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The 2300 AD game in all forms is owned by Far Future Enterprises. Copyright 1986 - 2009 Far Future Enterprises. 2300 AD is a registered trademark of Far Future Enterprises. Far Future permits web sites and fanzines for this game, provided it contains this notice, that Far Future is notified, and subject to a withdrawal of permission on 90 days notice. The contents of this site are for personal, non-commercial use only. Any use of Far Future Enterprises's copyrighted material or trademarks anywhere on this web site and its files should not be viewed as a challenge to those copyrights or trademarks. In addition, any program/articles/file on this site cannot be republished or distributed without the consent of the author who contributed it.
2300AD : Humanity Among the Stars
- Introduction to 2300AD
- Introduction to the Site
- The Great Game II
- My 2300AD Universe
- Site Log
Introduction to 2300AD
2300AD was a hard (hardish, see the My 2300AD Universe Section) science fiction role playing game produced by GDW in the late 1980s. The background assumed that World War III had occurred just before the new millenium and that mankind had spent the next three hundred years rebuilding the earth and colonising nearby solar systems. Earth itself remained split into over a hundred nation states which competed with one another for resources and prestige both on and above the earth. The dominant power over much of the period was France which had capitalised on a quick recovery from the devastation of the Twilight War, as World War III was known, and the subsequent turmoil. Even France however was not a super power merely the first amongst equals.
By 2300AD humanity had colonies on planets orbiting tens of other stars and had encountered four alien races one of which had become an inplacable enemy.
Current Status of the Game
When GDW went out of business 2300AD was already out of print but following the winding up of the company the rights reverted to Marc Miller's Far Future Enterprises. Note that Marc sells a CD-ROM containing all the 2300AD material every published, and one or two bits that never were.
Since then Quick Link Interactive (QLI) have produced an update, under license, to the game known as 2320AD. This moves the timeline on by 20 years (including a major war with the alien enemy) and uses QLI's Traveller20 rules which are in turn based on the d20 system. An interim version of 2320AD, written by Colin Dunn, finally came out in 2007 as a pdf. This included all the rules and background for the game (you also needed the Travller20 and d20 rules to play). Unfortunately QLI never produced the final version which was due to include lots of new illustrations, either as a pdf or hardcopy.
There are also currently rumours that Mongoose Publishing are going to produce a 2300AD sourcebook for their Mongoose Traveller (MGT) game.
Introduction to this Site
The Humanity Among the Stars Site presents my view of the 2300AD game and will, over time, provide various resources for fellow players and referees.
If you have any queries, spot any errors or I have got something wrong (the latter two being highly likely) please eMail me.
The Great Game II (GG2)
Introduction
GDW generated their future history for 2300AD by playing a grand social-political-economic-military-diplomatic simulation. Members of the GDW staff took the part of the countries of the earth in 2000AD and in five to ten year turns played out the recovery from nuclear war, the discovery of a star drive and the foundation of colonies on the planets of other suns. This future history ended in 2300AD and was extended to 2303AD in various game supplements.
A group of players on the Web has now decided to further extend the history of the game universe by restarting the game from where GDW left off. This effort is being primarily organised by Steven Alexander and further details can be found on his Web Pages.
GG2 Information on this Site
As part of GG2 each player is required to produce a Web Page(s) for each of the countries he or she is playing. I was playing New Zealand, The Netherlands and Elysia (a former French colony on the planet Joi which orbits 61 Ursae Majoris). The pages can be found by using the following links.
My 2300AD Universe
My main complaints about the 2300AD universe as presented by GDW are
- Why is the solar system not much more heavily colonised and developed?
- Given that extra solar colonists start off in space why is most of the local industry not in orbit where it doesn't have to pay the transportation costs up the gravity well and energy is available 24 hours a day and all but free?
- Why build your first beanstalk on a 1G aggricultural colony world? Surely you would want to have a go somewhere much easier first - say a low G world near the bulk of humanity's industry and expertise (Mars for example).
- If you can build a beanstalk this would have massive implications for architecture (Gibralter Bridge anyone?). Also is you are building beanstalks why not space tethers (essentially beanstalks that don't reach the ground) which would greatly reduce the costs of reaching orbit.
- DNA Modification! If you can modify humans to live on King surely everyone with any money at all would be busy modifying themselves and their children to be smarter, healthier, stronger, longer lived etc. While this would be a very interesting SF RPG it is not 2300AD.
Despite all the above I do enjoy 2300AD mainly I think because of the multi national flavour and the lack of domination by any one power. I am quite happy to live with Stutterwarp and aliens underneath every other rock as these are necessary for the game its just the little niggles that annoy me.
During the course of my musing on 2300AD I have produced various items of equipment and organisations. The ones that I have had time to write up can be found on the following links.
Log of Site Construction
I am attempting to keep a log of the updates to this site as and when I make them. This is also a useful place to check to see if I have added anything new since you last checked.
Site Log.
Version 2.0
2/08/2009
Copyright J.M. Pearson, 2009