By Any Other Name (Part II)

A couple of years ago, I wrote a post in which I briefly touched on the variety of names by which the Game Master or referee is known in older roleplaying games. Since I'm currently knee-deep in revising Thousand Suns, which uses the term GM, I found my mind wandering a bit back to this topic, trying to remember what alternate terms the RPGs of my youth employed. 

A quick check through my library revealed the following, but, as ever, I am certain I missed some important ones. Feel free to fill in any obvious blanks in the comments. I have intentionally not included games whose term is Dungeon Master, Game Master, or referee, since these aren't especially noteworthy.

• Ars Magica: Storyguide
• Call of Cthulhu: Keeper of Arcane Lore
• Chill: Chill Master
• Ghostbusters: Ghostmaster
• Golden Heroes: Script Supervisor
• Marvel Super Heroes: Judge
• Skyrealms of Jorune: Sholari
• Space Opera: StarMaster
• Star Ace: Campaign Master
• Starfaring: Galaxy Master
• Star Trek (Heritage): Mission Master
• The Fantasy Trip: Fantasy Master
• The Morrow Project: Project Director
• Timemaster: Continuum Master
• Toon: Animator
• Top Secret: Administrator

As I'm said, I'm sure there are others, especially after 1990 or thereabouts. Still, I must confess I was a bit surprised by how few I could identify. My recollection was that, back in the day, every roleplaying game had its own unique name for the referee, but I suppose I was mistaken. 

Science Fiction is Fantasy

I've mentioned before that one of my favorite What's New with Phil & Dixie strips appeared in issue #65 of Dragon (September 1982). In it, Phil Foglio muses on the surprising similarities between fantasy and science fiction. It's a great comic and one I can still, more than forty years later, quote almost verbatim. While Foglio probably wasn't being entirely serious, one of the reasons the strip's humor lands is that there is more than a little truth to his flippant comparisons of these two supposedly distinct genres. 

As a lifelong science fiction fan – take a drink! – I've observed how often many of my fellow fans have advanced the notion that science fiction is somehow more “serious” or at least more plausible than fantasy. There seems to be this unspoken assumption that science fiction possesses some kind of intellectual legitimacy that fantasy lacks, perhaps based on the idea that spaceships and robots are, in some meaningful way, closer to reality than dragons and sorcery. I understand the logic behind this perspective, but I simply don't find it convincing.

I obviously say this without any dislike of, let alone malice for, science fiction – quite the contrary. I'm a big fan of the genre, probably a bigger fan, in fact, than I am of fantasy. That's why I increasingly feel that the distinction between the two genres as they're commonly understood rests on a foundation that is far shakier than we'd like to admit. Science fiction, despite its name, is not really about science. It's simply another mode of storytelling and one that's rarely more plausible than fantasy. The difference between the two genres lies not in what is possible, but in what we are willing to believe.

To understand better what I mean here, it helps to take a look at the history of imaginative literature over the centuries. Human beings have always told stories about things that do not exist, whether they're spirits, enchanted forests, utopian societies, lost worlds, or journeys beyond the horizon of the known. These stories served many purposes, often religious, philosophical, and moral, but they all had one thing in common: they evoked the marvelous. 

In the past, the marvelous was typically framed in explicitly supernatural terms, such as miracles or magic. These were the explanatory frameworks available to premodern people. A flying chariot was thus the purview of the sun god and immortality the product of drinking from a magic spring. To people living in earlier eras, that was explanation enough. However, as the intellectual climate started to change in the 16th and 17th centuries, the language of the marvelous changed with it. The old supernatural explanations lost their cultural authority, at least among the educated. In their place arose the new explanatory tools of reason, science, and technology.

Science fiction is, in the realm of imaginative literature, the heir to this cultural transformation. It takes the same fundamental human desire to imagine worlds beyond our own and to transcend our mortal limitations and clothes it in the language of Science. Instead of magic carpets, we have grav belts; instead of philosopher’s stones, we have nanotechnology; and so on. Yet, in most cases, these speculative future technologies are not meaningfully more plausible than their fantastical counterparts.

Faster-than-light travel, for example, is a staple of science fiction because it allows characters to visit other star systems on a human timescale. However, unless our understanding of physics is very wrong, FTL is almost certainly impossible. The same is true, in different ways, of many other common elements of sci-fi, such as artificial gravity, sentient robots, or force fields, never mind the routine colonization of distant planets.

I feel that we readily accept all these sci-fi concepts not because they are in any sense likely, but because they are framed in the language of science. That language carries cultural authority and that authority lends them the illusion of plausibility, even when the underlying ideas are, in fact, no more plausible than a wizard’s spell. The key difference between science fiction and fantasy, then, is not that one is "realistic" and the other is not. It is that they draw upon different sets of cultural assumptions.

In a society where belief in magic or the supernatural is widespread, stories of sorcery don't feel implausible. In a society shaped by centuries of scientific advances, stories framed in technological terms feel more credible, even when they stretch (or outright ignore) the limits of current knowledge. Most people today no longer believe in fairies, but we do believe, often without much reflection, that Science will one day solve nearly any problem. Consequently, we assume that, for example, interstellar travel or artificial intelligence are not merely imaginable, but inevitable.

This assumption is rarely examined, being simply an article of faith in the religion of Progress. Science fiction, at least it's popularly understood, taps into this faith. It reassures us that the future will be wondrous, because the universe will yield its secrets and our ingenuity will use those secrets to overcome all obstacles. Even when SF presents darker visions of the future, it still does so within the same overall framework that depicts technology as powerful, transformative, and, perhaps most important of all, central to human destiny.

Fantasy, by contrast, draws on different symbols, those derived from mythology and folklore. Its marvels are overtly impossible and, therefore, easier for contemporary audiences to dismiss as “mere” imagination. Nevertheless, the imaginative function of the two genres is remarkably similar. That's why I hope this post won't be read as a critique of science fiction, but rather as a celebration of the kinship between science fiction and fantasy.

Science fiction is not, in my opinion, diminished by being understood as a form of fantasy. On the contrary, it's elevated by placing it within a long and venerable tradition of imaginative storytelling that stretches back to mankind's earliest myths. It is one of the ways people today continue to grapple with the unknown, express our hopes and fears about the future, and explore questions that lie beyond the reach of empirical inquiry. Likewise, fantasy need not be defended as if it were secretly “realistic.” Its value lies precisely in its freedom from any such constraints.

Both genres, in their different ways, encourage us to imagine the world differently. They create spaces in which we can ask “what if?” without being bound too tightly to what actually is. If I can be a little mawkish, I'd day that fantasy, broadly defined, gives form to our dreams, our anxieties, and our aspirations. Whether the stories exploring these subjects is expressed through the language of magic or technology is, in the end, a secondary matter.

None of this is to say that science fiction cannot engage with real science or that it has not, at times, anticipated genuine technological developments. Anyone who's read science fiction, especially in its formative years, know that it has indeed done both and often done so brilliantly. However, I think it's worth remembering that, as a genre, it is no more bound by reality than fantasy. Its most enduringly popular images, like FTL starships and intelligent robots, are not predictions. They are myths for a technological age. To insist otherwise is to mistake the trappings of science fiction for its substance.

