2300 AD: Man's Battle For The Stars [Box Set]

by Marc W. Miller, Timothy B. Brown, Lester W. Smith

"2300AD plays against a background of Earth and its colonies 300 years after WWIII, The Twilight War. In a world where nations still clash, civilization has crawled back to its prewar levels and beyond. The world is dominated by the Third French Empire, which maintains a shaky peace among its jealous rivals. Earth's 100 nations have colonies among the stars. First contact with aliens came long ago, and commerce with them is commonplace." A full set will contain:

* Adventurer's Guide (96 pages)
* Director's Guide (112 pages)
* Near Star Map - Breathtaking in its beauty and scale
* Play Aids (32 pages) Tables, forms, star data, and solitare adventure

Genres: Science Fiction, Role Playing Games

About the author

Marc W. Miller is an American game designer.

Miller was one of the founding partners of the Game Designers' Workshop (GDW), and the original creator of the Traveller science-fiction role-playing game. After GDW folded, the Traveller rights reverted to him, resulting in three more editions of the game, administered by his company Far Future Enterprises:

Reviews

[Matthew J. · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is kind of a tough one to rate & review. It feels weird for me to say, "this is really cool...but no thank you." And that's sort of how I feel. I like the setting a lot. It's packed with cool ideas. I just don't see myself ever running it, and that includes plugging in another system (which is what I'd do if I were going to run it). That said, I'd be really interested in playing it, if the GM were well versed and comfortable with the game. The mechanics are far too complex for their own good, which somehow feels almost like a feature, not a bug, but makes the whole thing kind of obtuse and daunting. It runs into a problem that might be too much for many. It feels a lot like Marc Miller's more famous Science Fiction RPG, Traveller, yet, it lacks the thing that I think makes Traveller so popular...its generic vibe. Traveller is to Science Fiction what Dungeons & Dragons is to Fantasy. Sure, it's got a default setting, but who cares. It's SCIENCE FICTION: The Role Playing Game. Well, 2300AD has a similar generic vibe, but has a much more limited (I don't mean that as a bad thing) setting. Add to that, it's not based off an existing and popular property, which might help sell the limits of the setting. If this were the Enemy Mine Role Playing Game, or the Space Above & Beyond Role Playing Game, it might (probably not) capture folks more, even though that's exactly the type of game it is. I ran into this trying to run Fading Suns. That's a game that isn't generic enough to fill the niche of a Traveller, but it's not directly based off Dune or Star Wars, so a lot of players had a hard time connecting. It's a weird catch 22.
That's a long winded way of saying, I think this is an interesting game. I really like the world that's been set up. I just doubt I'll ever get to play it and I have no interest in trying to run it. If I were going to run a Sci-Fi game, I've got a dozen others I'd go to first (some with settings not half as interesting).

[Hermann Morr · Rating 5 out of 5]

The season of pen and paper RPG has been so short, but so creative.

2300AD is not a book, yet, the game and adventure modules were some of the best science fiction around back in the 90's

[Randy Mcdonald · Rating 4 out of 5]

The hard-SF RPG 2300AD has a sufficiently dedicated fanbase to have enjoyed two separate relaunches, the most recent being Mongoose Publishing's release last year of a new core book for a reissued line. That fanbase has everything to do with the solid conception behind the game.

Interesting alien races with authentically alien psychologies and physiologies? A fair number of decidedly non-Earth-like planets, and an innovative use of the locations of stars (as they were known to be located at the time) and the implications for colonial astrography? Even a relatively innovative ranking of powers, with France preeminent and the United States one of several noteworthy second-tier powers? 2300AD is a game worthy of the interest it retained. The materials here are more than enough to get a group started. The mechanics of the game are a bit wonky, mind.

[Devin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Even though the core premise is a bit dated, stemming from the idea that a Third World War with a limited nuclear exchange occurred between NATO and Warsaw Pact nations, 2300 AD is still one of the better hard SF settings to have been published for gaming. The strongest aspect of 2300 AD in this reviewer's opinion are its alien races; while most science fiction game authors are content to people their settings with humans-in-animal-suits or humans-with-one-exaggerated-trait, the aliens in this setting are actually alien. Their rarity and unusual psychologies will ensure that every encounter player characters have with them will be a memorable one.

While sadly out of print, 2300 AD can still be purchased online in PDF format from DriveThruRPG.com.

[Stephen Herron · Rating 5 out of 5]

Of all the RPGs I've played over the years (and boy, are there a lot of those at this point, both years and RPGs) there's something about the 2300 setting that always takes me back to the initial excitement around this game. We were very much into the movie Aliens back in those days, and Outland, and shows like Star Cops (god help us) and 2300 really did a good job capturing the feel of those more gritty, hard SF backgrounds.

It's still around today, which you'll already know of you're reading this. Author Colin Dunn has, with Mongoose Publishing, brought the setting forward into the new decade with aplomb and the setting still has that power to get me grinning and eager to run games.

[Cthulhu · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lots of potential, good rules, but suffered through lack of support