Black Gate

Transhuman Space (Steve Jackson Games, March 29, 2018). Illustrated by Christopher Shy

In the 1990s, I made a big decision about tabletop roleplaying gaming: Rather than coming up with my own rules for running games, I ran campaigns using published systems. Some of these used my own original settings; some borrowed settings from published fictional or dramatic works, either as adapted by game publishers or in my own adaptations; and some used published original game worlds. I hardly ever used a setting more than once. But one that I found worth coming back to was David Pulver’s Transhuman Space, a setting for Steve Jackson Games’ game system GURPS.

As its name suggests, Transhuman Space was a science fictional milieu. Tabletop roleplaying has had a lot of these, going back to the classic Traveller, first released in 1977. For a long time, most of them built on the premises of what might be called classic science fiction: The stories of Old Wave authors such as Poul Anderson or Frank Herbert, and of later hard science fiction authors such as Larry Niven, or of the original Star Trek. That is, they were about aliens, robots, supermen, interstellar travel, time travel, parallel worlds, and psionic abilities, singly or in combination.

Transhuman Space does have robots, though they’re quite different from Asimovian robots. But it avoids all those other classic story elements. It has space travel, on an interplanetary (but not interstellar) scale, with human inhabitants from Mercury to the Kuiper Belt — but also with many machines that don’t need life support.

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Castle Amber (TSR, 1981). Cover by Erol Otus

Castle Amber (aka Château d’ Amberville) by Tom Moldvay (RIP) is a classic D&D adventure that I first enjoyed as a player at age 10 and later as DM. Published in 1981 by TSR, Castle Amber has a wonderful cover by Erol Otus, and excellent interiors by Otus, Jim Holloway (RIP), Harry Quinn, Jim Rosolf (RIP), and Stephen Sullivan (he did the maps, I’m assuming).

I didn’t appreciate it as a youth, but this module was largely inspired by the weird fiction of Clark Ashton Smith — specifically his Averoigne Cycle of stories, which were set in a fictional counterpart of a province of France. Smith called this part of Southern France “the most witch-ridden in the entire country.” Smith has been a huge inspiration to me in my own RPG work, and I never tire of rereading his poetry and fiction.

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Lankhmar, City of Adventure (TSR, 1985). Cover by the legend Keith Parkinson

I would like to round out my posts on tabletop RPG city supplements with my personal favorite: Lankhmar, City of Adventure, which is the home of Fritz Lieber’s Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. Published in 1985 by TSR for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, this book was written by Bruce Nesmith, Doug Niles, and Ken Rolston. The cover art is by the legend, Keith Parkinson, and the interior art is by the great Jeff Easley. Cartography by Geoff Valley, Curtis Smith, and Tracy Hickman.

Wow, I don’t know where to begin with this one! I absolutely adored the fiction of Fritz Lieber, devouring his Lankhmar works and even some of his sci-fi at a young age. Lieber was a friend of Gary Gygax, and he was among a handful of Gygax’s favorite authors. Thus, I think it’s important to note that the content of the Fafhrd and Gray Mouser tales was incredibly inspirational to Gygax, and this comes across in the tone and themes of D&D — which essentially is a melting pot of fictional inspirations. My point is, you can’t simply look at this supplement as a fictional property that was adapted to the D&D game, because the DNA of Lankhmar was already embedded in D&D to begin with.

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Cities (Chaosium, 1986). Third Edition. Cover by Dan & David Day

As a follow-up to last week’s post on the Forgotten Realms City System, today I have Cities, from the Universal Supplement Series, published by Chaosium in 1986 (previous editions were published by Midkemia). It was written by Stephen Abrams and Jon Everson, with cover painting by Dan and David Ray, and it was illustrated by Kevin Ramos.

In stark contrast to last week’s City System boxed set published by TSR — which was nearly all maps and practically no content — this supplement takes the opposite tack: no maps, all content!

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Forgotten Realms City System (TSR, July 1988). Cover by Larry Elmore

City System is an interesting Forgotten Realms boxed set that was released in 1988 by TSR, written by Ed Greenwood and Jeff Grubb, and with cover art by Larry Elmore. Except for one very slim booklet, this essentially is a box full of maps (by Dennis Kauth), detailing the most famous city of the Realms, Waterdeep.

Now, I must admit, I have always favored Greyhawk over FR, because it’s what I cut my teeth on, but this set is pretty nice for the development of an enormous city in any campaign. Poster maps include the typical grid of the city, a beautiful, three-dimensional artistic rendition of the city, and then 10(!) poster maps that zoom in on different wards.

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Charlemagne’s Paladins (TSR, July 1, 1992)

One of the more interesting developments during the AD&D Second Edition years (1989-2000) was the Historical Reference series of campaign sourcebooks.

These green “splatbooks” were well-researched, taking a broad view of history, myth, and legend, and looking at all of it through a D&D lens. Charlemagne’s Paladins is one such shining example. Written by Ken Rolston, illustrated by Roger Raupp, and with cartography by Gaye O’Keefe, this sourcebook adapts the historical setting of the Carolingian period into a quasi-game world, featuring the historical and legendary personalities and events of Charlemagne’s time.

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