Here's the Pinnacle Entertainment Group GenCon session. It's worth 38 minutes of your time.
Sunday, August 2, 2015
Thursday, February 12, 2015
Star Swords - The Beginning
The setting features aspects of Heinlein's Starship Troopers (swarms of bugs) and Niven's Known Space (warrior kitty cats and forerunners) with some Firefly thrown in for good measure (oppressive centralize government). It also has aspects of Shadowrun, Halo, and Star Frontiers.
In this setting, Earth and other well-established core worlds of the Grand Planetary Federation have become a bureaucratic hell where Social AIs dictate every aspect of citizen's lives. Humans live a pampered, if structured life with cradle-to-grave care. On the core worlds, aliens are looked upon as second-class citizens. Malcontents disappear and are never heard from again.
On the Frontier, life is rougher but freer. There are wars with neighboring races, new planets to explore, and FedCred fortunes to be made and lost in a day. Mercenary guilds are common and provide everything from explorers to law enforcement. The characters begin the adventure in one of these guilds.
Large numbers of alien races live in and around the Frontier but it is dominated by humans. Other races can be played but there will be some built in bigotry when you encounter GPF citizens.
Other governments outside the GPF include:
The Ateraxian Matriarchy – spider-like beings the operate a series of wormhole generators making a sizable income for the matriarch.
The Blorb Syndicate – large slugs with high-tech capabilities. Most other races are either slaves or food sources. They live in a back-stabbing, overly legalistic society. Few visitors leave the Sisternous system without several lawsuits filed against them.
The Kurr Hegemony – muscular apecats with a clan-based society and a large number of slave races. They have a raid or trade mentality depending on the strength of encountered races. Hunting other sentient beings (Sents) is a favored pastime.
The Kzzick Sovereignty – bugs in all shapes forms and sizes. They are humanity's primary threat. Kzzick consider all other races food sources and every planet material for growing the massive colonies.
The Riss Oligarchy – small lizards with a penchant for camouflage. The prey on other races and form the core of many pirate organizations.
The Verlian Union – large bears with clairvoyance. They are merchants with no real colonial ambitions. They revere their elders who they claim can see the future.
The Blorb, Kurr, Riss, and Kzzick are adversarial to the GPF while the Verlians and Atteraxians are allies. Client races of the GPF include Arvins along with the races present in the Science Fiction Companion. Other exist as well.
The game begins with characters applying to a mercenary guild. Guilds employ all sorts but for this game a good mix includes fighters, pilots, medics, explorers, and scientists. A combination of starship and dirtside skills are important.
Non-humans face special challenges in parts of the scenarios. Humans must be either an Oldie or a Frontiersman. Oldies are from the core worlds and don't follow the normal human character creation method receiving a better education (i.e. more skill points) but sacrificing the additional edge.
The game uses the Savage Worlds Deluxe Edition with the Science Fiction Companion. You can find the books at your local game store, on Amazon, or you can order the PDF from DriveThruRPG (cheapest). I've included the links below for Amazon and DriveThruRPG. The setting is best described in World of Grey. I've included that link as well.
On Amazon:
On DriveThruRPG - Note, this will be your cheaper option for the rule sets. They are $10 each.
I'll attempt to write a blog post detailing each came with setting tidbits as well.
All artwork is by Devin Night. You can find his tokens and other artwork at the Immortal Nights website.
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