Steve Jackson Games Offering Early Space Gamer Issues on e23

From many of my prior posts, it's probably pretty clear that I am a great admirer of The Space Gamer magazine that was published by Steve Jackson Games in the early 80s. Over the course of the magazine's lifetime, it changed hands no fewer than four times, but it is the Steve Jackson era that stands out as a particularly high point for the magazine.

During the Steve Jackson era, The Space Gamer was THE magazine where gamers could find reviews covering the breadth of the gaming hobby. They had review and news columns covering rpgs, miniatures, and play-by-mail games. Key among the reviews was the magazine's "Capsule Reviews" section where gamers could find thoughtful reviews of dozens of gaming products in every issue. This magazine is one of my favorite resources when I am looking for archival information about the history of the gaming hobby. Reading The Space Gamer one quickly sees that the "current" animosity that some gamers feel toward Wizards of the Coast -- the current owners of Dungeons and Dragons -- is nothing new. Back in the 80s, during the Gygax era, TSR (the owners of D&D at the time) had huge layoffs on a regular basis and were as sue happy as modern gamers claim Wizards is today.

In addition to rules and news, The Space Gamer issues often featured fully playable board games. Kung Fu 2100, Globbo, Battlesuit, and Necromancer were all games that originally appeared in the pages of TSG. The pages of the magazine also featured regular articles by people who are now giants in the gaming industry. People like Allen Varney started their game designer careers as contributors to the Letters page of TSG. Lord British wrote articles discussing his designer notes for Akalabeth and its origins.

For years, I have been collecting back issues by scouring eBay on a regular basis. Some of the issues are more expensive than others, and I have had to wait through several auctions on a couple of key issues. eBay, garage sales, used games sections, and used book stores used to be the only places one could legally acquire copies of TSG. Now that has changed.

Steve Jackson Games has finally made the first three SJG issues of The Space Gamer available on their e23 electronic publication store. Potential readers can now find issues 27, 28, and 29 at the website where they cost a mere $2.99 each. For these, and for any TSG issues, this is a bargain.

Go. Buy them now. Read them. Enjoy the in depth look at the early days of our hobby.

You can even get a free preview of issue 29 here.

Let's hope they keep adding new issues for us to purchase.

K is for Kung Fu 2100

For its first 26 issues, the storied Space Gamer magazine was a house organ owned and published by Metagaming Concepts. Metagaming used the magazine to promote their upcoming products, and included some -- but not much -- coverage of products by other companies. This all changed after the magazine changed publishers. Starting with issue 27, The Space Gamer was published by the upstart Steve Jackson Games and continued to be published by them for another five years. The Steve Jackson Games run of The Space Gamer is one of the best runs of any gaming magazine in the history of the hobby. James Maliszewski has recently waxed nostalgic about the title and by I talked about the magazine here when SJG started offering their issues as pdfs for sale at their e23 webstore (they are a steal at $2.99 each).

In addition to publishing news and articles reviewing/supporting existing games on the market, the Steve Jackson era of the magazine included a number of classic minigames. Some -- like Allen Varney's Globbo where humorous in nature -- and others -- like Battlesuit -- were games that were inspired by other Steve Jackson products. Most of these games were quite good, but one struck a particular chord with me when I first encountered it as a wee tyke. That game was Dennis Sustare's Kung Fu 2100. The game had everything -- martial artists, secret laboratories run by evil scientists, and transhuman clones.

Dennis Sustare is not a well known game designer today, but he designed some very good micro-games in the 80s. His Star Smuggler game is an entertaining solo game where the player takes on the role of a Han Solo-esque freetrader, and his Intruder is a playful combination of A.E. Van Vogt's Black Destroyer and Ridley Scott's Alien that plays like Star Trek meets John Carpenter's: The Thing. This is likely because both Alien and Star Trek were inspired by the adventures of Van Vogt's Space Beagle, and Sustare's game captures the anxiety of a crew of scientists dealing with an otherworldly threat.

Kung Fu 2100 was inspired by this illustration in the first SJG issue of The Space Gamer:

Issue 27 asked readers to describe what was going on in the above image. Readers could present a game idea or write a short piece of fiction. Sustare did both and the his winning submission became the complete game insert for issue 30.

Kung Fu 2100 was eventually published in three different formats. The first was as the insert game in issue 30 of The Space Gamer for which you will need issue 31 to get the errata to the game -- there are a couple of errors. The second version was a minigame enclosed in a ziplock bag, and the final version was identical to the second except that it was now packaged in SJG's signature minigame box. In the end, the game got nice packaging and provided hours of fun at an inexpensive price.

The premise of Kung Fu 2100 was a combination Logan's Run and James Ryan's Kill or Be Killed. To quote the copy on the game:

IRON FISTS...

For years the CloneMasters have ruled the world. Their only foes are the Terminators -- trained from birth in the martial arts. Now you are a Terminator. Your mission: smash your way into the CloneMaster's fortress...chop through his defenses...and destroy him forever.

But his guards are many and loyal. Like you, they can kill with a single blow. And time is against you...

The game features an interesting combat system where kung fu maneuvers are selected in secret and later revealed as combat occurs simultaneously. The game uses an interesting alternating movement system in order to maintain game balance. The Terminators are tougher than their opponents, but they are badly outnumbered and only the right combination of stealth and skill selection will help them defeat the dreaded CloneMaster.

The components of the game have never been nothing special, you have to hand cut out the counters, but I have always wanted to make a project of making a "home play edition" of the game. I'd replace the small counters used to represent maneuvers and replace them with small eurogame sized cards. The Terminators, Jellies, and CloneMaster would be represented by stand up paper minis -- likely from the Cardboard Heroes line by SJG. I'd also make a more modern looking map. I'll get around to it some day, but that day will have to wait.

As it is now, you can get a copy of the game for $2.99 by buying issue 30 of The Space Gamer, printing out the proper pages, and getting down to having a good time. You might want to buy that copy of issue 31 for the errata, but that issue is worth the purchase for the reviews alone.

Before I forget, one of the most interesting things about the game is that the Terminators are a part of the Cult of Thanatos. The reason they despise the CloneMasters so much isn't entirely due to the tyranny of CloneMaster rule. The Terminators are far more upset that the CloneMasters seek immortality. The Terminators are part of a cult that glorifies death, and seeks to bring destruction to those who are avoiding the inevitability of death.

Tim Kask: A Tale of Two Magazines

 

Back in July of 1981 Tim Kask launched the first issue of ADVENTURE GAMING magazine. It was a magazine dedicated to the entire gaming hobby. The magazine launched just as two of the largest "Industry Magazines" (DRAGON and WHITE DWARF) were beginning their slow migration from magazines that covered the entire hobby and into house magazines that covered primarily the products offered by the company publishing the magazine. Tim Kask had been the editor of DRAGON for the first 34 issues of the magazine, so if anyone was qualified to launch a new magazine for the growing hobby he was certainly on that list. Unlike the two previously mentioned magazines, and magazines like Space Gamer, Tim's new venture wouldn't limit what kinds of games it covered. To quote Tim from his "Off the Wall" editorial:

Do you really plan to cover it all? You betcha, Buffalo Bob! The lines that used to separate the types of gamers are becoming more blurred. The amount of crossover interest and participation has never been greater. There can be no disputing the fantasy phenomenon erased a number of those lines, as well as gave the industry an incredible boost in interest in sales. Fantasy remains the dominant force in the industry today, but all areas are showing increased interest and sales. We plan to accurately reflect the hobby whatever direction it may take.

