Chymist and the Battle Herald

AND MUCH, MUCH MORE!

-Rognar-

Update: Another title which interests me is The Chronicles of Future Earth from Chaosium, but alas, this seems to be another game supplement with a migratory publication date. Maybe another GenCon release...

The latest purchase from my FLGS, pt.10

Traveller Book 4: Psion by Lawrence Whitaker

Since rediscovering Traveller a few weeks ago, this time in its current Mongoose edition, I have grown to appreciate the depth of the system for dealing with all sorts of different science-fiction genres. I suppose Mongoose has come to a similar conclusion as they have begun adapting several of their licenses to the Traveller system, including Babylon 5 and Judge Dredd. Obviously, incorporating such a wide variety of campaign settings demands that the core rules have to be made more flexible and nowhere is that design imperative more obvious than in the psionics rules, as described in Traveller Book 4: Psion. In the "Third Imperium", the default setting for Traveller, psionics play a prominent, but subtle role. One of the main races contending the Imperium for control of the galaxy is the Zhodani, a race of humans in which the ruling caste is made up of telepaths. Mistrust of the Zhodani leads to similar mistrust of psionically-gifted individuals within the Imperium. Therefore, those with latent psionic abilities often have a difficult time finding training and support. Even those who do have developed psychic powers often refrain from using them as many planets have laws forbidding their use. Psionics in the default Traveller setting are, therefore, generally weak and often discarded completely. On the other hand, psionics in Babylon 5 are front and center. Such powers can decide the fate of whole civilizations.

To accommodate such a wide range of psionic capabilities, the rules have been greatly expanded in two important ways, psionic strength and advanced talents. In the traditional Traveller game, psionic strength is a 2d6 roll with a -1 DM for each 4 years of adulthood spent without training. This would give a typical starting psionic character 6 or 7 psi points. Since even something as basic as reading someone's thoughts would cost 2 to 3 points, and a psionic assault would cost 8 or 9 points, we are obviously not looking at high-powered psychic abilities here. Psion introduces new levels of psionic power with examples of campaign settings where such levels would be appropriate. For example, a hard sf setting with prominent psionics, such as Babylon 5 would have a power level of basic psi + Int DM, just a slight boost (and a bit low in my estimation). A science fantasy setting such as Judge Dredd, on the other hand, would have a power level of basic psi x 2. At the very top of the scale is what is referred to as transcendent culture sf (Dune being an example). An appropriate power level for such a campaign is given as basic psi x 2.5.

Beyond the basic psionic talents of telepathy, clairvoyance, telekinesis, awareness and teleportation, Psion introduces a bunch of advanced talents, some of which will knock your socks off. Among the most powerful of these are dimensional manipulation (i.e. interdimensional travel), ship integration (i.e. folding space), tapping (i.e. psychic vampirism) and temporal manipulation (yeah, time travel). These new advanced talents really open the door to using Traveller as the be-all-and-end-all of sf game systems. I've definitely found my system.

-Rognar-