RPG Retro Review: Star Frontiers Alpha Dawn 

I have the purple book, I remember when I got it as a kid, I was so excited! Then I realized I had no one to play with and just reread it for the 12th time.

A healthy shoutout for Bill Logan and his excellent reboot of Star Frontiers, Star Frontiers 'Gamma Dawn', and the excellent (free on DriveThru RPG) 'Star 'Frontier Explorer' and 'Star Frontiersman' for keeping this franchise alive.

I fully approve of this review and love this game. And I solemnly swear I am not under any Sathar mental influence. Not at all! Completely and utterly making this comment of my own free will. I am not a Sathar double agent...

This is still one of my favorite Sci-Fi RPGs. I still have my rulebooks. I've been playing since around 1984.

😊👍 *Please cover more Star Frontiers .*

This was the 1st RPG I played when I was a kid. Still have fond memories of it.

Since my introduction to D&D, way back in 1985/6, I have searched for this game. It took me almost 30 years to finally obtain a copy (Thanks to Drive-Thru RPG!). Seeing the talents of Elmore and Easley visualizing a Sci-Fi universe is a real treat. The Original cover of Star Frontiers is one of my all time favorites in the RPG (and comics!) universe - the colors, humor, concepts, kineticism and general aesthetics... like seeing a brand new 80's Red Line BMX, my inner kid gets butterflies all over again. An extremely flexible game whose system easily translate to whatever hits your fancy - Raw Percentile probability all the way!

Nice to see that game again! Amusing to see the dig at Traveller. History shows that contest didn't work out TSR's way.

Yesssss! As a young man I got an Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Player's Handbook, but I was missing how to run an RPG. TSR Inc. dared to make mass-market boxes, stopped depending on word of mouth and gave away the secrets of designing and running game adventures. At that point, any kid could pick up a Star Frontiers box in a bookstore or mall, read the programmed-learning parts in the Basic Rules, and have a half-decent chance of "getting it" about RPGs and run it for their little friends. As a bonus, the kids were not dependent on old bearded grognards to tell them what to do! The original electric-blue box was only US$10. It did not have much on starships: it assumed you were taxied to a new planet by an agency to get on with exploring. Later the Knight Hawks set came out about starship combat and RPG aspects, and the original box was identified as "Alpha Dawn", a very arbitrary term having NOTHING to do with the game! The combat system is beautiful. Basic Ability scores are almost 5 times what you are used to in D&D because it is a percentile game and not d20-roll based. There are only 13 skills but there are subskills within each skill with different base chances, so these adequately cover adventurous actions. Knight Hawks and especially Zebulon's Guide to Frontier Space added more skills. The basic combat calculation is 1/2*STR or 1/2*DEX plus 10% per level of skill. There is a ponderous table of combat modifiers, big and small, but take the time to learn these tables! The importance of each factor lends realism, and the factors won't change often from turn to turn. You always know what your odds are in simple direct per cent. The game allows figuring melee attacks but also the very powerful ranged weapons. Robots and vehicles are added, even aerial vehicles, all going on in fast-playing, nervy six-second turns. In the second Volturnus module (SF1: Volturnus, Planet of Mystery), I managed to run the fight in a jungle between the PCs, 12 Star Devil Pirates and 40 Kurabanda allies of the PCs. It is fast-playing if you learn the system and don't fear the Melee and Ranged Combat Modifiers Tables. A wonderful experience for a young adult whose little feet were set on the dark path of role-playing, vocabulary building, public speaking, resource allocation know-how, and my humble efforts at creative writing.

I printed and created some homemade counters using a pack of the inexpensive floor tiles with adhesive backs. Just printed my counters off on regular paper, pressed it down on the adhesive side, then cut down the lines on my cutting mat with a utility knife & metal edged ruler I already had. They're a bit flexible but weigh more. Didn't want to buy a paper cutter, adhesive pages, etc, as they wouldn't get much other use.

Traveler fan here, but Star Frontiers was a really good one as well. Too bad they couldn't keep the TSR-tanic moving. Star Frontiers and Gamma World will always have a soft spot in my heart. Didn't know anything about the updated effort, I'm going to have to check that out. Thumbs up to the Thri Kreen, they are alive and well and living in Dungeons and Dragons.

Remember playing this game as a 13 year old. Thanks for reviewing it!

My friend and I had this back in the 80's when it first came out. Never played it, made characters and dreamt of playing, but with just two of us, we never really played enough. Sad.

A hand salute to you Captain for bring back nostalgia for me! We played star frontiers for several weekends! Volturnus campaign left a lot to be desired and had some silly story issues. Ty for reviewing this game!! 😊

Whoop whoop whoop! I have been waiting a long time for this one! Thanks!

I think that's the best overall score you've given anything you have covered thus far. Thank you so much for covering this. Star Frontiers has a special place in my heart and have notified everyone on our Facebook page about your video. Cheers.