 The words that Tim wrote in 1981 were true, but they weren't sufficiently true for him to launch a successful magazine that lasted years. ADVENTURE GAMING published only 13 issues. As a fan of the hobby as a whole, I find this to be a great loss. Magazines are one of the best ways for modern fans to learn the history of the hobby. They are the primary way we can cut through the "common knowledge" and assumptions about the history of the hobby we so often encounter in conversations across fandom. If you read the article in FIRE & MOVEMENT magazine about the TSR/SPI merger you get quite a different picture than what you hear from former SPI employees. That merger doesn't look to be a clean merger from either side, and one wonders if TSR's attempt to acquire IP while avoiding debt obligations that would have been demanded during bankruptcy wasn't poorly communicated. It certainly created bad blood, and TSR may have been being too "creative" for their own good. Add to that the state of nature-esque competitiveness of that growing market, and modern gaming historians are poorer for the fact that magazines like ADVENTURE GAMING, SPACE GAMER, and DIFFERENT WORLDS didn't do better outside their regional spheres of influence.

Let's just have a look at what ADVENTURE GAMING #1 had to offer:

1. Scepter & Starship -- A Traveller Variant article. Note that Traveller recently had a very successful Kickstarter over 20 years after this issues publication.
2. Starting Over: Some Points to Consider Concerning New FRPG Campaigns -- A good how to start a campaign article.
3. The Joys of Napoleonic Wargaming -- Here you begin to see the breadth of the magazine's coverage.
4. Reflections -- A "Gamer POV" article about the hobby.
5. The Adventures of space Trader Vic -- One of the obligatory cartoons.
6. Campanile -- A column by Kathleen Pettigrew that was a gamer opinion column.
7. CIVILIZATION: A Game Review -- What it says.
8. What Makes a Player Good? A DM's View -- An article that looks at a topic that is often under evaluated, that of what players can do to make a better game experience.
9. Heroic Combat in DIVINE RIGHT -- A cool variant rules article by one of the designers of the game.
10. Away to the Wars! -- A variant for the KNIGHTS OF CAMELOT game.
11. Cangames 81 and Canadian Gaming by John Hill -- Yes, that John Hill of SQUAD LEADER fame.
12. NPCs are People Too! -- An article on how to give more personality to NPCs.
13. On Being a Gamemaster -- A GM advice column.
14. Any News of the Questing Beast? -- An overview of KNIGHTS OF CAMELOT
15. Whither Boardgames -- A column dedicated to the discussion of boardgaming and about how RPGs are hurting boardgame sales and how boardgaming still has value.

It's a pretty interesting lineup and one that would be fun to see in a modern publication. Speaking of modern publications, Tim Kask and his merry band of adventurers are at it again. Late last year/early this year saw the launch of GYGAX Magazine, a quarterly "adventure gaming" magazine. A magazine with a distinctly familiar mission:

We've go material that reaches back to some of the earliest role-playing games, and some of the absolutely newest. Virtual tabletops, fantasy miniatures rules for toddlers, complicated mathematical answers to simple questions, even a city in a swamp...we've got it all here. If there's one question that's come up more than any other while we were making this magazine, it's been "what are you going to write about?" From here on out, we would like to direct a similar question at our readers. What would you like to read? Drop us a line and let us know. With your help, we want to see tabletop gaming thrive and expand.

 While the wording is more "marketing" oriented than the older editorial, the message can be said to be very similar to the older quote, "We plan to accurately reflect the hobby whatever direction it may take." The first issue of GYGAX features the following:

1. The Cosmology of Role-Playing Games -- An incomplete but interesting look at the role-playing game hobby as a cosmology. It has a lot of important games, but it misses a few games I would consider highly influential. Not to mention that it just ignores 4e completely.
2. Still Playing After All These Years -- An editorial by Kask. A very good one.
3. Leomunds Secure Shelter -- An article by Lenard Lakofka, of Bone Hill fame, that looks at the math of AD&D.
4. The Ecology of the BANSHEE -- With the demise of Kobold Quarterly, it's nice to see an ecology article.
5. Bridging Generations -- An article by Luke Gygax discussing the continuation of the hobby.
6. Gaming with a Virtual Tabletop -- What it says.
7. Keeping Magic Magical -- An article by Dennis Sustare the designer of SWORDBEARER a game that very much kept magic magical.
8. Playing It the Science Ficiton Way -- A discussion of METAMORPHOSIS ALPHA and its origins.
9. DMing for Your Toddler -- Cory Doctorow's less useful version of Highmoon Games RPG KIDS. Do yourself a favor and buy RPG Kids.
10. Greate Power for ICONS -- Steve Kenson article for the supers RPG.
11. The Future of Tabletop Gaming  by Ethan Gilsdorf -- The second "celebrity" article. It's a good article, but I'm wondering if Shannon Applecline couldn't have done a better job.
12. The Gygax Family Storyteller -- What you might imagine, in the best possible way.
13. Talents OFF the Front Line -- An article for GODLIKE by Dennis Detwiller.
14. D&D past, now, and Next by Michael Tresca -- A good article that none the less falsely states that 4e is the "first edition to explicitly require an objective environment." No, that would be 3e and both Line of Sight rules and Flanking rules.
15. Gnatdamp -- A city in a swamp. Good article.
16. The Kobold's Cavern -- Wolfgang Baur!
17. Magical Miscellany -- Support for Green Ronin's AGE.
18. An AGE of Great Inventions -- More support for Green Ronin's AGE, which is a wondrous thing.
19. Scaling Combat Feats for PATHFINDER -- A good article by someone who wants to address the "feat taxes" of 3.x and PATHFINDER. Insert my snarky remark about how PATHFINDER is already amped up, so why does it need to be turned up to 11. Answer with "because it's a game and there is no wrong way to play" response.
20. Marvin the Mage -- Obligatory Cartoon.
21. What's New -- Obligatory Cartoon.
22. Order of the Stick -- Obligatory Cartoon.

As you can see, Tim is being more conservative in the new venture. There are no mentions of Napoleonic games here and the focus is on fantasy. The magazine still covers a wide swath of the hobby though. It has yet to be seen if there is a market for this publication. I'm certainly the target audience, and I've already got a one year subscription to print and digital, but who else will be is the vital question.

Will GYGAX be the next ADVENTURE GAMING or will it be the first of a new breed of hobby based magazines? Only time will tell. It wasn't for lack of quality that ADVENTURE GAMING failed.

1.  

Find Room in Your Pocket Book for Steve Jackson's Pocket Box Games

What is old is new again because Steve Jackson Games is republishing their classic Pocket Box Games from the 1980s. Do yourself a favor and check them out.

Way back in the before times that are the not now (1977), a young game designer named Steve Jackson created an entirely new genre of games when Metagaming Concepts published a small game called OGRE. The game was deceptively simple to play and remarkably deep for its price and size. This combination of low price and small components were the central features of what came to be called "Microgames." Metagaming Concepts published a significant number of Microgames during their tenure, including OGRE, G.E.V. a sequel to OGRE,  and the MELEE/WIZARD games to name a few. These games were a huge financial success for Metagaming, but creative differences led to Steve Jackson leaving that company to form his own company Steve Jackson Games.

When Jackson left Metagaming, he took a couple of things with him that he used to launch his company. These were the SPACE GAMER magazine that Metagaming had been publishing and his OGRE and GEV designs. For a variety of reasons, he was unable to take MELEE/WIZARD with him and would not be able to publish those under the Steve Jackson brand until approximately 30 years later. As a Steve Jackson publication, SPACE GAMER went from a journeyman publication that had a significant "house" focus, to one of the leading hobby gaming news magazines of its era. Though it had its share of house content, the pages of the Jackson published SPACE GAMER were filled with articles about games like D&D and TRAVELLER and its coverage of the CHAMPIONS role playing game contributed to that game's larger success.

But the magazine was only a small part of what would help to transform Steve Jackson Games from a small game company to one of the most successful privately owned game companies in the business. To be sure, it's no Hasbro or Asmodee, but it is a company with gross incomes around $5.5 million. It's still classified as a small business, but it's a cornerstone in the gaming hobby. One of the key reasons the company was able to grow was its swift publication of the OGRE game and a series of new games based on the microgame model, games that came in sturdier plastic pocket boxes.

