Thursday, June 23, 2011

Revolt On Antares As Science Fantasy Campaign?







The advisor hurried through the halls of the imperial palace ever so fearful of the generals to the Emporer himself. They waited in a nearby council chamber. The very air around the place cracked with their thoughts seething in the air around the room. Near by two death bots stood at the ready. The heavy door opened on frictionless pivots & as one they looked at him. "Well !?"
The advisor went green as he gave the news, " There has been a Revolt on Antares!
Imhirrhos, the ninth planet in the Antares system. But Sirs this isn't the worst of it. There are rumors that certain houses have been taken over by very powerful forces
The Iron General has been making forays into the area, Andros has been spotted on several colony worlds,Imhirros II hasn't been heard from since one of Dr. Death's zombies was spotted. & "
"Enough!" The thought projection from the Emperor silenced the entire room. "Send my forces in to stablize the systems before the arrival of the Silakkan's Fleet led by Magron. Let them fight a bit longer & then get me both Mirrhos & Ward Serpentine we shall have words after things settle. Have our forces on stand by"
Then he was gone. The men in the room were transfixed & then scrambled to carry out his orders






I was looking over using the old Revolt on Antares mini game as a possible Rpg campaign for Human Space Empires. The game was a real classic & back in the day I played this game to hell & back. There are some solid ideas in Antares. So here's the official wiki entry on Revolt of Antares.:
The action of the game takes place on Imhirrhos, the ninth planet in the Antares system. Two to four players assume the roles of leaders of different factions fighting for control of the planet as the influence of Earth's Imperial Terran Empire begins to weaken. The factions include seven different ruling families or houses, Terran Empire forces, natives, and alien Silakkans. Players can choose from one of three different game scenarios.

Each of the seven houses has a leader with varying numbers of forces to command such as HovercraftsJump TroopsLaser Tanks, and Power Infantry as well as one Artifact (see below).
 Here's where a dungeon master could effectively start to customize the background . Each of the houses could effectively have their citizens, soldiery, & vassals imbued with their super scientific powers. This was originally written by flintlocklaser over on Rpgnet here. Revolt on Antares thread

  • House Orsini: Fascination (mind control)
    -the cool/creepy thing is the same here; status is shown by how many serfs you can 'teleoperate' at once, and a little psychosurgery on your puppets to make them more manageable is no more controversial than chalking your pool cue (these guys are going to strongly mirror the similarly-named Orsinate from Elizabeth Hand's Aestival Tide, so they're the squickiest of all the Houses)

    House MacKenzie: Teleportation
    -cool thing: buildings made for the House nobility have lots of rooms that are inaccesible if you can't teleport
    -creepy: ??

    House Kinrabe: Hallucination (illusionists)
    -cool thing: ?? Illusion contests? Maybe the 'standard display' for nobles is how many copies of themselves they can manifest? This feels a bit too much like a pale reflection of the Orsini brainslave display
    -creepy thing: ??

    House Fitzgerald: "...can create ion waves. They soothe the fears and raise the spirits.... [raising] combat factor by +1." I'm having trouble with this one as a more generic psi power - maybe they're sort of walking tasps, and they make everyone fighting on their side feel so damn good that they'll ignore little things like getting shot, just to make sure the feelgood keeps coming?
    -cool thing: ??
    -creepy thing: generations of Pavlovian conditioning that "fighting = joybuzzer" means there's lots of fighting among lower-class Fitzgerald subjects; reinforced by the fact that a passing noble will usually 'approve' and give them a jolt to the pleasure center

    House Sessedi: Long distance telepathy
    -cool thing: Telepathy is really common among their citizens/subjects; the nicer areas of Sessedi towns (where there's more noble blood) are virtually silent
    -creepy thing: high-caste Sessedi children have their vocal cords removed at birth

    House Braganza: Summon lightning (Electrokinesis)
    -cool thing: tons of low-grade electrokinetics walking around, what's not to like?
    -creepy thing: ?? The leader is called 'the Mad,' and her tank-battalion strength lightning power hits her own people 33% of the time; maybe they're all basically nuts from having jacked-up neuronal activity?

    House Edistyn: Precognition
    -cool thing: ??
    -creepy thing: ?? Maybe the higher-ups are really good at it, and know their own deaths from an early age?
    Once a "Galactic Hero" comes into the  leadership of a house then things get really interesting. These could be high level characters in Human Space Empires who might foreshadow an Antares campaign -This is going to be happening in my current campaign setting up for events to happen later on Antares 
    If a house leader is killed during combat, the player has the opportunity to recruit a Galactic Hero to replace him. Like house leaders, Galactic Heroes also have special powers or lead additional forces.
    • Andros, an alien android who can summon a "Phantom Regiment"
    • Corvus Andromeda, an intergalactic assassin
    • Doctor Death, a criminal who has the power to create an army of zombies
    • Emerald Eridani, the commander of the Emerald Company laser tank battalion
    • The Iron General, the cyborg leader of a group of mercenary laser tanks
    • Lyra Starfire, a scantily clad adventuress and commander of an airjet squadron
    • The Nullspace Kid, a young adventurer and airjet squadron pilot
    • Skarn 3, an alien mercenary who commands a band of jump troops
    • Subadai O'Reilly, the commander of "O'Reilly's Raiders," a power infantry battalion
    • Tovan Palequire, an intergalactic smuggler and arms dealer

      Other Factions

      In addition to the seven house leaders there are three other power groups that may or may not come into play depending on the game scenario.
      • Ward Serpentine, leader of the Terrans
      • Mirrhos, leader of the natives
      • Magron, leader of the alien Silakkans
    • The artifacts might be very powerful military weapons given over to the royal houses in case of an invasion from Silakkans space. Things get very complex more we look into said Artifacts. These might be royal treasures given over from the Human Space Empire itself. 

      [edit]Artifacts

      Each house has possession of a special alien artifact, chosen at random at the beginning of the game.
      • Devastator
      • Dimensional Plane
      • Energy Drainer
      • Field Generator
      • Force Cannon
      • Sonic Imploder
      • UFO

      [edit]Scenarios and Gameplay

      Revolt on Antares has three different game scenarios: Revolt Against Terra (the basic game), The Silakka Invasion, and Power Politics on Imirrhos.
      • In Revolt Against Terra, the game is played over the course of ten turns. Each turn consists of ten ordered phases where players take actions such as movement, combat, recruitment, and forging alliances. The player with the greatest number of victory points at the end of ten turns wins the game. Victory points are earned for owning or capturing different economic zones and for owned or captured house fortresses.
      • The Silakka Invasion
      Human Space Empire Play Tonight ! 

6 comments:

  1. I've never played the game but this looks extremely interesting. Where did you get that cool space art? Wicked!

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  2. ...okay, went to BGG and saw the images are part of the manual (shoulda' figured!). :)

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  3. I'm glad you liked the game Jay! Otus is pretty wonderful

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  4. This was a very cool game. I haven't played it for years but I looked at it recently with an eye toward lifting some ideas for Humanspace...

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  5. Pretty much my thoughts with this little game. Lots of fun with this little beastie & its got some really great ideas in it.

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  6. Awesome! I remember this, but never owned it. Love the art.

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