Alternity holds a strange place in my gaming history. Released in 1998, it came about a year or so after my high school / college group disbanded due to my new work hours. Of course, that didn't stop me from buying RPGs, especially TSR releases.
I had the Alternity boxed set, Star*Drive and Dark*Matter. Here's the kicker though - I recall nothing about the system itself although I enjoyed the shit out of reading Dark*Matter.
You see, I knew I wasn't going to be actively gaming at the time, so I was more focused on setting and less about the rules.
Now, Alternity is returning. Kinda. Sorta.
It appears to be returning in much the way TSR returned - even if it is mostly "name only", with some of the originals attached to the name.
Here's the press release from Sasquatch Game Studio:
Sasquatch Game Studio is pleased to announce the return of Alternity (TM), a modular science fiction roleplaying game where you create your own future! The game system will launch in 2017 with a 256+ page hardbound book.
The game, which shares a name and heritage with a popular RPG from the 1990s, covers such action-packed scenes as starfighter dogfights, zero-G combat, and powered-armor troopers blasting aliens into their constituent atoms. The Alternity rules set is modular, so gamemasters can support the story arcs they create with the specific rules they need. A story of far-future space exploration, for example, will use a capital starship rules module, while a dystopian cyberpunk setting will use a virtual reality/hacking module instead.
Developed with guidance from Alternity’s original designers. Richard Baker and Bill Slavicsek, Alternity will feature a publicly available playtest packet in early 2017. Based on feedback from those external playtesters, Sasquatch plans to release the game in the second half of the year.Am I interested? Sure. But I'm more interested in any attached settings than the new crunch.
The pre-Alpha doc that they've released is a clear successor to Alternity 1e, but flipped from roll-low to a more intuitive roll-high. There are other changes, but the thing that defined it AS Alternity is still there (d20 +/- dX, and a weighty list of skills). I am super excited to see where they go with this.
ReplyDeleteMan, Alternity was another one of those games with settings I really loved when it came out (Star*Drive, Dark*Matter, Gamma World), shackled to a system that seemed cumbersome and made probability less clear.
ReplyDeleteStill knew a guy who loved it though.
Weird. The Alternity that I remember used some kind of step-die system. I do remember liking the setting.
ReplyDeleteIt is a step die system (which I quite liked). I also like the armor mechanics and multiple damage tracks.
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