Star Frontiers


Star Frontiers is a science fiction role-playing game produced by TSR beginning in 1982. The game offered a space opera action-adventure setting.

Setting

Star Frontiers takes place near the center of a spiral galaxy.
A previously undiscovered quirk of the laws of physics allows starships to jump to "The Void", a hyperspatial realm that greatly shortens the travel times between inhabited worlds, once they reach 1% of the speed of light.
The basic game setting was an area known as "The Frontier Sector" where four sentient races had met and formed the United Planetary Federation. The original homeworlds of the Dralasites, Humans, and Vrusk were never detailed in the setting and it is possible that they no longer existed. A large number of the star systems shown on the map of the Frontier sector in the basic rulebook were unexplored and undetailed, allowing the Gamemaster to put whatever they wished there.
Players could take on any number of possible roles in the setting but the default was to act as hired agents of the Pan Galactic corporation in exploring the Frontier and fighting the aggressive incursions of the alien and mysterious worm-like race known as the Sathar. Most published modules for the game followed these themes.

Sapient races

These races were altered heavily and reused in TSR's Spelljammer, and were later loosely republished for d20 Future by Wizards of the Coast.
The game was a percentile-based system and used only 10-sided dice. Characters had attributes rated from 1-100 which could be rolled against for raw-attribute actions such as lifting items or getting out of the way of falling rocks. There were eight attributes that were paired together —Strength/Stamina, Dexterity/Reaction Speed, Intuition/Logic, and Personality/Leadership.
Characters also each had a Primary Skill Area which allowed them to buy skills that fell into their PSA at a discount. Skills were rated from 1–6 and usually consisted of a set of subskills that gave a chance for accomplishing a particular action as a base percentage plus a 10% bonus for each skill level the character had in the skill. Weapon skills were based on the character's relevant attribute but other skills had a base chance of success independent of the character's attributes. Many of the technological skills were penalized by the complexity of the robot, security system, or computer the character was attempting to manipulate.
Characters were usually quite durable in combat—it would take several hits from normal weapons to kill an average character. Medical technology was also advanced—characters could recover quickly from wounds with appropriate medical attention and a dead character could be "frozen" and revived later.
Vehicle and robot rules were included in the "Alpha Dawn" basic set. A beneficial feature of the game was its seamless integration of personal, vehicle and aerial combat simulation. The "Knight Hawks" rules expansion set included detailed rules for starships.
The basic set also included a short "bestiary" of creatures native to the world of Volturnus, along with rules for creating new creatures.
Character advancement consisted of spending experience points on improving skills and attributes.

Products

The basic boxed set was renamed "Alpha Dawn" after the expansions began publication. It included two ten-sided dice, a large set of cardboard counters, and a folding map with a futuristic city on one side and various wilderness areas on the other for use with the included adventure, SF-0: Crash on Volturnus.
A second boxed set called "Knight Hawks" followed shortly. It provided rules for using starships in the setting and also a set of wargame rules for fighting space battles between the UPF and Sathar. Included were counters for starships, two-ten sided dice, a large folding map with open space on one side and on the other a space station and starship, and the adventure SFKH-0: Warriors of White Light. This set was designed by Douglas Niles.
Adventures printed separately for the game included two more adventures set on Volturnus, SF-3: Sundown on Starmist, SF-4: Mission to Alcazzar, SF-5: Bugs in the System and SF-6: Dark Side of the Moon. The last two modules were written by authors from TSR's UK division, and are distinctly different from the others in the series in tone and production style.
Adventures using the Knight Hawks rules included SFKH-1: Dramune Run and a trilogy set "Beyond the Frontier" in which the players learn more about the Sathar and foil their latest plot.
Two modules also re-created the plot and setting of the movies ' and '.
A late addition to the line was "Zebulon's Guide to Frontier Space" which introduced several additional races and radical changes to the game's mechanics. Of the three planned volumes of the Guide, only the first was ever published, leaving the game in a partially-overhauled state. Gamers were given little to no practical advice on how to convert their existing characters to the new rules, and TSR never published any further products using the "Zebulon's" concepts.

Current products

Wizards of the Coast published many of the races originally found in Star Frontiers in their d20 Future supplement for d20 Modern.
A version of the setting called "Star Law", which uses the d20 system rules was published as an alternate campaign setting in the d20 Future book. It uses the species names of Vrusk, Dralasite, Sathar, and Yazirian, but is not actually the Star Frontiers setting.

Reception

Andy Slack reviewed Star Frontiers for White Dwarf #37, giving it an overall rating of 7 out of 10, and stated that "Unfortunately, I can't say the system struck me as especially realistic; but if you like action adventure, thinking with your fists, and Star Wars you can have a lot of fun with this game."
William A. Barton reviewed Star Frontiers in The Space Gamer No. 60. Barton commented that "Star Frontiers probably isn't going to lose TSR any money. But I wish there were a lot more to commend it than that."
Jim Bambra reviewed Star Frontiers for Imagine magazine, and said that "In summary, the Starfrontiers game is an excellent introduction to Sci Fi gaming, a game I heartily recommend to beginners and experienced gamers. A lot of expertise has gone into the designing of this product and the result is a very enjoyable and easy to learn game."

Review