GURPS Alpha Centauri

[chipjamieson]

Anybody play a campaign of this or run this? I LOVE the computer game, and was wondering if anyone has played the GURPS game...

If so, could we exchange characters/notes/ideas?

Yes - I heard the book is only so-so. I had it once, but sold it to buy RAM (sigh) and now am hooked on the computer game again.


Transcendence to you...

[chipjamieson]

Wow - NOBODY plays this. Wow.

[hjo3]

I have the book and have played the game many times. But neither of these contain enough background/setting information to run an Alpha Centauri game without a ton of work on the GM's end. I suppose if I read the novels, I might have more to work with (i.e. a view of the world from a person's perspective, not an omniscient being who only looks at the "big picture").

When I consider the maps I'd have to draw, the social environments I'd have to make up, the impact of higher technologies on daily life, the minutia of dealing with an alien world with a dramatically alien ecosystem (which is barely documented), the ramifications of controllable psi powers... well, I just figure it's a thousand times easier to use the Transhuman Space setting.

Alpha Centauri's a great setting, but it needs about ten more books to be playable by anyone besides a really devoted fan with huge amounts of free time.

Just my two cents.

[Falco]

Originally Posted by hjo3

Alpha Centauri's a great setting, but it needs about ten more books to be playable by anyone besides a really devoted fan with huge amounts of free time.

Just my two cents.

Unfortunately, I have to agree. I am a tremendous fan of the PC game and it is only one of a very select handful of strategy games I will ever play, as I don't generally go for strategy games unless they have a simple elegance to them, such as Chess, Axis & Allies or the like.

So I was pleased when someone bought the GURPS book for me (can't recall who it was right now), but I can't say I honestly ever considered playing it. It just seemed too obvious that this was a world with a life of its own already (given the number of people familiar with the world setting), but without most of the details of this life to help GMs.

I guess I would say that it is sort of like trying to run one of the massively popular D&D settings (like Dragonlance or Forgotten Realms) with people who know and love the world, by using only the basic books.

[Brent]

I wish the book had had a standard GURPS Space map of Planet.

[Phoenix42]

Hey Guys...

Alpha Centauri's a great setting, but it needs about ten more books to be playable by anyone besides a really devoted fan with huge amounts of free time.

Oh ye of little faith ;) - Let me just say, for one, you're right... for another - I AM YOUR MESSIAH - BOW DOWN TO MY GEEKDOM!!

Well, or something to that end ;)

At any rate, I have been spending (and my head spins at the thought) the last four years GMing Gurps: Alpha Centauri, and I'm just opening up a new group. And yeah, you hate it for the work and you love it for the benefits.

At any rate, since I in no way wish that kind of ordeal on anyone else, I here humbly offer up my documents and files so far, for all those interested. I really don't want to brag, but I have an Alpha Centauri file on my PC, size 678MB and growing. Contact me if you would like some of it, here are some of the more useful snippets:

• An Alpha Centauri Character Sheet with a logo and self-calculating forms in Excel
  
• A document detailing the periods in which Alpha and Hercules provide light on Planet (Alpha is a fixed star, providing sunlight for the first 9 hours of the day, but Hercules orbits Alpha, therefore providing sunlight at changing times of day in an 80 year cycle - I almost went mad doing that). One could have probably made it more easily than I did by using self-calculation, but heck, it's done now ^^. In essence, you can now say, by calling the year you're playing in, when it will be dark (if at all) and when it won't.
  It also provides pre-set data for the distance one can see to from high points on Planet (Planet being larger than Earth by a rate of 2,784, if you use the Huge Map of Planet), and a time reform (proposed by Zakharov in my setting) to make the weird 17hr 32min day on Planet somehow divisible into useful units.
  
• Plus another document with an example daylight distribution for MY 2100
  
• A modified and 4th ed. Progenitor Template
  
• A modified and 4th ed. Mind Worm Template for all boil states
  
• A modified Psi Terror Table for Mind Worm attacks etc., adapted to the Fear attack.
  
  
• Quite a few Planetside pics, both extracted from the game as well as gleaned and modified from other sources.
  
• A ranged weapons document for players using Flame Guns and Shredder Sidearms, with marking points for ammo and energy used.
  