Echoes of Dr. Demento in your voice. That brought back some memories.

Such good memories! I had everything for SF back in the early/mid 80s except the figures. Initially ran the game then my best friend ran a great campaign we never finished because we later graduated high school and went into college/military. I also played Spacemaster from ICE. Good times!

My local am radio station back in the day had ads for this game. I remember the over the top voice over and cool sound effects. Being a basic D&D kid at the time, I always wanted it... but my brother went with Gamma World instead.

Excellent review of Star Frontiers, and I speak as the content editor of the Frontier Explorer magazine.

Been thinking about getting into Star Frontiers lately and this video helped! Cheers!

I do like this review. A couple things I would differ from you is this: traveler I saw more like Star Wars, or even possibly Blakes seven, or the greater University of Doctor Who in the future. Very broad and diverse Starfrontiers I did love the simplicity and well written rules. There was no confusion and how to do things. But if you take nighthawks for example, easy to use, but they were very limited options on chip designs. Traveler was very open ended including up to 1,000,000 tons The game mechanics of Star frontiers was percentage based. The game mechanics of travel was the classic roll 2D6 and try to do eight or better. modifiers would help you go up or down. classic traveler to come up with the book called the unwritten rules which helps with that concept. It was probably written this way because a lot of classic war games were roll two dice six and try to get eight or better I am a fan of basic and advanced rules. The basic were set up for people who were not into role-playing but were into doing a quick combat. and the advances for those who have tried the basic and comprehend it and not want to get into it more. Dungeons and dragons also had a basic version and a advanced Version. The basic ways simple rules but not too much complexity and allowed for a lot more role-playing. The advanced of course has a lot more color in details in it. Which if you can use to the basic only flushes it out for your role-playing. Kind of like the difference between a weekend warrior and a full-time special forces I forgot to mention if you look closely in nighthawks the ship rooster, showing sizes of the ships is actually presented upside down. In my own copy of the PDF I have fix this

This game holds a special place in my heart. I remember fighting the whole 2nd Sathar war? Didn't they include that scenario? Thanks for your great reviews and I hope you do more on this game.

I loved this game soooooo much, for a little while when I was a kid this was the only RPG I was allowed to play due to the Satanic panic, until my parents recognized the foolishness of it. But this game still holds up today and is fun to play.

I still have the original Alpha Dawn module plus the Knight Hawks module. And a few of the Adventures with player and Ship tiles. CANT wait until my 7yo is old enough to play with dad.

Wow I love this game. I played back in 1984 when I was 14

Ha! I literally just tracked down a copy of the original 1982 blue box Star Frontiers and got it yesterday! Was a fun RPG to play back in the day -- I liked playing Dralasite characters.

I really think that there was a strong mythical belief in the need to do a Basic/Advanced rules thing, up until around 2000.

Just grabbed one of the blue box sets on eBay recently. I've got to run a campaign with this system. I had the books as a kid but I never talked my friends into playing.

Love the instructions for the counters. They're almost identical to the originals. Nice!

I tottaly agree about the aliens that aren't just blue humans thing. This is a very well made and informative video!

Star Frontiers is such a fun game! I had so much fun with it! The Volturnus campaign was so much fun!

Holy COW! I had this, but had completely forgotten about it. Thanks for taking me back. Far out.

Wonderful video! Thanks for sharing!

I played this more than D&D when I was a little kid.

Watching this now I've only just realised that the Alternative Armies miniatures line Space Simian X is totally based on these races!

Always enjoyed the game back in the 80s even if it never quite clicked with me the way D&D and TSR's Marvel game did. Having said that, I enjoyed it and have fond memories of it.

I wanted to be a Dralasite so bad. Sadly as I age, I am morphing into one IRL. LMAO

Another great review Cap! Well done. Star Frontiers was the first opportunity I had to be a player; after chewing AD&D, it was a light load on the brain, to be sure. I loved the open ended nature of the gaming universe. Thanks again.

I swear the dralasites were taken from the old cartoon the Shmoo. It's what they always reminded me of when I 1st saw them.

I would imagine someone has mentioned this. I read down the comments by about 15 post and didn't see it. Regardless, the final score out take is for some reason at the front of the review. I started the video with the final score and a thanks for watching. :)

Thanks, this brings back fond memories.

So good! My favourite RPG channel along with bandits keep

I love this game! I still have it and played a one-shot, not too long ago. The space battle game is good on it's own too. I converted all the percentages into d20 rolls. I even acquired a few starship minis and kit-bashed the rest.

This is a game that with a little more support could have been around for a long time. If you want minies for this game, I've found proxies that will work for most of them. I've found some sci-fi snakemen that make good Sathar, some bugs that are like the Vrusk, humans are everywhere a plenty. The Dralasites, are a tough proxy to fill. I've been looking for minies at 15mm scale instead as vehicles are also much easier and small enough to fit on the table as well.