While there are several games in the pocket box series, the two best known are OGRE and CAR WARS and these are the games that helped to secure Steve Jackson Games' future success. Both of these games, in their early print runs, had short and easy to understand rulebooks, counter sheets, and maps to be used for play. They contained months of deep game play for a very inexpensive price. Both OGRE and CAR WARS became individual product lines, but some of my favorite pocket games are lesser know and equally robust games that cover a variety of themes. These themes ranged from a post-apocalyptic future where a kung fu death cult fought against the evil clone masters to to hunting for Dracula in London, and from the small tactical operations of a Raid in Iran to the massive strategic challenge that is the Battle of the Bulge (simulated with only one page of rules in ONE PAGE BULGE). The games were fun and inexpensive when they were published.

A typical example of a Pocket Box game is UNDEAD. The game was published in 1981 and recreates the battle between Van Helsing's vampire hunters and the dread Count Dracula. The game also includes the ability to expand play by including the possibility of playing a certain consulting detective in a variant scenario. It can be played as either a two player game, or as a mini-role playing game. The box for the game was a medium hardness plastic that had the ability to hang in a store display. 

Inside the box was a double printed poster sized sheet that contained the rules and two maps that could be used in play. The first was a map of the city and the second was a tactical map. In addition to the poster sheet, there was a counter sheet that included all of the counters one needed for play. Players would have to carefully cut out the counters, but they featured engaging and colorful artwork.

Until recently, the only way to get these games was to track them down on eBay and pay a potentially exorbitant price. That all changed this month with Steve Jackson Games' launch of a Pocket Box project on Kickstarter. Now you can get them for $20 a piece, less if you take advantage of some of the pledge levels. Most of these games are absolute gems, and it's nice to see them in print again...this time with upgraded components.

Finding Out About NEW RPGs is Easier and Harder Than Ever... #RPGaDAY2017 Day 3

In the before times, in the not now, it was pretty easy to find out about what role playing games were coming down the pipeline. All you had to do was pick up a copy of The Space Gamer, Different Worlds, White Dwarf, The Dragon, or one of a host of magazines dedicated to the role playing game hobby. Some of those magazines predate me as a gamer, but they all covered new game offerings during a portion of their run.

Prior to the existence of these magazines, it was harder to find out about new games. You had to rely on word of mouth and the distribution chain providing advertisements to your local game store. One of the figures who made it easier back in the day, according to Shannon Appelcline's excellent Designers and Dragons, was Lou Zocchi who began including advertisements for games in his own published games. This service led to him becoming one of the first distributors in the hobby. Other than Zocchi though, it was rough going in the early days, but as the industry grew so too did those magazines.

In the early days of the intarwebs, there was a wonderful GO TO location for gaming news called gamingreport.com. It had everything you wanted: press releases of upcoming games, industry insiders leaking the games they were developing, and articles by Kenneth Hite on obscure games. It was a one stop shop for all you needed to know. Sadly, it disappeared for a variety of reasons and since that time we have returned to a digital form of the pre-magazine era in many ways. We are largely reliant on word of mouth and solicitations from distributors to game stores. It seems that we are reliant more and more on our communities for information, much as earlier gamers were reliant on 'zines from their communities.

I know what you might be thinking, "but this is the internet era and there is information EVERYWHERE!" That's exactly the problem. There is information and product solicitation scattered everywhere, almost at random. There are Kickstarter RPGs, there are indie press rpgs that sell at Indie Press Revolution but not on Kickstarter, there are strong independent publishers like Evil Hat Productions who have a core fanbase that keeps up to date with their newsletters, there is io9, Nerdist, and ICV2, but as good as these sites are they are too much shaped by their editorial preferences to cover a wide portion of the industry in a useful way to consumers. ICV2 is more a service for retailers than fans, so its stories tend to have underlying assumptions about knowledge of solicitations.

The fact is that I find out more about upcoming RPGs from the independent blogs I read and my Twitter and Facebook feeds than I do from any other source. There are too many distribution methods Kickstarter, Self-Publish, PDF only (where I find out by just looking at what's new at RPGNow/DriveThruRPG more than from an informative source), traditional hobby store, large retail exclusives, the list goes on and on. There is more information than ever, but it isn't centralized and that makes it challenging for a "broad interest" gamer like me. Were I only interested in games of a particular niche, then my searches and sites would be limited, but my interests range from Apocalypse World to The Zorcerer of Zo, okay bad example because those are both indies...how about...D&D to Apocalypse World to Zombicide to Karthun to the Protocol Series to Swords & Wizardry to Rotten Capes to Hero Games to GURPS? I missed the last Rotten Capes Kickstarter because it appears that I was the only of my friends who knew about it.

We need a service/place to cut through all the noise and get to the signal. We need a new GamingReport.com or a great generalist magazine like Different Worlds or The Space Gamer at their prime, but I don't see one coming unless someone launches a Patreon for one.

Gaming History: The Space Gamer and Black Gate Magazine, TSR Buys SPI

On February 28th, the publisher of Black Gate Magazine, wrote a blog post celebrating an old SPI game called Swords and Sorcery.  He praised the game in his semi-regular "new treasures" column.  The game itself was published in 1978, but O'Neill had just acquired an edition from eBay.  If the edition he purchased is the edition photographed in the blog post, he and I own the same edition of the game.  The game may have been old, but it was new to him. 

The post is quite positive, and I largely agree with O'Neill's review.  As is common in discussion of old SPI games, a discussion of TSR's acquisition of SPI -- and their subsequent "killing" of SPI game lines -- was brought up in the comments section.  Among the grognards of the gaming hobby, of which I am certainly one, there is often a good deal of ire aimed at TSR for their behavior.  This ire is often directed at Lorraine Williams, but not always.  One of those cases where it isn't directed at Lorraine Williams is in the TSR purchase of SPI in 1982.  At that time, the company was very much in the control of Gygax and the Blumes -- though they were having plenty of internal strife at the time.

In this particular post, Black Gate's managing editor (and talented author Howard Andrew Jones) was the individual who brought up TSR's "killing" of SPI product lines.  In my typical "provocateur" fashion, I mentioned that I thought that the TSR acquisition and killing of SPI was more complicated than most grognards think and even included some slight praise for Lorraine Williams -- as a fan I am actually amazed at the products that came out during her tenure, even if she hated gamers.  Here is what I wrote:

While it is easy to blame TSR for what they did to SPI — and they deserve a lot of blame — one should keep two things in mind

First, when they purchased SPI it was in dire financial straights and would likely not have survived.

Second, they had hoped to keep SPI’s staff, but those staff members refused to work for TSR — for varied reasons — and left to form the Victory Games studio over at Avalon Hill.

Third, and this is where I get near heretical, it was the Blumes who devalued SPI’s contributions. A massive resurgence of publishing of SPI games happened under Lorraine Williams. We would never have seen the SPI monster TSR World War II game, or Wellington’s Victory, SNIPER (including BugHunters), let alone the 3rd edition of DragonQuest.

I believe she did the publishing of SPI stuff out of desperation, not any love for the product or the fans, as TSR was starting to have financial troubles which could only be met by an ever expanding publication schedule and continual revenue flow.

It was the Blumes who refused to acknowledge lifetime subscriptions to SPI magazines.
There is an excellent issue of Fire and Movement, printed by Steve Jackson Games, that goes over the purchase of SPI.

I have since hunted down the issue of Fire & Movement I mentioned, and it is issue 27 (May/June 1982).  In that issue Nick Schuessler writes a remarkably detailed article about TSR's acquisition of SPI and provides some context for the purchase.  Some highlights of the article are:

• On March 31, 1981 TSR announced they were initiating a chain of events to purchase SPI.
• On April 7th, eight key SPI staffers tendered their resignations and announced they were forming a new company called Victory Games that would work under the auspices of Avalon Hill.
• TSR acquirexd the trademarks and copyrights of the entire SPI inventory.
• Mark Herman, the leader of the eight defectors, had been negotiating with Avalon Hill to purchase SPI.
• The TSR conglomerate owned a science fiction magazine (Amazing), and a needlepoint company, in addition to D&D and in 1981 they had $17 million in sales revenue.
• SPI was a $2 million a year company.

