Rather surprisingly I find myself recommending the Into the Looking Glass series by John Ringo. Basically a disaster at a high physics lab gives modern man the keys to the universe – if they can survive a horrible alien threat.
The second book has a decommissioned SSBN converted into starship (clever – but Harry Harrison was there first) and sent off to see what is out there. Basically a good modern military yarn meets aliens with a lot of neat little references for SF fans and particularly in the first book a lot of Call of Cthulhu references (this guy is one of us).
I finished the second book yesterday and found myself thinking about how it would work as a gaming setting. Even if you ignore the setting the core idea, here is a spacedrive, go play with it, is worth a thought. Traveller would probably adapt quite well if you watch the skill selection as it was originally based quite closely on the modern military structure. Amusingly the old Black Book traveller would need its weapon selection modernised as until Mercenary came out the most advanced weapon apart from the two lasers with an Automatic Rifle, basically a Great War vintage BAR.
His other books are equally fun. The Ghost ones would not be suitable for an RPG but then again you just need a decent modern day system to do them. Spycraft comes to mind but if you do not want to use D20 what else is there? All I can think of is Merc: 2000 and that is going back a long way.
The second book has a decommissioned SSBN converted into starship (clever – but Harry Harrison was there first) and sent off to see what is out there. Basically a good modern military yarn meets aliens with a lot of neat little references for SF fans and particularly in the first book a lot of Call of Cthulhu references (this guy is one of us).
I finished the second book yesterday and found myself thinking about how it would work as a gaming setting. Even if you ignore the setting the core idea, here is a spacedrive, go play with it, is worth a thought. Traveller would probably adapt quite well if you watch the skill selection as it was originally based quite closely on the modern military structure. Amusingly the old Black Book traveller would need its weapon selection modernised as until Mercenary came out the most advanced weapon apart from the two lasers with an Automatic Rifle, basically a Great War vintage BAR.
His other books are equally fun. The Ghost ones would not be suitable for an RPG but then again you just need a decent modern day system to do them. Spycraft comes to mind but if you do not want to use D20 what else is there? All I can think of is Merc: 2000 and that is going back a long way.
