Showing posts with label strange stars. Show all posts
Showing posts with label strange stars. Show all posts

Thursday, January 4, 2024

Two Species, Two Systems


For comparison, here are two of my Strange Stars setting sophont species in both Black Star and Star Scoundrels terms. Both are pretty simple! For Black Star, species just provides innate traits as listed. In Star Scoundrels the species is a Trademark which is sort of described by the words in parentheses after it. Those words might also suggest Edges that could be selected.

Follow the links with the names to get more background on the species.

HWURU

In Black Star:

Traits: Claws, Tough.

In Star Scoundrels:

Hwuru (Strong, Climb, Forest Survival, Claws, Intimidate)


BOMOTH

In Black Star:

Traits: Extra Limbs, Acute Hearing.

In Star Scoundrels:

Bomoth (Enhanced Hearing, Extra Manipulators, Music, Slang, Philosophical, Unflappable)

Sunday, December 30, 2018

Playing with Heroforge

Heroforge, a custom 3D printed miniature design site is pretty cool. My wife and I were playing with it over the holidays, and while there are some frustrating lacks, it already has an impressive array of design elements. Here are a couple of the characters in my Land of Azurth campaign:

Kully the Bard:


And Kairon the Demonlander (i.e. Tiefling) Sorcerer:


 Its inclusion of Western/Victorian elements not only helped Azurth designs, but also my old Wampus Country character, Horvendile Early:


And there's sci-fi stuff. Here are the three characters from the cover of Strange Stars:


Thursday, October 12, 2017

Strange Stars Reviews


I couple of Strange Stars reviews went up this week. One for the OSR Gamebook and the other for the sourcebook. Both of there are by that reviewing machine Endzeitgeist. Also, here's a review I recently discovered from back in 2015. Any news you haven't heard is still news!

Thursday, April 27, 2017

Strange Stars Video Review

For those few of you who read this blog and still haven't bought Strange Stars (and we know who you are), check out this video review by Questing Beast:




Sunday, February 26, 2017

The Wreck of the Golden Dawn


This is an adventure idea for Strange Stars:
"Look at me honey, I'm using technology!
Ain't got no time to make an apology.
Soul radiation in the dead of night,
Love in the middle of a firefight." 
Seventy-eight megaseconds ago, a hyperspace traffic monitor AI recorded a vessel transponder signal from an unmapped node. The vessel was Golden Dawn, a pleasure yacht registered out of Smaragdoz and belonging to pop star Xeno Stardust.

Stardust, his band, and his entourage disappeared during a short cruise, ostensibly for the recording of their new album. When a search failed to discover their whereabouts Stardust corporate filed an indemnity insurance claim--a claim currently unresolved and under investigation.

The insurance company gave you the job, and it sounded like an easy one: IP salvage. Get to Golden Dawn and recover any new music. Bringing Stardust back alive would be optimal, but a partial brain download, recordings, or even partial recordings are worth something.

It isn't going to be that easy. Golden Dawn is stuck in the event horizon of a malfunctioning hyperspace node. At least some of the passengers are still alive, but drugs, ego, and isolation in warped spacetime have taken their toll. Making it out with a lost album? You'll be lucky it you make it out alive.

Friday, February 24, 2017

Strange Stars Review Roundup


GusL over at the Dungeon of Signs wrote a thorough review of Strange Stars OSR yesterday that you should read if you haven't. You should also stay to check out Gus's blog because he does good stuff outside the bounds of bog standard Medieval fantasy.

I also ran across a couple of old reviews for Strange Stars that I hadn't seen before. They might be new to you, to:

Andy Slack's review at Halfway Station
A video review from Red Dice Diaries

You Fate guys need to to get the people some Strange Stars Fate reviews!

Sunday, February 19, 2017

Strange Stars Soft Cover & A Review


The wait is over! Strange Stars OSR is now available in soft cover as well as pdf. If you're still on the fence, here's our first review to help you decide.


Sunday, February 12, 2017

Strange Stars: A Recent Science Fiction Appendix N


A few weeks ago, Rob Barrett made a request in the comments of this post for "more recent SF" suitable for Strange Stars inspiration. In the section on galactic adventuring, I relied mostly on older, well-known and non-science fiction references because I want to convey the idea that the setting is easily accessible and usable for the sort of stuff people typically use science fiction games too do.

That doesn't mean science fiction from the past twenty years hasn't been an influence on the conception and development of Strange Stars. I mentioned a few of these in the intro of the setting book, but here are a few more:

Hannu Rajaniemi. The Quantum Thief; The Fractal Prince; The Causal Angel. This series is one of the biggest inspirations for Strange Stars, but its influence is diffuse. The interaction of information and physical life that pervades the series is very Strange Stars, as are the exotic societies of Earth, Mars, and the Oort Cloud.

Greg Egan. Diaspora. The conception of moravec, infosophont, and biologic groups was inspired by Diaspora, specifically, w

Alastair Reynolds. The Prefect; Chasm City. The Glitter Band is a great example of the varied polities of the League of Habitats or the Circus. The Ultras have some resemblance to the Star Folk, if not the same style. Chasm City in particular would make a pretty good Strange Stars adventure.

