Black Gate

When I think back all those years ago about visiting a Waldenbooks in the Terre Haute, Indiana mall, I can never firmly, confidently say whether I bought the boxed set of Star Frontiers or Traveller. My hunch is that it was Star Frontiers, the science-fiction role-playing game by TSR (the company that Dungeons & Dragons co-creator Gary Gygax founded with Don Kaye and Brian Blume) that came out in 1982 – really, a response to GDW’s Traveller, published in 1977. While Traveller, which I had shortly after Star Frontiers, if that’s the correct order, became a personal favorite from then on, Star Frontiers still conjures fond memories.

While the community for Traveller is thriving thanks to Marc Miller’s (the creator of the game and co-founder of GDW) smart decision to retain ownership of the game post-GDW, which has allowed multiple editions to be published over time, Star Frontiers does not have the benefit of official support since the line was ended by TSR in the 1980s. Hence, the game lives on only within a community of gamers who still play it, though they actively do so along with fanzines.

Gen Con has a session or two of it every year it seems, and the Facebook Group, Star Frontiers: Alive and Well, has 2,800 members. Indulging in a bit of nostalgia, I purchased a PDF and print-on-demand hard copy of the game, Star Frontiers: Alpha Dawn. This is a version of the original boxed set, including the Basic Game Rules book, Expanded Game Rules book, and the adventure, Crash on Volturnus.

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And now for something more positive: ten awesome little moments in RPGs, beginning with a very self-serving one.

1) Ex Machina

Bruce Baugh, Rebecca Borgstrom, Christian Gossett, Bradley Kayl and Michelle Lyons’ 2004 Ex Machina was a cyperpunk roleplaying game, published by Canadian game company Guardians of Order. It got a very favorable review from BoingBoing. It was also my first professional editing credit.

It only took me a quarter century of playing and selling RPGs to get into the design end of things.

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Emirikol the Chaotic, by Dave Trampier. From the Dungeon Masters Guide (TSR, 1979)

So. Some of my older gentlemen friends are feeling upset and disenfranchised by Wizards of the Coast’s disclaiming of the values and mindsets of early D&D. It feels like a betrayal to them, for what I’m sure is a variety of reasons.

But I have, on more than one occasion, wanted to share this iconic illustration from the 1st edition Dungeon Masters Guide with kids in my middle school club and stopped. Because I remember the steel in my daughter’s eyes as a preteen, squinting at the facing page and saying, “Hey, what’s that?”

Pointing, of course, to the obligatory harlot table. “How come there are 10 extra ugly terms for women in the harlot table, but nothing for mercenaries, thieves, nobles, or tradesmen?” Cocked eyebrows that demanded to know why I would accept this rubbish at all.

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The Coming Storm (March 2016) and The Eleven Lights (April 2018), published by Chaosium

We live in a Golden Age of board gaming, and if you’re in the market for a fantasy game, you literally have thousands to choose from. Mind you, that wasn’t the case 40 years ago. In fact, if you were looking for a serious fantasy-based pastime in those days, there were literally only a few games in town: SPI’s War of the Ring (1977), TSR’s Divine Right (1979), and Chaosium’s Dragon Pass (1981).

In terms of gaming history, there’s little question that by far the most important of those was Dragon Pass. It was originally developed in 1975 by Greg Stafford, and published under the name White Bear and Red Moon. Stafford decided to form a company to produce and market it; inspired by the nearby Oakland Coliseum, he called his new enterprise ‘Chaosium.’ Stafford sold White Bear and Red Moon, and its sequel Nomad Gods, in ziplock bags out of his house in Oakland. Chaosium grew rapidly, and in less than ten years was one of the most important publishers in the industry. If it weren’t for the early success of White Bear and Red Moon and its sequels, we wouldn’t have  RuneQuest, Thieves World, and Call of Cthulhu, just to name a few.

The setting for White Bear and Red Moon, a Bronze Age world rich with human and nonhuman gods, cults, clans and mythology, was Glorantha. Today Glorantha is one of the most important settings in modern fantasy, home of numerous role playing campaigns, board games, novels and stories, and even a popular computer game, King of Dragon Pass. There are many reasons for its popularity and longevity, of course, but personally I believe Dragon Pass — the game that introduced Glorantha to the world — deserves much of the credit. If you’ve spent hours staring at the colorful map of Glorantha, moving your outnumbered clans across the rugged terrain of Sartar, through the Skull Ruins and towards a desperate battle in Snakepipe Hollow, the chance to visit those iconic settings in a role playing environment is just too irresistible.

A few years ago Chaosium released an epic two-part campaign set in Glorantha that explores much of the history and rising tensions that eventually exploded into the Hero Wars: The Coming Storm and The Eleven Lights, which together comprise the Red Cow Campaign. I recently purchased both books, and have really been enjoying this chance to revisit the colorful and dynamic setting where I spent so much time in my youth.

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In 1993, I for some reason started watching a new show called The X-Files from the pilot. It was a lark. A few weeks prior, I had started my first job after graduating from university. I did not make much money, and in those days, Friday night television often featured the science fiction shows. Anyway, I started watching The X-Files and was hooked on Chris Carter’s drama. While never a believer in either UFO abductions or deep state conspiracies, I enjoyed watching such fare.

For some reason, the early 1990s spawned conspiracy-based, dark horror games like Dark Conspiracy and Delta Green, a sourcebook for Call of Cthulhu. Maybe it was the end of the Cold War and the need for something to haunt our thoughts when the fear of global nuclear holocaust dissipated with the collapse of the Soviet Union. All those years of nuclear terror found an alternative outlet for our existential fears.

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By popular demand¹, ten WTF were they thinking moments from classic RPGs, which I admit is something of a target-rich environment. I will limit myself to games I’ve actually seen, which means I get to skip past that one.

[1: Well, a couple of people, anyway.]

1) Dungeons and Dragons Basic Set (TSR, 1977)

The 1977 edition of D&D added an orthogonal good vs evil to the law vs chaos morality axis. While humans got freedom of choice regarding where on either axis characters fell, this was not true of some non-human races, which in turn means there are whole races good people are morally obligated to kill when possible. This is by no means unique to D&D but it gets special credit for being the one to establish it as a trope in table-top roleplaying games.

2) Cyberpunk 2020

This may be a misnamed series, because in this case the detail I am very sure I know exactly what the company was thinking.

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Twilight: 2000 (GDW, First edition box set, 1984). Click for bigger versions.

I have vivid memories of receiving the boxed set of Twilight: 2000 in 1984, cracking it open, and diving into its dark and gritty world. Each generation that spent its formative years growing up during the Cold War has its memories attached to that long, usually dull, and occasionally terrifying epoch. The Korean War. Sputnik. The Berlin Wall. The Cuban Missile Crisis. Nuclear raid drills. The Vietnam War. The invasion of Afghanistan. The Olympic game boycotts. Fraught meetings between leaders of the USA and USSR. Numerous proxy wars and insurrections. Eventually, the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies crumbled in a series of revolutions — some soft and some hard — and it all seemed then a distant memory.

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