Guardnacho
Mongoose
Starship Troopers
Futurama
Aliens
Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
Futurama
Aliens
Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
Favourite (possibly unrealistic) setting to convert?
- Thread starter Gaidheal
- Start date
Well, my lingering bad chest (I really hope it's not bronchitis *sigh*) left me decidedly disinclined to send time out of bed except as far as I had to, so this thread's run a while without me, I see.
Interesting to see so many of the ones I like listed; I didn't want to 'poison' the thread by first posting a long list of things I thought were contenders.
I have to say, for all that I read them and enjoyed them mostly, the Honorverse stuff is a bit crap... I mean, at first I was okay with it but after a while the reimagining of colonial Britain as a sort of golden empire with a benevolent monarch was a bit hard to stomach (and that's definitely what the Star Kingdom is all about) and in the end I got tired the author pushing his preferred flavour of religion and politics all the time (though I am sure others do it and are just more palatable to me). I also kind of lost believability in the character of Honor Harrington, in the end, too.
Well, enough ramble; I shall return to post a few of my thoughts on settings and what's been suggested later as well as offer a few I think have been overlooked. Who knows, maybe we can pick one and persuade Mongoose to do it? ;¬)
Interesting to see so many of the ones I like listed; I didn't want to 'poison' the thread by first posting a long list of things I thought were contenders.
I have to say, for all that I read them and enjoyed them mostly, the Honorverse stuff is a bit crap... I mean, at first I was okay with it but after a while the reimagining of colonial Britain as a sort of golden empire with a benevolent monarch was a bit hard to stomach (and that's definitely what the Star Kingdom is all about) and in the end I got tired the author pushing his preferred flavour of religion and politics all the time (though I am sure others do it and are just more palatable to me). I also kind of lost believability in the character of Honor Harrington, in the end, too.
Well, enough ramble; I shall return to post a few of my thoughts on settings and what's been suggested later as well as offer a few I think have been overlooked. Who knows, maybe we can pick one and persuade Mongoose to do it? ;¬)
Cowboy BeBop seems better suited to something like BESM, if you ask me.
Dune I can so easily see working, actually, good call there.
Blake's 7 Has some potential, too but there'd need to be quite a bit of background exposition to make a setting, no?
BSG Original I think could work but in the end the whole "looking for Earth" got old in the TV series, wouldn't it in the game, too?
Star Wars is well covered already, in my opinion but Star*Cops has a lot of potential, in itself and I keep threatening to run a 'near earth TL' type game, actually, with orbitals and expensive interplanetary transport to the new established colonies, etc.
I already said my piece on Weber's Honorverse, I think and a lot of the other suggested authors I've not actually read...
Andromeda I really don't like, at all. I think the lead actor puts me off more than anything, though, so I might be a bit unfair.
Bladerunner AKA Do Androids dream of Electric Sheep? has quite a few themese that are thought provoking and moody... do we think Traveller is the system for it, though?
Firefly I enjoy as a series, not convinced its that special as a setting, though.
Halo has a pretty weak background, if you ask me, and I don't care that much for the games (which might be influencing my decision, I admit).
I don't know the Republic of Cinnabar stuff at all (and quite a few other suggestions I've not commented on), might have to look into these.
Wing Commander wasn't bad, actually, in terms of setting... aye... I could see that being fleshed out but Space, Above and Beyond? Really? I enjoyed it for a while as entertainment but I have to say I thought the stories were pretty piss-poor at times; mostly I liked that they seemed to capture a certain amount of 'military realism' more than anything else.
It's probably heresy but I've not read Niven's stuff, beyond maybe a couple of short stories.
RoboTech has better systems, in my opinion, for a port, including BESM and rather obviously, the whole BattleTech line. I'll second the desire for a 'world builder's book' with lots of maths, though, hehe!
Schlock Mercenary was in my head the moment I wrote the first post, actually and it was one of the first ideas in my head when I rediscovered Traveller through the Mongoose release. I think, in the end, though, that it works because of the author's storytelling skills rather than because of an especially ideal background - it's mostly just 'hard scifi' with a few broken rules and humanity united with 'uplifted' terran mammals in a sort of "Space UN".
Now that is interesting to me.
EDG - Revelation Space universe is the other one I had in my head when writing the post but didn't mention and again it jumped out at me when I got my hands on the core rules.
Space: 1999 doesn't do it for me, I must admit and Gundam gets the same kind of treatment as Macross and so on, from me - use BattleTech or BESM, depending on desired feel.
UFO Hmm, for some reason I think I like this a lot more than Space: 1999, actually.
X-Com might be better done with Conspiracy, if you ask me.
I love a lot of McCaffrey's stuff but I have to say I think that Freedom series is rubbish and the game they made from it was appalling, too.
Aliens has its own game, actually but I can see it being something that would adapt very easily and nicely to Traveller, Futurama? Honestly? For Toons, maybe. Starship Troopers I never thought was that great, the novel or any of the films, in fact I think Heinlein is a bit hit-and-miss, to be honest. Hitchhiker's seems a poor fit for the system to me, concerned as it is with realism, in many ways and military stuff especially.
Fallout has a couple of systems for it but I can't see why it couldn't be run under Traveller very well, actually, in fact you'd only need a proper sourcebook and a very few stat blocks.
Dune I can so easily see working, actually, good call there.
Blake's 7 Has some potential, too but there'd need to be quite a bit of background exposition to make a setting, no?
BSG Original I think could work but in the end the whole "looking for Earth" got old in the TV series, wouldn't it in the game, too?
Star Wars is well covered already, in my opinion but Star*Cops has a lot of potential, in itself and I keep threatening to run a 'near earth TL' type game, actually, with orbitals and expensive interplanetary transport to the new established colonies, etc.
