Alternity

>>50700336
Yes. I have. Use the rules variant that treats XP like spendable points rather than the stupid 'you get progress points up until you have X of them, and then they all suddenly convert to XP because you gained a level. It's just easier to track XP as you go, and the only thing it messes with at all is the fancy achievement rewards. Even then it's just a matter of calculating the thresholds for a flat increasing number than using the goofy holdover level system.

What campaign setting are you looking at? Star*Drive? Dark Matter? Homebrew?

>>50700336
>"alternity pdf tg"
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/2ia61pqy11i62/RPGs%20for%20tg#awno6jjavrjhc

>>50700896
Dark Matter was more of a contemporary Xfiles setting, rather than space adventures, wasn't it?

>>50700336
I played all of one campaign when I was a teen and never found another group. It was an enjoyable system, and the choice of settings means you have pretty significant flexibility in what sort of campaign it can run.

Always wanted to get back into it. Too bad roll20 is 90% pathfinder and other dnds.

I loved that game. It was variable in setting, but not generic. Very sci-fi in what it provided. Had some fun but not-that-heavy spaceship and design rules too.

>>50700957
Yeah. Dark Matter is essentially The X-files.

>>50700931
Thanks for the link.
Not the OP, but always wanted to try Alternity.

>>50700896
It's a homebrew setup. Lore is slightly secondary since it is our first campaign. We will build as we go.

>>50702036
Well, have fun with it then. If you're just going with standard space opera stuff, feel free to use the Star*Drive Arms and Equipment Guide with the serial numbers filed off, since it has lots more interesting sci-fi weapons and equipment than the core book.

Have fun with the system - just remember to note that characters tend to start hyper specialized and then branch out - might want to consider lifting the Broad Skill Limit after character gen.

>>50700336

Ran a few campaigns in Star Drive. One was where the players were basically playing Escape Velocity on tabletop, lots of trade haggling, empty space station/ship exploration, and screwing with local politics in some systems.

Next campaign was the players actively deciding to get involved in major Verge and Old Space power shenanigans. Long story short is they more or less swore allegiance to the Concord and Aegis system governmenr at the same time, then proceeded to shoot every Voidcorp person or ship on sight. Lasted a little while until they had to decide try to play nice when they managed to board and steal a klick ship and needed VC's xenospecialist tech folks.

Third was them getting caught up in investigations for a few major and minor powers as they slowly got drawn into every plot I could squeeze out of one of the expansion books. Can't remember the name of it, but it was where the journalist was going all XFiles in every star system she was in. That was really fun as trust was hard to come by ingame.

>>50702700

Seconding that Broad Skill limit lift. It's not bad if you have a large cohesive group, but 3 or less players and it tends to straightjacket options.

>>50700336
It remains, to this day, my favorite RPG of all time. I have a little bias with it though because it was my first experience with RPGs, which was also my first time GMing. It's got some wonky rules that seem weird, but I love its base dice mechanic and skill system. Star*Drive is also one of my favorite scifi space opera settings. It's so well thought out and fleshed out. I love this game, and am sort of jelly you guys will be playing it.

I wish someone would kickstart a second edition or something, or Wizards would do something meaningful with it other than [shudder]d20 future[/shudder], oh god it was a terrible fate for the game...

>>50704227
You might wanna read this: http://www.sasquatchgamestudio.com/products/alternity/

>>50705596
That's not actually comforting. It's a new system with new background, and while it is by the original creators, it will not be related to the old game in any way more than the name and the expressed intention to roll two dice. The only think I forsee this new Alternity doing is making it hard to find the old books while searching online.

I hope it's good. Given the last set of games I've seen where a creator picks up their old work idea for a new game, my hopes aren't high.

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>>50702934
>>50702700
Did you guys ever play with Psionics or Mutations? I haven't read into them yet. Are they broken by any chance?

>>50700336
It's fun and I've played a lot of it, mostly as Post Apocalyptic fallout-style games.

I'd note that you can treat a + or - to Situation Dice as +2 or -2 per level rather then roll dice if you want to eliminate some rolling.

>>50702700
>>50702962
Great advice. With limited broad skills it can be hard to make characters that are versatile enough to survive without heavily depending on each-other. There are also some things that are skills, like Physical Resolve, that are a little inexplicable.

If you like Alternity, it's likely you'd like GURPS.

>>50705719
Psionics are powerful and have some pretty broad effects. They are expensive and each skill has relatively discreet effects that can tire you out to use.

Mutations can be heavily random. If people are just allowed to select their mutations and drawbacks, or gets lucky with rolls, you can easily end up with an extremely overpowered character. To avoid that you might want to just give them mutations you select as the game master.

>>50705596
As long as it's bill slavicsek and richard baker, Im fucking on board. It seems they want to go with the original system mostly, which I loved, but do a modular gurps-style sourcebook system. Which I think could be cool (despite my hatred of the gurps system).

I am looking forward to the eventual Star*Drive campaign book, most definitely. I collected all the alternity and Star*Drive books because I loved it so much (I didnt get into Dark Matter though)

>>50705957
Huge fan of the stardrive setting as well. Alternity as a system was ok, but the campaign was what sold it for me.

>>50705719
Have played with both. They can be completely naff, or very powerful. The one thing that they do that you can't get anywhere else in game though it give you fast, instant healing. Sure, Psionic healing is limited to once an hour, and the regenerating mutation once a day, but both give you access to no-resource cost healing of wounds and even mortals at higher levels. Be wary about losing the dangerous 'feel' of the game with psionics and mutations in play. I think the regenerative mutation is a lot less impactful to the game a whole because of it's once a day limit and the fact that it's self-only, but it's still something to keep in mind.

>>50705957
>>50707017
They can't do Star*Drive in anything but name because all the creative assets, names, concepts and background are still owned by Wizards. I'm going to keep an eye on the project, but I'm not going to get my hopes up yet.

>>50707438
Yeah I gathered the no Star*Drive thing, but I just got done reading all the dev blog posts and I am genuinely pretty excited. I like the idea of a modular modules(?) to customize the campaign to your liking, and I like they are doing the skill-system and character class hybrid. I also like the degree of failure/success that was great from the old game.

A jarring change which I think will be fine is they are doing roll-over instead of roll-under. I think it's for the best, but the roll-under was unique with the degrees in success. Also the lucky events seems interesting.

All in all, it's the 2 guys that started it all, and I love their work. No Star*Drive is kindof a bummer, but there's a reason I own ALL the Star*Drive source and adventure books, I imagine they will be easily ported over, or fan-projects done for it.

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Since there are a few Star*Drive fans in this thread, I made a thing a few year back that I look for any excuse to post.

>>50707571
>all information must be freed

all information must be free sounds much better

>>50710712
Considering insight's history and their crusade against corporate secrets and information privacy, i figured they were more after freeing information rather than just merely making sure it didn't cost anything

>>50707017
I posted an Alternity Collection in the pdf thread

>>50700336
Anyone running a roll20 campaign and could use a player?

I have all of the pdfs for all of the stuff released. I own most of the books in dead tree format. I played this for about four years, three of which were an ongoing star drive campaign.

This brings me back.

>>50700336

Damn, I love Alternity. I've done several games with it, and I plan to do several more. The systems a little clunky, but it's not bad once people know what to do.

>>50717678
It's unfortunate it didn't catch on more.