Rocketship Empires 1936 - Core Campaign, RPG (po angielsku)
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Rocketship Empires
1936
™
The world war ii era
space opera
Core Campaign Book
by
Edward Kann
The Table Of
Contents
Introduction page 4
Chapter One page 5
Styles page 5
Systemless Combat page 6
Systemless Damage page 6
Starship Overview page 8
Chapter Two page 14
The Hegemony page 14
Martians page 15
Hegemony War page 17
The Accord page 18
Chapter Three page 22
1920-1923 page 22
1923-1925 page 24
1925-1928 page 25
Chapter Four page 28
French Star Republic page 28
Kingdom of Holland page 31
Kingdom of Spain page 33
Roma page 39
Reich Space page 41
Soviet Space page 45
The Chinese Corridor page 49
Asian Co-Prosperity page 51
Federal Territories page 53
The Confederation page 55
Independent Systems page 56
British Star Empire page 57
Chapter Five page 62
Archetypes / Careers page 62
Chapter Six page 68
Human / Hybrid / Xeno page 68
Purchase Lists page 70
Weapons page 74
Chapter Seven page 84
Ship Tables page 84
Sample Ship Classes page 89
Ship Operations page 93
Gravity Drives page 99
Armor page 106
Sensors page 109
Weapons page 116
Chapter Eight page 140
Starship Examples page 140
Starship Quick Build Tables page 156
What is in this book?
Rocketship Empires 1936 is a space opera
campaign, written so that it may be
easily adapted to most table top
RPG systems.
This book represents the core material
necessary for kicking off your
own Rocketship Empires campaign.
The campaign kicks off in the year 1936 but
source books, ship books, adventures
and supplements forthcoming will span
the entire course of the World War II era
starting in 1936 through 1946.
Welcome to what I hope will become
your next favorite science fiction campaign.
Edward M. Kann
Introduction
Mike Doscher
Featured Artist
Chris Pickrell
Featured Artist
Jonny Ledford
Featured Artist
This is the first in what I hope will become an ex-
tended series of campaign books for the Rocketship Empires
setting. Rocketship Empires is a sweeping space opera in-
tended to be adopted into your favorite table top roleplaying
game system. Truth be told, Rocketship Empires represents
the author’s favorite bits and pieces from various genres
all forged together into one setting, allowing him (and now
you) to enjoy them as a cohesive whole. Some of the genres
Rocketship Empires includes are:
Keith Curtis
Featured Cartographer
Pulp / Science Fiction
Dark and Gritty Science Fiction
Steampunk
Horror
Mecha
World War II
Mystery / Suspense
Additional Artwork
Tero Niemi, Shawn Brown, Nicholas Trenin, Daniel Askins,
Jonny Ledford, Ron Lemming, Mike, Melissa Wilemon, Mar-
tin J. Birk, James Harnock, Gail Havonec, Eric Lofgren, Cyn-
thia Fischer, Gabriel Yanez, Edward Kann and others.
Thanks
If you are a fan of space opera and also enjoy any of the
genre’s listed above chances are that you will enjoy Rock-
etship Empires.
Thanks to everyone who waited patiently or not
so patiently for this series of books to be realized. A spe-
cial thanks to the artists who had to wait for an especially
long time. I am pleased to be back in the writer’s chair after
having to focus for so long on health and other important
issues. A special thank you to the men and women in the
WARBIRDS organization who provided me the opportunity
to crawl around in, fly in and ask all sorts of fool questions
about their beautiful birds.
Game System
I recommend that you play Rocketship Empires in
a game system with an existing framework for handling fire-
arms and vehicle combat. Having a system that can handle
supernatural creatures, psi, occult abilities and horror ele-
ments will also be helpful but is not mandatory. Many of
those elements a creative GM can improvise.
Dedication
Mature Themes
This book is dedicated to my wife Valerie. Thank
you for sharing a day dreamers love of books and adventure
stories.
Rocketship Empires contains mature themes and
content only suitable for an adult audience or with adult
supervision. These mature themes include violent combat,
content associated with the 1930’s era including references
to the Third Reich, racism and other potentially controversial
subjects. If you are under the age of eighteen it is best if
you seek out a different campaign setting for now or have
a responsible adult running the campaign to insure that the
content is age appropriate. If there is any question, ask your
parents.
