What is Thousand Suns?

I've rather surprisingly received several comments and emails about Thousand Suns and how it relates to Traveller. In retrospect, I suppose it's not really all that surprising, since I briefly touched on the game last week, in my post "Traveller and I." So, in the interests of answering some of the more basic questions people might have about Thousand Suns, I'm presenting this post. Because my goal here is to be as complete but succinct as possible, I won't be able to answer every possible question here. If you have any other questions, feel free to leave them in the comments to this post or drop me a line at the address found in the "About Me" tab above. 

Thousand Suns is a science fiction roleplaying game I wrote in 2007 and then first released in 2008. The current version of the game (the one available at the link above or the sidebar to the left) came out in 2011. It's not really a new edition so much as a revision of that original version. In addition to having a much better layout and graphic design, it's also better organized and (I hope) clearer, with lots more art. The 2011 edition has its flaws, but none of them have yet convinced me that it's time to do another revision of the game. 

I wrote Thousand Suns as an homage both to the imperial science fiction I've loved since my youth and to Traveller. By "imperial science fiction," I mean primarily literary SF from the '50s, '60s, and '70s that features mighty galactic empires and whose plots take inspiration from the 19th and early 20th century Age of Imperialism. Think authors like Anderson, Asimov, Piper, Pournelle, and the so forth and you'll have a pretty good idea what I'm talking about. These are the authors and stories that captivated me as a child and with whom I still strongly associate science fiction. Thousand Suns was thus, from the very beginning, a self-indulgent project intended to make a science fiction RPG whose primary audience was me. 

Previously, Traveller had filled that role. Back in 2007, though, I had pretty burnt out on Traveller. I'd been playing it since the early 1980s and had thoroughly immersed myself in both its rules and its official Third Imperium setting. I'd also written professionally for the game, during both its Traveller: The New Era and GURPS Traveller incarnations. At that point, I thought I'd learned enough about Traveller that I could improve upon it, creating a better game – or at least one that better suited me and my personal preferences as both a referee and a player. I did say this was a self-indulgent project, did I not? 

Specifically, I wanted to create a generic science fiction rules set, which is to say, one without an official setting. Rather than being a game about any one setting, I wanted to present a toolbox that allowed the referee to create his own imperial science fiction setting. In this, I was inspired by Traveller itself, which, in its original 1977 release, was a game just like this. Over time, though, the Third Imperium increasingly came to dominate Traveller, so much so that, in my opinion, the game became about roleplaying within that setting rather than being a toolbox for creating one's own setting. 

Now, I love the Third Imperium and consider it my favorite fictional setting of all time. But, after almost fifty years of development, the Third Imperium isn't the most welcoming to newcomers to the game. That's why I intentionally designed Thousand Suns without a setting of its own. Instead, it has a "meta-setting" – a flexible outline of a setting, in which some details have been provided, along with lots of "blank spaces" for the referee to fill in himself according to the kind of setting he wishes for his campaign. For example, I don't specify whether the main human interstellar state is a federation or an empire. I simply call it "the Terran State" and provide lots of options on how to portray it, from an idealistic and democratic alliance to an ironfisted tyranny and everything in between. My goal, above all, was to make something that was both adaptable and accessible.

Rules-wise, Thousand Suns is pretty straightforward. Character generation is either by lifepath or point buy, depending on the wishes of the player. Characters are defined by five abilities ranked from 1 to 12 and skills similarly ranked. Skill tests use a 2D12 roll under a target number based on a combination of the relevant skill rank and an appropriate ability. The amount by which the roll is under that target number is important, because, in many cases it helps to determine the effect, like damage in combat. Rolls of 2 are dramatic successes, while rolls of 24 are dramatic failures, with each having its own effects. All in all, it's a pretty simple system, though, like all system, there are wrinkles here and there, once you get into the weeds of modifiers and edges cases. 

The rulebook (also available in Spanish) contains everything you'd ever need to play – character generation, sample aliens, combat rules, equipment, psi powers, starships, trade, world generation, etc. I tried very hard to make good use of all 272 pages of this 6"×9" book. I like to think I succeeded, though there is a companion book called Starships that expands upon the rules for space vehicles, including the starship construction system. There's also Five Stars, which presents another sample sector (one is included in the rulebook), a new alien race, and an adventure that involves both. I once had plans to produce a few other books to support the game, but a combination of factors, including my focus on this blog, distracted me from doing so.

Compared to Traveller, Thousand Suns is, I think, a bit simpler rules-wise, but not hugely so. It's also a bit more "modern" in its approach to science fiction, though, again, not hugely so. For example, there are cybernetics and robots in the rulebook, things Traveller has never really made much space for. I also included lots more advice on designing an imperial SF setting than Traveller ever did, because, as I said at the beginning of this post, I wanted Thousand Suns to be accessible to newcomers who'd never played this kind of science fiction roleplaying game before.

That said, I still call Thousand Suns "a love letter to Traveller," because it's very much informed by my decades of playing that game, which I still adore and consider one of the best RPGs ever designed. Thousand Suns is not a replacement for Traveller so much as another take on the same subject matter, one with slightly different emphases and esthetics reflective of my own idiosyncratic preferences. If you're a fan of Traveller, you might find Thousand Suns useful as a source of ideas, but its rules are sufficiently different that none of its content can be used without modification. 

This turned out to be a lot longer of a post than I intended and I'm not certain I said everything I wanted to say. If you have any questions I didn't answer about Thousand Suns, go ahead and leave a comment below or send me an email. I'll do my best to answer them.