Karl Schroeder. Permanence. The primary inspiration for the metascape is the exoscape of Permanence.

Charles Stross. Glasshouse; Accelerando; the books in the Saturn's Children universe: Saturn's Children and Neptune's Brood. The technology and economic considerations in Stross's novels underpin similar concepts in Strange Stars. If you want to really get a feel for how I envision fabbers, read Glasshouse. Neptune's Brood also has a very well-realized "water world."

Scott Westerfield. The Risen Empire (Succession Book 1). Though I haven't written a lot about military matters in Strange Stars material, the planetary assault and space battle in this book greatly informed what I think such things would look like among "modern" powers in the setting.

John C.Wright. The Golden Oecumene  trilogy and related stories. The technology of the Golden Oecumene with the trappings of Cordwainer Smith's Instrumentality of man gets you a good representation of the Radiant Polity. The novella "The Far End of History: A Tale from the Last Days of the Seventh Mental Structure" is a great example of what sort of things went on in the Archaic Oikumene.

Thursday, February 9, 2017

Strange Stars OSR Arrives--and a Special Deal!


Now you can explore the Strange Stars universe in Sine Nomine's Stars Without Number or similar OSR-derived science fiction games! The Strange Stars OSR supplement is now available in pdf.

The contents include:

  • Tips for creatings characters and 19 clades--from Atozan librarians to armored thrax warriors--as player character options.
  • A catalog of adversaries and threats from the monstrous ssraad to the more subtle agents of the Instrumentality.
  • A gazeteer of known worlds and rules for creating random orbital habitats
  • A sampling of factions big and small from across the known galaxy
  • Advice on running adventures and campaigns in the Strange Stars with a random adventure seed generator
And here's a special deal for early adopters: Everyone buying the pdf will get a coupon for $3.55 off the cost of the soft cover when it's released.

Monday, January 16, 2017

Thirty-Three and A Third

by Lester B. Portly
Circus registry 331/3 (called by its operators Thirty-Three and A Third) is a Universal Standard Transport LS1517 series space hauler. The LS1517 series is often used as a pilot engine for a train of container pods with the primary motive power coming from a secondary drive at the end.

The series is an older design with a higher crew (or more sophisticated nonspohont mind) than new models and only one axis of container attachment, but it has better armaments (ostensibly "space debris protection") and a more powerful engine.

The above diagram will appear in Strange Stars OSR.

Friday, January 13, 2017

Strange Stars OSR Tease

Strange Stars OSR is getting close to release! To prove these words are true, here's the Gamemastering chapter. Some minor edits and typo-fixes aside, this is what it will be in the finished product.



Monday, January 9, 2017

Strange Stars Comic Inspiration

With Strange Stars OSR drawing near, I figure it was worth a look at some comic books/graphic novels that would make good fodder for a Strange Stars game. There are no Strange Stars comic per se, but the decades of comics reading influenced the setting--and their are new comics coming out all the time that continue to inspire. Here's a list of a few things currently in print:

Prophet: I've mentioned my admiration for this series before, so I won't dwell on it here. It's sci-fi superheroes, but much more Dune than Legion of Super-Heroes. It's finished now, and I believe all the issues have been collected.


Habitat: Is about life in an isolated orbital habitat, a bit like Starlost but with cannibalism. It's by Simon Roy, co-creator and sometime artist on Prophet. Roy has also done a number of other science fiction sorts that are suitable, some collected in Jan's Atomic Heart and Other Stories.

Dreadstar: This is another one I've mentioned before. Starlin's space opera is a science fantasy, but its visual style (and its Instrumentality!) influenced Strange Stars greatly.

Descender: While the aesthetics aren't the same, Lemire's tale of genocidal super-machines and the adventures of artificial intelligence is great inspiration.




Friday, December 30, 2016

On Rune, in the Strange Stars

Final (hopefully) edits continue on Strange Stars OSR and the commission of a few additional pieces of art to fill some layout gaps. Above is a chapter header by ever-amazing Jason Sholtis showing an encounter with a Runic dragon. Here's the Stars Without Number style description of Rune from the upcoming book:

RUNE
SSGSB p. 15
Tags  Out of Contact, Rigid Society
Enemies  Necromancer Mauldazard, Rampaging dragon
Friends  Young dragon Thussumbraan, Benevolent sorceress Jaronel
Compl.  Feudal warfare, Dragon attack
Things  Dragon’s treasure horde, Downed spacecraft from a “civilized world”
Places  Wizard’s tower, Dragon’s cave

Also, remember the 12 Days of Hydra sale is still ongoing. This would be a good time to pick up the Strange Stars Setting Book on the cheap before the release of the OSR Rulebook.