The Terran State

The Terran State by James Maliszewski

Whether Federation or Empire, Some Truths Remain

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Retrospective: The Argon Gambit

Today, I make good on a promise I made two weeks ago to write a retrospective on the other adventure included in GDW’s Double Adventure 3 for Traveller, The Argon Gambit. Compared to its companion, Death Station, it rarely receives much attention, even among dedicated Traveller fans. That’s understandable to a degree, since it is more closely tied to the Third Imperium setting and therefore less easily adapted to other contexts. Even so, The Argon Gambit is a solid scenario that plays to Traveller’s strengths as a more “serious” science fiction RPG. Rereading it, I was struck by how influential it must have been on me when I was younger, as its overall structure closely resembles many of the scenarios I’ve written or refereed over the years.

The Argon Gambit is very explicitly set in the Solomani Rim, far removed from the familiar Spinward Marches. This sector is defined primarily by human conflicts, especially the ideological tensions between the Solomani and the Third Imperium. Solomani belief in the superiority of Terran humans casts a long shadow here, shaping the sector's politics in ways that The Argon Gambit exploits for their adventure potential. 

In terms of structure, the adventure begins simply, in a way that familiar, almost clichéd, for longtime players of Traveller. The characters, in need of money, are hired to steal a set of genealogical documents from a villa in the titular city of Argon on the planet Janosz. Like all such jobs, it appears straightforward at first, but, as it turns out, the documents in question are being used for blackmail and their contents carry explosive political implications, since the Solomani Party places great emphasis on the genetic "purity" of its members. 

After the initial job, The Argon Gambit becomes a political mystery involving a three-way struggle within the local Solomani Party. A hardline supremacist, a moderate rival, and an ostensibly neutral power broker all maneuver for advantage. Behind them lurks a deeper game. The patron who hires the characters is himself an Imperial agent, seeking to manipulate events so that both major factions are discredited, leaving his own puppet in control.

It's a terrific set-up for an adventure that could only really work within the context of GDW's Third Imperium setting. That's both a blessing and curse, depending on how wedded one is to the game's official setting. For me, it was great, but I can easily imagine people less enthused with the setting finding it too obscure or focused on setting-specific minutiae to be useful. That's why I suspect The Argon Gambit doesn't get as much love as Death Station.

At the same time, the adventure, designed by Frank Chadwick, makes excellent use of the classic Traveller adventure components, like rumors, which it categorizes by source and ties to the characters’ backgrounds (e.g. Navy, TAS, noble title, etc.). These rumors are essential to understanding the situation on Janosz, though their presentation is frustrating. The referee must piece together the scenario much as the players do, only really understanding the full scope of what's happening after reading explanatory notes at its very end. That's not a problem as such, but it means the referee probably needs to read the adventure several times before attempting to run it (yes, yes, I know, that's only common sense ...).

More interesting, I think, is the moral ambiguity of the scenario. Everyone involved is compromised in some way and acting according to their own best interests. There's no obvious "right" way to proceed. The characters begin as pawns in someone else’s scheme, but, as they uncover more of what's actually happening, they, in turn, have the opportunity to bring about a conclusion that they think is best and the adventure passes no judgments on that. Consequently, it's a very open-ended and heavily reliant not just player choice but referee implementation. This is the kind of adventure that could kick off an entire campaign – or complicate an existing one.

It's a shame that The Argon Gambit isn't better known and appreciated. As I said at the beginning of this post, I hadn't realized the extent of its influence over my own personal style and preferences as a referee until I re-read it in preparation for writing this. I tend to include lots of moral ambiguity and compromised figures in my games. While I don't favor "edgy" or "dark" content, I likewise shy away from clear "good guys" and "bad guys," preferring NPCs whose motivations and actions are more muddled and, dare I say, human. I'm not sure I picked these tendencies up solely from The Argon Gambit, but there's no question the adventure played a role in my doing so, hence my continued affection for it after more than four decades.

REPOST: The Articles of Dragon: "Dragonchess"

Issue #100 of Dragon (August 1985) was a milestone for the periodical, as well as for me. For the magazine, it was a portentous number to use as an occasion for celebration. For me, though I didn't know it at the time, it represented the end of an era. The same month that this was released was the last time I attended a "games day" hosted by a public library. It may have even been the last such gathering my local public libraries sponsored, since I don't ever recall hearing of others. Even if it wasn't, I remember well that my last one was a rather underwhelming affair, with far fewer participants than previous ones and most of those who did attend were much younger than I. There weren't nearly as many teenagers, let alone college students or adults, and that disappointed me.

From my perspective, it seemed as if the demographics of the hobby had changed over night and I didn't like the change, especially now that I was one of the "older kids" I looked up to when I was younger. In retrospect, it's obvious to me how hypocritical I was back then, wanting to distance myself from the 10 year-olds clutching their Elmore-covered Basic Sets the way I had done with Sutherland-covered one a mere six years before. But six years is a long time in the life of a child and, as a teenager, I wanted no reminders of my younger self. Thanks goodness that the teenagers of my younger years did not feel the same way!

There was more to it than adolescent snobbery, though. The hobby really did seem to be changing by late 1985 and, while I was still as keenly interested in it as ever, it became much harder to find people with whom to play and, for the most part, the new RPGs coming out held much less appeal to me than those published in the years before. Issue #100 wasn't my last issue of Dragon, but I did let me subscription lapse not long thereafter; it would never again play as central a role in my connection to and understanding of the hobby after that.

The funny thing is that, for all the fanfare surrounding issue #100, it wasn't a particularly memorable issue. The only things I still remember about it are the adventure set in 20th century London and Gary Gygax's article (and accompanying Greyhawk short story) about a chess variant called "dragonchess." Dragonchess is a three-dimensional version of chess, with boards representing the sky, the land, and the underworld. I'd known about 3D chess variants ever since I'd watched Star Trek in reruns in the mid-70s, but this was, I think, the first time I'd ever seen the rules for such a game – and by Gary Gygax no less! Needless to say I fell completely in love with the idea of playing dragonchess.

There were, of course, two problems with this. First, and perhaps most importantly, I am a terrible chess player. I can barely hold my own in a regular game; learning and mastering a variant that uses three boards at once was almost certainly going to be beyond me. Second, to play dragonchess, one must assemble the boards for oneself and that, too, requires skills I did not possess. This didn't stop me from trying, of course, but I utterly failed to do so. Ultimately, I gave up the idea of having three boards stacked on top of one another and instead opted for having three boards placed side by side. This required me – and the poor souls I goaded into playing with me – to keep track of which squares on one board were "over" or "under" others. That was hardly insurmountable but it was nevertheless trying, particularly when one considers how many other aspects of standard chess Gygax changed in his variant.

Dragonchess had a much larger number of pieces – 42 per side, consisting of 15 different types. Likewise, many of these pieces had unique moves unlike those in standard chess. Furthermore, some pieces behaved differently depending on which board they were currently situated, while others were bound to a single board. The object of dragonchess is the same as regular chess, so that is at least familiar. However, the larger number of pieces and types, not to mention the presence of three dimensions, made it much more difficult to grasp. That's not a criticism of the game itself, which looked like it'd be a lot of fun when played by two opponents who are both skilled at standard chess and well acquainted with the unusual aspects of dragonchess.

Alas, I was neither of those things and, while enthusiastic for the game, I was not very good at teaching its rules to others. Add to it that I didn't have a "proper" board and it's little wonder I never got the chance to play many games of dragonchess. Nowadays, I look back on my efforts with more than a little embarrassment – the follies of youth! One of several that this issue of Dragon brings to memory.

