Retrospective: Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game

Between early exposure to televised coverage of NASA launches and constant reruns of Star Trek, it was almost inevitable that I would become a science fiction fan. It helped, too, that my father’s only sister, who was barely twenty years my senior, shared that passion and actively encouraged my fascination with all things related to space travel, robots, and laser guns. So, when George Lucas’s space opera Star Wars premiered in the late spring of 1977, my aunt and I wasted no time in seeing it. Like countless other children of my generation, the experience marked a turning point in the development of my imagination.

As I’ve written elsewhere, Star Wars dominated the mental landscape of my childhood from 1977 to 1979, a reign challenged only by my discovery of Dungeons & Dragons and, through it, the wider world of roleplaying games. Even so, my enthusiasm for Star Wars didn’t vanish. I vividly remember the thrill I felt at the first rumors of "Star Wars II" (the film’s actual title wouldn’t be revealed until late 1979, as I recall). While D&D redirected some of my imaginative energy, it never fully replaced my love for Lucas’s galaxy. That said, there’s no denying that the fervor of my early affection dimmed somewhat in the face of newer, competing obsessions.

By the mid-1980s, that dimming had become a common experience. Star Wars itself seemed to be fading into the past. In 1987, the franchise appeared adrift. Four years had passed since Return of the Jedi had concluded the original trilogy and no new movies were on the horizon. For many fans, the galaxy far, far away was becoming a relic of childhood. The Kenner toy line was winding down, Marvel’s comic book series had ended, and while fan interest endured, it was increasingly nostalgic in character. There were occasional whispers of more to come, but nothing concrete. To be a Star Wars fan in the late ’80s was to dwell in the long shadow of what had been, clinging to worn VHS tapes, dog-eared storybooks, and well-loved action figures.

Meanwhile, the tabletop roleplaying game hobby was entering a new phase. TSR’s Dungeons & Dragons still loomed large, but the landscape was shifting. A host of new games had appeared, offering players fresh ways to explore favorite genres. Yet the RPG industry had not yet figured out how to handle licensed properties particularly well. With a few notable exceptions, like Star Trek or Marvel Super Heroes, most licensed RPGs of the era felt to me like clumsy grafts, existing more as marketing tie-ins than true adaptations. Then, in 1987, West End Games released Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game, designed by Greg Costikyan.

What West End delivered was more than just a faithful adaptation of a beloved movie trilogy: it was a revelatory act of worldbuilding. The game employed a streamlined D6 system, originally developed for Ghostbusters, that emphasized speed, flexibility, and cinematic flair over rules complexity. It was a system that matched the tone and pacing of Star Wars perfectly. Characters weren’t defined by a tangle of subsystems but by evocative archetypes: the Brash Pilot, the Young Senatorial, the Quixotic Jedi. Combat was fast and improvisational, encouraging swashbuckling heroics rather than tactical micromanagement. It felt, in a word, right.

But the real genius of the Star Wars RPG wasn’t its rules; it was its tone and presentation. The game didn’t merely borrow the setting of Star Wars; it inhabited it. The rulebook and its indispensable companion, The Star Wars Sourcebook, were filled with film stills, in-universe schematics, detailed planetary entries, and short snippets of fiction. These books didn’t feel like products about the galaxy far, far away; they felt like artifacts from within it. For fans starved for new material, the RPG was a lifeline, offering a way not just to revisit Star Wars, but almost to live in it.

It’s hard to overstate the influence these books would go on to have. Much of what we now take for granted about the Star Wars universe, like species names, background details about the Empire and the Rebellion, classifications of ships and vehicles, and descriptions of distant planets, originated not in the films, but in the pages of these RPG books. Lucasfilm itself came to rely on West End’s material. When Timothy Zahn was hired to write Heir to the Empire in 1991, he was handed a stack of WEG books to use as reference. In many ways, West End Games defined the Star Wars expanded universe before it officially existed.

Within the RPG hobby, Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game was also a harbinger of things to come. Unlike many earlier games, it emphasized genre emulation and collaborative adventure over simulationist detail. Its influence can be seen in the rise of narrative-focused design philosophies that would emerge in the late 1990s and early 2000s. It welcomed new players with familiar characters and easy-to-grasp mechanics, helping to expand the hobby beyond its traditional fantasy roots and making it more accessible to newcomers.

As I mentioned earlier, there were other successful licensed RPGs during this period, each with its own merits. But, in my opinion, none matched the totality of West End’s vision. The Star Wars RPG wasn’t just a game; it was a doorway into a living, breathing world, one that players could explore, shape, and make their own. Today, with Star Wars a global media brand, it’s worth remembering the quiet, crucial role this game played. It expanded the setting beyond what we saw on screen. It kept the flame alive during a fallow period. And it reminded us all that, with a few friends, a handful of dice, and the right kind of scenario, we too could journey to that galaxy far, far away.

