2300 AD

Man's Battle for the Stars

2300 AD is a science-fiction role-playing game first published by Game Designers Workshop (GDW) in 1986 as Traveller: 2300. The game in fact had nothing to do with GDW's popular Traveller RPG, and when the system was revised in 1988 it was also re-branded as 2300 AD.

The setting is an extension of the background of GDW's Twilight 2000 game, effectively showing what happened during the next 300 years. Mankind has started to spread into space, and faces its first major competition in the form of the Kafer.

2300 AD was intended to be more "hard science-fiction" than GDW's Traveller. Appart from FTL travel the typical trappings of Space Opera are mostly absent, and the game boasted a "Near Star Map" based on real stellar catalogues.

A d20 version called 2320 AD was released in late 2007 as a campaign setting for the T20 system. Moongoose Publishing, a current producer of Traveller material, has said they will produce a version as a sourcebook for their Traveller line.


 * After the End: The entire game is After the End for the earlier Twilight 2000 game. 300 years After the End. Earth has recovered from the nuclear war, but the current balance of power between Earth's nations had its beginning in the Twilight War.
 * During our Bronze Age, the Eber were a spacefaring civilization possibly more advanced than humanity is currently, with stutterwarp ships and three colony worlds. Then they had a nuclear war. The only survivors just barely re-invented the steam engine.
 * Aliens Are Bastards: Averted. The aliens have very good reasons for acting as they do, even when they act like brutal psychopaths.
 * All Planets Are Earthlike: Strongly averted. Most of them are actually quite a bit less hospitible than Earth.
 * Alternate History: Since we didn't in fact have a nuclear war in the late '90s, 2300 AD is an alternate history.
 * Artificial Gravity: Averted. Human-built ships have spinning sections to simulate gravity, and no known species has anything different.
 * Asteroid Miners: The Nyotekundu sourcebook/adventure is all about asteroid miners.
 * Asteroid Thicket: Nyotekundu features one in the cover art, but the actual asteroid belt described in the book is much more realistic.
 * Backstory: The history between Twilight 2000 and 2300 AD was created by the designers by playing what they called "The Game" - a socio-political miltary simulation where each of the players took three or more nations and ran them at 5 or 10 year turns from 2000 to 2300.
 * Balkanize Me: China broke up into three parts after the Twilight War and hasn't reunified. Texas is an independent nation (and has colonies on other planets). Germany wasn't re-unified until 2292 (about 300 years after it happened in the real world).
 * BFG: Plasma guns.
 * Big Creepy-Crawlies: The Kafer have some insectoid traits, hence the human name for them (German for "beetle"). The Xiang are also vaguely lobster-like.
 * Binary Suns: A large portion of the systems on the Near Star List are double systems, and many human colony worlds therefore have two suns.
 * Casual Interstellar Travel: Partially averted. Humanity is still getting used to traveling among the stars, and starships are almost always owned by governments, corporations, or scientific foundations.
 * Cool Airship: Blimps and zepplins have made a comeback, being used for cargo and passenger transport.
 * Cool Starship: The American Kennedy class cruisers are the fasted ships in space and well-armed to boot. The French Suffren class cruiser that plays a central role in Mission: Arcturus might qualify as well.
 * Cyberpunk: The Earth/Cybertech sourcebook introduced this into the setting, somewhat jarringly.
 * Curb Stomp Battle:
 * The Slaver War - humanity's first space war against an alien race. The Sung had solar sails and ion drives. Manchuria and Canada had stutterwarp ships. The Sung capitulated rather quickly.
 * The War of German Reunification - France, already exhausted by the Central Asian War (2282 to 2287) got curb stomped by the Germans, with France itself nearly invaded, and were forced to allow German reunification (until then France was pretty much the undisputed world leader).
 * Death World: Several of humanity's colony worlds are quite dangerous, and most of the outposts are on worlds without breathable atmospheres.
 * Deflector Shields: Some starships have magnetic fields holding ablative particles in suspension that work like these, to protect against incoming lasers or particle weapons.
 * Determined Homesteader: Many of Earth's colonists are these.
 * Earth Is the Center of the Universe: Earth is the center of human-controlled space, and the Kafer are the only other race known to control more than a handful of planets.
