Fire, Fusion, & Steel

Science fiction is about diversity, the unusual, and pressing the cutting edge of science. It's not suited to simple lists of equipment that limit play. Each different world's environment calls for slightly different approaches to transportation, communication, and even weaponry. You need rules to design whatever equipment you need, and as many different variation of it as your players find uses for. More than than, you don't need jargon and double-talk; you need to understand enough of the science behind the equipment that you can see how it works, understand its limitations, and make the game come alive.

Fire, Fusion, & Steel has all of that and more. Starships, aircraft, and vehicles, in almost infinite variation, are at your command, from fusion-powered grave tanks to advanced technology lighter-than-air ships, from gigantic armored star cruisers to delicate ornithopters. pick your power plants from a selection that ranges from primitive steam engines to matter-antimatter annihilation, with side excursions to solar power, batteries, explosive power generation, or even cold fusion.

Tired of just playing with jump drives? Tailor your campaign around a wide selection of FTL options, from natural wormholes to stargates, stutter warp, or hyperspace drives. Or if FTL is too advanced for you, conquer space the hard way, with Bussard hydrogen ram jets or Daedalus thermonuclear pulse drives.

The cybernetics chapter alone has dozens of entries and provides a rich basis for adding cybernetic enhancement to any science fiction game.

Weaponry isn't slighted either. Rules and supporting data enable you to design small arms, conventional cannons, gauss weapons, plasma and fusion weapons, lasers, particle accelerators, meson guns, missiles and more. Or counter them with reactive armor, electrostatic armor, meson screens, or nuclear dampers.

Fire, Fusion, & Steel gives you unprecedented control over your campaign environment by not only providing a variety of design rules (and explaining the physics behind them in layman's terms), but also by covering a wide variety of technologies not part of the core Traveller game universe. It is a sourcebook on universe building for any science fiction referee, and an indispensable reference work on future technology.

Publisher    Game Designers Workshop
Version    Traveller: The New Era
Author    Frank Chadwick, Dave Nilsen
Format    Paperback
Edition    First
Year Published    1994
Pages    160