Star Frontiers (1982)
Copyright: (c) 1982 TSR, Inc.
Advancement: Skill-based, ranks purchased with XP; attributes improved by XP expenditure
Features: Straightforward resolution system, sci-fi setting not rooted in existing movie/book license
Star Frontiers was an early sci-fi RPG that did fairly well for a time in the early 80s. A large portion of the credit probably goes to it’s relative success in terms of generating and describing an interesting sci-fi universe to explore, without falling back on an existing license, and a free-wheeling, open-ended one to boot. Anyone who played it probably has some fond memories of the Star Frontiers setting, particularly the alien races PCs were allowed to play (Dralasites, Vrusk, and Yazirians, oh my!)
Character Sheet
These scans of the official character sheets for Star Frontiers (pdfs of the originals available via the good folks at starfrontiers.com) give a good overview of exactly how straightforward the system could be. The original “Alpha Dawn” game (the Knight Hawks expansion added rules for starship travel and combat) had a grand total of 13 defined skills. After Knight Hawks and Zebulon’s Guide, it got a bit more complex, with about a hundred or so options, but it all still ran under the same basic resolution system, and really just fleshed out the types of options you’d expect in a free-wheeling sci-fi campaign… tech skills, medical skills, piloting skills, and so on.
Additional rules could be found or extrapolated for psionic abilities, cyborg/robot characters, and so on. In the end, however, the game was really about exploring alien planets and navigating the heights and depths of a high-tech, far future society… just what the doctor ordered.
Attributes
The attributes of Star Frontiers were the height of simplicity. There were 8 basic attributes, arranged into 4 related pairs: Strength/Stamina, Dexterity/Reaction Speed, Intuition/Logic, and Personality/Leadership.
A d100 roll on the Ability Score table would translate to a starting score ranging from 30-70 (another early instance of this alternate stat range, see Chill) which would be set for both scores in the pair. The player could then move up to 10 points from 1 score in a pair to the other. These scores were also modified by race (Vrusk had -5 to STR/STA and +5 to DEX/RS, for example).
Skills
Progress in Skills in Star Frontiers were measured in ranks: in general, rank 1 was basic knowledge, on up to rank 6, which was the height of expertise. Each rank added +10 to the character chance of success, the base of which was predicated on one of the attribute scores. For example, Beam Weapons skill was defined as “1/2 DEX+skill level”, so the base chance to hit for any character was 1/2 DEX score (a base of 15-35 for a starting character)+10 per skill level achieved.
Characters would start play with 2 skills at rank 1, and then could spend any XP earned to advance an existing skill, open new ones, and/or increase attributes.
Combat
Star Frontiers combat was straightforward and quite similar to D+D: roll to hit based on skill modified for circumstances; if successful, roll damage based on weapon; apply any defenses from armors or force fields; reduce targets Stamina by result. As you might expect, basic rules were also defined for grenades, automatic weapons fire, and so on… all quite easily understood and applied.
Setting
As I mentioned in the introduction, I think that the core strength of the Star Frontiers game was it’s setting. It was open-ended enough that a GM could run with it in nearly any direction his players wanted, yet provided enough detail and options to make it interesting. By creating a new yet internally consistent setting, unencumbered by an existing fictional setting, or even a connection to Earth itself, I think it endeared itself to a fan base that wanted to explore a future somewhat of it’s own design, as opposed to that already largely described, even choreographed, by someone else.
Conclusion
Star Frontiers was one of those pen-and-paper RP games that was just plain fun. Unfortunately, it doesn’t have many of the twists or insights that might transfer well to the production of a “next-gen” on-line MMO game… it is a solid small group, pen-and-paper title, and makes no pretense to be anything more. However, it might be well worth the time to examine in detail how the setting was designed and presented… one of the difficulties most sci-fi titles encounter is helping players establish a solid connection to the underlying setting, especially if there is no licensed fiction to use as a foundation. Star Frontiers managed to accomplish this very feat with significant success… there may well be lessons to be learned by digging into the material.
