11-02-2009, 10:57 AM | #41 |
Join Date: Feb 2007
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Re: How is GURPS Alpha Centauri.
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11-02-2009, 11:00 AM | #42 |
Banned
Join Date: May 2008
Location: TIE pilot aboard the ISD Butterball
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Re: How is GURPS Alpha Centauri.
I love the computer game and I bought the GURPS book from SJG's store. It's good reading, especially if you liked the computer game. The writing and mechanics are good and the adventure ideas are creative.
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11-02-2009, 11:13 AM | #43 | |
Join Date: Feb 2007
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Re: How is GURPS Alpha Centauri.
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The Spartans can be moral, strictly self-disciplined warriors, dedicated to a warrior code that also incorporates duty to the species, the future, and a code of treatment of defeated enemies and civilians and bystanders. Pravin Lal and the Peacekeepers are set up as the 'good guys', but not much is needed to make them bureaucratic, technocratic nepotists, carrying over all the bad traits of the real-world U.N. to Chiron. Without too much adjustment Lal and the Peacekeepers can be turned into a socialistic would-be 'soft dictatorship', enslaving Chiron in a web of good intentions and nepotism. The Nautilus Pirates...just a little adjustment can turn them into freedom-loving free spirits, harrying the nasty factions and providing reliable, reasonably priced sea transport and protection to the sympathetic ones. The Free Drones? They've actually made socialism work the way it's theoretically supposed to! You could easily have a campaign based on a rivalry between the Morganites and the FD as the rival 'good guys' against the Peacekeepers who want to bring in socialism with an autocratic face. The University? Modest adjustments can easily turn Prokhor into a terrific guy or a monster. The Hive, though...it's hard to make that sympathetic without competely rewriting it into something else. Last edited by Johnny1A.2; 11-02-2009 at 11:25 AM. |
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11-02-2009, 11:45 AM | #44 |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Maryland
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Re: How is GURPS Alpha Centauri.
I ran a playtest game while I was writing the book - on the Pyramid MOO, with Dr. Kromm as one of the regular players. It was a Planetfall game, in which the players actually had some part in choosing which faction they were going to end up. I had two or three different potential faction leaders turn up in their landing pod's population, with the assumption that only one would end up in charge.
Worked pretty well, as I recall. I suspect if I were going to rewrite the book, I wouldn't try to do the "grand sweep of history" approach again. Better to concentrate on the first years after Planetfall, and provide more ready-made material for building adventures.
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Jon F. Zeigler Base of operations for creative work is at Sharrukin's Palace. Fan fiction and other unproductive nonsense appears at FanFiction.Net. |
11-02-2009, 11:51 AM | #45 |
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Join Date: May 2008
Location: TIE pilot aboard the ISD Butterball
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Re: How is GURPS Alpha Centauri.
The Hive can be a sympathetic faction if you do a trope subversion. Even the Soviet Communists were semi-sympathetically portrayed in the "Red Son" series of Superman comics (alternate universe where he landed in the USSR rather than the USA).
Take the usual authoritarian propaganda arguments, e.g. the leadership ensures security, without a dictator the entire faction would collapse, etc., and play them straight. Let the players sign on with an "Evil Galactic Empire" faction but show them that behind the slogans there's actually a fair bit of truth. And make the leader, Sheng-Ji Yang, every bit as philosophical and thoughtful as his ingame quotes make him out to be. The Hive stands for an unpopular authoritarian political structure, but a canny GM can definitely make it a "Good guy" faction. |
11-02-2009, 12:03 PM | #46 |
Join Date: Aug 2007
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Re: How is GURPS Alpha Centauri.
<shrug> It's been reported by serious scientists. Hunter-gathers have more leisure time than the primitive agriculturalists supposedly one step above them. This may say more about the extreme suckitude of being a primitive farmer.
The farmers support a denser population though and can generally push the H-Gs off any land that's in contention between them.
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Fred Brackin |
11-02-2009, 02:54 PM | #47 | |
GURPS FAQ Keeper
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Kyïv, Ukraine
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Re: How is GURPS Alpha Centauri.
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For one, I see them as one of the only two factions that make transhumanism viable (the other being Students of the University). Not talking about the expansion factions, that is. |
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11-02-2009, 03:02 PM | #48 | |
Banned
Join Date: May 2008
Location: TIE pilot aboard the ISD Butterball
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Re: How is GURPS Alpha Centauri.
Quote:
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11-02-2009, 05:24 PM | #49 |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Pittsburgh PA USA
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Re: How is GURPS Alpha Centauri.
Since it was a license, an official update seems extremely unlikely.
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11-02-2009, 05:47 PM | #50 | |
Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: One Mile Up
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Re: How is GURPS Alpha Centauri.
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Picture the alliance: a shotgun marriage of the bold pioneers with the most bizarre visions and the blindly loyal worker bees with the will to carry anything that seems advantageous to its logical extremes... |
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alpha centauri, sci-fi |
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