White Dwarf: Issue #80

And so, with issue #80 (August 1986), we come to the end of my retrospective on Games Workshop's White Dwarf. Even so, I'll likely have some concluding thoughts on the entire series next week, since I feel, after so many months of posts on the magazine, there's still a lot to be said about it. This issue features a strong cover illustration that recalls the work of Frank Frazetta – no surprise there, since the artist, Ken Kelly, was the nephew of Frazetta's wife and had the chance to study Frank's works and technique up close and personal.

Paul Cockburn's editorial focuses on a new Reader's Poll included at the end of the issue. The poll is quite lengthy, lengthier than many previous ones, in part, I suspect, because Games Workshop was trying to understand its current readership as it charted its course into the future. After nearly ten calendar years of publication, White Dwarf had changed a great deal, as had Games Workshop itself. It, therefore, makes sense that the company would want to take stock of its readers in order to better serve them.

"Open Box" kicks off with a very positive review of Games Workshop's printing of the third edition of Call of Cthulhu. Normally, I'd have a critical word or two about WD's habit of advertisements dressed up as a reviews, but, in this case, I'll make an exception. The GW hardcover printing of CoC's third edition is indeed an excellent product, one of the best versions of the game ever, in fact. I only wish I still had my copy. Also reviewed are two adventures for FASA's Doctor Who RPG, The Hartlewick Horror and The Legions of Death. The former receives greater praise, primarily because it's less complex and more suitable to referees of all levels of experience. Palladium's The Mechanoids gets a negative review, with the reviewer (Marcus L. Rowland again) suggesting that it'd work better as a war game than as an RPG. Destiny of Kings for AD&D is favored over Swords of the Daimyo (also for AD&D). Realms of Magic for Marvel Super Heroes is treated positively for the most part, though the reviewer (Peter Tamlyn) expresses some dissatisfaction with the added complexity this supplement introduces. He also criticizes the excessive use of the trademark symbol throughout the text, necessitated, no doubt, by Marvel's lawyers. Finally, there's Avalon Hill boardgame, Dark Emperor, by Greg Costikyan, which merits only middling praise.

Nigel Cole's "Combat in Doctor Who" attempts to correct some errors and oversights in FASA's RPG. Meanwhile, "Something Special" by Hugh Tynan introduces ten new special abilities for use by characters in Judge Dredd the Role-Playing Game. "Clouding the Issue" by Chris Barlow takes a look at the various detection spells available in AD&D with an eye toward sorting out the inconsistencies. "Crime Inc." by Graeme Davis presents a system for creating organized crime groups for use with any 20th century RPG. The system takes into account a group's size to give the referee an idea of how many members of various ranks it possesses, along with the extent of its reach into illicit activities. It's nothing fancy, but it looks genuinely useful in fleshing out enemy groups for a wide variety of RPGs. 

Dave Langford's "Critical Mass" returns to form by providing capsule reviews of a plethora of books, most of which I've never read, the exception being The Anubis Gates by Tim Powers. It's funny: I've rarely been a fan of Langford's columns, but, despite that, I think I'll miss reading them nonetheless. I suppose that's mostly a function of the fact that they've been a fixture of the magazine since issue #39, which grants them an almost-venerable status. On the other hand, I've always liked both "Thrud the Barbarian" and "Gobbledigook" (the latter reduced to half a page in this issue), so it makes sense that I might feel a pang of regret in saying goodbye to them.

"The Reliant" by Thomas M. Price presents an escape craft, complete with deck plans, "for SF role-playing games," though the titular spaceship is presented using terminology and concepts clearly derived from Traveller. "Roleplaying for Everyone" by Peter Tamlyn is a thoughtful essay on the development and expansion of the concept of roleplaying. Tamlyn looks at the evolution of RPG design and how it has facilitated (or impeded) the adoption of the hobby by a large segment of the public. He also examines the growth of solo gamebooks, like Fighting Fantasy, and ponders what impact they, along with the then-new How to Host a Murder games might have. It's a solid piece that's mostly interesting from a historical perspective, since it was written nearly forty years ago, but I found it a worthwhile read nonetheless.