Reconciliation

Reconciliation by James Maliszewski

The Ominous Meaning of an Innocuous Term

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Pulp Science Fiction Library: The Rebel Worlds

I'm sure it'll come as no surprise, given my recent posts here and over on my Substack, that I'm in a decidedly science fictional frame of mind of late. As work continues on the second edition of Thousand Suns, I'm finding it harder and harder to maintain any focus on fantasy, which usually occupies pride of place on the blog. Consequently, when I started pondering which story or novel I'd discuss today, I immediately thought of the tales of Poul Anderson's interstellar secret agent, Dominic Flandry, sometimes called "the James Bond of science fiction," even though he first appeared two years before Ian Fleming's much more famous character.

The Flandry stories have long been favorites of mine. I was probably introduced to them through Traveller, whose Third Imperium setting borrows liberally from Anderson's "Technic" future history featuring Flandry and his predecessors, Nicholas van Rijn and David Falkayn. Though I fell in love with these tales for their espionage-inflected action, what ultimately solidified their place in my affections was their understated melancholy. Flandry, as an officer of the Imperial Navy, is duty-bound to defend a sclerotic empire he knows is dying because he believes the alternative – the Long Night – is worse. Something about that spoke to me, even in my teen years, and, the older I get, the more it does so.

This theme is central to Anderson's 1969 novel of Flandry, The Rebel Worlds. The novel begins with Flandry being dispatched to Alpha Crucis sector to deal with the titular rebellion brewing there. The uprising began after Admiral Hugh McCormac, a respected and decorated officer, uncovers corruption abuses by the imperial governor of the sector. McCormac attempts to remove the governor, as is his right, but is instead arrested, along with his wife. The admiral eventually escapes custody and becomes the leader of a growing insurgency, not just against the corrupt governor but against the Empire itself. 

Flandry is ordered by Naval Intelligence to deal with this problem, but, as he investigates conditions in the sector, he finds that the rebels’ grievances are legitimate and that imperial rule there has indeed become exploitative and short-sighted. Complicating matters further, he becomes personally entangled with people connected to the rebellion, including the admiral’s wife, with whom he falls in love. Despite his sympathy for the rebels, Flandry ultimately concludes that allowing the revolt to succeed would weaken the Empire at a critical moment and hasten its ultimate collapse, an outcome he cannot countenance. He therefore works, with reluctance and increasing cynicism, to undermine the rebellion and restore imperial control, even as he recognizes that any victory he achieves for the Empire is only temporary but comes at the cost of justice. 

What I most enjoy about The Rebel Worlds is Anderson’s refusal to grant either Flandry or the reader a moral "escape hatch." The rebellion is justified; there is no doubt about that. Admiral McCormac is an honorable man responding to genuine abuses and his grievances against the Empire are real. Flandry himself recognizes this. Even so, he also believes that the consequences of successful revolt, even one undertaken for the "right" reasons, would serve as a catalyst for the Empire's collapse. The novel thus presents its central conflict as being between competing goods rather between something so simple as "good" and "evil."

This is the thematic core of the Flandry series. The Terran Empire is thoroughly corrupt and declining, but it still serves as a bulwark against the coming dark age of fragmentation and loss. Flandry is under no illusions about the Empire’s flaws. Indeed, the tragedy of the character lies in his clear-eyed understanding of them. Nevertheless, he chooses to defend it, not out of loyalty, let alone optimism, but because he judges the alternative to be worse. His is a calculus of decline, where every action preserves a flawed order at the cost of perpetuating its injustices.

That tension gives The Rebel Worlds its melancholy. Flandry’s wit, his indulgence in pleasure, even his romantic entanglement with McCormac's wife serve as a way of enduring the burden he carries. He succeeds in crushing the rebellion, but the victory is hollow. Because of his actions, the Empire endures for a little while longer. The Long Night is only postponed rather than prevented. That's enough for Flandry – or at least that's what he keeps telling himself in both this story and the others Anderson write about him.

If I may be so bold, I'd argue that The Rebel Worlds is about tragic responsibility. Though carrying himself with great panache, Flandry is not a hero who saves the day. Rather, he is a man who kicks the can of interstellar collapse down the road a little farther in the hope that, at the very least, he will never experience it during his lifetime. For Flandry, there are no clean choices, only necessary ones. Anderson's talent as a writer is that he doesn't cheer this or present it in a cool or edgy way. It's ultimately sad and tragic and that's probably why it continues to resonate with me after all these years. 

Interstellar War in the Thousand Suns

Interstellar War in the Thousand Suns by James Maliszewski

The Consequences of Time and Distance

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The Thousand Suns Campaign Loop

The Thousand Suns Campaign Loop by James Maliszewski

What the Second Edition Aims to Do

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Retrospective: Fading Suns

(Yes, I know I said I'd do a post today about Argon Gambit, the other adventure found in GDW's Double Adventure 3 and I will, but the Muse had other thoughts, as she often does, and here we are.)

When I initiated the Retrospective series back in 2008, my unthinking assumption was that I would limit myself to writing about RPG products from the first decade or so of the hobby, since that was, more or less, the period when most of what we now call old school games were published. Even though I hadn't given it much thought beforehand, this was, I think, a perfectly defensible position at the time. However, eighteen(!) years have passed since I wrote that first Retrospective post, meaning that more and more of RPG history is now further in the rearview mirror, with even the mid-1990s being three decades ago. 

Likewise, my own interest in the history and development of the hobby has similarly expanded, meaning that the scope of what I want to discuss here is not quite as narrow as it once was. That and the fact that I'm now seventeen sessions into my Dark Between the Stars campaign made me think that maybe I should take a look at Holistic Design's Fading Suns science fiction roleplaying game, whose first edition was released in 1996. 

I distinctly recall when I first saw a copy Fading Suns on the shelf of my local game store, sitting right beside Deadlands, which had come out at the same time. Being an inveterate science fiction fan, I was naturally drawn to the book's weird and moody cover, featuring what I eventually realized was a jumpgate floating in the void of space. Flipping through it, I was similarly struck by its black and white artwork, which reminded me of the illustrations I'd seen in some of White Wolf's offerings. That shouldn't have been a surprise, since the creators of Fading Suns, Bill Bridges and Andrew Greenberg, who had previously been the developers of Werewolf: The Apocalypse and Vampire: The Masquerade before working at Holistic Design and brought some of White Wolf's sensibilities with them.

It's worth noting that Holistic Design is not primarily a roleplaying game publisher but rather a developer of computer games. One of its games was the turned-based strategy game Emperor of the Fading Suns, released in early 1997, six months or so after the RPG. From what I understand, Bridges and Greenberg were brought in to develop the setting of the computer game, which eventually became sufficiently detailed and complex that it was decided to release it as a tabletop roleplaying game. At the time, I knew nothing about the computer game, so my interest was entirely in the RPG, whose aesthetics brought to mind a mash-up of Dune, Warhammer 40K, and Gene Wolfe's "New Sun" series.

As it turned out, my instincts on this score were not far off, as that's pretty close to the general vibe of the setting of the game. Set at the dawn of the 51st century, Fading Suns posits a kind of interstellar Middle Ages, after the fall of a technologically sophisticated Republic. In its place arose an empire composed of scheming noble houses, a Church whose priests command real divine powers, and merchant guilds who retain some of the technology of earlier times. Arrayed against the empire are rebels, heretics, barbarians, and – worst of all – demonic powers dwelling in the dark between the stars. Then there's also the phenomenon of the titular fading suns, as the stars themselves are noticeably dimmed from an unknown cause, adding to the pre-apocalyptic feel of the setting.

