Tuesday, November 17, 2015
Strange Stars A-To-Z: "Q" Is For Quigley
That Strange Stars book cover! There has been such a buzz about Eric Quigley's great cover illustration! For many SF gamers, the art signals that the Strange Stars is a spiritual successor to TSR's classic SF RPG Star Frontiers, whose cover also has three figures in the foreground and a burning spacecraft behind them.
True confessions time: I only acquired a copy of Star Frontiers a year ago at Goodman Games booth at U-Con; my early SF game inspirations were Traveller (I bought the Little Black Box before I bought White Box D&D) and Metamorphosis Alpha, and the wargames Alpha Omega and StarForce: Alpha Centauri. More recent gaming inspirations for me have been all about the Fate system and include +Chris Birch's amazing Starblazer Adventures, +Brad Murray's brilliant-and-lean Diaspora (a major inspiration for the world generation rules in the Strange Stars Fate Rulebook), and +Sarah Newton's Stapledonian SF masterpiece Mindjammer.
I know classic SF was an influence on Strange Stars setting designer +trey causey, but truth to tell he hasn't hidden his more contemporary SF references either, which include many authors associated with the New Space Opera. We outline a lot of those influences in the "Adventures and Campaigns" chapter of the Strange Stars Fate Rule Book.
Come back tomorrow for a 1D6-1D6 Table based on the Strange Stars cover, showing off both classic and contemporary SF references built into Strange Stars!
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