• A Map of Planet made using the SmaX Map Editor; pieced together from screenshots, displaying the starting locations of the factions. Not high quality, but completely viable for political maps etc. 9MB
  
• An Alpha Centauri Trivia Sheet for using the maps provided by SMAC;
  
• The Alpha Centauri Trivia File that can be gleaned from the game itself - it's worth rooting through that game file, people, there's stuff in there you wouldn't believe! That file includes all the planetary raw data on Chiron, Nessus, Pholus, Prime you will ever need, including complete ratio to earth. Gravitation, luminosity, axial tilt, atmospheric pressure, flammability - everything.
  
• A draft for the stats of what I call the SubVerTec, a TL10/11 Hive answer to the Cloudbase Academy, a Submarine Carrier Launching system for Aircraft that needn't surface in order to launch. Not yet tested, but I still like the idea.
  
• A United Nations Calendar with a 500 day period, which is almost exactly the time in Alpha Centauri days in which an Earth year passes, and divides the year into ten months with 5 "weeks" of ten days each. Can be adapted by taste to any campaign or faction you like.
  
• A Believer Calendar, assuming the Believers retained an Earth Calendar of 24 hrs and 7 days for religious purposes, for calculating Sabbath and other religious Holidays, set against the 500 day calendar used by all the other factions (so you can calculate, e.g., that Easter in 2135 is a 24 hr period going from 12.00hrs on day 128 to 00.28 hours on day 130 of the Spartan Calendar, if the Spartans want to pull a Yom Kippur-style surprise attack on the Believers) - one doesn't really need this, of course, but it is really good for making the Believers seem rather conservative and making their religion seem as complex as any real religion.
  
• A collection of Bible passages useful for Members of the Believers Faction.

__________________________________________________ _____________________________________

That was the relatively generic stuff.
If anyone was interested I could also offer:

From my Believer Campaign (subject to preparation, more is coming):

• A calculation of the Believer population progression since Planetfall, including new Bases, until 2135; useful and indeed essential for knowing how many people can be expected to be in one base at any given time. (Never be floored by the "how large was my base when I was born" question again).
  
• A Timeline for the Lords' Believers leading up to 2135.
  
• I am currently working on a list of typical creatures to be found on Alpha Centauri beside the typical Mind Worm, Sealurk, Razorbeak, and Glowmite. It's a bit slow getting started, but it's hard to have really realistic ideas for alien lifeforms if like me, your last biology lesson was 6 years ago.

From my Peacekeeper Campaign (ran for four years, and still running):

Powerpoint-designed introductions with music and flashy stuff, for every adventure session (mainly to give the players a "previously on" effect, but also to set a beginning for each session; every intro ends with a "Welcome to the Holobooks of Alpha Centauri"; I have listed documents of potential interest to GMs or players under their respective adventures.

From Book I ("Unity" Playing the actual Unity departure, the disaster and faction splitup)
Chapters 1 through 4 plus Epilogue

• A Unity Adventure plot summary, with dialogues between the command crew/later faction leaders on the bridge (the dialogues were acted out by the players in interludes.)

From Book II ("Scout Patrol", playing the first exploration attempts around UN Headquarters, and Mind Worm/Spore Launcher confrontations)
Chapters 1 through 4 plus Epilogue

• Adventure Notes for Book II
  
• Name lists for members of the Scout Patrol, with personal backgrounds and military ability ratings for the officers.
  
• An "images of Planet" handout for the players, with a Unity Pod, a Monolith and Fungus landscape as well as some other pics of mindworms etc. to boost the imagination.
  
• The UN Charta as cited and sworn by all members of the faction shortly after landing.
  
• UN Headquarters "Base" descriptions for MY 2100, shortly after planetfall, mainly focussing on the surroundings, including some description of local flora and fauna.

From Book III ("Recon Rover", playing the large-scale exploration with a recovered Rover, and the first contact with the Morganic faction)

• Book III Adventure Notes, including the Character of a "Progenitor Hunter" marooned on the Planet in a stasis field after crashing on Planet and rediscovered by a Morgan mining expedition - loosely based on "Predator", except that this Predator is marooned and has just been woken up by some stupid inferior life-forms. In a mine. In the middle of nowhere. Oh damnit, it's the Predator movie for AC, I admit it, but it was fun :)

From Book IV (Colony, now running, the players have advanced far enough in the hierarchy to be among the governing talents for the first Base to be founded outside UN HQ)

Prologue Intro

Not much as of yet, since the Characters have yet to get past the prologue ^^

• A timeline of "random events" for the period of 2101-2114, to spice things up during adventures.
  