The result is a portentous, wonderfully baroque setting that pulls on multiple threads of sci-fi, fantasy, and horror, byzantine political and religious intrigue, and some genuinely compelling mystical flights of fancy. For someone like me, this is catnip. Fading Suns manages to combine all these different elements together in a way that doesn't always cohere, but they nonetheless have a vibe that feels distinctive even if it's very obvious from where they're ultimately derived. It's an impressive act of creative alchemy that still holds up well three decades after its original release.

Where Fading Suns falls down, in my view, is its Victory Point rules system. They are, at best, workable, combining elements from White Wolf's Storyteller system and Pendragon with a blackjack-style "roll high but stay under a target number" approach. It's not the worst system ever conceived for a roleplaying game but it's often clunky in play. More than that, I have always found it hard to remember, which leads to frequent rulebook-flipping to confirm details of its implementation. That's always been the biggest downside to a game I've otherwise considered one of my personal favorites. 

Fading Suns cannot, by any stretch of the term, be considered an old school RPG. It's very much an example of the '90s push for more "narrative" games that placed a greater emphasis on mechanizing a character's inner life (i.e. beliefs, drives, passions, etc.) in a way intended to mimic literature and other media. These efforts are still in an embryonic form compared to later, more focused designs, so they don't bother me much. I still referee my current campaign in a rather old school, almost sandbox fashion, with the characters interacting with a setting full of factions all pursuing their own plans independent of them. Fading Suns practically begs for this kind of approach, since the Known Worlds already possess a multiplicity of power groups contending with one another for dominance.

Having contributed professional to its second and current editions, I am no doubt biased, but, for all its flaws, I consider Fading Suns a really good game, one that I've had a lot of fun with over the years. It's not perfect – what game is? – but it packs a lot of compelling, evocative ideas under one cover. I'm very glad to be revisiting it with the former House of Worms crew for however long the campaign lasts. 

The Articles of Dragon: "Pysbots and Battle Mechs"

For good or for ill, my interest in the history of the hobby of roleplaying is intertwined with my interest in the history of the industry to which it gave birth. In particular, I find the history of The House That D&D Built – TSR Hobbies – to be endlessly fascinating, especially how dysfunctional it seems to have been as a business for most of its existence. To be fair, very few RPG companies have much to crow about in this regard, but TSR seems to be a prime example of a company succeeding in spite of itself. The more I learn about TSR's history, the more surprised I am that it managed to survive for nearly a quarter of a century.

I was reminded of this as I looked through the Ares Section of issue #99 of Dragon magazine (July 1985) and came across Mike Breault's article "Psybots and Battle Mechs." The article in question was intended as a preview of a then-upcoming science fiction roleplaying game, entitled Proton Fire. By "preview," I don't mean of the game's rules but mostly of its background, though there are a few snippets about the mechanics (characters can be warriors, rangers, or engineers and there are "talents"). 

Background-wise, it's pretty thin gruel. The humans of the Matri system descend from colonists who long ago arrived from Earth and settled on Coreworld, the fourth planet of the system. In the colony’s early centuries, power gradually fell into the hands of the Corporation and its ruling council, the Quintad. Originally five elected officials, over time they became increasingly authoritarian. Their corruption deepened after the developments in cybernetics allowed them to transform themselves into immortal cyborgs and rule indefinitely through violence and intimidation. 

The dominance of the Quintad collapsed when a laboratory accident released a devastating virus that killed 90% of Coreworld’s population and shattered the Corporation’s control. In the aftermath, the University, an academic colony hidden within a moon of the fifth planet, declared independence and began searching for a new home for the surviving humans of Matri. The central conflict of Proton Fire now pits the University and its agents, who explore and defend humanity’s future, against the Corporation and the immortal Quintad, who seek to restore their former domination using ruthless operatives known as Eliminators.

Characters can be humans, cyborgs, or psybots. Humans are similar to their ancestors on Earth and protect themselves through the use of armored battle suits called mechs. Cyborgs are more or less what you'd expect. Psybots, meanwhile, are advanced robots that possess emotions and experience pain, but lack the empathy and insight of human beings. The article suggests that the characters devote themselves to exploration of new star systems and foiling the plans of the Quintad, though they never really explain what those plans are now that most of humanity is dead.

Despite all this, I was very intrigued by Proton Fire and looked forward to its release. I was and am a science fiction guy at heart and was genuinely curious to see if the actual game was more fully realized and expansive than this article suggested. Alas, that was not to be. A couple of issues later, TSR posted a retraction, in which they explained that there "wasn't a big market for a stand-alone robot game," so it would be repackaged as a supplement to Star Frontiers. That never happened either and all we have to go on regarding the game's final fate is what Steve Winter posted in a comment to this blog back in 2011.

I suspect this kind of thing happens more often than we realize. Goodness knows that my own track record when it comes to unfinished projects is far from stellar, so I shouldn't point fingers. Still, I'm just one guy, not a multi-million dollar game publisher like TSR was at the time. One day, I'd love to know more about Proton Fire and its origins. I suspect, though, it'll probably be one of those mysteries that I'll never see solved to my satisfaction. Oh, well.

Interstellar Commerce in the Thousand Suns

Interstellar Commerce in the Thousand Suns by James Maliszewski

Or, Everyone Loves Space Pirates.

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Rudy Kraft Responds

The response to my two-part interview with Rudy Kraft at the start of the month was very well received, generating a lot of comments and emails. A recurring elements of them was a desire for Rudy to expand upon or clarify his answers to my interview questions. Fortunately for readers of Grognardia, Rudy was paying attention to the comments and sent along a collection of responses to some of the questions put to him, along with some further thoughts and reflections on matters of interest.

Because there are a lot of replies and because some of them are lengthy, I'm going to place them behind the jump break below.

Pulp Science Fantasy Library: Empire of the East

Having enjoyed revisiting Hiero's Journey in last week’s installment of Pulp (Science) Fantasy Library, I thought I would continue along a similar path this week with 1979's Empire of the East. Before turning to the book itself, however, a bit of context is helpful.

Empire of the East is not a wholly new novel but an omnibus edition that gathers together three earlier works by Fred Saberhagen, The Broken Lands, The Black Mountains, and Changeling Earth. In preparing the omnibus edition, Saberhagen revised portions of the original texts so that they would read more smoothly as a single, unified narrative rather than three loosely connected installments. The result is a work that functions much more clearly as an epic novel than the original publications did.

Of these three component books, only Changeling Earth appears in Gary Gygax's Appendix N. The absence of the earlier volumes is somewhat curious, since they are integral parts of the same story. One possible explanation is that Gygax regarded Changeling Earth as representative of the trilogy as a whole, but this is only speculation. Regardless, the series as a whole exemplifies the kind of exuberant science fantasy that almost certainly helped inspire many early role-playing campaigns and adventures.

One of the central conceits of Empire of the East is that sufficiently advanced technology might appear indistinguishable from magic. By the 1950s and 1960s, the concept (immortalized as Clarke's Third Law) had already appeared in numerous science fiction stories. Saberhagen, however, approached the notion from a different direction. Rather than presenting magic as misunderstood technology, he imagined a catastrophe in which technology itself had literally been transformed into magic. It is an intriguing inversion of a familiar idea and one that gives the setting much of its distinctive flavor.

In Saberhagen’s imagined past, mankind fought a devastating war using immensely powerful computers capable of manipulating the laws of physics to achieve specific military ends. At the height of that conflict, these systems inadvertently triggered a phenomenon known as the Change. The Change permanently altered the behavior of the physical universe, rendering advanced technology unreliable or entirely inoperable. In its place arose a new set of forces that later generations would understand as magic. Over time, as knowledge of the pre-Change world faded, people came to regard magic not as a transformation of technology but simply as the natural order of things.

