Spacers: Really Big Space

I often ask myself, why am I doing Spacers(TM), then I find my loose notes somewhere. With my RSF (rocket-ship fantasy) where randomness was an important part of the exploration of new locales something about keeping things in denominators of six works in astronomical mapping.
Earth as 3.3.3 not Tri-Zero
"Zed Three" just couldn't happen, unless Earth was not the center of the universe. I didn't know back in the mid 90s if this was math, but for using 3D6 as D555 while doing your own take on Ken St Andre's Starfaring random sector generation, you get three dimensional areas where the PCs aren't looking down at a map.  I wasn't improving on his rules, I just didn't have access to the rules book I had received as a newsletter back in 1981. As a group we started referring to sectors as beach balls, and the star systems/powers within them as ping-pong balls to baseballs to basketballs. Bring the "6,6,6" results into the same place and that's where the Spacers ('OMG what a great name for delvers in a space-based SFRPG!' I thought) started.

1997- Don't want negative integers? Make the map a sphere.

With about eight different campaigns, the beach balls of the universe started to be filled out. Luckily two, then three, then four, then back down to three, then back up to four players would stick with me throughout these campaigns. So from rocketeers hunting down greys and space pirates, things would change into "Big Space" or "War Star" (Star Trek meets Battlestar Galactica), which as group was referred to "Really Big Space." We'd step back into the pre-Big days, and hang out in the solar system with a lot of cyber-punk elements, which is the "Near Space" stories from o8 'onward. Then I'd go nuts and bolts every now and then with Star Push but usually at conventions. We never had to do a Star Wars, that niche was filled by New Khazan  which was officially for T&T. 

Really Big Space. The really big beach ball that wrapped around six beach balls circa '06.

If you've got War Star as a title, you need navies right?

With a couple of artists helping me with species and ships, things are starting to come together. Just takes three decades to get things lined up.