M. Jared Swenson Productions

This blog chronicles my projects, developments, and all things related to tabletop gaming. I will try to avoid rants and reviews. Mostly games I'm developing, and progresses from my campaigns.

Tuesday, May 1, 2012

Mass Effect - Alternity Rulebook


Announcing my plans to create a Mass Effect conversion for Alternity. I have already made a post a while back on how much I love Alternity. It's a great system designed specifically for high tech yet gritty space opera settings like Mass Effect. And I love Mass Effect. Even the much debated and controversial ending to the trilogy. I think it's a very rich and brilliant aesthetic with plenty of opportunities for exploration and adventure.

On /tg/ there was a thread discussing possible systems to use to run a Mass Effect campaign, and a few anons and I got discussing about Alternity. (links in the next sentence are all to the conversion sites for the listed systems that I know exist) In the thread were other game thrown around, like Rogue Trader, Traveller, d20, Star Wars Saga Edition, FATE/Diaspora, Savage Worlds, World of Darkness, and a new game I haven't heard of called Alpha Omega.

So nobody that I know of has done a conversion document for Mass Effect yet. I would like to spearhead that. However this will be completely different. I plan on doing a complete standalone rulebook. All other current Mass Effect conversion documents require the original rulebook for core rules. This project will have in it the core rules for Alternity flavored specifically to the setting. I can't include EVERYTHING because that would be an astronomical task, so it will be designed for beginning play. The rules will be a healthy halfway between the beginners rules and advanced rules as outlined in the Alternity Players Handbook.

And because I want to someday become a game designer, this will also be a practice in book layout and design. Art courtesy of Google images (cheating i know), and all the fluff will be courtesy of the Mass Effect Wiki.

3 comments:

  1. Looking forward to this, I love both Mass Effect and Alternity, so there you go, it's a natural match.

    I converted Mass Effect recently for Rogue Space, does that count?

    http://roguespacerpg.blogspot.com/2012/04/rogue-space-another-review.html

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    1. Thanks for the encouragement Mik. I didnt know you knew Alternity. It is a great system. Sad wizards bailed on it and went with d20 future instead *shudder*

      Of course it counts. If you have the conversion notes or document, I'll update it on my post.

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    2. Oh yeah, big Alternity fan since TSR was prepping it to be "the" sci-fi RPG of the day. Of course that fell through but I managed to hang on to my PHB and Star*Drive book.

      I need to post up my conversion stuff, nowhere near as ambitious as what you've got going here, but it was fun nonetheless.

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