It is no secret that I absolutely love the old Star Frontiers RPG, but what I have also considered is the possibility of bringing the Frontier into 15mm as a wargaming option. Thisi s tricky, of course, because nobody makes figures for the very distinct races of the SF game. Happily some of these can either be proxied or converted and in one case likely even scratchbuilt. My hope is to be able to explore the various option for bringing Star Frontiers to life in 15mm miniatures over the next few months. Work, time, the move, and other various factors may make this tricky in a practical sense, but at least the theory and brain work can be explored until those obstacles are cleared.
Another big issue for this project has been finding vehicles that look the part too. Star Frontiers had some very distinct ideas about what sorts of vehicles populated their universe. Where Traveller tended to focus a lot on the military hardware, SF was about explorations, discovery, and exploitation and so included a lot of vehicles with minimal or no military hardware. One very outstanding example is the Explorer.
The SF rules describe the Explorer as a huge, RV-like ATV. This vehicle is a self-contained home, lab, and scouting/exploration vehicle that allows a party of adventurers a mobile base of operations and in many cases a safe haven. Such vehicles are hard to find in 15mm as most APC vehicles tend to go along the lines of modern military designs. Some of the early 15mm scifi lines did include vehicles of a similar sort but a recent development from Critical Mass Games really hit the mark.
I borrowed the image of the Dractamaa APC here from Mark's excellent Dropship Horizon blog to show what I mean. Take the heavy combat turrets off of these things and place a lighter armed turret with an observation canaopy on top and these are the spitting image of the Star Frontiers explorer vehicles all the way down to the door between the big wheels. I can even see piles of stowage lashed to those flat spots at the front, accessed by the rooftop hatches.
I'll be posting more thoughts on the 15mm Frontier as they come to me or I find solid miniatures alternatives. Also, I'd like to take a moment to remind folks of my proposal for the 15mm winged simians that I had posted about a while back. They really were the first major step in the whole idea of the 15mm Frontier project.
Take care everyone and stay tuned. Thingsm ay be slow around here, but I'm still kicking.
-Eli
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Peter Pig has some vehicles that might be easily morphed into a futuristic setting
ReplyDeleteHave you seen this website dedicated to Star Frontiers Eli: http://www.f4fbbs.com/StarFrontiers/
ReplyDeleteCheers
Mark
Ground Zero Games has a lovely tracked vehicle, which I think is called "Explorer II", which looks like a Traveller ATV. They also have a flat-bed grav truck, plus various wheeled vehicles of not so military appearance.
ReplyDelete15mm.co.uk have several nice grav vehicles - grav car and grav bike spring to mind, plus a flying roof-less bus.
Old Crow has a "mule" in grav, hover and wheeled.
Hope these help - I never saw Star Frontiers back in the day, so if you could "review" some vehicle shots for us, it might be easier to do the detective work.
Word verification 'snivilit'? Sounds like a type of gretchen.
@Mark - I have seen the site. Starfrontiersman.com is also another incredibly useful and fruitful fan site.
ReplyDelete@Kobold - Many of those vehicles would work. Reading over some of the SF modules it seems the variety of vehicles spans the entire range though there doesn't seem to be much of a showing for grav vehicles.
Way cool. We may try to game it in 15mm now instead.
ReplyDeleteIxx for Vrusk... Dralasites - heck, that's a little blob of putty with a gun... Yazirians are a bit tricky - maybe some kind of goblin or something with putty 'wings' and a weapon swap or two? Humans are available already... Sathar would be tough unless there's a sci-fi snakeman out there somewhere, and the other non-standard races...
I am looking at goblins with ape-like appearances but they usually have too much fantasy gear.
ReplyDeleteThere are some animal-headed aliens from various manufacturers that might be given wings and visors to look mor Yaz like.
Another option is to use the wolfe heads from Peter Pig that really look less wolfy. There is a pic someplace on Dropship Horizon that shows one.
I had a thought just a few moments ago. What about the 15mm Quar for Sathar? Too fat, I know, but the faces are pretty right...
ReplyDeleteI am not so sure the Quar would work well. The sathar being wormy, might be easy enough to build using wire and putty. Even their faces look simple enough to paint.
ReplyDeleteOne thing that has been mentioned many times on the Starfrontiersman group, however, is that in most of the modules, you rarely run into Sathar fighting themselves. They usually fight through cyberneticly altered and controlled life forms or robots.
The Sathar are themselves, ill-suited to physical combat.
-Eli
Dude you suck!!!!!! This was my all time fav rpg, and I was trying to put it out of my mind as no one will play it with me. Now I go to my blog reader and see this. STOP dude you are killing me.
ReplyDeletegreat idea any way.
Noel
I apologize for nothing!
ReplyDeleteSF was/is a great game and a cool universe. Now you need to go to starfrontiersman.com and download all the remastered and new content for the RPG.
Now you can hate me :)
-Eli