 * Earth-That-Was: a variant in one of the many little alien secrets known only to the GM:
 * The Empire: France inaugurated the Third French Empire in 2298 (just 2 years before the setting), but France has really been the major power on Earth since the Twilight War. They're not necessarily evil, however.
 * Everything Trying to Kill You: Some of the planets humans have colonized are quite dangerous.
 * Aurore in particular has acid-spewing crawling shag carpets and tree-sized mushrooms with foot-long claws that will try to eat humans even though we are deadly poisonous to them.
 * Cold Mountain has flying blinds and burrowing rigattoni that try to kill you. Not to mention the flying hollow sharks full of glass knives...
 * Fantastic Racism: Between humans and aliens.
 * Humans are viewed as boogeymen by the Kafer, while humans see Kafers essentially as space orcs.
 * The Slaver War fought between Manchuria and Canada and the Sung was caused because the Sung believed they had a moral duty to enslave the more primative Xiang.
 * Faster-Than-Light Travel: The Stutterwarp drive "jumps" the ship instantly a few hundred meters, and does it hundreds of thousands of times per second to reach faster-than-light speeds. It also has a built-in range limitation. Ships must discharge their drives in a gravity well every 7.7 light years or the drive starts producing large amounts of lethal radiation.
 * First Contact: This has already happened a few times, and there was even a war fought (and won) against the Sung, but most of the races humans have met to this point are more primitive than they are. Some of the published adventures involve first contacts as well.
 * Forces With Firepower: each nation have its military in 2300 AD described in both canon and fanon with great detail. Some of them may or may not include:
 * Gauls With Grenades: France is the leading human nation in 2300 AD and its rarely if ever the cheese-eating surrender monkeys.
 * Brits With Battleships
 * We Are Not the Wehrmacht
 * Aussies With Artillery
 * Yanks With Tanks
 * Russians With Rusting Rockets: Although the Russians do have a decent space force, they are notable for refusing to have any space colonies.
 * Kaiju Defense Force: The Japanese have officially made the self-defense force their own military after World War III.
 * Poles With Poleaxes
 * Canucks With Chinooks
 * New Roman Legions: described in Italy 2300 AD as mostly composed of mercenaries.
 * Mexicans With Machine Guns
 * South Koreans With Marines: some 2300 AD sources say the Republic of Korea's military is The Dragon to Manchuria's military.
 * The Other Chinese Army: Canton's army is implied to be this, as fanon mostly consider Canton as the future Republic of China.
 * Brazilians With Bazookas
 * Global Currency: Averted. The French Livre is the unit used in the books, but each nation still has its own currency.
 * Heavyworlder: The colonists on King have been genetically modified to survive in the heavy gravity there, and need rebreathers to survive in more earthlike (thinner) atmospheres. They are also short and immensely strong.
 * Hufflepuff House: The French Arm was the main focus of the published materials and was the center of the Kafer War meta-plot. The Chinese Arm has three alien races in it, one of which is featured and further detailed in Ranger. The American Arm, on the other hand, has one interesting high gravity planet and...not much else. It's just a dead end nobody else wants.
 * Innocent Aliens: The Xiang and the Klaxun are both stone-age primatives and relatively peaceful. The Xiang were enslaved by the Sung until the humans fought a war on their behalf and the Klaxun world is being scouted by the Kafer when humans first meet them.
 * ISO Standard Human Spaceship: Most human ships are indeed blocky, gray, utilitarian vessels, often with large spinning sections for gravity. In a possible subversion, Kafer ships are generally like this too.
 * Kinetic Weapons Are Just Better: Most of the nations of Earth use high-tech assault rifles as their primary weapons, though they also have lasers.
 * Living Ship: The Pentapods have these.
 * The Metric System Is Here to Stay: The game uses metric units exclusively.
 * Metaplot: The Kafer war.
 * Mexico Called. They Want Texas Back.: During the Twilight War Mexico invaded the southern states and captured Arizona, New Mexico, and southern California (including LA). In 2300 they are still part of Mexico. Texas was conquered by Mexico too but successfully rebelled in 2099, becoming independent. Mexico also annexed all of the central American nations north of Panama during the 22nd century.
