After several minor wars on Earth and beyond Mankind found itself under threat from the alien race known as 'Kafers'. They are brutal, beyond reasoning with, and addicted to violence... worse still, they have a pathological fear/hatred of humanity. After a major campaign and the deaths of millions man is fighting back and has struck at the kafer homeworld....
2320AD is an updated version of the RPG 2300AD by GDW. It is twenty years later and Humanity has brought the Kafer War to an uneasy stalemate.
The differences. Thankfully precious few. I really enjoyed the setting and QLI have changed this very little. There has been a progression of the Kafer War, Players can now play as alien characters (although realism is still key and these characters should be rare). There has been some technology updating and a fresher , more modern approach to colony worlds. Urban dystopia, frontier survival, corporate intrigue, ship based exploration, and total warfare adventures that fit seamlessly this setting. The book itself. Refreshingly easy to read this book is segmented into easily accessable sections that can be read as capsules. No long and boring techno-babble here! It's a weighty tome (and should be bigger when the final print version arrives) but it's everything that the Referee/Player needs. Character gen, equipment, refereeing, game setting are all dealt with succinctly and leave space for helping you to immerse yourself into the setting that has, over the years, had the honour of being one of the games with the most realistic worlds, aliens and technology. I like games such as 'Star frontiers', and 'Star Wars' but this game is hard sci-fi and makes other sci-fi games look like they're made for the tellytubby generation. The way the game is set out tells you that all the info is there but it also gives you latitude to create your own adventures and encounters while leaving you hoping there's more to come.
The system. It's D20 and follows the T20 rules in the way it generates characters with experience. The '20' system has been done to death on every forum there is so I'll comment no further on the system except to point you in the directions of 'negative Points' below.
Artwork. Having been involved in this from a contributor perspective I can say that there is a lot of artwork destined for the print version and it is all excellent (and I'm not talking about my contribution). there's some art that'll definately make you go 'coool!'. In the PDF version a lot of great art is there, some reprinted from original version and some new art.
Negative points. The only negative point I could find with this is the system. it's not that it's D20...which is fine for me but that you need the 'Traveller 20' (T20) rules to play (world & character gen etc) and over here in the UK, they're rare. That said, T20 is a fantastic buy also.
Summary. I have played this setting for 20 years and it's STILL my sci-fi RPG of choice. The new version is a worthy descendant of the previous one.