Within this transformed world stands the titular Empire of the East, a tyranny that dominates vast territories through a combination of sorcery and alliances with demonic powers. (The Change, it turns out, did more than reshape machines: it also gave rise to supernatural beings, including a powerful demon named Orcus, a name that will sound familiar to fans of Dungeons & Dragons.) Against this empire stands a loose resistance movement known as the Free Folk.

The story begins with Rolf, a young man whose life is shattered when imperial forces destroy his village and carry off his family. Escaping captivity, he joins the Free Folk and soon begins receiving mysterious visions from an unseen entity called Ardneh. These visions guide him on a path that gradually reveals the deeper mysteries of his world. During his adventures, Rolf discovers an “Elephant,” an ancient armored vehicle from before the Change. To the people of his era, it appears to be a kind of legendary mechanical beast, but in truth it is a relic of the lost technological age. In a world where such artifacts are almost unknown, the Elephant becomes both a symbol of hope and a tangible advantage against the Empire.

As Rolf’s role within the resistance grows, the truth about Ardneh gradually comes to light. Ardneh is not a spirit or a wizard but a surviving artificial intelligence created before the Change. Long ago, it intervened to prevent global nuclear destruction. In doing so, however, it inadvertently helped trigger the very transformation that reshaped the world into its current magical form. The Empire, aided by the demon Orcus, seeks to destroy Ardneh and thereby secure its domination forever.

The narrative ultimately builds toward a large-scale confrontation between the Free Folk, guided by Ardneh, and the armies and supernatural forces of the Empire. It should surprise no one that the forces of resistance prevail in the end, though the victory comes only after the underlying truth about the world is revealed and some of the consequences of the Change are reversed.

I confess that I do not have a clear sense of how influential Empire of the East was when it first appeared, whether in its original installments or in its omnibus form. Apart from Gygax’s reference to Changeling Earth in Appendix N, I rarely encountered discussion of it during the years when I was first exploring fantasy literature. More often, the trilogy seems to arise in conversation as background to Saberhagen’s later The First Book of Swords and its sequels. Those novels appear to have achieved greater visibility, perhaps simply because they formed a longer and more widely published series.

Nevertheless, I think Empire of the East stands as an appealing example of a once-common strain of science fantasy featuring a magical world that is, in fact, the distant future of our own Earth. During my youth, such settings were remarkably popular, blending the wonder of fantasy with the speculative imagination of science fiction. Saberhagen’s trilogy embraces that hybrid approach wholeheartedly. By transforming the relics of advanced technology into the foundations of a magical world, he created a setting that feels at once ancient and futuristic, which, being a fan of "secret sci-fi," continues to hold great appeal for me.

Interstellar Currency and Banking

Interstellar Currency and Banking by James Maliszewski

Another Thousand Suns Rabbit Hole

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Nova Kalendario

Nova Kalendario by James Maliszewski

Timekeeping in the Thousand Suns

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Retrospective: Death Station

GDW's Traveller is justifably lauded for the wealth of tools it provided the referee in generating his own adventures, such as procedures for generating worlds, handling trade, and creating encounters, among many others. However, the company also published a large number of ready-made adventures, too, starting with The Kinunir in 1979 and I think they deserve to be better appreciated for how much they contributed to the success of the game. Though not all every Traveller adventure is a winner, many are classics.

One such classic is Death Station, one of two adventures published in 1981 as Double Adventure 3 (the other being Argon Gambit, about which I'll talk next week). Designed by Marc Miller, Death Station exemplifies many of the sensibilities of early roleplaying adventures by being compact and largely concerned with providing a referee with a location, a problem, and a handful of dangers with which to challenge the player characters rather than much in the way of background detail. 

The scenario's premise is simple. The characters are hired by Lysani Laboratories to investigate a lab ship orbiting the world of Gadden after communication with it has been lost. Upon arrival, they discover that most of its crew is dead, while the station itself shows signs of damage. Further investigation reveals scattered clues pointing to psychochemical experiments intended to produce a new type of combat drug that heightened personal strength, dexterity, and endurance. The experiments were successful to a degree, but sabotage by a rival company resulted in the entire crew being exposed to an early version of the combat drugs that enhanced their physical abilities at the cost of their sanity. Now deranged, they pose a threat to anyone who boards the lab ship.

In a sense, Death Station offers what might be called a science fictional "dungeon,” complete with "monsters" in the form of the deranged crew. The lab ship is mapped and divided into keyed areas through which the player characters must move cautiously, examining laboratories, storage areas, and crew quarters. As in a fantasy dungeon, each location aboard ship offers the possibility of discovery, danger, or both. Logs, notes, and physical evidence gradually reveal what happened, while the deranged survivors and similarly deranged lab animals ensure that exploration is never safe.

The influence of movies like 1979's Alien is clear, I think, but, rather than resorting to an unknown extraterrestrial threat, Death Station opts instead for reckless science running afoul of corporate espionage, which fits well within Traveller's more sober approach to SF. Even so, the adventure has great atmosphere, which is a big part of why I count it among my Top 10 Classic Traveller adventures. The scenario relies less on direct exposition than on the gradual accumulation of clues. Some of that is a direct consequence of its sparseness of its descriptions and room keys, which is as much intentional as it is driven by the shortness of the page count.  

Even so, Miller includes four pages of referee's notes that help provide not only a brief overview of what happened aboard the lab ship and why but also guidelines for how to run encounters with the deranged crew and experimental animals. This is useful, since part of the fun of Death Station is navigating its cramped rooms and corridors while its inhabitants also move about and stalk the characters. Also included in the notes is a discussion of the effects of the experimental combat drug, which is also helpful in handling encounters involving the crew who are affected by it. 

My own experience with Death Station is that it’s both straightforward to run and surprisingly tense in play. The confined environment of the lab ship, combined with the unpredictable behavior of the drug-crazed crew, creates a constant sense of unease. The situation is made more tense due to the fact that, once the characters understand what's going on, they likely won't want to kill the surviving crew but instead seek a way to subdue and possibly cure them – at least, that's what has happened when I've made use of the scenario in the past.

From chatting with other Traveller fans, I've come to realize I'm not alone in regarding Death Station so highly. Its premise is immediately understandable, its structure is easy for a referee to grasp at a glance, and its atmosphere remains effective. Like many of GDW’s adventures, it provides just enough detail to establish the situation while leaving ample room for the referee to elaborate as needed. That balance between guidance and openness is a plus in my opinion and it’s certainly why Death Station has a lot of replay value, even after more than four decades since its publication.

REPOST: The Articles of Dragon: "History of a Game That Failed"

Issue #99 of Dragon (July 1985) featured an article by David F. Godwin entitled "History of a Game That Failed." I don't ever recall reading it, though I'm sure I must have, when I first got the issue in the mail if not at some time later. Re-reading it in preparation for this post was an enlightening experience, both for what the article might have said about gaming culture at the time of its publication and how I react to its contents now.

The article contains Godwin's reflections on being "soft-hearted enough to want to see the PCs survive and do well" to the point that he "was no longer playing the AD&D game. [He] was shooting fish in a barrel." I must confess that I was very surprised to see an article like this appear in an issue of Dragon published in 1985, since my recollection of that time was of an era when being "soft-hearted enough to want to see the PCs survive and do well" was not just increasingly commonplace but de rigeur.

