[Rq-rules] *** JUNK MAIL ***Re: Other Suns

[Niall Campbell Shapero]

> Date: Sat, 19 May 2007 13:03:13 -0700 (PDT)
> From: Simon Phipp <soltakss at yahoo.com>
> Subject: [Rq-rules] *** JUNK MAIL ***Re: Other Suns
>
> Sven Lugar:
>> Let me also say "Other Suns" is one of the best variants of BRP out
>> there in my humble opinion. I really like the depth of background to it
>> as well as its ability for open ended exploration.
>
> Agreed, it was very good.
>
> The only criticism I would have of it was that the Alien races seemed to 
> be of the "humans in suits" variety and not fleshed out particularly well.
>
> It was close enough to RQ to be easily usable and far enough away to be 
> incredibly frustrating at times. But, all in all, it was a pretty good 
> system.
>
> Were there any published scenarios/supplements? I can't remember seeing 
> any.

THE ALDERSON YARDS SHIPBOOK was the only one that ended up getting printed. 
H. Andrew Keith submitted ICE WORLD which, initially, was a TRAV supplement 
with TRAV replaced by OS.  Keith hadn't, however, bothered to read the OS 
rules, nor was he producing a scientifically accurate supplement (one of his 
more obvious mistakes was giving midnight as the coldest time of the night, 
as opposed to just before sunrise).  I had to rewrite ICE WORLD from one end 
to the other, and while Keith received full payment, I received nothing, and 
FGU went belly up (as far as publishing further supplements) before ICE 
WORLD could ever be published.  A friend put up some of what I'd done on the 
net afterwards (years afterwards).

The second edition OS went to DANCING STOAT ENTERPRISES for publication in 
the 90s, but the publisher flaked out (a fan run operation, it had the 
faults of many such), and the result is OS-2nd is sitting on my computer, 
awaiting reformatting and typographic corrections.  Stephen Posey (also on 
this group, I believe) bought one of the galley proofs a couple of years 
back; he can speak to whether or not it was an improvement on the original.

>
> steven mckenzie:
>> first off I love other suns, and always will, it never
>> gets packed away, but some people are scared of the
>> formula etc

A little hard to drop formulae and equations for the scientific situations. 
For character creation?  Well...one still has characteristics and bonuses in 
RQ that affect skills -- and I tried to "rationalize" the approach in OS, 
perhaps not with total success.  In the 2nd edition, I tried to carry on the 
process a bit further.

-- Niall C. Shapero