White Star Settings

White Star has been pretty well supported in the setting department.  The main rule book supports a quasi-Star Wars setting from the get-go.  There is Five Year Mission and the Space Cede adventure covering Star Trek.  Stark Space has dystopian/cyber-punk SF covered.  Galaxy War 1939 and Have Death Ray, Will Travel addresses the pulp/Flash Gordan needs.  These items scratch many of my science fiction itches.

It turns out Star Wars is the type of setting my son would like to play in.  When we were discussing options he said that he wanted to play a bounty hunter and capture "rebel scum".  Cool.  Got that covered.  I'm working on my own Star Wars rip-off homage that is set in the fallen Commonwealth of Worlds.  (People don't understand why Terrans laugh when others refer to it as CoW.  Although I haven't quite decided whether Terrans will be part of the mix or not.)  It is now ruled by the High Archon and is called the Archonate.  I'm working up a timeline for the setting which I will present in another post.  Suffice it to say that it will contain all of the Star Wars cliches.

As much as I like Star Wars and the default assumptions behind White Star, my mind immediately jumped to two literary settings upon my first read through of the rules (and more recently a third and then a fourth.).  The first was Battlestar Galactica.  More the new series than the old.  I didn't know it until a while later but BG has gotten a little love, too.  There is a little adventure called Colonial Civil War that is similar to BG.  It's not exactly the same and it is a single adventure but it is there for those who want to dip their toes in.  I would like to see a full blown treatment of BG though.  It would be really fun to be part of a "ragtag fleet" of humans trying to survive a robot onslaught and have tailored rules to do so.  The players could encounter the planet of the week or explore a single planet with an eye towards colonization.  Also, following the second series, the player may need deal with android infiltrators that are indistinguishable from humans.  However, those loving their star knights would have to look elsewhere to get their fix.  I haven't watched the entirety of the new series so I don't know if they slipped any psionic elements into it.

The second setting I flashed on doesn't contain star knights, either.  It is the Terro-Human Future History stories by H. Beam Piper.  Specifically Space Viking.  Raiding and trading and re-civilizing would be a blast.  The mercenary, pilot and aristocrat classes would all be perfect for this setting.

I think this encapsulates a Space Viking raid perfectly

However, there are few aliens to encounter in this universe, let alone be player characters.  Piper's aliens definitely take a back seat to humans.  Even Little Fuzzy was about how humans reacted to the Fuzzies and their potential sapience.  Also, there are no personal lasers or star sword type weapons either.  Combat tech is limited to 20th century type weapons.  The starships would have to be much larger, also.  The Nemesis, Lucas Trask's ship, is a globe 2000 feet in diameter.  That's big.  The largest aircraft carrier that the United States has is 1,092 feet long.  So take two aircraft carriers, stack them lengthwise and turn them into a globe and there you have it, a SV ship.  Heck, the world's largest oil tanker was only 1,500 feet long.  I can't remember if the book mentions the size of the crew complement but I imagine it is quite large so that would have to be adjusted accordingly.  Once again, a World War II battleship carried around 3,000 officers and crew.  I use a battleship as comparison because SV does not mention specifically an air or fighter wing.  Contragravity assault vehicles for the troops are mentioned but I didn't get the impression that it was along the of an air wing.  Robots were well developed and were used as servants amongst other duties.  However, I don't recall a sentient robot in any of Piper's stories let alone SV.

I think one of the advantages of this setting would be the sheer number of human inhabited worlds to explore.  Each would have a different level of technology and civilization.  One session could be occupied dealing with stone throwing primitives and the next could be spent doing desperate battle with a rival spaceship of comparable tech.  It could include exploring the ruins strewn about various planets as well as domain management if you take over a low tech world.  I would imagine that this, like other settings, would be SV with the serial numbers artfully removed.  This could lead to an infinite variety of worlds and situations.  Also, if you want to have a slightly different setup you could remove the Euro-centric nature of the Sword Worlds and substitute a Japanese, Chinese or some other model.  (I like the way it is so this wouldn't be one of my choices but, hey, it's there.)  And the political situation of the Sword Worlds could be modified to taste also.  The book does mention the first Space Viking-on-Space Viking world raid.

So, these are just some thoughts.  I would like to say I am going to create the Space Viking knockoff but I doubt that would ever happen.  Something about doing the actual works always seems to get in the way.  Sigh.  Oh, and by the way, Space Viking is available for free at Project Gutenberg.  You can download it here. 

Oh, the other two settings you ask?  Niven and Pournelle's The Mote in God's Eye universe (which includes the CoDominium books and King David's Spaceship) and Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan saga.