Intriguingly, the first "tip" Godwin passes along as a result of his past failure is "Feel free to fudge." Though he introduces this tip with a story of how he pretended to roll low on an attack that would have killed a PC, he is quick to point out that fudging rolls "doesn't have to be in favor of the players." He adds that it is the referee who is the final arbiter of what is and is not true in his own campaign. Never let an errant dice roll or players quoting chapter and verse from a rulebook lead you to think otherwise.

Tip two is "Just because it's in a module doesn't mean it's so." In particular, he's talking about the strength of opponents and the amount of treasure and magic items. I must admit I find this tip odd, because, even in my worst letter-of-the-law days of gaming, I never felt that the contents of a module was sacrosanct. However, Godwin claims that he did think they were and it took him some time to realize that it was acceptable to alter what was written in adventure to suit his own campaign.

Tip three is "Be exceedingly stingy in handing out magic items." This tip is apparently near and dear to Godwin's heart, because he discusses it at length, providing lots of examples of magic items he feels are exceedingly powerful, or at least problematic if the referee is not careful. To be fair, he's not opposed to placing powerful magic items in the hands of PCs; he simply thinks the referee needs to conscious of the potential for mischief such items bring with them. This is a fair point and many an inexperienced referee commits this mistake.

Tip four is "Don't let your players have a continuous commune spell." By this he means that the players should be kept in the dark as often as possible, since knowledge is what gives the referee his edge -- including the properties of magic items. Godwin stresses the limits even of spells like identify and encourages the referee to take full advantage of it.

Tip five is "Do not allow a character to become more powerful than a chugging locomotive." Here he's talking specifically about ability score inflation, both through magic items and spells.

Tip six is "If they wish for the moon, don't let them have it." I'm actually surprised that, in 1985, there was still a need to talk about all the delightful ways wishes can be used to turn the tables on the players, but apparently there was.

Tip seven is "No, you can polymorph your henchman into Odin." You know, I had no idea until very recently that polymorph was apparently such a troublesome spell for a lot of D&D gamers. I honestly don't recall a single time it's ever given me grief as a referee, since the spell description I remember is pretty clear about its limitations.

Tip eight is "Be careful playing with fireballs." Sure.

Tip nine is "Be reasonable in awarding experience points." Godwin here encourages referees to use the "equivalent hit dice" system from the Dungeon Masters Guide, which is an oft-forgotten element of AD&D. It basically compares the value of the characters' levels against the hit dice of the monsters they defeat and then adjusts the value of the XP gained up or down accordingly. The system is intended, like its rough equivalent in OD&D, to put the breaks on gaining easy experience points through killing much weaker foes in large numbers. Again, this has never been a problem for me personally, but I fully support slowing the rate of character advancement.

Tip ten is "Go easy on the poor deities." That this needed to be said at all is sad.

Tip eleven is "Beware the many-headed hydra." Here Godwin is discouraging allowing one player to play more than one character in an adventure at the same time. That's just common sense.

Tip twelve is "Avoid an adversary relationship with your players." Godwin notes that it's inevitable that referees and players will be at odds, since players are always trying to pull fast ones on their referees:

It would be a wonderful world if players were so conscientious and so willing to risk their characters for the sake of a good time that they never looked at the Dungeon Masters Guide, the modules, or even "Dungeon Master advice" articles (such as this one) in magazines. It would even be nicer if they did not look up monsters in the Monster Manual, FIEND FOLIO Tome, and Monster Manual II whenever they confronted them. Maybe you can forbid this sort of activity during the playing of an adventure, but you can't control what players do on their own time. And never underestimate the ingenuity of players. I once had a player justify looking in the Monster Manual during play by saying that his character carried around a bestiary in his backpack!

Despite this, try and make it clear to your players that your iron-fisted rule is all in the name of fun, to ensure that the game remains challenging for all.

That's a lot to digest, but I think it provides a fascinating snapshot into at least one slice of the hobby back in 1985. Some of it comports well with my own recollections, while other parts of it feel like the author is describing a game in an alternate reality. I suspect this reaction will be true for a lot of my readers as well.

Pulp Science Fantasy Library: Hiero's Journey

Today, I'm being doubly cheeky. First and most obviously, I've decided to dub today's post an entry in the previously non-existent Pulp Science Fantasy Library series. In the past, I've occasionally run posts under the Pulp Science Fiction Library title, so this isn't wholly without precedent. In the case of Hiero's Journey, though, I think it's a reasonable modification, since it's definitely not a fantasy book in the usual Tolkien/Howard sense most people understand the term, but neither is it a "proper" science fiction tale of the sort that could have appeared in Gernsback's Amazing Stories.

Second, this is another book I have discussed before, albeit briefly. Like last week's post, this too was part of the Pulp Fantasy Gallery series, an early series that I more or less abandoned after a while (though I have revived a version of it from time to time, many to discuss the different pieces of artwork that have graced the covers of famous fantasy books). In any case, I like Hiero's Journey enough that I thought it would be productive to do a full post on it and its relationship to the history of RPGs.

Though first published in 1973, I didn't read Sterling Lanier's post-apocalyptic tale until almost a decade later, when I chanced upon it in a bookstore at the local mall. Though Gary Gygax listed the book in Appendix N, I am almost certain the first time I ever saw a reference to it was in the foreword to Gamma World, which is why I picked it up. I instantly fell in love with it. If I had to pick a single book that captures my own sense of what Gamma World was meant to be, I'd probably choose Hiero's Journey. Certainly, it's the book that, even now, I still find myself subconsciously influenced by whenever I try to imagine what the game is and should be.

Lanier himself is an interesting fellow. As a writer, he produced only a small number of works, of which Hiero’s Journey is probably the best known (and that's being kind). For a time, he worked as an editor at Chilton Books, where he was involved in bringing Frank Herbert's Dune to publication after having read it in serialized form in Analog magazine. Herbert had had great difficulty in selling his novel elsewhere, but Lanier believed it would sell well. When it didn't, he lost his job at Chilton, which led to his taking up writing more seriously.

Hiero’s Journey is set in North America thousands of years after a catastrophic nuclear war referred to simply as “the Death.” The devastation of that ancient conflict reduced the technological civilization of the past to scattered ruins and reshaped the natural world in unexpected ways. Mutated animals roam the wilderness, some hostile, others capable of domestication, while human societies have reorganized themselves into small states and tribal cultures amid the remnants of the old world.

The novel’s protagonist, Per Hiero Desteen, is a priest-scholar belonging to a monastic order known simply as the Abbey, located within the Republic of Metz, a polity occupying part of what was once Canada. The Abbey preserves fragments of ancient learning and trains individuals with psychic abilities, including telepathy, which have become an important if poorly understood feature of the post-Death world.

At the outset of the novel, Hiero is dispatched on a secret mission by the leaders of the Abbey. Rumors suggest that somewhere to the south lies a cache of ancient knowledge about relics called "computers" that might aid the Republic of Metz in its ongoing struggle against a shadowy group known as the Dark Brotherhood. These enemies, whose influence extends across large portions of the former United States, employ both advanced relic technology of their own and psychic powers in pursuit of domination over the scattered civilizations that survived the Death.

Hiero’s titular journey takes him across a landscape that is at once recognizably North American and yet profoundly altered by millennia of mutation, ecological change, and cultural transformation. Along the way he encounters both allies and enemies, from human societies struggling to survive in the wilderness to intelligent animals capable of communication and monstrous creatures born from the lingering consequences of ancient radiation and experimentation.