The Rocketship world is dedicated to my boys Alex-
ander and Sebastian in the hopes that they will see that you
are never too old to write and create for the sheer joy of it.
Credits
Edward M. Kann
Author and Creator
Rocketship Empires 1936
™ 4
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the same time remaining well outside of the scope of trying
to mold Rocketship for a specific set of rules.
Systems Check
Writing Rocketship Empires as a systemless work
was a decision based upon quite a bit of back and forth dia-
log with readers who all seemed keen to investigate their
own Rocketship campaign but who likewise remained avid
fans of a wide variety of game systems. Those of you who
remember Rocketship Empires as a potential rpg product
back in 2004 will hopefully be enthusiastic at the many hours
of combined play, writing, rewriting and art poured into this
system over the last three years. My apologies to those of
you who were looking for the campaign setting back in 2004.
Life has a funny way of rearing up its head from time to time
amidst these labors of love but happily things have sorted
themselves out. I am pleased that in the end we find our-
selves with a line of Rocketship Empires campaign books
ready to publish in 2008.
In a systemless campaign book it may seem a bit
strange to kick things off with a chapter dedicated to game
mechanics. I felt that it was important to cover this topic
first so that readers might make head and tails of weapons,
equipment and starship descriptions presented later.
The primary reason for introducing a basic conver-
sion structure and all of the starship information introduced
in this book is to assist the game master. As mentioned pre-
viously this is a campaign setting and not a full blown rules
set. As a GM reading this with a system already in mind your
perspectives are going to vary greatly from reader to reader
depending upon what you have available in the tool box of
your system of choice.
With the right game system, much of what is covered
here will be simple enough to plug into existing frameworks
for weapon damage and combat rules. Many of the 30’s era
firearms have been written up in a half dozen other game
systems. I see this as a good thing. Why redesign 1930’s
weapons yet again when they have already been covered so
completely and so well by other authors?
Those of you who GM systems with a starship com-
bat system already in play must understand that not every
excellent game system includes rules for starship combat or
starship construction. While I do not try to create a universal
starship combat system I do try to create enough of a skel-
eton that someone could expand on say an existing set of
modern vehicle or aircraft combat rules and use those same
ideas for running their ship combat.
In some cases a GM will need to invest a bit of time
on the front end in plugging in final damage or equipment
stats for the items covered. I have included empty boxes for
GMs to write in the appropriate stats for items in their favorite
game system. In the same way, Rocketship Empires mod-
ules will include most of the descriptions, equipment lists and
tactics of NPC characters but will also include a spot where
GMs can pencil in the attributes, skills and other stats should
they desire to do so.
Finally the ship technology goes a long way to set-
ting the mood and gritty flavor of the Rocketship universe.
Rocketship should -not- have humans beaming down from
their warp drive vessels in spiffy spandex uniforms. Humans
in Rocketship should not be carrying around blasters or phas-
ers or stunners or light sabers. They should have ball tur-
rets in their ships that fire the equivalent of machine guns in
space. They should have simple rocket weapons. Landing
parties rumble out in their jeep with their Colt .45 strapped
to their hip and a hack their way through alien jungles with a
machete.
The most important advice I can give to those of you
planning to run Rocketship Empires is that the rules should
not get in the way of the story. Nor should they shackle you
to hours of preparation prior to play. A quick reference and
starship builder’s guide is included at the end of this book to
speed up your own original starship designs.
If I ever see a Rocketship landing party using a tri-
corder to scan for aliens I am going to be a little irked be-
cause that is not what Rocketship is meant to be. There are
plenty of games with the hard science fiction look and feel of
the popular movies. If you want buck rogers and ray guns go
play those games. If you want warp drives and phasers or
light sabers go play the other games. If you want knocking
the teeth out of an alien with brass knuckles, covering the
space bar with your Thompson, hunting dinosaur aliens with
your elephant gun...welcome to Rocketship Empires.
Writing Style
I write to readers directly in this book as though we
were hashing it out over a few beers. That is the style I write
in. Just warning you because this sometimes grates on the
nerves of those who want to approach all game books as
though they were required to be “in character” at all times.
Screw that nonsense. This is a manual to help game
directors and players figure out how to play in his campaign
setting. Sometimes I write “in character” and sometimes I
break character to give examples. You have been warned.
My intention is to go a step beyond simply listing one
pistol as a light pistol and another is a medium pistol while at
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Rocketship Empires 1936
™
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