Schuessler's article is heavy on facts, and only has one bit of speculation.  That bit of speculation is whether the brain drain, the loss of Mark Herman and crew, will have a long term negative effect on the acquisition.  I would argue, from a historical perspective, that this was the single most devastating part of the acquisition.  SPI's strength was in its designers.  Mark Herman, Jerry Klug, John and Trish Butterfield, and Greg Gorden were some of the most talented designers of their era.

But the May/June issue of Fire and Movement only gives us a part of the story.  It doesn't truly show how desperate TSR was to diversify their brand, and how much internal strife existed at the company.  Those elements can be seen in old issues of The Space Gamer.   In issue 60 of TSG, John Rankin writes an article about a visit by TSR employees to Dallas where TSR Vice-President Duke Seifried were to meet with Heritage-USA and where there were possibly discussions for TSR to purchase Heritage or to enter into a joint venture with them.  John Rankin's article states:

• Heritage USA still owed Duke Seifried money from his time with the company, and that Duke was a stockholder in the company.
• TSR was very much in need of a miniatures company if they wanted to diversify. 
•  No meeting between TSR and Heritage actually occurred, though Duke did likely get information from them as a stockholder.
• TSR "left no broken hearts in Dallas.  But they didn't make any new friends either."
• There is a sense of some instability at TSR, and they are seen as not wanting to lead the industry rather just to "control it."  

This all seems like a relatively mundane deal gone bad...until one looks at other issues discussing TSR.  By issue 65 of The Space Gamer, the internal strife at TSR comes to the fore.  In that issue, the following facts are reported.

• TSR released 40 of its employees in June of 1983.  Among these employees was Duke Seifried.
• TSR was reorganized into 4 companies.
• TSR Public Relations director Dietur Sturm described TSR finances as, "More or less, what you're looking at is money coming into the company from sales and not focused properly...Sales are there as far as the distributors and retailers and stores (are concerned); they have nothing to worry about."

This news demonstrates a number of problems within TSR.  There is obviously internal strife.  The firing of Seifried and the "banishing" of Gygax to Los Angeles hint at that.  The company also clearly had no idea how to maintain and expand their product lines.  They purchased a needlepoint company for goodness' sake!  Why?  What synergy could that provide?

They purchased SPI, a company that had a rich catalog of war games but that also had a Fantasy Roleplaying Game called Dragon Quest.  Supporting the SPI rpg would have possibly meant cannibalizing their own product lines.  They had no plans to retain the talents acquired in the SPI purchase, and in fact eventually fired everyone they hired from SPI and refused to support life time subscriptions to SPI's magazine Strategy & Tactics.  TSR did everything they could to alienate the customer base of the company they had just acquired, and they were "reorganizing" to end an outpouring of money.  They were in constant need of revenue to stay afloat. They were selling a ton of product, but they also weren't developing products with any logical consistency.  These are trends that wouldn't end any time soon.  You can read Ryan Dancey's financial audit of TSR when Wizards of the Coast purchased them to see just how much this remained a problem in 1997.

I think that Rankin's comment regarding not wanting to lead, rather to control is a perfect description of the company.  They boycotted GAMA and demanded D&D not be played at Origins.  They had no plans for talent retention.  They didn't publish the products they acquired.  They don't seem to have been logical in the determination of the size of print runs.  They cannibalized product lines -- even in the Blume/Gygax era though this became disastrous in the Williams era.  As much as I love TSR's many settings having the Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, Mystara, Hollow World, Birthright, and Dark Sun all as simultaneous fantasy setting product lines is a case study definition of cannibalizing product lines.  Having "Basic," "Expert," "Companion," and "Master" D&D as well as Advanced D&D -- let alone a 2nd edition -- is also a case study definition.

The company produced great games, but they were not managed well at all.  Bad management is endemic throughout the rpg industry.  It is an industry primarily run by hobbyists and not business people.  This is a creative boon, but a business curse.

On an interesting note, as I was looking through old The Space Gamer issues I found a letter by a John O'Neill of Ottawa, Canada in issue 66.  I'm going to take a huge leap here and say that the John O'Neill in that 1983 letter is the publisher of Black Gate Magazine.  Why would I make such an assumption?  Just look at the first two paragraphs of that letter:

In an age of man now only distantly remembered, there existed a magazine which the good people in the land of Fandom did enjoy.  But lo, there came a day unlike any other day, when the Powers That Be sent a lightning bolt to rend asunder that magazine.

From the fragments of the one there emerged two magazines, and the Powers That Be told the people of Fandom to partake of them.

Who, but the future editor of a Sword and Sorcery magazine, could write such a letter? 

Image Copyright 2012 Jody Lindke

 

Wargaming School Renaissance -- Victory Point Games

Regular readers of this blog are well aware of the fact that I collect and play role playing and board games. My collection of each is quite large and ranges from the original D&D White Box by TSR to the recently released Old School Renaissance White Box by Brave Halfling Publishing on the role playing side, and a copy of Milton Bradley's Dogfight to Bucephelous Games Dogfight on the board game side.

What readers may not be aware of is the fact that I am also a fan of simulation war games as well. My collection currently includes the full line of Squad Leader boxed sets -- the precursor to Advanced Squad Leader (of which I don't own any sets) -- and a nice collection of issues of Strategy and Tactics and World at War among other things. My introduction to this particular market within the gaming hobby came in the early 80s when a friend named Christian Hunt introduced me to Steve Jackson's excellent mini-game Ogre which featured an artificially intelligent supertank crushing a small defensive force of human soldiers. The game was great fun, and it used all the classic components associated with the traditional war game -- i.e. hexagon maps, small 1/2" counters (hand or die cut depending on the game), and a Combat Results Table (or CRT). That game, with its small and easy to learn rules set, deeply ingrained an appreciation for how fun war games can be and made it possible for me to try out more complex rules sets -- though I must admit that I've yet to try Drang Nach Osten.

The vast majority of war games are time consuming affairs that take up a good deal of table space and require either familiarity with the underlying systems of a series of games, or the patience and time to read a complex rules set. This is one of the reasons there have been so many wargamers who play these games solitaire over the years. It can be hard to find someone else who had the time, energy, and interest to pour through pages of rules and who also spent the time futzing around with them enough that the two (or more) of you could just get straight to playing without one player having to teach the other the basics of the systems etc.

This "intimidation gap," particularly acute in monsters like Drang Nach Osten, is one of the reasons that I believe that Metagaming's line of mini-games (which started with Ogre) were so successful. They provided small, approachable, quick, and playable games that in turn gave players a substantive and robust gaming experience. A game like Ogre initially appears to have little strategic depth, but one quickly learns otherwise. In a way, the mini-game was the Eurogame before there was a Eurogame.

Recently, I had been lamenting the lack of a vibrant "mini-game" community of manufacturers. I believed, wrongly as it turns out, that there were few if any publishers selling games that offered depth of wargame experience with the compactness and playability of a mini-game or a Euro-game. I knew of Eurogames like Neuroshima Hex which were Euro-style games that approached the war game experience. I was even familiar with the Euro-influenced Card Driven Strategy war games available on the market -- ranging from Command and Colors to Paths of Glory. I was looking for a company more akin to Metagaming back in its heyday or Steve Jackson Games during its early years.

I didn't believe they existed.

Then I saw an advertisement for a new Independent French War Game Magazine called BATTLES -- published in English. That's right, a French magazine. The first issue of BATTLES contained a nice, playable, and quick wargame -- in contrast to the comparably monster games of Strategy and Tactics -- that had excellent quality components. The game was beautiful by war game standards...not to mention the magazine. BATTLES is a graphically amazing magazine that covers the war game hobby as a whole, rather than focusing on "in house" games as some other war game magazines do. But enough about BATTLES, or rather not enough but I'll save some comments for posts regarding the magazine, I want to talk about an American company that I found out about because of BATTLES.