One of the most distinctive aspects of the novel in my opinion is the way it blends several types of science fiction. On the one hand, the novel clearly belongs to the lineage of post-nuclear adventure stories that became common during the Cold War, exploring the long shadow cast by nuclear catastrophe. On the other hand, Lanier freely incorporates elements, such as psychic powers, telepathic animals, and quasi-medieval social structures, that give the setting a distinctly fantasy character. The resulting world feels less like a conventional science fiction future and more like a kind of Lost World romance set amid the ruins of modern civilization. That's probably why I so enjoyed the novel when I first read it.

It's also probably why Gary Gygax saw fit to include it in Appendix N to the AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide. Though set in post-apocalyptic North America, so much of the story's elements feel as if they could be part of an eccentric Dungeons & Dragons campaign, with psychic powers substituting for spells and ancient technology standing in for magic items. Of course, these qualities are also why the novel almost perfectly encapsulates what Gamma World is about, at least for me. The first time I read this book, I felt as if I finally understood Gamma World in a way I hadn't before. It might be an exaggeration to say this is the "key" to the game, but there's no question in my mind that it's helpful in getting into the mood for playing or refereeing it.

Lanier did write a sequel, The Unforsaken Hiero, which came out in 1983, shortly after I read the original. As follow-ups go, it's fine but nowhere near as good as its predecessor. Lanier was working on a third novel in the series but it was never released during his lifetime. Supposedly, it was finished by another author and published in 2024, but I've never read it and have doubts that it's any good. I had bad experiences with the sequel to A Canticle for Leibowitz being released under similar circumstances, so I'm quite wary of these posthumous collaborations. If anyone knows otherwise, I'd love to hear about it.

Art Is Not an Aesthetic

Art Is Not an Aesthetic by James Maliszewski

Or Depiction versus Presentation

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Interview: Rudy Kraft (Part II)

4. Were you ever formally an employee of Chaosium or were you simply a freelance writer and designer for the company?

I was never an employee of Chaosium. All the work I did for them was as a freelance writer and designer. I was, for four months, an employee of Judges Guild. I was never an employee of any other game company although I was flown to Las Vegas to interview with Coleco for a job as a game designer in Connecticut. I was recommended for this job by Jennell Jaquays, with whom I had worked on several projects. I ended up turning the job down because at that time, Coleco only had a handheld gaming device with which I was not impressed. To be fair, I have never used a handheld gaming device or controller other than for the original Pong. All my electronic gaming has been on computers, so my judgment in this area might have been flawed.

Also, the pay being offered by Coleco was not significantly above what I was making as a combination freelance game designer, book seller, and legal secretary for my mother. And after spending four winters in Ithaca, New York and one winter in Decatur, Illinois, I preferred to live in the Bay Area to avoid snow. Other than my four months with Judges Guild, I was never a formal employee of a game company. Even my work as editor of Gryphon was done as a freelancer where I got paid a certain amount of money for gathering the articles and editing them for each issue of the magazine.  

5. You also wrote a number of products published by Judges Guild. How did that come about and what do you recall about it?

My involvement with Judges Guild came about when Greg decided to exclude the Broken Tree content from Snake Pipe Hollow.  As best I can tell, he did so for reasons of space not quality. Greg told me that they had signed an agreement with Judges Guild to produce licensed RuneQuest products. He suggested that I expand the material and submit it to them. I did so. I do not have any detailed memories of my work on that project, but it did lead to a job offer. Unlike the job offer from Coleco, which occurred several years later, I accepted this job offer and moved to Decatur, Illinois in January 1980. I remained there for 4 months during which time I designed and worked on several projects for the Judges Guild.  

I attended the Origins game conventions in Philadelphia in June of 1979 and again in 1980. I wanted to make contacts and look for work in the gaming industry. The job with Judges Guild partially arose out of the 1979 trip. My work on Frontiers of Alusia with SPI arose out of the 1980 trip.

I remember many things about my involvement with Judges Guild quite clearly and some not at all.  While I was Judges Guild, I injured my back moving heavy boxes. Prior to that time, I had no problems with my back. Since that time, I have had intermittent chronic back pain which requires precautions to avoid ongoing pain. I think it’s likely I would have eventually had back problems anyway, but I didn’t need it to trigger at age 22.  

I left Judges Guild because the owner, Bob Bledsaw, became concerned because there was a burglary in a building somewhat near the Judges Guild offices. He decided to address the burglary by buying a gun and leaving it in the office so whoever was there could protect themselves. This probably seemed like a perfectly sensible plan from the perspective of someone living in downstate Illinois, but it seemed crazy to me as a 22-year-old from Palo Alto, California. As a result, I left the Judges Guild and went home.

However, this was not a hostile breakup. I continued to produce projects for Judges Guild for several years thereafter. I began to represent Judges Guild at San Francisco Bay area game conventions by running a booth in the dealer hall. I don’t remember the specific financial arrangements, but it was financially profitable, albeit not greatly so, for both Judges Guild and myself.  

The RPGGeek website shows that I had been involved in 26 projects as a designer. Some of them are duplicate entries or things where I only contributed a short element. However, 10 of them were separate Judges Guild products. 

My contributions to the Book of Treasure Maps II, Book of Treasure Maps III, Legendary Duck Tower, Duck Pond, and Portals of Torsh were done as a Judges Guild employee. Treasure Maps II involved me completing work that someone else had already started. I started Treasure Maps III but Edward Mortimer completed it after I left. Legendary Duck Tower had been started by Jaquays while she was a Judges Guild employee. I finished it while I was working there. Its title was a pun on her Dark Tower D&D adventure. Obviously, Duck Pond took the punning title sequence one step further.

The other five products were items that I designed freelance after I left Judges Guild. Wondrous Relics was inspired by my RuneQuest product, Plunder. I thought it would be fun to make a bunch of new magic items for Dungeons & Dragons. I should pull out a copy and see if there is anything worth using in my current campaign.

The three portal products were designed to create an interconnected series of worlds where each product would provide a background for a world which Dungeon Masters could add to their campaign, if they wanted to have multi-planet campaign.  

I don’t remember much about design process of each of these items except that in September of 1980, I bought an Apple 2+ computer. From that point on I was typing my work, and my mother’s legal work, on that computer. At the time, there wasn’t any standardized word processing program, so I still submitted everything on paper, and it had to be retyped by the game publisher. I don’t remember the specific word processing program I used, but it was nowhere near as user friendly as the current ones.  So, for example, if I accidentally deleted something, there was no control Z to bring it right back. I had to retype it. Thus, there were number of occasions where work was lost because of accidental deletions or a failure to save combined with a computer crash, which also occurred much more often than it does now. In addition, there was no internal hard drive, so everything had to be saved onto a separate floppy disk.

I stopped representing Judges Guild at Bay area conventions in 1983 or 1984 after I got a part-time job at a local bookstore which became a full-time job that lasted until 1985 when I left to go to law school. 

Interview: Rudy Kraft (Part I)

A long-standing and popular feature of this blog has been its interviews with designers, artists, and other luminaries of the hobby. From the beginning, I’ve believed it’s important to preserve and share their memories, insights, and experiences. They deserve to be heard not only by those of us who remember those now-ancient days firsthand, but also by later generations of roleplayers who might otherwise never encounter the stories behind the games they love.

That’s why I’m always especially pleased to speak with someone whose contributions were largely unknown to me in my own youth. Such conversations are reminders of just how many hands shaped this hobby in its formative years.

Rudy Kraft, who was involved in the early days of Chaosium – or The Chaosium, as it was then styled – very kindly agreed to answer a series of questions I put to him. As you’ll soon discover, he did so with remarkable generosity and detail. What follows is the first part of our conversation; the second will appear tomorrow.

