I'm Tired of Edition Wars -- An Open Letter to Gamers

Dear Gamers on the Internet,

Every now and then I like to visit the various websites associated with the companies who manufacture and produce role playing games that I enjoy. These companies, and companies that no longer exist, have provided me with over 20 years of entertainment. The companies are filled with hard working employees who care about the hobby, participate in the hobby themselves, and who believe that roleplaying games are something valuable enough to make a career out of. Given the size of most of these companies, and the ratio of dollars profit to hours of labor of most rpg product, I hold them in pretty high esteem.

I also firmly believe that every single one of them wants to entertain us with an engaging quality product.

I am sick of reading screeds on the message boards of company x about how company x has betrayed the gaming tradition and how company y's came is the real version of company x's product. I am sick of visiting company y's boards and reading comments by fans of company x's products who troll around slamming on the hard work of the employees and fans of company y. Stop it. It is irritating to those of us in the hobby who love both company x and company y, and who realize that these companies have shared staff from time to time. A certain staffer at company x wrote a heck of a lot of the content about a certain "Shackled City." He seems to be a stand up guy.

These comments apply to all those in the "indie" and "retro rpg" movements as well. These communities are creating wonderful gaming products that are influencing the design decisions of the bigger companies. These communities are invaluable to the gaming hobby as they spawn innovation and are some of the best sources of new players. But I am sick of them attempting parricide on older and newer games/editions. You make the hobby better, but so do those other games.

There is no perfect game, and no perfect edition. I would even go so far as to argue that there are only a few truly awful roleplaying games in existence. In fact, I believe that there are more high quality roleplaying games and game adventures than I will ever be able to play in my lifetime. They are already out there. When I found a copy of Dennis Sustare's Swordbearer, I was blown away by how awesome that forgotten game was. When I cracked open Heroes of Shadow for D&D 4e, I was impressed with some of the design decisions which went in directions I never would have chosen -- yet they still seemed to work. When I began reading the most recent Paizo Adventure Path, the "Hammer Studios" fan in me got giddy.

My gaming group recently decided to add "one shot" sessions playing games we've never played before into our normal mix of play, and it has been wonderful. Some of these one shots will be of forgotten, or smaller press, games, but other sessions will be of prior editions of existing games. I'd love to have four to six one shots that go through the evolution of GURPS from The Fantasy Trip to present. We've already done a couple of "Moldvay/Cook" sessions and will likely do more, but that will have to wait for sessions of Boot Hill and even the old Fantasy Games Unlimited Flash Gordon rpg.

These are all wonderful games, and I believe that every edition of the "most popular role playing game in history" are excellent.

As much as I want to say that edition wars are bad because every edition is good -- and I do believe that -- this isn't the real reason that edition wars are bad. Edition wars are bad because they scare away new players. Imagine if you will to people heatedly arguing about some subject that you have little -- or only a passing -- interest in, let's say this subject is programming on The CW Network. As the conversation progresses, the passion of the speakers might pique your interest a little. "These shows must have something to them if they inspire such passion," you might say to yourself. But as the conversations progress and the passion quickly escalates to violate Godwin's Law, your interest might quickly wane. You will no longer care if Supernatural is a better show than Vampire Diaries, and you may not even turn on the one that most matches your viewing preferences. You might miss something you would really like.

The desire to avoid the product associated with people suffering from a kind of IFWS is stronger with the gaming hobby than with other products because the potential new player must ask him/herself, "are these the kind of people I want to spend 4-8 hours a week hanging out with?"

I'll tell you what. I don't want to spend most of my gaming time hanging around people who have to insult other games to build up their own game play. I want to hang around with people who care about the hobby, and who want to have fun. Let's all have fun!

Gaming*Mirth -- Dwarven Expectations

Meet The Crusaders -- The Archangel Gabriel

In the 90s, I ran a DC Heroes campaign for a close knit group of friends that lasted for a couple of years. The players all made characters who were supposed to be around "Justice League" power level, but they could make heroes based on any concept they desired. While I was using the DC Heroes rules set for the campaign, the characters were equally likely to be facing Magneto or Doctor Polaris in combat as I incorporated characters from both the Marvel and DC universes.

For a short period during the campaign, my wife made some short cartoon strips based on the role playing adventures of the team members. Some of the results were quite amusing. One of my favorite characters in the game was the Archangel Gabriel. My dear friend Matt York came up with the character concept. You see, Gabriel is an immensely powerful super powered being who believes that he is an Archangel in the service of the Lord. His power and righteousness might lead one to believe he is correct in this opinion, but his stint in an insane asylum and his interesting interpretation of what merits swift retributions might make you rethink the issue.

Click on Image for Larger Version

Click on Image for Larger Version

The third panel in the Origin strip refers to a time during our DC Heroes campaign where Gabriel was in battle with Ares in the European Theater of Operations during a time travel story. Gabriel used his Aura of Fear power in an attempt to intimidate the God of War and give the rest of the Crusaders some benefit during the combat -- Herakles wanted to "bestow upon Ares 'the Gift.'" Matt rolled his attack, which he had already pumped up with hero points to make more effective, and it came up doubles, so he rolled again and added that result to his prior result, but he had rolled doubles again. ...and so on, and so on. He rolled doubles more times than I can remember and his result was literally off the charts. The massive Aura of Fear, which now extended over the entire continent of Europe, not only cowed Ares, but sent put the fear of God into every person in the ETO.

It was a great moment from a great character.

Fantasy Humor

One of my favorite features of the old Dragon magazine was the DragonMirth cartoons section. Jody and I were discussing them a while back, and she kindly drew a couple of DragonMirth-esque single panel cartoons of her own.

Fightin' Dragons in My Mind -- Roll a D6

I'm thinking about adding this to my mp3 player playlists.

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.

What If...Actors of Oscar Wilde's Plays Performed "The Jersey Shore?"