2300 AD - Influences

Influences

The background history of 2300 AD is a continuation of the nuclear war depicted in the Twilight 2000 role-playing game by the same company. A custom strategy game called "The Great Game" was used by the authors to develop the background history for 2300 AD.

In various supplements and adventures, one can find characters, situations and equipment that strongly resemble items from popular science fiction movies and novels. Equipment described in the game is similar to guns and the power loader from the movie Aliens and a buggy from Silent Running, for example.

Despite the name, alien Kafer (bugs) are not similar to the Bugs of Robert A. Heinlein's Starship Troopers. However, there are some physical similarities with Predator (from the movie of the same name), and both races engage in combat as a form of recreation.

Finally, the authors added a Cyberpunk campaign to the game with the publication of the "Earth/Cybertech Sourcebook" and two adventures for the same, "Deathwatch" and "Rotten to the Core" contemporaneous with the Cyberpunk movement of the 1990s. GDW catalogs advertised the game as "2300 AD - the Cyberpunk game of a Dark Gritty Future". The Earth/Cyberpunk Sourcebook states that Cyberpunk can be a fringe element in any society, its members being cyberpunks by self-definition. References to influential cyberpunk works such as Neuromancer and Blade Runner appear.