 * Military Science Fiction: A strong influence on the game, with several of the printed adventures centering around the Kafer War and putting the players in the roles of mercenaries or soldiers.
 * Mohs Scale of Science Fiction Hardness: On the hard side, with no artificial gravity, no FTL radio, and realistic aliens and lasers.
 * Naming Your Colony World: Earth's colonies include just about all the variations.
 * No Biochemical Barriers: Averted. Carnivorous life on Aurore finds Earth life to be dangerously poisonous, and vice versa. Unfortunately it usually finds out that humans are deadly only after it has taken a large bite out of one.
 * "No Warping" Zone: The stutterwarp's efficiency drops off greatly in a gravity well, meaning stutterwarp ships are still going really fast within a solar system, but no longer exceed the speed of light. They can just barely maintain orbit around a world.
 * One World Order: Strongly averted. Earth still has about as many nations as it does today, and several worlds have the colonies of more than one nation on them. The Sung have multiple nation-states as well.
 * Organic Technology: The Pentapods are big on Organic Technology, since their species evolved underwater and never had the option of using metal or fire in their industrial development.
 * Powered Armor: The major nations all have their own designs.
 * Rancher: Many colonists are this.
 * Psychic Powers: Humans don't have them (apparently), but some of the aliens in the adventures do.
 * Scary Dogmatic Aliens: The Kafer believe in using violence and pain to reach enlightenment, and it actually works for them. Unfortunately they think it works for everyone else too.
 * Science Fiction: Intended to be on the hard side.
 * Space Fighter: Handy in battle as launch platforms for missiles.
 * Space Marine: Most nations have some, and the movie Aliens was an obvious influence on the game. American space marines are especially prominent in the adventure Mission Arcturus.
 * Space Navy: Also several. The board game Star Cruiser is all about space battles between them (usually involving humans fighting humans).
 * Space Battle: Until the Kafer war humans had only ever fought each other in space.
 * Space Elevator: Two of them - one on Earth and one at Beta Canum Venaticorum (which features in the adventure Beanstalk).
 * Space Plane: Quite common.
 * Space Station: There are several of these too.
 * Split Personality: The Ebers have a "compartmentalized" mind, which effectively gives them all split personalities.
 * Starfish Aliens: All of the aliens in the setting are designed to be these.
 * Stealth in Space: A major tactic in the space combat system is keeping your ships unidentified to confuse your opponent. Once they light up their sensors or get too close the jig is up.
 * Subspace Ansible: Averted. There is no means of communication faster than a stutterwarp ship.
 * Tank Goodness: The Vehicle Guide seems to focus more on military hover tanks than civilian vehicles. Awesome but Impractical?
 * Terraform: Several human colony worlds are being terraformed to something a little more earthlike. It's going to take a long time.
 * 2-D Space: Both averted and played straight. The map of human space is thoroughly (and sometimes confusingly) three-dimensional, but starship combat uses a flat map.
 * Uncanceled: The 2320 version.
 * United Europe: Strongly averted. Europe's nations still can't get along with each other, although they have more or less cooperated in colonizing the French Arm.
 * United Space of America: Averted. Earth and its colonies are still divided between nations. The major arms of exploration are the French Arm (France, Britain, Germany, and other European nations), the Chinese Arm (Manchuria, Canada, Brazil and other South American nations), and the American Arm (America and Australia).
 * Unobtainium: The stutterwarp drive makes use of Tantalum, and wars have been fought over Tantalum deposits.
 * We Will Wear Armor in the Future: High-tech materials have made armor useful again.
 * White Man's Burden: The Sung believe that advanced civilizations have a moral duty to dominate lesser civilizations and then educate them up to their level... and that the lesser civilizations have a corresponding moral duty to serve their educators. It wasn't their fault that the Xiang didn't want the advanced education and technology they were offering in exchange for their enslavement.
 * And they don't understand why the humans are so reluctant, now that they have submited to human authority, to share the secret of stutterwarp.
 * Winged Humanoid: The Sung.
 * World War III: A major part of the backstory.