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2300AD and Millennium's End

G K Zhukov

G K Zhukov

SOC-11
Someone from the Millennium's End Unofficial Homepage just posted a quite impressive conversion of the 2300AD universe to the now defunct Chameleon Eclectic's RPG.

Direct link to DL is:

Click here

Millennium's End featured percentile rollunder dice rolls and a very advanced damage system somewhat reminiscent of BTRC's Timelords.

Worth taking a look at.
 
I noticed that the download had a couple of gramatical and spelling errors, so I've updated it to version 1.01 (which gets rid of the ones I saw) if anyone is interested.
 
It looks very good, even professional. I have some concerns over the weapons section, though, as the the number of illustrations may go beyond "fair use". It's not my call, however. But it may be something that you want to keep in mind, especially given that 2320AD does use many of the same illos.
 
Hi Colin,
Thanks for the 'professional looking' comment.

I certainly hope that it doesn't go beyond fair use, but if asked I'd be happy to withdraw all the reused images and replace them with ones of my own. Likewise, I can re-write the weapon descriptions (the ones that I haven't already).

What were your thoughts on the Rebco section?
 
Like I said, it's not my call. When Hunter returns, well, then it's up to him. Fair use pretty much allows you to copy a page or so, but the situation may be different here. You could try getting permission from Marc Miller, then fair use/copyright isn't an issue.

The RebCo SAR section looks very good, but RebCo is far bigger than just 1500 people. They hire out everything from maids to police forces.

Just checked. Rebco employs, as staff or contractors, 1.5 million people throughout human space. About 1/2 a million more than the modern Wal-Mart corporation.
 
It's most probably easier if I just withdraw it until I've modified it.

I had the impression that Rebco was more "elite" than providing maids and rent-a-cops. More like acting as a broker for mercenary forces and providing it's own specialised teams to carry out special missions.

1.5 million people just sounds a little excessive. 10,000 including currently on hire mercenary forces I could beleive.

100,000 I could possibly beleive if they were doing some kind of 'Robocop' style privatised police force for several cities across human space.
 
RebCo provides police forces for Tanstaafl city, as of 2315, along with the police forces of several other major colonial cities.

Yah, 1.5 million does sound a little high. At the time, though, it made sense to me. I shall have to take another look at it.

I would encourage you to seek permission from Marc Miller. After all, he granted it for a Star Hero conversion of Traveller (I think) not too long ago. And that supplement is good enough that I want to track down a copy of Millenium's End, just to figure it out.
 
There is a difference between RebCo and RebCo SAR, though, IIRC. RebCo may well be the huge multiplanetary conglomerate that hires everything from maids to police officers, but RebCo SAR is the smaller, more selective subsidiary. Seems a happy compromise - dull HR and recruitment parent company = huge, exciting mercenary and adventurere company = small.

G.
 
Well I wrote to Marc, and I have approval for it, :D so it's back on line.

Just a thought about private police forces for Rebco SAR. Currently, most major cities supply about 3-4 police officers per 1000 inhabitants (including specialists and support staff). Smaller cities often make do with less. Tanstaafl city would have about 50-100 thousand inhabitants am I correct? (Most of my 2300AD reference material is on a boat somewhere between New York and NZ). That'd equate to 200-400 officers and support staff.

Cheers
 
Hey, that's great! Marc never did seem an unreasonable person to me...and if it generates more interest in 2300 AD, all the better.


I'm really curious about this Millenium system...problem is getting a copy of the out-of-print rules. I wish one of the online PDF stores would get the okay to off it. Princes at eBay and Amazon are a bit higher than I would like.
 
Millenium's End was a great system. I played it extensively for a while, and frankly, it looks better as a system for 2300 than it ever did as a slightly rotten version of Miami Vice.

Unfortunately, like most system it did have its drawbacks. Most notably, there was quite a bit of "repeat schooling" and everyone looked like Basketball players as that gave you the best "bang for the buck" as far as bodyforms go.

The biggest drawback to the system in my eyes were the bodymaps. They were a nifty concept, but I simply found them rather limiting and there wasn't a good way to generate more (at the time). The fact that you could "hit" and still "miss" due to the distribution of the bodymap bothered a lot of my players as well. The clear overlays were pretty fun but looking back on it, it seems a bit "gimmicky" and fiddly, not quite as bad as the 'extra-dice' mechanics of Alternity, but still a source of potential problems - especially if you misplaced or damaged your overlays.

A simple 3D "barbie doll" computer program with color-coded parts could probably be developed these days to quickly generate more bodymaps.
 
I can see what you're getting at, and in the bad other days before the internet (and cheap laptops), you'd be right.

Now-a-days, software for generation of the bodymaps exists these days, as does software to use them. More templates can be simply printed onto overhead-transparency plastic.

The problem with the combat system wasn't that you could "hit" and still "miss" as a hit resulted in the round striking exactly where you targetted it. It's that a narrow miss could be an all out miss, a hit on another body part, a hit on another person or just about any other result.

The "repeat schooling" thing, if I read you right was to do with the character generation rules that rewarded university level education, thus generating PHd weilding killers. The rules done for the 2300AD conversion remove that, instead using a combination of the characters intelligence, sensibility and willpower to provide the skill points.

Likewise the football/boxer look (the rewarded heavier players with less damage from wounding) has been removed by basing height and weight on strength, constitution and homeworld gravity.
 
The problems I had with Millenniums end were twofold: Firstly, autofire was a apin in the rear end. Tracking where each shot went... bleah! Also, no decent rules for suppressive or area fire AFAIR.

Secondly
 
Originally posted by GJD:
The problems I had with Millenniums end were twofold: Firstly, autofire was a apin in the rear end. Tracking where each shot went... bleah! Also, no decent rules for suppressive or area fire AFAIR.

Secondly
Click to expand...
Argh. You brought up autofire. I think I was in denial about that. It was such a PITA that we spent a lot of time firing single-shots, which was fine because it made you more deadly. The problem was when you ran into a drug dealer's "street soldiers" and such - the kind you normally nerf using autofire because it never hits anything. Suddenly they're firing single shots and hitting a lot more...
Are we going to get the second reason?
 
If I was playing back when Millennium's End was first released, then I'd agree. Autofire is a pain in the bum.

Fortunately, software has come to the rescue again in the form of a visual basic program that plots each round (and their effects) easily. Makes all those full hosing battles easy to resolve. I also have house rules on supression and area fire all of which seem to work very nicely and I will one day get around to putting into a useable format.
 
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