1. How did you first become involved in the hobby of role playing?

I first got involved in gaming as a hobby because of my father. I was the oldest of five children—although we started gaming before the fifth child was born. We had family games of Clue and Monopoly—mostly Clue. At some point, my father bought me a Christmas present of the old Avalon Hill game Afrika Korps. He and I played that a lot often leaving it set up on the desk in my parents' bedroom. Because I liked this game, he bought additional Avalon Hill Games at least once a year until I went away to college in 1974.

Starting in elementary school, I became an enthusiastic reader of both science fiction and fantasy.  During this time, I read and reread The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings and Asimov’s Foundation series on multiple occasions.  

During high school, some friends and I created a space exploration war game where one person acted as the moderator and the other people explored a star map from different locations until they ran into each other and presumably fought a war.  

When I was at Cornell University, I read a lot of science fiction and touched the periphery of SF fandom. In one fanzine I read about this new game, Dungeons & Dragons. This almost certainly occurred in August 1975. The game sounded interesting to me, so I ordered a copy of it which I received in September. Once I looked at it, it became obvious to me that I did not know how to get started in the game and I set it aside.

In October, I overheard two people talking about playing Dungeons & Dragons. It turned out that there was a small group of people playing the game regularly in the same dormitory where I ate my meals.  They played every Saturday, so I first started playing Dungeons & Dragons on the second Saturday in October 1975. In fact, I had a 50th anniversary celebratory session in October this year where, for the first time in years, I played rather than DMed a game of Dungeon & Dragons.

Following that first session, I became very addicted to playing Dungeon & Dragons to the point where it significantly adversely affected my grades. During those years, I bought Empire of the Petal Throne and Metamorphosis Alpha, but I never persuaded anyone to play them instead of D&D. 

Retrospective: The Gamer's Handbook of the Marvel Universe

I've no doubt mentioned on numerous occasions that, as a kid, I was never a big reader of comic books – at least not superhero comic books. Even so, many of my friends were avid comic readers and, more than that, it would have been quite difficult growing up in the 1970s and '80s to not know at least a little bit about comic book superheroes, particularly those published by Marvel Comics, merchandise for which was seemingly everywhere at the time. So, while I never a devoted fan of the genre, I was familiar with its characters and storylines.

Consequently, once I got into roleplaying games, I inevitably picked up Champions and had a good time with it, though it was never going to rise as high in my affections as, say, Dungeons & Dragons or Traveller. Champions was too ponderous and math-heavy for my tastes and seemed, to my way of thinking at any rate, to be a poor fit with the fast and frenetic action of superhero slugfests. Champions was good enough, because I didn't have any other ready alternatives, but I never connected to it the way I did with other RPGs.

TSR's Marvel Super Heroes, on the other hand, was pretty close to perfect for my purposes. That it was published by TSR certainly helped, I am sure, but, unlike many of TSR's other non-D&D offerings, Marvel Super Heroes was one that I played regularly, because it hit a sweet spot in its design and presentation. This was a game that was meant to be played and my friends and I had a blast with it. Sure, one can quibble about its lack of a robust character creation system, but that mostly didn't matter, because the whole point of this game was taking on the roles of one of Marvel's immense pantheon of heroes. 

That's what made the Gamer's Handbook of the Marvel Universe, released in four 256-page volumes over the course of 1988, so appealing. Modeled on the 15-volume Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe series from Marvel Comics, TSR's Handbook provided game statistics for nearly every Marvel character ever to appear in its comics, as well as information on their history and even roleplaying notes. If you were playing Marvel Super Heroes, this was pretty much a must-have product, especially if, like me, your favorite heroes and villains had never appeared in other MSH products or in the pages of Jeff Grubb's excellent "The Marvel-Phile" series.

Much like the Monstrous Compendium for AD&D Second Edition, the Handbook's pages were five-hole punched so that they could be organized into a binder. Unlike the MC, I don't believe TSR ever produced officially-branded binders for this purpose, but my memory is hazy. Interestingly, Who's Who: The Definitive Directory of the DC Universe, released between 1985 and 1987 in obvious imitation of Marvel's earlier effort, was released in a similar loose-leaf format. I have no idea whether TSR was, in turn, borrowing a page from DC or if it was simply something the company had, for whatever reason, hit upon as a useful format for releasing its products at the time.

I loved these books and regret that I no longer own my original copies of them. Unfortunately, they came out during my college years and a lot of things I acquired during that time went missing as I regularly moved between my parents' home and various dormitories. TSR released four more, slimmer follow-up volumes to the originals – annual updates that included new or overlooked characters, in addition to literal updates previously presented characters. I never saw any of these and so cannot speak to their specific contents, but I get the impression that, like the initial volumes, they were well-regarded and useful.

Thinking back on this series of products, I find myself remembering just how good Marvel Super Heroes was and how much I enjoyed playing it. Though I've played (or attempted to play) several other superhero RPGs in the years since, none has ever really grabbed me the way MSH did. That might just be because I'm not, as I said, a diehard superhero fan and thus have never really committed to the genre for roleplaying purposes. However, I prefer to think it's more likely that Marvel Super Heroes was just a solid, intuitive design that fit its subject matter in a way few others have. I miss it.

Thousand Suns 2e Playtesting

It's still very much my intention to release a new edition of my science fiction roleplaying game, Thousand Suns, either this year or next. While my public discussions of my design work on this project take place over at Grognardia Games Direct, I'll also be doing a series of playtests the details of which will periodically appear at my Patreon. If that's something you'd be interested in, my latest (public) post talks a bit about this, with more information to follow in the weeks ahead.

REPOST: The Articles of Dragon: "Mutant Manual"

Since this blog could hardly be accused of intellectual rigor, I trust no one will object to my choosing the "Mutant Manual" as the "article" I wish to highlight from issue #98 (June 1985) of Dragon. Written by Randy Johns, Douglas A. Lent, John M. Maxstadt, William Tracy, and James M. Ward, the "Mutant Manual" was a 12-page insert that detailed 17 new mutants for use with Gamma World.

To say that I adored the "Mutant Manual" is a bit of an understatement. Along with only a handful of other articles, it became a permanent addition to my "referee's binder" in which I kept maps, notes, and photocopies of useful articles from Dragon, White Dwarf, and elsewhere. In the case of the "Mutant Manual," though, it wasn't a photocopy, but the original itself, which I carefully removed from the center of my copy of issue #98. Since I generally preferred to keep my copies of Dragon "pristine" – a shock, I know – the fact that I removed the "Mutant Manual" was a high tribute.

I'm not sure I can really convey why I liked it so much. Were I to describe any of its constituent mutants, like the flying squids, armor-plated rhinos, or post-apocalyptic sasquatches, I doubt most readers would find them particularly interesting and perhaps rightly so. Back in '85, though, I appreciated having a source of new mutants to throw at my players when we played Gamma World. Creating good monsters takes time and imagination, as many entries in the Monster Manual prove. You need more than a name and some game statistics to create a worthy monster – an indescribable something that makes it more than the sum of its parts.

In my opinion, this is particularly the case with regards to Gamma World, where it's all too easy to take some normal animal, roll a few times on the mutations tables, and think you're done. More often than not, this led to some utterly ridiculous creatures that I could barely take seriously myself, let alone my players. So, having some ready-made mutants that weren't immediately laughable was invaluable to me. Whether others might deem the "Mutant Manual" a success in this regard is a matter of opinion, of course, but I loved it and still strongly associate it with my fondest memories of Gamma World.