The Future Is The Past In The Black - The Role of the Orbital 2100 rpg in 2d6 Cepheus Engine Style Campaigns & The Earth Sector rpg

 

If there's a book that seems to get overlooked in the Zozer games catalog its got to be Orbital 2100. Most of the classic Traveller players I've talked with haven't even heard of it. Orbital 2100 is for my own Hostile rpg campaign 125 years of exploration & expansion out into the Black. That is into the frontier before our workers,unions, etc. all get funded by the megacorporations. Space is very expensive and contary to Star Trek is the playground of the megacorporations. And our own solar system is still going to be experience it's own growing pains within Hostile. Compare this with the California Gold Rush of 1848. 

Artist impression of the Kuiper belt public domain artwork 

The Kuiper belt itself will keep Earth busy for centuries to come not to mention the opportunities for exomining & more. For the Hostile rpg there are two supplements that are aboslutely criticial and the first is the Hostile Tool-Kits & the second is Colonial Freighter. And having played a tin starred mercenary bountyhunter turned sheriff in tonight's DM Steve Hostile rpg campaign. Colonial Freighter is the 125 year follow up to Orbital 2100. Because Colonial Freighter is literally a base in a tin can space craft able to go anywhere & take on some of the punishment that the Black can dish out. Colonial Freighters in Hostile are base, 'colony starter kit in a can', and hauler all in one. 

The Kuiper belt is rife for exploration & exploitation in Orbital 2100 but within Hostile is going to be the road signs, investiments, & perhaps playground of the megacorporations. Or could they be abandoned by Hostile's time only the playground of the roughnecks trying to scratch out a living?! Perhaps a little of both. And this brings up the fact that Colony Builder is perfect to build a few smaller colonial style bases almost little tents on the edge of the rocks of our solar system. 
And this brings up the fact that Orbital 2100 could be used to add in a bit of detail for those wild catter spacers who are out on the edge of the frontier in the Black of Earth Sector by Independence Games.  So even in the Earth sector your going to have smaller spacer outfits operarting with Orbital 2100 technologies. 

Fancy doesn't necessarily mean better when it comes to spacer technologies, it's going to be what get's the job done in the end when it comes to working claims, getting out to strange new worlds, etc. Because of the collapse of the wormhole technologies were possibly thrown back hundreds of years and only now in Earth sector are recovering. And so the blackness of space really does become the great high frontier again. And these smaller operations are going to be dying, paving the way, & doing everything they can to survive. For the DM this is an opportunity for adventure, pay, and much more. For player's PC's this may be literally the bottom rung of the ladder into space for jobs, career, and more.