• A population calculation for the estimated growth in UN Headquarters in the years 2101-2114
  
• An assessment of the Production capacity of UN Headquarters, MY 2107; gives relative production of resources and intake/consumption; May be interesting for GMs whose characters have high-ranking positions and have to actually decide this kind of crap - makes for great City Council meetings.

__________________________________________________ _____________________________


Right, that's it for now. I would be thrilled if other AC GMs could come forward with their data for Alpha Centauri, be it generic or specific to their campaign; after all, everything can be useful or, at the least, inspirational, and it can save a hell of a lot of work; even if one has to fit it to one's own campaign, or adjust the rules, it's better than having to write it from scratch. As I said, if you would like to look into any of my stuff, send me a pm, and I will send you everything you like.

I would also like to hear other people's experiences with AC, which campaigns have been attempted, what worked, what didn't. Just get things livened up a bit.

*started uploading; click above links to download the stuff from rapidshare.

[HuManBing]

I'm new to GURPS (just picked up books about a year ago - I've been ravenously buying up pdfs ever since) but I do love SMAC. A lot.

SMAC GURPS is basically what you get when you've got top-notch campaign writing (thanks to Firaxis) and top-notch RPG rules (thanks to SJGames). I love the setting and I'm glad I bought the book.

I have yet to play a single game of GURPS though, but I'm very interested in joining others. If you're GMing an online group, I'd love to sit in or join in.

The Alpha Centauri document you have sounds fascinating. May I have a copy? :)

[Phoenix42]

Sorry, I don't do online groups - I've my hands full already :(; but I can send you documents - which ones are you interested in?

Where are you located? Surely one must be able to find a group around your area? Not necessarily Gurps: AC, but gamers are everywhere, aren't we? :D

And a quick addendum: As I mentioned, I am working on expanding the AC fauna. If anybody has suggestions or ideas ( internet links for Nitrogen-based life-forms would also be much appreciated), I would be eager to hear them all!

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by Phoenix42

Sorry, I don't do online groups - I've my hands full already :(; but I can send you documents - which ones are you interested in?

Where are you located? Surely one must be able to find a group around your area? Not necessarily Gurps: AC, but gamers are everywhere, aren't we? :D

And a quick addendum: As I mentioned, I am working on expanding the AC fauna. If anybody has suggestions or ideas ( internet links for Nitrogen-based life-forms would also be much appreciated), I would be eager to hear them all!

The problem with Alpha Centauri lifeforms is there's actually a reason why no large native animal life forms exist. Although I do have genetically engineered goats with an appetite for fungus created by the colonists.

[Phoenix42]

The problem with Alpha Centauri lifeforms is there's actually a reason why no large native animal life forms exist.

Naturally - the fungus/Planetmind/mindworms kills off all sapient life on the planet as a matter of interest. So I get you can't have creatures with IQ higher than 2 or maybe 3. However, that doesn't mean you can't have animals as such, grazing herds, even predators, and flying creatures, in most sizes known on earth; the only necessity is that they act as a symbiotic part of the ecosystem as a whole, and somehow tie in with the fungus as part of this symbiosis.

Other than that, any creature of IQ <2 should be acceptable, shouldn't it?

The point about the plan was that a planet without identifiable animal and plant life is barren and rendered uninteresting; if players want to play scouts, they want to be able to talk about the environment they're scouting in, maybe even hunt game.
The main idea would be to "furnish" the Planet a little, give it a bit more life, and add things for survivalists to use. Obviously, no animal is going to present a real danger to Colonists wielding TL8+ weaponry, but it can be a topic of discussion ("he's slower than a furknork") or simply be something to add to food rations if you know how ("see, if you just fry the yellow intestine in iodine paste at 70°, you can eat it without dying of nitrate shock").

Although I do have genetically engineered goats with an appetite for fungus created by the colonists

That is so cool... *lol* Can I borrow the goat, please? I have this vision of one of the more silly TL 9 University experiments... "Yes, Provost, this is our 5-million credit project... We call her 'Fungy Ferdi', and if our calculations are correct, she and her offspring will clear the fungus off Planet in a mere 250 years...'"