Never Played Day Five: Other Suns

[james_davis_nicoll]

Day Five of Unplayed RPGs: Niall C. Shapero's SF RPG Other Suns. Game mechanics were a very detailed, math-heavy cousin of BRP. The setting drew on popular SF of the time (More the Mote in God's Eye and Space Viking side), with the twist that when the heavily-armed Terran Empire encountered the vast, alien community that dominated a third of the galaxy, they were promptly and immediately defeated. Twice. Currently, humans have a collective government but functionally, humans fall under the purview of three alien regional governments.

Said aliens for the most part curiously similar to humanoid animals for the most part, which makes this one of the earlier furry RPGs.



The aliens were also available as PCs, so anyone not wanting to play a member of a second tier group notable mainly for being homicidal bastards who almost crashed civilization could select something more palatable. Seriously, why play a naked ape when you could be a telepathic fox person?

A vast variety of weapons was provided, despite which the example of combat provided in the rules ends with the example character (a human) getting arrested for murder. Also provided, planet generation and ship building rules, which I had a lot of fun playing with.

FGU supported the game rather poorly.

Comments

Reasons for pulling OTHER SUNS

[(Anonymous)]

If you contact me at niall_shapero@earthlink.net I can give you my account of my reasons for pulling OTHRR SUNS from Chaosium consideration. Or I can put you in touch with my attorney of that time, and he can give you his.