Star Frontiers is, at present, utterly out of print, and has been for quite some time. Presumably, Hasbro/Wizards of the Coast still hold the basic copyright. I’m also not certain whether there was any attempt to resurrect the Star Frontiers setting under the Alternity ruleset of the mid-90s, as they did with Gamma World: I haven’t found anything definitive yet one way or the other on that.
There are still some nice fan sites available for Star Frontiers and it’s various expansions. One I would recommend in particular is starfrontiers.com, which not only has some online pdfs of the original rule sets and expansions, but also has a significant number of links to other sites and resources related to the game. If you want to gain a better understanding of the game, I’d suggest checking them out.
5 comments
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February 20, 2007 at 10:28 am
JuJutsu
I loved that game. It was a short-lived campaign though, only 8 or 9 months as I recall.
February 21, 2007 at 9:40 am
damianov
Amongst my circle of gaming companions, I can recall 3 separate campaigns over time. The one I ran kinda went wild, evolved into somewhat of a political science simulation by the end of it (a typical result with that particular group… more than a couple of wannabe Napoleons in there, heh heh.)
There was a haunted spaceship, ancient alien stellar platforms (to “explain” the weird physics behind the hyperspace mechanics of the game), and even multiple secret organizations (ala “Illuminati”) introduced at different points along the way. Plenty of basic space combat sessions, tho, too… everyone seemed satisfied, at least.
Don’t remember exactly how long it ran… this was back in high school, and we were playing 4-5 times a week, different games and groups every night. I suspect it was that same 8-9 month timeframe, maybe a year at the outside.
March 9, 2007 at 6:45 pm
Psychochild
My first introduction to “mainstream” RPGs was Star Frontiers. The local target store had a module on clearance and I saved up a bit to buy it. Now, my best friend at the time was a total Bible-thumping fundie (I hung out with the wrong crowd), so the fact that the letters “TSR” were on it was a sure sign of the devil.
I bought it anyway and didn’t understand it at all. I was new to the RPG thing, so I didn’t understand what a module was. I lost interest in it quickly, of course, but the writing still fascinated me.
The irony here was, of course, that my fundie friend and I used to play computer RPGs and make little games on notebook paper. He wasn’t fond of “magic”, so I did some research in the library to find an alternative. I found a book “herbal medicine” (read: Wicca in a plain wrapper) and used that as a basis for a new magic system.
Oh, irony! Turned away from magic and into the world of witchcraft! (No, I didn’t convert….)
So, anyway, seeing the name Star Frontiers always brings this memory to mind.
March 10, 2007 at 6:27 am
damianov
Heh. It sure seems like none of us who lived through those early years of the RPG escaped that “those games are tools of the devil!” garbage. I know it shaped my childhood… I was a constant source of tension to some parents amongst my classmates, because I was one of those “roleplayers”, yet I was also an acolyte, church choir member, avid volunteer in the community, etc., etc. Nearly all my friends were much the same… we all created some definite “cognitive dissonance” amongst the fundamentalists in our little hometown. It was a weird time.
One of the constant sources of amazement for me these days when looking at the pen-and-paper RPG market is how far it has all evolved away from that. Now you have games like the White Wolf titles, where you literally play monsters, vampires, werewolves, and the like, and In Nomine, where you essentially take the role of angels and devils. Can you imagine how _that_ would have went over 20-30 years ago?
Of course, it really didn’t go away, the focus just moved to an even more popular diversion, computer games. “Doom made him do it!” (Yeah, right.)
September 10, 2009 at 5:36 pm
Art Eaton
Hello, Art here, admin of Starfrontiers.com’s sister site and forum, Starfrontiers.org.
wow. What a nice write-up. On the spot. Period.
I myself never “dropped out” of Star Frontiers, though many other games went by the way-side. As a hard Sci-Fi buff, Star Frontiers never made me want to ralph; unlike some other media favorite settings. That, and the open architecture of the setting really was a rare thing. They never tried to “close it in” until TSR changed dramatically and got a horrible ice-goddess CEO. That was not it’s doom however. It remains both a preserved as well as living work of art, with almost no commercial involvement. We have magazines, new rulebooks, video games, and of course lots of on-line resources and gaming meet-ups, all without anyone earning a dime.
It would have been a shame to let Dralasites drop into fictional history.
-Art Eaton