I was thinking of running something like this with my players at one time and was considering using Eden Studio's Unisystem Classic or their Cinematic system as I think the system would lend itself rather well to the subject matter of Twilight Imperium.

Well!

Some news. I've been worrying at the RPG and doing super hyper-preliminary playtesting aaaaand I've found that unless everyone is the same race, the game gets a mite hard to keep together. Also, I kept finding that I had to make up so much of the setting (which, though thick and detailed for the boardgame level, is not detailed enough for an RPG)...

Why not make up my own setting?

And so, while walking with a friend, I jawed out a basic setting and we expanded it together and we really like what we have!

So, its not going to be based off of or related too Twilight Imperium.

If you guys are still intersted, I can keep you up to date, but it might be a bit out of place here.

Zoombie said:

I would be interested in seeing what you have come up with. If anything if may give me idears on how to go about getting my own game started at some point.

Well, here's what I've got

There have been Four Ages of the Galaxy. The first age, the Dawn Age, was a time of great heroes, great villains, and great discovery. The First Race, humanity, warred with itself and flirted with destruction. But, through sheer luck and human ingenuity, the first steps were taken off world. The solar system was boot strapped to humanity's will and a golden age began as the mineral wealth of the solar system was exploited to humanity's content. This was the Second Age.

After a time, cracks began to spread through the gilt of the Second Age. As technology advanced, a discord began to brew between multiple factions, each with their own vision of a future humanity. Some were forward looking, such as the Cybernetics or the Bio-neers. Others sought the comfort and morality of the past, such as the Mormons and the Muslims. The discord grew, conflicts broke out over places to live and ideology. Laws to keep moderation in place only worsened the rifts between humanity. Finally, after the Jupiter Incident, humanity realized there was a solution, a way for each of these factions to live in peace.

The Slowboats. Massive ships, equipped with an enclosed environment - built and managed by those who shepherded the Earth through the environmental deprivations of the First Age – Ion Drives to propel them to their destinations, and finally, the equipment each faction thought necessary to survive on their hand picked world. Each world, chosen through telescope and scanned with spectrograph, was believed to be life supporting.

The Slowboats left with much fanfare, leaving SOL behind.

Laser burst allows communication between Earth and the Slowboats. Everything seemed fine... until the third generation of travel, when the laser communication stopped dead. Silent. Without their shared home, the Slowboats were unable to communicate with one another. Knowledge of the others became twisted and tainted by propaganda, rhetoric, rumors, and still the silence kept up from Earth, leading to speculation and fear. Some wondered if humanity had simply abandoned them. Others speculated that there was a war going on. Others still wondered if there were darker and more ominous reasons for the continued silence...

In truth, Earth had faced the war they hoped to prevent despite all their efforts: the political differences that splintered humanity remained even with the Slowships taking the extremists away. War began, and before anyone knew what happened, nuclear fire had purged the planet. The spirits of humanity became no brighter than the glow of background radiation.

Thousands of years passed and humanity crawled upwards from the ruins of nuclear fire, building their civilization once more, using information stored safely by those who saw the coming fire, information and buried caches of synthetic fossil fuels, advanced technology, and the storage devices containing the writings of the First Race.

The Third Age, the Dark Age, did not officially come to an end until the discovery of the Mass Drive. This discovery, that the theory of relativity was a local phenomenon, allowed for the bridging of light years in an instant! The Mass Drive allowed the Terrans, those descended form the survivors of the nuclear devestation, to construct a mighty starship filled with the best Earth had to offer

Christened the Solian, the ship's journeys changed the galaxy. They set out in the hope of reuniting humanity. What they found was that humanity no longer existed. Each of the Slowboat colonies had birthed a new race, a new civilization, a new species.

The arrival of the Solian galvanized each race it met to pursue the technology of the Mass Drive. Soon, each Race was expanding into their surrounding area, building true empires and governments that were impossible without faster than light travel.

This is the Fourth Age.

ALmost done with all eight Solian races.

CanadianPittbull said:

I agree with the use of Unisystem. I have free time now, so I'm putting it aside to running in this. I've got a short campaign figured out (I tend to run out of steam if running on my own), and I've only got until October when my main campaign starts up again.