Friday, December 16, 2016

I Didn't see the new Stars Wars but I did see new Strange Stars

Yesterday, Lester B. Portly sent me the rough layout for Strange Stars OSR. There is still proofing and some other edits to be done, but I wanted to show off some sample pages:


This is a page from the beginning of the chapter on Worlds, containing 22 planets/habitats described in the Stars Without Number style and random generators for orbital habitats.


This is a page from the chapter on clades. There are 20 clades in all and general guidelines for adding additional clades in the various sophont categories.

Monday, October 24, 2016

What's Got this Alien So Surprised?

Could it be he's heard that Strange Stars OSR is now in layout? It's been a long time coming, (longer than I planned!) but I am happy to say I placed the manuscript and art in the hands of the very able Lester B. Portly this past weekend.

We're in the home stretch. Stay tune!




Sunday, June 26, 2016

Strange Stars OSR Excerpt and Update

After a delay for important non-rpg stuff, I've really been putting the nose to the grindstone on Strange Stars OSR. The guys at Hydra made some good suggestions on additional content and clarification on the manuscript and I have responded to those and will have it back in their hands this week for another round of proofing. Then it will be on to layout.

Anyway, here's and excerpt (except for the photo) from the NPCs and Adversaries chapter:


ERATOAN ASSASSIN/BODYGUARD

No. Appearing: 1-3
AC: 3
HD: 2
Saving Throw: 14+
Attack Bonus: +3
Damage: 1d6+2 retractable cyberclaws or concealed monoblade 1d8+1
Skill Bonus: +1
Movement: 40’
Morale: 10
The bioroids of the pleasure world of Erato have a myriad of modifications to primary and secondary sexual characteristics, sexual performance, and biochemistry. Always seeking to expand their market share, the Eratoans have began to generate members of their clade with new purposes. Bioroids with idiopathic poison biochemistry or weaponized genitalia command a high price on the black market as assassins. The above stats represent a somewhat less exotic assassin or covert bodyguard type.

Friday, April 8, 2016

A Sampling of the Hydra Sampler

The Hydra Cooperative is proud to be supporting ConTessa and Gen Con. As part of that port we're in the process of putting together a sampler of Hydra products and upcoming products. Above is our tenative cover and here's the Strange Stars OSR page I put together for the sampler:

Sunday, March 6, 2016

Salvage on Gogmagog

Here's an excerpt from Strange Stars OSR with new art by David Lewis Johnson. Okay, the excerpt's repeated, but the art is new!


GOGMAGOG
(Strange Stars Setting Book p. 9)
Tags  Desert World, Local Specialty
Enemies Crazy bot-breaker Haxo Ysgar; Robber gang
Friends Merc Faizura Deyr working for the bot-breakers, A free trader supplying bot-breakers
Compl.Von Neumann machine swarm, Malfunctioning giant robot
Things Hidden entrance to the mysterious planetary substructure, A forgotten ancient giant bot
Places a shanty town; a junkyard

Monday, February 8, 2016

Three Worlds: A Strange Stars OSR Excerpt

From the pages of the upcoming Strange Stars OSR, here are three worlds detailed in Stars Without Number style:

BOREAS
Tags  Seagoing Cities, Zombies
Enemies  Animated bioroid beast, Vrzemko Koprdazak xenophobic local kommissar, Zyta Hrenj paranoid ranger
Friends  Scientist Jarka Lissik seeking communication with the Cold Minds, Local trader Balok Zek
Complications Transport breakdown out on the ice, Dead from a sunken warship animated by the Cold Minds
Things Container of weaponized microorganisms; Exclusive trade contract with the uldra
Places Ranger station beneath the ice, The subsurface levels of a trading settlement

Tags  Desert World, Local Specialty
Enemies Crazy bot-breaker Haxo Ysgar; Robber gang
Friends Merc Faizura Deyr working for the bot-breakers, Free trader supplying bot-breakers
Complications.Von Neumann machine swarm, A malfunctioning giant robot 
Things Hidden entrance to the mysterious planetary substructure, A forgotten, ancient giant bot
Places A shanty town; A junkyard


PHOBETOR
Tags  Local Tech, Flying City, Badlands World
Enemies Industrial spy disguised as a technician, Dark dream-dealer Arden-Decima
Friends Customer interface specialist Soren-Tertia, Short-duration reverie designer Alex-Quintus
Complications A loosed frumious bandersnatch, Wealthy BASE-jumpers wingsuit-flying to the planet’s surface
Things An experimental dream drug product, A captured art-monster, weaponized dream-tech
Places The sky city of Eidolon, An ancient underground vault

Friday, February 5, 2016

In Space No One Can Hear You Scream

I'd initially planned to not to get any new art for the Strange Stars OSR book, instead reusing the great stuff that had been done for the Fate book, but when Jason Sholtis expressed interest in doing a piece, I had to take him up on it.

This illustration will likely head (appropriately) the monster/NPCs chapter. Currently, that chapters contents include stats for Algosian torture cultists, Caliban cannibals, Hyehoon Eden Seeker terrorists, Eratoan assassins, and of course, three colors of ssraad--among others.