You read that series of sentences correctly. I found out about an excellent American (Southern Californian in fact) game company by reading a French war game magazine (published in English). Talk about the world being flat!

That game company is Victory Point Games and they operate out of Irvine, CA. The story of the game company's founding, and the Wild West nature of their product line/production schedule, are very reminiscent of all the qualities I admire about Metagaming and Steve Jackson. The company started as an extension of a college course, and has become something of a "community course" in game design. From their "About Us:"

Most great game ideas begin with an impassioned gamer thinking about a game and saying, “Wouldn’t it be cool if…?” That’s how the best game ideas occur – not from bottom-line watching bean counters, not from Sales or Marketing, not through scientific research – it is gamer passion that creates the best games.

Enter Alan Emrich, who was teaching various game-related subjects such as Game Design, Game Prototyping, and Game Project Management at The Art Institute of California: Orange County in 2007. An impassioned gamer himself, while teaching other impassioned gamers about the art, craft, and science of making games, he had one of those “Wouldn’t it be cool if…?” moments. Although he had been ‘designing game designers’ among his students for some time, the notion arrived as a culmination of thoughts coalesced.

Just as some genius at Reese’s figured out one day, “Hey, what if put the chocolate and peanut butter together?,” Alan blended the ideas of Desktop Publishing (DTP) with his students’ game projects. The seed of an idea for Victory Point Games was planted.

“Wouldn’t it be cool if,” Alan reasoned, “I could desktop publish a few copies of some of my students’ better course project games? That way, when they graduate and go find jobs in the game industry, they’ll have a published title to their credit and a copy of it in their portfolios. That would certainly be a plus on their resume and at job interviews. What a great graduation gift I could give them!” This became a notion that he had to pursue.

A quick look through their website shows a deep catalog of games that appeal to the simulation gamer, with creations by well regarded creators like Jim Dunnigan, Joe Miranda, and Frank Chadwick, as well as light-hearted games that appeal to the casual gamer. Games like Forlorn Hope and Nemo's War address topics (space marines vs. aliens and Captain Nemo's world on the world's navies) that don't fit within the narrow confines of traditional wargaming.

What one will also find are blog entries discussing Victory Point Games' business model, and giving advice on how to design your own games the "victory point way."

These are games by gamers for gamers, but they aren't just games by gamers for "hardcore" gamers. These games are for both experienced and inexperienced gamers. You won't find any games that have "hundred" of die cut counters here. In fact, they have a whole line of games that feature no more than 20 counters used during play.

Everything about the company echoes Steve Jackson's early days -- before everything they made was Munchkin! Back in those days SJG produced games like One Page Bulge (which had one page of rules), Ogre, Car Wars, Undead, and Kung Fu 2100. The games were innovative and fun and made by people who obviously loved what they were doing. Add to this that SJG's house magazine The Space Gamer had a series of articles discussing the art of game design and you quickly see some parallels between the two entities.

Don't get me wrong. SJG is a great company. Their Frag Gold Edition is a wonderful, if overlooked by game stores, product. The same is true for their Revolution game -- and I am looking forward to owning copies of their new Zombie Dice and Cthulhu Dice games as well. In fact, I think that SJG has managed to recapture a bit of the creative spirit that was lost for a time as they focused on the best way to pay the bills. My point is that Victory Point Games behaves like SJG did when they were small and hungry.

Victory Point Games is indicative of a movement in wargaming similar to the "Old School Renaissance" movement in role playing.  It's a movement of gamers who want to break from the current fads of gaming and introduce the world to a robust and vital hobby.

I'm all for it.

I am very excited about Victory Point Games offerings, and am looking forward to reviewing them as I'm playing them.

Cancelling AD&D? RPG Rumors Circa 1986 -- Different Worlds #44

I'm a big fan of Tadashi Ehara's now defunct gaming magazine DIFFERENT WORLDS. Over its tenure, the magazine was published by a couple of companies including Chaosium and Sleuth Publications. According to a pre-publication solicitation letter (available here), the magazine was originally slated to be entitled DM. The change was likely due to concerns over TSR's trademark of DM/Dungeon Master. Regardless of the reason for the change in title, I think that DIFFERENT WORLDS better suited the content of the magazine than DM ever would have. The magazine was a gem. Like Steve Jackson Games' magazine SPACE GAMER, Ehara's magazine covered the entire roleplaying game hobby. As I've written before, issue #23 of the magazine is maybe one of the most important magazines ever written about the origins of Superhero Roleplaying games. For those who want to understand the history of RPGs, DIFFERENT WORLDS, SPACE GAMER, and ALARUMS & EXCURSIONS are three of the most valuable resources that the aspiring historian can find. They really help to cut through a lot of the community gossip about a transitional era in the hobby.

Speaking of Gossip, DIFFERENT WORLDS featured an excellent gossip column written by the pseudonymous Gigi D'arn (clearly a Gary Gygax/David Arneson reference). I've written speculation about the identity of this columnist before, and I'm still pretty sure that she was a real person and that the Chaosium staff added to her actual letters. There are just too many little tidbits of SoCal culture, which was booming at the time as an RPG hub, for me to believe otherwise. The column was filled with a great deal of speculation, some true, some pure fiction, and all fun to read.

There are a couple of pieces of gossip/rumors in issue 44 that stand out and need attention. In fact, they are rumors that I'd like to hear more from the gaming community at large about, and I'll be asking around to see if there is any merit to them.

First and foremost - actually quite shocking - really is a claim about ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS. According to Gigi, "Rumour thinks TSR is unhappy with the ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS game line and is considering dropping it. GARY GYGAX meanwhile is starting his own company, Infinity Games, in New Jersey. Will he take the license with him?"

I wonder if this is true. 1985 saw the publication of UNEARTHED ARCANA and ORIENTAL ADVENTURES for the AD&D game, but the mid-80s was also the era of the publication of the Basic, Expert, Companion, Master, Immortals rules for D&D. It was a time when the D&D brand was divided among two sub-brands and a time when there was great potential that one brand was cannibalizing the other. From my experience, the D&D brand was putting out a lot of great material at this time. According to GROGNARDIA 1986 saw the release of a number of BECMI products and 1987 saw the production of the first Gazetteer products for the D&D brand - some of the best products ever released for D&D.

If I were to guess, I'd say the rumor was true and that core rule book sales for AD&D had dropped. I would argue that this is why we saw a 2nd edition of AD&D released in 1989. An edition that may not have happened at all if not for the success of the Forgotten Realms Setting. My thought is that the Forgotten Realms setting, written for AD&D, was so successful that management decided to do a new edition of the game for increased sales. I'd like to know if this is correct or not though.

The second interesting piece of gossip/rumors is that J.D. Webster, the creator of the Finieous Fingers cartoon strip, was a carrier fighter pilot. This is apparently true.

[Gaming Library] Aaron Allston's STRIKE FORCE: A Must Own GM Resource

At the Origins convention in 1981 Hero Games released what would become one of the best selling super hero role playing games of all time, a game that is still around and which has served as the IP behind a  computer MMORPG.  That game is CHAMPIONSand it is one of the great games that the hobby has produced. 

CHAMPIONS has a large and active fan base, though it does seem to have dwindled a little between the 5th and 6th edition of the rules.  That dwindling may soon find itself reversed with the recent release of CHAMPIONS: LIVE ACTION and upcoming release of CHAMPIONS COMPLETE.  I've been of the opinion the past couple of editions of CHAMPIONS and the HERO rules have become a little bloated, and it seems that the designers behind CHAMPIONS COMPLETE agree as their upcoming rulebook is only 240 pages in total.  While much can be, and has been, written about the CHAMPIONS game, there is one supplement for the game that transcends the game itself and is one of the best "how to run a campaign" supplements ever produced...for any game system.