I've mentioned elsewhere on this thread my ideas for running, but I'll go back to my thread a few months old with updates, as this thread is now no longer a Twilight Imperium RPG thread.

So, the RPG is going well. Its no longer a Twilight Imperium RPG, though, so I guess posting here is kinda pointless, but what the heck!

I've completed the write up on all eight of the Solian races, though I have not really worked out what their rules will be. I've tried to make sure that each race's culture and physiology will preclude them to being GOOD at a focused kind of character...but you can also be a different character without ruining your game.

But, without futher aduie, here are the races (in short summery form). Each of these races are decendent from humanity, and are only now, after thousands of years, reunited by FTL travel.

Terrans: Decedents of the nuclear fire that scourged Earth, Terrans have a very small population due to the rampant sterility and cancers that still infest their race. Due to this, they have created some of the best robotic support in the galaxy. Terran characters are good at technical tasks and controlling, creating, and repairing robots of all kinds...but they should stay away from combat.

Independent Cybernetic Enhanced: The I.C.E are anarchists who established an anarchistic/libertarian utopia in a distant solar system. It worked...after a fashion. I.C.E start off with cybernetics, and are very resiliant, but they don't get along well with more orderly people.

Templar: Mormons who fled the solar system after facing religious persecution, the Templar settled on the barren world they called Bounty, only to find it infested with semi-sentient aliens that attacked them almost from day one. The centuries of war that followed shaped the Templar into the finest soldiers in the galaxy. Templar also make the galaxy's best power armor, for their Paladins.

Bioneers: Experement in biological engineering that unleashed viral plauges that decimated this colony's populations. From the chaos emerged a caste system, with Bioneer Lords at the top, and everyone else at the bottom. Over time, genetic engineering made those castes into permenent sub-species, with Lords at the top, followed by Knights, Priests, Peasents, and Breeders. Bioneers are an ordly people, with each caste capable of doing very well in their specific feild.

Freegens: A branch off from the original Bioneer colony, Freegens rejected the control and hierarchy of the Bioneers in favor of a republican system. Now the most politically minded Solian race, the Freegens also produce the most Gene-Hacks, genetic modifications that you can inject.

Kau'Thar: Muslims fleeing religious violence in their homeland, the Kau'Thar settled on a water planet, dotted with a few archipeligoes. They became a thriving trading cutlure, and took to intersteller trading like a mouse to cheese. However, their adaptations (I.E, gills and fins) to their waterworld make them invalubale ship pilots, due to their innate sense of three dimensional movement.

Sky-Jacks: These colonists arrived at their new home, only to find that it had been turned to radioactive wastelands. Yes, the Sky-Jacks found the only sign of intellgent alien life in the galaxy...and it had already destroyed itself by the time they got there. So, the Sky-Jacks decided to just keep on flying. Now, the Sky-Jack ships fly through every solar system known to man, ranging in size from small to large. Sky-Jacks are suprimely good at keeping space ships running, and are even better at holding grudes. Sky-Jack clans have complex and intricate fudes that stretch over thousands of years.

And lastly we have...

The Mind-Net: A hive mind created through cybertechnology, the Mind-Net are incredibly efficent. They're so efficent they almost beat the Alliance (Bioneers, Freegens and Terrans) in the first Hive War...and they DID beat the Bioneers and the Freegens in the second HIve War, occupying both homeworlds. It was only the timely discovery and intervention by the Templars that saved the Allies from becoming permenent conquests by the MInd-Net. Now, almost a hundred years later, the Mind-Net is still confined to one planet, surrounded by defensive satilites. But the MInd-Net has repented, and in an attempt to improve its image in the galaxy, it has sent out Emmisaries, drones that have been modified to interact with the other races peacefully. These Emissaries are player characters...and they only have good intentions.

Right?

And so, those are the races.

I have also been working on illegal items for these various races. Things like A.I, Glasser Bombs, flesh eating moss, monofilimant net guns, diamond dust, Screamers (my favorite) and anything else I can think of.

So...yeah.

Anyone here still interested in this?

Wow! This sounds quite impressive. What system are you using? I might be interested.

I'm using the White Wolf system.