I already said my piece on Weber's Honorverse, I think and a lot of the other suggested authors I've not actually read...
Andromeda I really don't like, at all. I think the lead actor puts me off more than anything, though, so I might be a bit unfair.
Bladerunner AKA Do Androids dream of Electric Sheep? has quite a few themese that are thought provoking and moody... do we think Traveller is the system for it, though?
Firefly I enjoy as a series, not convinced its that special as a setting, though.
Halo has a pretty weak background, if you ask me, and I don't care that much for the games (which might be influencing my decision, I admit).
I don't know the Republic of Cinnabar stuff at all (and quite a few other suggestions I've not commented on), might have to look into these.
Wing Commander wasn't bad, actually, in terms of setting... aye... I could see that being fleshed out but Space, Above and Beyond? Really? I enjoyed it for a while as entertainment but I have to say I thought the stories were pretty piss-poor at times; mostly I liked that they seemed to capture a certain amount of 'military realism' more than anything else.
It's probably heresy but I've not read Niven's stuff, beyond maybe a couple of short stories.
RoboTech has better systems, in my opinion, for a port, including BESM and rather obviously, the whole BattleTech line. I'll second the desire for a 'world builder's book' with lots of maths, though, hehe!
Schlock Mercenary was in my head the moment I wrote the first post, actually and it was one of the first ideas in my head when I rediscovered Traveller through the Mongoose release. I think, in the end, though, that it works because of the author's storytelling skills rather than because of an especially ideal background - it's mostly just 'hard scifi' with a few broken rules and humanity united with 'uplifted' terran mammals in a sort of "Space UN".
- Kafka
Now that is interesting to me.
EDG - Revelation Space universe is the other one I had in my head when writing the post but didn't mention and again it jumped out at me when I got my hands on the core rules.
Space: 1999 doesn't do it for me, I must admit and Gundam gets the same kind of treatment as Macross and so on, from me - use BattleTech or BESM, depending on desired feel.
UFO Hmm, for some reason I think I like this a lot more than Space: 1999, actually.
X-Com might be better done with Conspiracy, if you ask me.
I love a lot of McCaffrey's stuff but I have to say I think that Freedom series is rubbish and the game they made from it was appalling, too.
Aliens has its own game, actually but I can see it being something that would adapt very easily and nicely to Traveller, Futurama? Honestly? For Toons, maybe. Starship Troopers I never thought was that great, the novel or any of the films, in fact I think Heinlein is a bit hit-and-miss, to be honest. Hitchhiker's seems a poor fit for the system to me, concerned as it is with realism, in many ways and military stuff especially.
Fallout has a couple of systems for it but I can't see why it couldn't be run under Traveller very well, actually, in fact you'd only need a proper sourcebook and a very few stat blocks.
Stormraven
Mongoose
Not really Sci-Fi, but I think Traveller could do them well:
Melissa Scott's Roads of Heaven series.
Doyle and MacDonald's Mageworld series.
Melissa Scott's Roads of Heaven series.
Doyle and MacDonald's Mageworld series.
Doc Smith. Triplanetary, Lensman and Skylark. I'd like to see someone else's take on them for Traveller, and borrow appropriately.
I'd also like to see "tubepunk", if you will. 1950's/60's technology gone mad, without a shadow of self-doubt in sight. Nerva, Orion, Sea Dragon, Project Horizon, nuclear aircraft and ships, RTG-powered muscle cars, you name it. With sourcebooks like that, you could take it any of a number of different directions, from juvenile fiction series of the period (Tom Swift, Space Cadet, etc.) to the more sophisticated but unbounded adult fiction. It'd be a lot of fun. Name it what you will. And no license fees for the publisher.
I'd also like to see "tubepunk", if you will. 1950's/60's technology gone mad, without a shadow of self-doubt in sight. Nerva, Orion, Sea Dragon, Project Horizon, nuclear aircraft and ships, RTG-powered muscle cars, you name it. With sourcebooks like that, you could take it any of a number of different directions, from juvenile fiction series of the period (Tom Swift, Space Cadet, etc.) to the more sophisticated but unbounded adult fiction. It'd be a lot of fun. Name it what you will. And no license fees for the publisher.
EDG said:saundby said:
"Gone mad"? That sounds like the way it should have gone to me!
Hehe, same here.
One of the best parts of my job is the people I get to pump stories from. "You worked on NERVA? Cool, tell me about it!" Next thing you know they're showing me the old reactor simulator.
Not to mention the prior job where I got to check out the drawings, designer's notes, and all for Sea Dragon. What a cool design! I had a great time working through the numbers on that for myself.
I wanna go back and reboot the past 60 years!
disney spin-off series from the toy story movies...
'Buzz lightyear of Star command'....
I'd like to see a traveller write up for the princess, booster and XR...
...the grub/lgm's
...brain pod's
...hornets to destroy with abandon
anyone know the tonnage of 42?
aagh, good times 8)
'Buzz lightyear of Star command'....
I'd like to see a traveller write up for the princess, booster and XR...
...the grub/lgm's
...brain pod's
...hornets to destroy with abandon
anyone know the tonnage of 42?
aagh, good times 8)
lastbesthope
Mongoose
Phonogram, a comic set in Bristol where music is the source of magic.
LBH
LBH
Huh. I didn't know our suggestions were going to get judged/rated. Why would you say Bebop would be better suited for BESM? Cause it's a cartoon? I don't necessarily disagree with that. I think there are several systems that could do Bebop. But why not Traveller? You give a nod to a Traveller Fallout, with it's Fat-Boy micro nuclear bomb chuckers, power-suit armor and other crazy-ness? :?
Supergamera
Mongoose
It would be nice if you could get the Known Space / Ringworld license, as IMHO Traveller would be a better ruleset than the old, BRP-ish version.