Star Frontiers

Of all of the RPGs that I no longer play, I think I miss Star Frontiers the most. When this thing first came out, when I was, eh, 13 or 14, I thought it was going to be the best game I'd ever played, AD&D in space, something like that. Fortunately it wasn't AD&D in space. :-)

When I first bought the rules, I actually bought the Knight Hawks boxed set rather than the main rules. So I had this space combat simulation instead of the God of RPGs I was expecting. I cried and cried when the bookstore wouldn't let me trade it in.

But, anyway. Star Frontiers is set out on the Frontier of known space, the place where (at first) five different races first meet. The races in question are:

Humans: Ordinary people like you or me. They aren't from Earth, though.
Dralasites: Intelligent, four-or-so foot tall amoeba beings. They are hermaphroditic, changing sex every couple of years or so. They looked sort of like the Shmoo, though they couldn't do ridiculous things; at least that part of the game was somewhat realistic. They were apparently somewhat slimy as well, because I remember seeing a sign in an illustration that said "No robots or Dralasites allowed," in a bar or something.
Vrusk: Insectoid creatures, sort of centaur shaped. Ambidextrous, big. If you've seen the thri-kreen from AD&D you've got the right idea, here.
Yazirians: Berserking, gliding monkey-guys. I loved 'em.
Sathar: These blokes were the bad guys. Wormlike creatures from another part of the universe who had attacked us once already and almost destroyed us, they had thousands of agents throughout the Frontier, fomenting rebellion and encouraging terrorism.

The tech level is not explicitly defined, but starships of all kinds exist and are buyable by individuals at extraordinary prices. There are lasers (which do pathetically small amounts of damage compared to other more modern space games), as well as all kinds of other weapons.

I have some gripes with the game, looking back, though I freely admit that as a youngster :) they did not bother me so much:

Governments: Governmental styles were never defined for the worlds of the Frontier at all. Heck, the government of the Frontier was never really well defined. There was a pretty big Navy, but individual worlds had their own navies as well. Individual worlds seemed to have interesting, unique governments, but it was really hard to tell.
Also, the Frontier seemed to be completely at peace. There was little or no racism among the member races (which is OUTRAGEOUS, the Vrusk were GIANT BUGS FROM SPACE for goodness sakes, they scare ME and I'm the GM), no sense of territoriality by the member-worlds, and not even a lot of indication that certain races tended to dominate certain sectors or worlds. Silly.

Those are, I suppose, my main complaints. Again, I enjoyed playing it a lot; there were some really enjoyable adventure modules written for the game, which I ran a bunch of friends through one summer in my parents' basement.