Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Starblazer Adventures

Back on December 31st I pre-ordered a new science fiction RPG called Starblazer Adventures from a British company called Cubicle 7.

Starblazer uses the very cool FATE system as its core engine and is based not on the famous Japanese anime Starblazers but on a British sci-fi comic book series from the 1970s and 1980s that featured some one shot stories alongside a cast of recurring characters.

The .pdf for the game came with the pre-order, but as the book is a massive 600+ pages it proved very hard to simply sit down and read all the way through.

Well, yesterday my massive hardcover copy arrived in the mail, and I'm quite excited. I'm putting together a document presenting my Consortium Sphere sci-fi setting in a fashion that emphasizes the opportunities that it offers for roleplaying and adventure. Not sure when I'll get that done to my satisfaction, as it involves repackaging and expanding upon the existing content so that it reads less like an encyclopedia entry and more like a call to adventure replete with story hooks.

But my current plan is to send it to the guys at Cubicle 7 as a pitch for developing the Consortium Sphere into (sounds a little crazy) publishable supplement for Starblazer Adventures, along the lines of the very intriguing Mindjammer setting that I think I'll be purchasing when it comes out.

And if that doesn't work out, I might consider the possibility of adapting the PDQ or PDQ Sharp rules (each flavor available for free download here) to space opera excitement. First I'd like to get my hands on a copy of Swashbucklers of the Seven Skies, the newest PDQ setting, as I hear it has inspired the game's author, Chad Underkoffler, to run swashbuckling space opera. But I don't know what the licensing or sales potential of that might be.

UPDATE: The last week of June I got into contact with Chad Underkoffler, who sent me the details of the PDQ license and said he'd be happy to read a manuscript when I got it ready. At the moment I've just started a freelance project, so it will probably be the end of the year before I get something ready, depending on how I get going on my fantasy novel. But it's a start.

1 comment:

El Jefe said...

Rock on. While I read too much into your email it's still the right thing to do. And it seems like an apt time to pitch to this particular outfit, they're still in the expansion phase where compatible material is an economic plus rather than just fanon. "Swashbucklers" has one of the great titles ever (I'm also looking forward to "The Antarctic Express," Ken Hite's Polar Express/Mountains of Madness mashup) and will look forward to your take on it.