When CHAMPIONS was released in 1981, Aaron Allston worked for The Space Gamer magazine which was then a publication of Steve Jackson Games.  Steve Jackson returned from the Origins convention with news of the game and asked Aaron to review the game for the magazine.  Aaron did so and his positive review appears in issue 43 of The Space Gamer.  This article was quickly followed by a "proto-Strike Force" article entitled "Look Up in the sky..." in issue 48. 

In the article in issue 48, Allston describes how he came to be a CHAMPIONS player and game master -- he would later become one of its premiere contributors.

The superhero campaign of CHAMPIONS which I run, which is successful enough that it's been thrown out of TSG playtest sessions (it was crowding out all the other games), began as an irritation. Steve Jackson came back from Origins with the news that some new company in California had nabbed the name CHAMPIONS; I'd hoped to use CHAMPIONS on a personal game project.  I could review the Hero Games offering if I wished.  Wonderful.

 Looking over the rulebook, though, I was impressed.  The game appeared clear and coherent after a single read-through and seemed to faithfully simulated the four-color stuff of comic books.  Extensive solo playtesting ensured almost immediately, with the heroic Lightbearers waging a running war with the criminal mastermind Overlord.

In the end, Overlord's munitions-running scheme was wrecked; the Lightbearers disbanded, with one member dead and two others unwillingly allied with the villain; and I had chosen to run CHAMPIONS on a regular basis.

 There is a good deal more to the article in which Allston shares with potential players and game masters some guidelines and some pratfalls that might happen as one plays a super hero campaign.  How does one exactly acquire a super hero secret headquarters anyway?  One can see the foundations for the book STRIKE FORCE in the article, and Allston provides a nice glimpse into what can contribute to the running of a successful game.  As good as the article is, it pales in comparison to the CHAMPIONS sourcebook that Allston wrote based upon that early -- initially merely a playtest -- campaign.

Aaron Allston's STRIKE FORCE is one of the better campaign sourcebooks ever written.  It has a very simple arrangement.  It begins with a section on campaign use.  This section is not a how to plot an adventure section, as by 3rd edition CHAMPIONS had a pretty good chapter on that, rather it was advice for dealing with very specific problems.  This chapter covers the following:

• The "Character Story" -- discusses how to help players develop the character stories that they dreamed up when they initially created the character.
• Simulating the Comics -- discussed how to keep the players behaving in a four-color fashion.
• The New Player
• Aging the Hunteds -- How to make "Hunted" behave like real world constant interactions rather than as a mere random roll done each week.
• Listening to Your Players
• Ground Rules
• Translation Follies
• Types of CHAMPIONS Players -- The Builder, The Buddy, The Combat Monster, The Genre Fiend, The Copier, The Mad Slasher, The Mad Thinker, The Plumber, The Pro from Dover, The Romantic, The Rules Rapist, The Showoff, and The Tragedian.
• Character Conception Checklist
• How to Ruin Your Campaign

If Allston had written no other sections than the "types of players" and "how to ruin your campaign" sections of the sourcebook, this would be an invaluable resource.  Allston's breakdown of player types builds upon some of the discussions which had been going on in Different Worlds magazine and other places in the game-verse, but his clear description of the varied motivations of players is spot on and extremely useful.  Between STRIKE FORCE and Robin Law's book on Game Mastering Rules, you have almost everything you need to run any game successfully...if you follow the advice that is.

In addition to the overview on Campaign advice -- generic campaign advice -- Allston then continues providing an invaluable tool by giving us a look into his own campaign in the subsequent chapters of the book.  We are given an "Abbreviated History" of the STRIKE FORCE campaign, which can be used as an example or as an outline for one's own campaign.  He provides the full roll call of the STRIKE FORCE and SHADOW WARRIORS teams as well as Independent heroes and a number of Villains from the campaign.  This is followed by a detailed history of the campaign -- both his real world work and the in game history.  In the history, Allston shares some of the storytelling challenges he faced and how he overcame them in play.

If you can find a copy of the book, I highly recommend it.

[Gaming History] Ace of Aces Seeks a Triumphant Return

I have always had warm feelings for Rick Loomis' game company Flying Buffalo.  When I was a young gamer whose pool of friends included few other rpg/wargame players, I spent many an enjoyable hour playing the solo adventures for Tunnels and Trolls that Flying Buffalo published.  I watched as their product lines improved in quality with the addition of the Blade subdivision and its line of well designed and attractive supplements.  I have always believed that a part of this improvement should be credited to Dave Arneson who may have provided some underwriting for this project, as he did many others after his settlement with TSR.  At a minimum Arneson wrote one of the better supplements for their Mercenaries, Spies, and Private Eyes games.

To me Flying Buffalo is the Oakland A's of the Adventure Gaming hobby.  Loomis has been innovative in many of his ideas, and has used his vision to purchase the rights to some excellent games, but he has never had the budget to bring his vision to full light.  After all, Flying Buffalo were at the forefront of the Play By Mail hobby (essentially creating the genre post-Diplomacy), the rpg hobby itself (with the release of Tunnels and Trolls), the creation of the solo game book hobby, and their purchase of the rights to publish the innovative flip book games like Ace of Aces designed by Alfred Leonardi and published by Nova Games.

Nova Games itself has heavily influenced hobby gaming.  In addition to the excellent Ace of Aces game, and the Lost Worlds combat book spin offs, Nova was responsible for the first edition of the now classic Axis & Allies game.  The Nova edition of Axis and Allies received a less than sterling review in Fire and Movement issue 27, which stated that the game would be better as a beer & pretzels game by a publisher like Milton Bradley.  That review couldn't have been more prescient, as by 1984 Axis & Allies became one of the "big" three Milton Bradley "Gamemaster" series board games.  The "Gamemaster" series of games essentially created what we now refer to as the "Ameritrash" game.  These are highly thematic games that have a complexity that falls somewhere in the middle of Risk and the easier "chit and token" games of a publisher like Avalon Hill or SPI.  When the Mildotn Bradly version came out, the reviews were quite different than the early F&M review.  To quote Warren Spector in The Space Gamer 72, "WOW! Make that double WOW! ...If any adventure/wargame company had released Axis & Allies it would probably sell for three times what it costs from Milton Bradley.  As it is, it can be yours for a measly 15 bucks if you shop around. So what are you waiting for?"

Like Axis & Allies, the Ace of Aces game seeks to provide game play that satisfies what was a new kind of gamer, and a demographic that makes up a large number of gamers today, the gamer who wants an easy to play game that is deep and has high replay value.  Where Axis provides game play at the most abstract of levels and covers all of WWII on one map, Ace of Aces provides game play at the most granular level.  It is a battle of one German biplane against one British biplane.  It is Rickenbacker versus Richtofen, Snoopy versus the Red Baron -- and it plays in about 15 minutes. When Nick Schuessler, Steve Jackson Games' resident war game guru in the 80s, reviewed the game he wrote, "All of the praise for this unique gaming system has been well deserved.  Simply put, AofA is the most innovative thing to happen to the hobby since Tactics II."  Given that Tactics II effectively created the war board game hobby, that is high praise indeed.


It is a magnificent game, that is sadly out of print and that would make a great iPad/iPhone app.

Do you hear that Rick?  This game is perfect for the iPad/iPhone without any alteration.  None.  Make it now.

As I mentioned, the game is out of print, but it doesn't have to be that way.  Rick Loomis is attempting to print a new edition of the game through a Kickstarter that is pretty close to meeting its funding goal.  The KS doesn't have a video attached to it, but the game's creator Alfred Leonardi has released a tutorial video.  As you can see by watching the video, it is more of a play through video than a tutorial.  But it does provide an excellent primer for how quickly the game plays.  In the video, two total neophytes play a full game in under 10 minutes.

Unlike other recent videos by more tech savvy companies, this tutorial is a bit crude.  But it does have it's charm.  The Ace of Aces game was also given a stellar review and recommendation in the most recent issue of Battles Magazine (number 8).  Would that the Flying Buffalo Kickstarter had the graphic design of that magazine, the game would certainly already be funded.  

