yeah, X-Decom was the game's name and it was going to use the old Grenadier Space Rangers figures and possibly the Combat Zone miniatures.  Both of which are available from EM-4 / Crystal Castle, as are the plastic Silent Death miniatures.

From what you say you got screwed by a scammer not Metal Express but be careful there.

Quote from: David Johansen;802152The thing is, that the Spacemaster fans liked the developments in Silent Death the New Millennium about as well as Traveller fans liked the developments in Traveller the New Era.

I'm a Traveller fan far more than a fan of the "official universe" - which has at most been a barely relevant background when I've used it at all. As such, I approached MT, TNE and T4 simply as rules sets.

TNE impresses me as offering a pretty excellent tool kit for a more detail-oriented game than what I run with Classic. I like it better than GURPS, which would be the leading alternative among the rules sets I have. (One nice thing is the simplicity in large encounters of tossing a single die per figure instead of two or three to add.)

Mongoose Trav with the right supplements is probably also something I would like a lot, but I've not had reason enough yet to spend money on a new rules set.

QuoteWhich is to say, not at all.  Sure it was a setting collapse by a bug race that turned out to be everywhere instead of years of civil war followed by weaponized sentient computer chip-like organisms.

It's interesting to note that Traveller and Spacemaster are both imperial sf but the settings couldn't be more different.  Spacemaster's take is much closer to Dune by way of Starwars than Traveller's Foundation + H Beam Piper that occasionally looks a bit like Starwars if you squint really hard.

Spacemaster Privateers is a totally different setting, in which precursors spread the same seven races over a large area of space.  Each race is very specialized and eventually two starfaring nations emerge.  One, a healthy democracy and the other a psychotic empire, when they meet, hijinks ensue.  A bit contrived perhaps, but well set up to get right in and play, sure the aliens aren't very alien and are very stereotypical but you can tell a new player "You're a knightly wolf man fighting to free your people from the evil cat people." and they get it right away.

Quote from: Spike;802825Well, I'll raise the stakes with Battlelords of the 23rd Century! Surely that will earn mad street cred!

I've seen that game around, and it looked intriguing, but not enough to buy it. What is it about?

Battlelords? Its a future setting as written by a meth addled metalhead.  There are plenty of pop-culture jokes that are disguised, some thinner than others.

System wise its actually fairly functional. The armor rules are fairly creative, detailed without being too clunky.  There are insane levels of power available, such as psychics who can 'fold space' for several parsecs, but destroy everything in the middle when they do.  There are lots and lots of guns, as I believe the default type of play is 'corporate mercenaries going out and doing violence', sort of the anti-shadowrun.

Races: Humans (pathetic, as written repeatedly by the book)
       Sim-Humans (less pathetic, but hung up on being clones)
       Orions (Cool human/aliens, with six fingers and a kender's attitude towards life)
Mutzachan (Melon headed psychics)
Space Jello
Two types of lizard, ranging from big and strong and agressive, to bigger, stronger and more aggressive
Asparagus heads (psychic healers and anti-healers)
Space Cats. Four legged, not bipeds.

Um... lemme get my book...


Ah, jeezus, how could I have forgotten!!!

Eridani: Methane breathing space samurai,

and their enemies
Methane breathing octopuses that think humans are delicious, and are treacherous bastards, every one.

There isn't really a lot of rules for things like space ships and and the like, just combat and some roleplaying stuff.  Now, as I noted, it really does shine in the combat department, though it is lethal. As a downgrade, Money=Power, as the dangerous 'big guns' are insanely expensive, and the tough armor is likewise.  We are talking exponential price increases for power upgrades.

It is, in its own inimitable way, the epitome of early nineties game design.

Battlelords struck me as somewhere between Rifts and Synibarr in terms of silliness.

That's a compliment, BTW.

My votes? Classic Traveller was my first love, but I haven't touched it in years. Now Hard Nova II and Diaspora are my current loves. I love Shatterzone's setting, but I'm not yet comfortable with the system. Won't bother naming my own SF games.

-clash

Quote from: flyingmice;803048Won't bother naming my own SF games.

-clash

From what I've seen of them they're pretty darn cool. I'm still hoping I can find someone willing to play Lowell Was Right!... who will get how clever that setting is and enjoy it.

From what I remember, you play celebrity reality TV mercenaries.

Quote from: David Johansen;803069From what I remember, you play celebrity reality TV mercenaries.

Smash TV, the paper-and-pencil version?

Quote from: Simlasa;803060From what I've seen of them they're pretty darn cool. I'm still hoping I can find someone willing to play Lowell Was Right!... who will get how clever that setting is and enjoy it.

Thanks, Simlasa! It means the world to hear how much you enjoyed Lowell!

I just meant I'm not going to claim anything I do is the best anything. They suit me just fine,  but that doesn't make them the best!

-clash

Quote from: jeff37923;802821The current version of 2300AD from Mongoose uses the Mongoose Traveller core rules as its engine.

Oh, so it does. I thought that was the short-lived d20 version and ignored it, but apparently I was wrong. Mongoose is coming out with a whole product line. I need to look into that.

Thanks for the reminder.

Weirdly, while I've played a decent number of games, I've never played any version of Traveller. (Except my friend's homebrew Trav-homage game, which was awesome)

Certainly not the best but I have a soft spot for Ashen Stars, I think of it as a darker version of Star Frontiers.

Otherwise, Star Wars D6 1st edition for the win. A game where you can use words like "TIE Fighter", "Protocol droid", "Stormtrooper" and everyone at the table  immediately knows (and "sees") what you are talking about.

RPGs being about shared imagination between players strong visual elements are a big part of what makes a SF setting "click" for me and my group and it is hard to beat Star Wars at this. W40K is the only other SF game line I can see with such a strong visual identity (but I don't have the time/patience to use the system that comes with it).

Quote from: Spike;802999Battlelords? Its a future setting as written by a meth addled metalhead.  There are plenty of pop-culture jokes that are disguised, some thinner than others.

...

It is, in its own inimitable way, the epitome of early nineties game design.

Quote from: David Johansen;803069From what I remember, you play celebrity reality TV mercenaries.

So, it's along the same sort of lines as SLA Industries?

It sounds good, I do love SLA.

When I was a snot-nosed, spazzball teenager in the 80's some older college kids let me play in their game of the (Then new) Traveller: 2300. In retrospect that was very kind and gracious of them.

The GM was world-class and the game's blue-collar, low-tech, Aliens-ish vision of the future seemed cutting-edge, realistic, and adult at the time. It was a complete blast, one of my favorite gaming experiences ever.