Zebulon's Guide to Frontier Space V2 Part 1 Introduction (Star Frontiers) 

This is a young person we had many adventures with the osprey. And we even dominated a dralasite comedy club!

Was a Referee using Zebulon's rules. it was fun. Ran some PCs through several of the original modules.

Star Frontiers was perfect for my pre-teen self. We played it often. By the time Zebulons Guide came out, I no longer really had a group that wanted to play Star Frontiers.

I still have my copy of Star Frontiers and it is just as you say. Still think of it fondly but even back then it was an episodic palate cleanser between D&D games. Now I would love to play in a long running Star Frontiers campaign. I came to watch this video because I thought it might be new official content for Star Frontiers. Love your passion for the game. A little envious of your players!

I certainly understand the fondness felt for Star Frontiers. Star Frontiers was the second RPG I ever played (back in 1984), but I have experienced limited enjoyment of a variety of Sci Fi RPGs over the years. For the way I engage in RPGs these days, the best Sci Fi RPG for my money is Savage Worlds' The Last Parsec. I put it off for a long time, and when I finally tried it, I tasted something familiar about it. After a bit of research and correspondence, I find out that TLP is a love letter to Star Frontiers, which the creator had a great deal of fun with in the Old Days. The only Sci Fi RPG I had a successful run with before The Last Parsec was West End Games' Shatterzone (using an adaptation of the action/story deck innovated in Torg). Of course, I found out that Shane Hensley (creator of Savage Worlds and TLP) was on the staff at WEG at the time and worked on Shatterzone. TL;DR, I like The Last Parsec, and if you like Star Frontiers and Savage Worlds, you will like it too, and that is not an accident. Thanks for your work, Scott! I look forward to your videos.

I loved FASERIP

I ran a Star Frontiers game back in 2011, using the Savage Worlds rules.

For me, the major mechanical mistake was the division of damage, instead of the multiplication system used in GW3e. That is, Dividing damage by 25%, 50% and 75%. It is much easier to have a base number and multiply it by 1-5. A small thing, but it makes a world of difference. Have you looked at Zefers (Zeb's Fantasy Role-Playing System), which is based on the TSR Conan RPG, or, dare I mention it, the TSR Indiana Jones Roleplaying game (it has an interesting hybrid action table hidden in their)?

Never got into the other games outside D&D, but glad I found your channel. I am actually running a variant of B4 The lost city, awesome videos on the old school stuff. And awesome background, almost got my library finished as well.

Totally want to get my 11 yr old nephew into SF. He's just started getting interested in D&D with friends from school, but I would love to introduce him to SF. Problem is he lives across the country, so I don't have a lot of opportunities to get him hooked.

Thought Zeb's Guide was pretty good. Added new skills and aliens.

Nice thing about Zebulon's book was the new additional aliens

Marvel Superheroes RPG came out before Gamma World 3rd and Zebulon's Guide

I LOVE this game. I ran games in the '80's. I ran a campaign again in the 2010's. I'm getting my new group geared up to try SF in 2021. Long live Star Frontiers!

The ACT table, particularly the Gamma World 3e version, is one of my favorite gaming concepts. With that one table and a single roll, you can have multiple outcomes - without having to dip to another table, roll, or anything like that. Take attacking someone (or thing). You have all the following outcomes: critical fumble, miss, basic hit (x1 dam), good hit (x2 dam), really good hit (x3 dam), very good hit (x4 dam), and critical hit (x5 dam, and possibly an effect, provided the attack has one). Some weapons/attacks can have their special effect happen on an earlier result. I have added a hit location, that uses the same roll only adding the dice together. The only thing I will say I don't like about both Star Frontiers and Gamma World 3e is that their skill systems need to be seriously overhauled. For GW it really didn't exist, and for SF it is just weird and unintuitive. Suggestion: go to Roll20 and check out the Star Frontiers character sheet on it. The thing is a work of art.

Good stuff.

I didn't really like the new resolution table, but I loved GAMMA WORLD as well. I did also incorporate a "where hit" graph to see what body part was hit. However, Star Frontiers has always been my favorite and can't wait to see if a 40th Anniv. comes out. I do like how you explained the table and how easy it COULD be if one decided to convert to using it.

Gamma World, wow, great little game for its time. Actually my friend Jim was the Co-Creator of this product back in 77', I believe the game released in 78'.

Alternity RPG was a good system, did it has a supplement for Star Frontiers Races

Ok, what is your favorite SF adventure?

Any word on the state of Zeb's Guide V2?

One of my issues with Zebs is that the skill system is fiddly. Real life example: New player says I want my character to be a roboticist, he takes most of the robotics skills in Zebs but misses one (note: zebs split the sub skills of AD into individual skills- I under stand why but...) and in game play he's pissed that he cant do action X because he lacks that skill. AD rules you just take robotics and done. I've even tried to play SF 2000 rules which is Zebs Guide skill system on steroids which is what convinced me to go with a simpler skill system for my games. Equipment: fiddly again the whole chinese menu for build your own rockets- my experience is that most players my age (40-50 something) dont want to fiddle with that "just give me a shoulder fired rocket". Also the CAS's from the equipment list are just too much- just rip chances are nobody is going to have the right one this is fiddly again- rip off star trek and have a tri-corder. The body comps are fiddly too. The time line is a mess with problems and illogical stuff etc. Action resolution table is not faster IMO, AD Combat is 1/2 ability score +10 per skill level; the numbers are right there on the character sheet, just roll. Any system that involves looking up stuff on tables is slower whether Role master, ICE's MERP (something I loved a lot), or Zebs combats are slower- I will concede that if you are familiar with the column shift system you can probably run a combat fairly fast but I go back in memory to a 45 minute SF game held in the early 2000s while waiting for the DM to show where we had 3 distinct combats, a skill challenge and a small bit of role play and I thought, "Damn, that was exciting and now that the DM is here I'm about to play D&D 3.5 for 3 hours and we will never be able to do that much and it will never be as exciting as that 45 minutes of star Frontiers. That said I do use Zebs material- planetary footnotes, info on mega corps and cadres, I was even the project manager for the Zeb Guide Expanded project at the dot us web page: www.starfrontiers.us/node/1718 Best comment is this Video, "Dont play Star Finder, play Star Frontiers." Damn Straight and Amen Brother! Please dont take my negative comments to mean I'm against your efforts to promote Zebs Guide. I'm reminded of the words of my Sicilian business partner when I was asking him about the whole red wine with red meat and white wine with white meat thing and Ed said, "Drink what the hell you like." The kernel of wisdom there applies to RPGs as well. I am supportive of anyone producing new Star Frontiers content and I then agitate for them to submit it to the fan magazine for publication. Nudge Nudge.

Watched this video and noticed one omission and that is the love hate relationship TSR has always had with Psionics. Even in D&D they continually try to resurrect this ability in various iterations, and for some reason the public always rejects it. In a science fiction setting it always feels like you are trying to introduce magic, and unless you treat it as a religious ability i.e. the force, it feels anachronistic. And calling those endowed with psionic powers Mentalists conjured up images of the Amazing Kreskin. Not a good look. It was always my thought they should have created a new race that had psionic abilities then in order to use the related powers you would be tied to the racial restraints of said race. For example maybe making them less robust as Yazirian, a call back to basic DND where magic users were physically less impressive. Thoughs?

Love the game. Prefer Alpha Dawn. Zebulon's is not a bad system, but it's change for change sake because the writer of Zebulons hated the game.