Go! Now! Back this project!  Let's play an Ace of Aces tournament at Gen Con 2013. 

H is for Hero System

Champions, the first Hero System role playing game, was released in 1981 at the Origins Game Fair. One of the first individuals to purchase the game was game designer and magazine editor Aaron Allston who quickly reviewed the game for The Space Gamer magazine in issue 43. By issue 48, The Space Gamer was featuring articles about Allston's Champions campaign, as he became one of its biggest advocates. His review was very positive, but it also contained a fair amount of constructive criticism. In particular he criticized the overly combat oriented nature of the rules set:

There is nothing on "extracurricular" characteristics of the superheroes -- there is no way to determine professional skills or wealth, for example. In the comics, Dr. Mid-Nite can use his medical skills to aid a badly wounded comrade, but in CHAMPIONS the injured soul must be rushed to the hospital, as there is no way for characters to be doctors. There is no way to see if the character is a playboy millionaire or a struggling science student. In short, within the scope of the rules, you can create Iron Man, but not Tony Stark, The Huntress, but not Helena Wayne.

To a certain degree, Allston was perfectly correct in his criticism. The skill list of the first edition of Champions, on pages 10-12, was sparse. It included only the following skills: Acrobatics, Climbing, Computer Programming, Detective Work, Disguise, Find Weakness, Lack of Weakness, Luck, Martial Arts, Missile Deflection, Security Systems, Skill Levels, Stealth, and Swinging. There is a complete and utter lack of professional skills in this list. This is also true of the second edition of the game. While the second edition improved the layout of the rules, clarified many rules descriptions, provided sample characters, and eliminated the sub-par Vic Dal Chele artwork from the product, Allston's critique could still stand.

Hero Games quickly released a series of related role playing games -- Espionage and Justice Inc. -- which had a more "street level focus" and thus had more "granular" skill and "perk" lists. Since these games dealt with Spy Stories and Pulp Adventure, and the heroes were more "human" than the superheroes depicted in Champions, these games included rules for knowledge skills, science skills, and the like.

The third edition of Champions still neglected these "secondary" skills, but most GMs had already begun to incorporate them into their games as the "Hero System" released more and more products. Eventually Hero Games released Danger International -- a serious update of Espionage -- Fantasy Hero and Star Hero proving that the underlying Hero mechanics could be used with any genre.

With the fourth edition of Champions -- the edition I believe is the best -- the skills and perks systems from the various offshoot Hero System games were incorporated fully into the Champions rules and the Hero System became truly universal.

But there were still players who -- like Allston early on -- wanted more granularity in the rules set. It wasn't enough to have rules for medical skills, there needed to be rules for flash light illumination, or the ability to moderately adjust the temperature in the room for heat/cold based characters. Some fans wanted every little minute detail to be codified in some purely mechanical system -- and thus the Hero System 5th Edition was born...and eventually a 6th edition.

All of the rules sets are good. I don't think any are sub par. I do think that they level of granularity and the ever increasing pressure to mechanically represent every last detail of the character has become a bit of an obsession for the rules and for some Hero players. I remember when the Hero players began to post on the Green Ronin boards about the Mutants and Masterminds skill system. Steve Kenson wanted the "ultra-skilled" characters like Batman or Mr. Fantastic to buy "Super Attributes" that implied that the character was equally proficient in all skills related to that attribute. I thought Kenson's proposal was magnificent, the former Hero players -- and some d20 players -- dissented. They wanted each skill to be purchased separately and the level of proficiency to be paid incrementally.

The fans of the granular won out, but ought they have. Is it really necessary for a rules set to have specific representation of knowledge skills and/or professional skills? Can't a character write a robust background for he character and have the GM rule, using judgment and common sense, how that background affects a situation?

Do we really need to have players roll dice to see if their Nobel Prize winning Physicist character understands string theory? Or is it better to have that be an improved/acted out scene that the GM can plan for and leave clues using the assumption of player proficiency rather than leaving it to arbitrary die rolls?

Table top role playing games aren't computer games after all. The reason we have mechanics for combat is to avoid "I shot you...no you didn't" Cops n' Robbers situations. They prevent arguments by providing a buffer between the player and the Game Master. They minimize the perception that the GM is just out to get you.

With non-combat/non-contested attributes, like wealth or education, are those things to be quantified or things to be incorporated into narrative?

For me, they are best things left incorporated into narrative -- unless someone is trying to outperform someone else. One might need mechanics for a duel of wits, but one doesn't need mechanics for "training."

All that aside, and the Hero System can easily be run without the skill system bogging things down, the Hero System is one of the great additions to the gaming hobby. It was one of the first games to use point build characters. It incorporated war game techniques and role playing game mechanics in a wonderful fashion, and was the first system to fully emulate the superhero genre while allowing full design control to the players.

Some of the best Hero System products are (in no particular order):
1) Champions -- 4th Edition
2) Danger International
3) Justice Inc. -- partly written by Aaron Allston
4) Fantasy Hero -- for 5th Edition Hero

[Gaming History] Star Frontiers -- A Look Back at a Classic SF RPG

When TSR released the Dungeons & Dragons role playing game in the early 1970s, they created a new mode of gaming the role playing game.  What is interesting is that they failed to rapidly follow up the success of their "fantasy" themed role playing game with a succession of game releases in other genres.  While many of the first role playing games were shallow imitations of D&D...some were even Vacuous to use Gygax's terminology, it was other companies who first entered the marketplace with non-fantasy RPGs.

It wasn't long after the publication of D&D that Ken St. Andre drafted a set of rules for a science fiction themed role playing game entitled Starfaring, and Marc Miller published Traveller in 1977.  Where Starfaring was whimsical, and is a quintessentially 70s artifact that feels a bit like John Carpenter's Dark Star the rpg, Marc Miller's Traveller set the standard for science fiction rpgs.  In fact, Traveller truly set the standard for any rpg product line that was going to compete in the rpg marketplace.  Marc Miller's creation had a large following among the Space Gamer readership, and the publication of support materials for the game led to the growth of FASA -- one of the classic old RPG companies.  Traveller's success extends to the present, and Marc Miller currently has a Kickstarter campaign that promises a new edition that harkens to the old version.

Even though Traveller established science fiction as a viable genre for role playing games, it took TSR five years after the release of Traveller before they released their SF entry into the RPG marketplace, the Star Frontiers game.  When Star Frontiers came out, there were those who tried to compare it to Traveller, but I have always felt that the comparisons were slightly off base as they represent different kinds of SF.  Traveller's rules and back story, as well as the overwhelming influence D&D had on the early RPG market, gave the game a specific feel.  Characters created in the game are typically former military who are now retired, or as James Maliszewski has pointed out a good many were former Mercenaries.  Traveller campaigns had narratives along the lines of the Firefly television show, though it would be more chronologically accurate to say that Firefly has a Traveller feel to it.  Traveller's own backstory was heavily influenced by Asimov's Foundation series with it's dying empire.  Traveller campaigns were often gritty SF adventures filled with mercenaries and retired Imperial Officers spanning the Spinward Marches in pursuit of wealth and notoriety.

The D&D influence could also be seen in many Traveller campaigns, where players essentially wandered around the galaxy as pirates raiding Imperial space ships for their loot.  This isn't to say that all Traveller campaigns were "spacey dungeon crawls," the official adventures certainly weren't, just that some people played it that way.