Yes! Finally!

YES! BIG SF fan. Taking a break at the moment but have run a Star Frontiers Gamma World mash-up campaign for past few years. Have couple very old copies still getting heavy use.

...I studied the rules thoroughly and corresponded with Penny Peticord of the Role-Playing Games Association. Some of my concerns got reflected in Dragon articles about Star Frontiers errata. For example, if a vehicle is damaged, it may suffer effects like loss of control. The effects tables had "2d10+damage" across the top but the text said to roll 2d10 and add only the number of DICE of damage from an attack, so if the damage was 3d10 and you rolled 15, add only 3, NOT 15!. If you did it wrong, the severity of effects would increase too sharply, up to the notorious "Roll and Burn"! I think you can play Car Wars-type games with this even better than Car Wars (which at the time broke up rounds into 15 segments every second!), or the types of battles from The Road Warrior (aka Mad Max 2) with that insane pilot swooping around on his autogyro too, dropping hand-made bombs, why not?!

I still have both that & the Knight Hawks expansion. Only played it once, but it was an easy & fun system as I recall.

My favorite rpg. I run it for pick-up games at cons or when I game with kids who haven't gamed before.

As always, great review! Forty years ago I found "Star Frontiers" to be somewhat generic and bland (the percentile system didn't help to change that assessment), however the PC races were appealing (like the amusing Dralasites and simian Yazirians). Traveller (publ. 1977), on the other hand, was a great way to play out the novels by E.C. Tubb on the interplanetary wanderer named Earl Dumarest (with a bit of "Space Viking" in the mix). Traveller's infamous die-while-in-chargen rules were a big turn-off, but there were ways of getting around that bug/feature. Traveller also had some great support from third-party Judges Guild. My all-time favorite scifi RPG has to be the super-rare SPACE QUEST (Hume and Nyhen, publ. Tyr, 1977) with all its freaky, psychedelic setting ideas, and hyper-technical rules.

Many a weekend in high school playing SF. My character eventually became the ship's pilot.

Never new this stuff. The boxed sets were a feature of my childhood

Thanks for the review! Although I love the idea of this game and have collected a lot of the books/minis, I have yet to actually play...although that's true for many of the rpgs I have :) Would love to see your review of the modules if you can get to it.

I have _no_ memory of those species featuring in Spelljammer. It's been a long time, though, and I only mined that boxed set for a few long-lasting concepts for my own setting.

Still love this game. I gotta pick up Zebulon’s guide tho.

Wonderful video thank you.

Love this !

I’ve recently rediscovered Star Frontiers and love the system - the basic / expanded break up is a bit weird, but I find I use the basic game as a skirmish/board game. And the expanded rules will be my basic for a campaign I’m planning next year. Thanks for the awesome content!

The only thing I don’t like about the DrivethruRPG PDFs for Alpha Dawn and Knight Hawks is they only have printer friendly broken up maps and not full one page ones, the modules don’t have this problem. I guess if you have photo editing skills to combine the images it wouldn’t be a problem but I do not. Other than that nitpick they are very nice.

Well I gotta give Traveller credit for teaching me vectors when I was in high school but game was like running a business....I stayed with DnD... But when I discovered Star Frontiers, I basically converted my whole DnD circle to play it and we never looked back. Just love the flow and simplicity compared to DnD.

Thank you, very fun.

While the rules were...odd...I LOVED this setting! It was kitschy in the best way, and was just this side of Flash Gordon and Lost in Space to allow my players to ignore the physics and enjoy the wacky science fiction.

There must be a disturbance, no, the opposite of a disturbance in the force this week. I've been thinking about Star Frontiers all through Thanksgiving and this culminates it.

DTRPG just listed a new Star Frontiers module called Taking Out the Trash. Sounds like it's set on/near Clarion from the Knight Hawks boxed set mini-campaign.

Ha - I literally just dug out my Alpha Dawn box this past weekend! (Alas, it's a replacement for my original, pre-AD blue box that I got in '82.) Been too long since I last looked at it. Such a cool game but one I haven't had many chances to play, unfortunately. That didn't stop me from making character sheets and maps for it, though. Speaking of which, I'm amused to see my map of the Frontier at 1:30 - that's two of my reimagined maps that have found their way into one of your videos! :D If any other viewers want to download that and my SF character sheet (and peruse a ton of other old school RPG stuff I've made) they can find them at A Rust Monster Ate My Sword)...

