Glitterband ~ Reynolds

[tzunder]

I am thinking of running some "Panoply" prefect adventures set in the "Glitterband" of Alistair Reynolds' Dreyfus books in the wider, longer Revelation Space sequences.

I'd love to chat to people with Traveller minds as to how to do it.

In some ways it's very easy, 10,000 habitats and er 100 million people, most everyone implanted to a low level to continually participate in persistent democratic participation (Demarchy), vast variation in political systems, body type, genetic manipulation, hyperpigs, smart matter that can literally make anything from anything (rare I noticed) and short distances from place to place. No official AI, but if course it's always an incipient possibility.

In many ways it's quite possibly a 3I style Core World in terms of TL, fun in that every habitat has the potential to be radically different. STL ships are plenty fast enough.

 

[Takei]

I don't know if you've seen it, but IIRC Mindjammer for Traveller has quite a few tropes that would work well in a Glitterband setting. I've linked the quickstart as it's free

 

[Geir]

I didn't even notice that Alistair Reynolds had a third book in the series out (and it will now arrive on my doorstep tomorrow)
I'd like to set a campaign in the a version of his Revenger Universe, but that would require a whole sourcebook to set up.

But as for the Glitterband, you can almost hand-wave the space travel part and just focus on the various habitats. No anti-grav either, so the habs would have a different feel to them.

(And then there is Paul McAuley's Evening's Empires, where I swear the original trading shaceship is a converted lab ship - no antigrav or FTL there either, just a lot of really old habs and sneaky references to other peoples stories)

 

[AndrewW]

I didn't even notice that Alistair Reynolds had a third book in the series out (and it will now arrive on my doorstep tomorrow)
I'd like to set a campaign in the a version of his Revenger Universe, but that would require a whole sourcebook to set up.

Better get writing.

 

[tzunder]

Yes! Mindjammer! Knew it was on my shelf for such a day!

 

[MonsterX]

The Glitter Band is totally worth stealing as inspiration when designing a space-habitat based star system. Sure, the artificial gravity and FTL changes the feel a little a bit, but it still works. I totally steal settings, worlds, plots, characters, tech, all the time from various SF books, sometimes pretty blatantly. Sometimes I don't even file off the serial numbers. I have no morals.