The science fiction background of Star Frontiers was quite different from that of Traveller.  Where Traveller took place in a galaxy dominated by an interstellar Empire in a fairly settled area of the galaxy, Star Frontiers took place on the Frontier of civilization where a major corporation "Pan Galactic Corporation" -- later multiple corporations -- was sponsoring the exploration and attempting to profit.  The Pan Galactic Corporation had come into existence to promote exploration and trade among four major alien races -- Human, Vrusk, Dralasite, and Yazirian.  These races have only just begun to interact with one another, and have banded together on the Frontier of explored space.  At that Frontier, they soon discover a new enemy...an enemy that threatens to destroy any civilization that chooses to explore the Frontier.  That enemy is the Sathar, a wormlike race with hypnotic powers on the edge of explored space.  The exploring races have only recently completed their First Sathar War, during which they formed the United Planetary Federation, and are now having to deal with terrorist attacks and sabotage by agents of the Sathar...agents from among their own people.  In response to the Sathar's new warfare strategies -- espionage and terrorism -- the UPF has formed the Star Law Rangers who track Sathar agents and attempt to foil their plots.

The universes of the Traveller rpg and the Star Frontiers rpg have parallels in history.  One is of an empire in decline, the other is of mercantilism on the rise.  The tones of the settings are very different, but so are the rules.  Where Traveller characters are retired from former professions and already have a number of skills at which they are proficient -- especially if the characters were generated using the Mercenaries or High Guard supplements -- Star Frontiers characters are relatively inexperienced.  Even in the Expanded Star Frontiers rules, the characters have training in only two major skills -- and that training is at the lowest level.  The characters start near penniless and are in need of employment.  Players can be thankful that the Star Law Rangers are always looking for recruits, that the corporations are always looking for someone willing to risk Sathar attack while exploring planets on the Frontier, and then there's always the possibility of playing a group of Sathar agents...

Star Frontiers is a game that has a background that is rich in ideas for development...but it is also a game where one has to dig in order to find these ideas.  Trying to find out the history of the Star Frontiers universe is not an easy task.  Prior to the publication of Zebulon's Guide to Frontier Space there was not a clear timeline of the development of civilization.  One had to induct heavily from the introduction in the Basic Game rule book, read and reread the racial descriptions, and scour every module for minutiae to get a sense of what was going on.  Zeb's Guide did some of the work for you, as it advanced the timeline to a point after the modules and to a point where the Sathar had developed mind controlling organisms that latch on to the victim's back to take over the nervous system (fans of Puppet Masters and Iron Empires take note).  Taking the Frontier beyond an outline and into a fleshed out campaign setting takes time, but it is worth it.

I've read the rules many time, but have never actually played the game.  It's an easy system, though I've recently come up with an even simpler version of their Basic Rule with my own Extremely Basic rules, but I might just use the setting and play the game with another game's rules set.  Maybe d20 Modern/Future, they did write a Star Frontiers setting section for the d20 Future book and had a web expansion with stats for the Sathar, maybe Alternity, or Savage Worlds.  Heck...I might just use the Traveller system for it, when I get my copy of the 5th edition.  It's a great game too.

Dave Arneson 10/1/1947 - 04/07/2009 R.I.P.: Another Gaming Legend Passes Away

If it weren't for Gary Gygax and David Arneson, my Saturdays would look very different. Between the two of them, they created a game (and hobby) that has altered the face of recreation. When Gary and David organically created the role playing game called Dungeons & Dragons, I don't think they could ever have guessed that it would lead to the creation of so many exciting games. Without them there would have been no Champions, no Tunnels & Trolls, no Magic the Gathering, no Space Hulk, no Ultima, no World of Warcraft.

Without these men and their creation, the world would be less fun. Given the number of heated arguments about which edition of various role playing games is superior, the world would also be less interesting.

As I read the words, "these men" and "their creation," I realize that I am doing one of these men a disservice. It is true that the combined activities of these two men led to the creation of the Dungeons and Dragons role playing game. They are after all the acknowledged co-creators of the game, as Wizards of the Coast's website so eloquently remembers. But in many ways Dave Arneson is the creator of the role playing game and of the continuing dialectic between mechanics and persona that moves innovation in role playing game design.

Role playing lore tells us that Major Wesely's Braunstein was the ur-roleplaying game. Major David Wesely was the first Dungeon Master (or Game Master), but role playing games may have died in their seedling state if not for the efforts of the first "role player." That gamer was David Arneson. I can try to describe what happened or what it meant for gaming, but I doubt I could do a better job than Ben Robbins from Ars Ludi. Ben writes:

Dave Arneson: Gamer Ex Nihilo

“Peaceful revolutionary. Gets points for printing and delivering leaflets to each of his revolutionaries, and more for handing them out to other civilians (who may be agents or guerrillas of course…). Starts at home. (B-4)”
–Braunstein 4, Banana Republic

When you started gaming you read all these books, and they told you you could be a cleric or a thief or an elf (or a vampire or a Prince of Amber) and they told you you should probably pick a caller and set up a marching order and listen at doors and all that other stuff. You marched your character around and talked in funny voices. Sooner or later you may have realized that the rules didn’t drive the game, your imagination did.

But what if you never had any of those books? What if no one had ever explained to you what roleplaying was? Were you a good enough gamer to become a gamer without even knowing what a gamer was? Could you have just started being a gamer out of thin air, without anyone ever telling you how to do it?

Dave Arneson did.

He lied, swindled, improvised, and played his character to the hilt. He came to the game with fake CIA ID he’d mocked up, so when another player “captured” and searched him he could whip them out. Other players were still moving pieces around the board and issuing orders like a wargame while Dave Arneson was running circles around them and changing the whole scenario. He was winning the game entirely by roleplaying.

You may think of Dave Arneson as one of the godfathers of GMing, but even before that he was the godfather of players. He was, literally, the proto-player.

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“You’re the student revolutionary leader,” Wesely says “You get victory points for distributing revolutionary leaflets. You’ve got a whole briefcase full of them.”

Much later, having convinced his fellow players that he is really, perhaps, an undercover CIA operative, and that the entire nation’s treasury is really much safer in his hands, Dave Arneson’s character is politely ushered aboard a helicopter to whisk him to safety.

Far below the streets are still churning with fighting, plastic soldiers colliding with innocent citizens and angry rioters. In his lap sits the forgotten briefcase of revolutionary leaflets. “I get points for distributing these right?” And with a sweep of his arm he adds insult to injury, hurling reams of pages into the downdraft of the helicopter where they scatter and float lazily down upon the entire town…

Final score: Dave Arneson, plus several thousand points

Big whoop, you say, this is all old timey stuff. We modern gamers are way beyond dungeon crawls and listening at doors and all that primitive stuff. We have indie games and story games and narrative control and yadda yadda yadda.

Yes indeed. But even skipping the “standing on the shoulders of giants” argument or the “know your roots” argument, look again at what happened in that game: Dave Arneson was winning entirely by roleplaying. He isn’t doing tactical combat or playing some dumb-ass linear quest, he is making his own rules and being, for lack of a better word, an excellent player by any modern definition. He is making the game.

Don’t think Dave Arneson would kick your ass in some Sorcerer or Dogs In The Vineyard? Then you haven’t been paying attention. He would, as the kids say, take you to the net.

Modern gamers are pushing into new territory, but they’re also reclaiming old territory whether they know it not — the lands of their ancestors. If you’re an indie gamer or an avant garde gaming revolutionary, old school titans like Dave Arneson and Major Wesely are your peeps. They were trying things that had never been done before in their day too. They are your guys.

It is rare that people come along and create something truly new. The cliche that there is nothing new under the sun is very often true, but when it isn't we can be inspired and entertained in ways we never thought possible. Role playing games were (and still are) such a new concept in play that theorists debate whether role playing games are merely games or whether they are also a form of art. When you look at a group of gamers moving pieces around a board and rolling dice, role playing games certainly seem to fit nicely into the niche of game. But when you see those same people, descendants of Arneson's CIA agent, acting out their actions and creating entertaining narrative experiences -- some semi-scripted like a Christopher Guest film and others completely improvisational -- the argument that role playing games can be art gains some traction.

One thing is certain, role playing games can move the soul by being immensely pleasurable experiences. They can have this effect no matter how you play them -- hack and slash or persona immersion intensive -- the games make for good friends and good stories.

To repeat a thought above, they make the world more fun.

Thank you Dave for making the world a more interesting and entertaining place.