I was wondering why they haven't re-released it. Even in "nostlagic releases" in 2008 seems to lack one. Heck, many TSR fans seem to show Gamma World and Metamorphosis Alpha as non-DnD TSR games to the point that I know Star Frontiers in 2020. Edit: Just a retrospect, I didn't realize their current shenanigans, i was really curious why it never received "nostlagia RPG" until 2020 (I mean I've seen more Gamma World and Metamorphosis Alpha than this, especially in 4E nostlagia update era).

I remember seeing the ad in the back of Comic books .

This was interesting. As someone who never played this or Traveller, more detailed info on the rule system would have been runtime well spent.

This was the second RPG I ever played (After D&D of course) It has always been one of my favorites. I preferred Human, but all of the playable races were fun to play. I fondly remember my first SF character Jon Carter (so original I know lol) a Demo expert (Okay... level 2) use D19 to sabotage a pirate starship and keep them from escaping later in the scenario. Good Times.

Holy shit this looks good. Any idea if these books or even modules could be adapted and usefull for my Dnd5 campain. I want to bring my party into space, so I was of course considering Spelljammer, but could use a bit more lore and possibly some cool adventure to use. Cheers !

Always wanted to play a drasalite

Long ago I wanted to play Star Frontiers instead of D&D. It was complicated but more fun if you liked Sci-fi.

Nice! Was always curious about this because it was advertised in my Mentzer redbox Player's Manual on the back page. Can you do Marvel Super Heroes?

this game has piqued my interest as well as Spell Jammer, so I'll definitely give this a look and get the PODs!

Like a lot of reviewers, had the box set mostly unplayed. It's too bad that like Top Secret, Gamma World, and Boot Hill, this game never reached its potential. Star Frontiers Expanded came out with a module based on Kubrick's "2001". THAT would be and interesting review, Corajus.

Star Frontiers is technically the first role playing game I played.

If you get the softcover do you also get the PDFs? I have the original, but nice to have an extra copy bound copy and ability to print certain pages as needed.

You know Star Wars vs. Star Trek? Yeah, it's like that.

Great video! Do you know if the PDFs on drive-through or actually PDFs or are they just scanned images? I ask because I’m blind and screen readers don’t read scanned images. Thanks!

1:58 You tried to say Yazirian, but it sounded like Yossarian (the hero of the novel Catch 22?) :-)

Oh wow, I need it.

So good! SF forever!!

Classic game

I'm as much of a fan of SF as anyone old enough to remember it from my childhood but taking the nostalgia goggles off for a minute, SF disappointed a lot of people back in the day by leaving all the rules for starships and space combat out of the main box set. The only element of space travel in Alpha Dawn is ticket prices for catching a ride to another planet. When you compared it to just about any other SF game on the market (Traveller being the big one, but FASA's Star Trek dropped in 1982 as well and there were others like FGU's Space Opera or Starships & Spacemen) that was a pretty glaring omission. Critics tore the game a new one over it too. TSR fixed it with the Knight Hawks boxed set next year, and in the end the game wound up with more page space devoted to starship rules than most because of it - as well as getting a pretty decent strategic boardgame around the second Sathar war in the process. Still, I suspect the year-long wait for what most people regarded as a vital part of any starfaring scifi game cost SF quite a lot of impetus and some customer ill-will, since KH was widely (albeit perhaps unfairly) seen as a cash-grab to sell two box sets instead of one. Not one of TSR's better design choices from a marketing standpoint.

Star Frontiers was a good game. There should be an OSE version.

Still think this was a cool rpg. Have nearly the entire series. Lots of fun. Mish-mash of Trek/Wars in concept, but has its own galaxy-wide commonwealth that is unique. Thanks for this review.

I use to play that all the time in Middle School until Star Wars finally put its official (and kind of hard to use) RPG out.

_Dralasites do it with dexterity!_

Great game!

I loved star frontiers

I'm going to introduce my players t this game but adapt it for D&D Basic.

I hear rumours there might be a revival, or a mashup of SpellJammer, Planescape and Star-Frontiers? ... how plausible is this?

Good game but not supported very well by tsr (only a dozen modules or so). I always thought the skills section was lacking and vague.

I never got into this...Paranoia and Mechanoid Invasion anyone?

My view is Star Frontiers feels more like Firefly than either Star Wars or Star Trek.

I played this game a bunch back in the day and still have it. But let's be honest - the style of the original game and modules is very much "D&D In Space!". I mean, crawling through a dangerous cavern complex? Really? When the game came out it didn't even have space ship rules because you were meant to be fighting monsters in the wilderness... I mean, on unexplored planets. It did get better and I agree that it's good for novice players but Traveller is a much better game.

Based on the race traits it appears that I am a Dralasite. Interesting and not unwelcome. Not a fan of the angry monkey birds. Imagine all the poop they would throw around. 🤮

Old 1980s crap. No thanks.

It's a shame what became of the reboot Star Frontiers (or rather the racists who took up the mantle) as it really casts a shadow on the brand when you try to recruit players.