I'm pretty old-fashioned when it comes to the games I like to play. I do a lot of Birthright, which was published by TSR in the later part of the 90s. I do Warhammer 40K - admittedly Dark Heresy is fairly new, but the setting and the system are both old as hell (meaning I got into them in the early 90s). But it's not like I still play all the games I tried 'back then'. They simply have not stood the test of time.

The hard sci-fi setting 2300AD 'Man's Battle for the Stars' is one game that has - sort of - passed that test. Here is a brief summary in the words of the all-knowing wikipedia:

2300 AD is a hard science fiction role-playing game created by Game Designers Workshop, originally offered as an alternative to the space opera portrayed by the company's leading science fiction role-playing game, Traveller. In fact it was originally titled Traveller: 2300, but this caused confusion as the game used neither the rules system nor the setting of the original Traveller. The game was therefore renamed in its 2nd edition.

Original (revised) 2300AD boxed set

It's an excellent setting that doesn't take too many liberties with physics (no artificial gravity for example), except in the department of translight travel of course. System wasn't too shabby either, except that the combat hart had a few flaws (but those were easily ironed out). What I really liked about it was that it took our own world and history and moved it 300 years into the future, a future that actually seemed plausible (I have some issues with parts of it, but mostly minor issues).

The game, along with GDW, was discontinued many years ago, and the game languished in silence. Hard-core fans kept going, but there was no new material. In 2007 a new edition of the game was released - 2320AD. It's not a reboot of the franchise, because it stays largely true to the old game's background history, technological outlook and so on. It does, however, move the story 20 years forward (no shocker given the game's title) and switches to a D20 system.

The new 2320AD ebook contains 'everything needed to play'.

I'm not sure if I feel that the switch to this D20 system is a good thing. Especially since it's based on the Traveller T20 system , requiring you to buy another game to use 2320AD! And for all it's fortes (I'm a big D20 fan myself) the T20 system isn't even remotely 'hard', but decidedly cinematic and heroic. I do not feel that this is right for a game setting that prides itself on being hard sci-fi.

Traveler T20 - not exactly hard sci-fi!

The thing I didn't like about 2300AD was the lack of action and excitement. I guess that was partially due to my immaturity back then - the 2300AD setting and accessories were probably too much sandbox for me. I had trouble turning this wonderful setting into good adventures. But that isn't the entire story - several of the adventures and accessories were completely devoid of anything remotely resembling action. It was so 'hard' that there wasn't any room for 'adventure'.

Luckily there was another major hard space setting for me to play with - the Alien franchise. Leading Edge Games  (now defunct, but they made several good games back then) developed an Aliens RPG - the Aliens Adventure Game - which was pretty nice. Based on their completely unwieldy Phoenix Command system the Aliens RPG used a much-simplified version of the same system that was actually quite good at combing in 'hard', 'action' and 'adventure'. I actually found my copy during my basement clean-up this spring. Brought mack good memories.

Aliens Adventure Game - Good times!

Developed after Aliens, but before Alien 3, the game went into considerable detail regarding the Colonial Marines, the Aliens, and the worlds occupies by humanity. Much of it completely contrary to what was later revealed to be canon...but some of it was still useable. Since Alien 3 was a crap movie we largely ignored it, but paid rather more attention to the Colonial Marines Tchnical Manual.  It really made sense of the stuff you see in the Aliens universe. Makes it kind of 'hard'. Besides the equipment, organization, and background share striking similarities with that of the 2300AD RPG. So lo and behold, in 1996 it all came together - a mesh of Aliens and 2300AD. Now THERE was finally a setting that made hard sci-fi exiting!

Colonial Marines Technical Manual - Best supplement I ever bought.

It's been a while though. 10+ years. And over the course of those years to world and gaming both moved on. So tht when 2320AD was fianlly released in 2007 it felt very aged. Like a tribute to something old and forgotten, but not a game that I'd like to play. The new T20 system and some of the 20 years that had passes had jazzed it up a bit, making it more adventuresome...but not enough. Not enough for a 2320AD meets Aliens kind of thing.

Yet there is one game that I feel has taken the legacy of hard sci-fi and ported it over to our own time and the memes now prevalent - the Transhuman Space setting by SJG.To me its what 2300AD would be like if it was designed now, rather than back in the 80s. There are other games - and novels - that also adds to the genre, but Transhuman Space is to me by far the most significant.

Transhuman Space - Man's Battle for his Humanity

Which brings me around to my real point. 2300AD was a great setting, but it had it's limitations even back then, and now it feels old and irrelevant. Time to re-imagine the series...which is all the rage these days anyway. Do they come up with anything that's not a remake, re-imagining, follow-up, etc.?

So that's my newest project - re-imagining 2300AD. Well, it's not that new really, it's been on the back-burner for 2-3 years (and will likely stay there for quite some time). That re-imagining will take the good stuff from 2300AD, Aliens, 2320AD, and Transhuman space - something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue. The end result will be fabulous :-P