The best thing in this issue, in my opinion, is Graham Staplehurst's adventure "Ancient & Modern." Described as "a scenario for schizophrenic roleplayers," it draws on work of author Brian Lumley, specifically his tales of the primal continent of Theem'hdra, a kind of Conan-meets-the-Cthulhu-Mythos sort of sword-and-sorcery setting. "Ancient & Modern" takes place in two times, the ancient past and the present day, with players portraying two sets of characters using two different game systems, most likely AD&D for the former and Call of Cthulhu for the latter, though the scenario is written to accommodate other possibilities. The outcome of events in Theem'hdra affect those in the 20th century, so there is a direct connection between the two halves of the scenario. I've long wanted to referee a scenario of this sort before, so I was very intrigued by "Ancient & Modern."

Closing out the issue is another installment of "'Eavy Metal," complete with many color photographs of beautifully painted miniature figures. As I'm certain I've said many times before, I genuinely appreciate articles like this, because I've never been very good at painting minis. Seeing what others more skilled than I have done with them is a treat and an education about a side of the hobby with which I have very little experience.

There you have, the final issue of White Dwarf that I'll be reading as part of a series of posts. I do wish that this had been a more remarkable issue than it was, so that it might have weakened my resolve to move on to something else. Alas, it was not and so I now must bid farewell to White Dwarf. For the most part, I enjoyed this trip down memory lane and am glad that I took the time to do it. After a final post next week, in which I attempt to sum up my various thoughts about WD and its place in the larger hobby, I'll move on to another topic. Polyhedron perhaps?

Different Worlds: Issue #12

Issue #12 of Different Worlds (July 1981) is the first monthly issue of the magazine, all previous ones being bimonthly. It also features cover art by William Church, whom I will always associate with RuneQuest and the wonderfully evocative map of Prax that appeared in the game's rulebook. 

"Meaningful Names for Characters" by Jane Woodward is the issue's first article and it's a big one – eight pages – consisting largely of lists of names and name elements from a variety of languages, both real (Old English and Welsh) and imaginary (Quenya and the Black Speech). The idea behind that article is to encourage players to come up with better names for their characters than "bad puns or meaningless constructs." I'm deeply sympathetic to this perspective; I think character names are important. At the same time, I prefer names to be rooted in a game's setting rather than by recourse to whatever language catches one's fancy, regardless of how appropriate it is (and it's never appropriate, in my opinion, to use Tolkien's languages, unless one is actually playing in Middle-earth).

"The Full Circle" by Robert Lynn Asprin is a preview of the upcoming Thieves' World RPG supplement, based on the anthology series of the same name. Asprin talks not just about the supplement itself but the ways that his experiences as a referee and player affected his decisions in putting together the anthologies. The article's title is thus a reference to the way that roleplaying games were influenced by literature, only for literature, in turn, to be influenced by RPGs. Though brief, Asprin provides some fascinating insight into these matters and I was glad to have read what he had to say. "Bersekers" by Laurence J.P. Gillespie is an overview of Norse berserkers from the perspectives of history and myth, with a few suggestions on how to use them in roleplaying games. 

John T. Sapienza reviews several new sets of Zargonian paper miniatures from Bearhug Enterprises. As in his review of earlier releases in this series, Sapienza thinks highly of these miniatures. The issue also includes many other, generally shorter reviews, most notably those of The Isle of Dread (for D&D), Plunder and Rune Masters (for RQ), Thieves' Guild, and the D&D Basic and Expert sets. All these reviews are positive, though, perhaps unsurprisingly, the review of the Basic and Expert sets include a number of cavils about Dungeons & Dragons and its approach to both rules and presentation, even though D&D clearly appeals "to a lot of happy adventure gamers." 

Larry DiTillio's "The Sword of Hollywood" column continues, focusing this time on the still-untitled second Star Trek movie, Clash of the Titans, Dragonslayer, and Conan the Barbarian. There's also mention of multiple fantasy films supposedly in the works, almost all of which DiTillio believes will never see the light of day. His instincts were indeed correct, as the only one that seems to have seen the light of day was The Beastmaster, unless "The Dragons of Krull" was a working title of 1983's Krull. 

Gigi D'Arn makes another appearance, providing some interesting gossip, chief among them being that TSR was rumored to have laid off "a dozen or so employees for 'bad attitude.'" This is no rumor but fact: starting in April 1981, TSR fired Paul Reiche, Evan Robinson, Bill Willingham, Jeff Dee, Kevin Hendryx, and others. There's mention, too, that Dave Arneson "settled (happily)" with TSR and that Greg Costikyan "hasn't been heard from in a while," followed by an appeal to "people who know his whereabouts" to contact the Game Designers' Guild. I have no idea what this might have been about. Gigi also references a "Troll Ball" game from Greg Stafford, which will have miniatures sculpted by Steve Lortz. I assume this never came to pass and that the rules were later incorporated into Trollpak.

Issue #12 is unusual in that, although it's the same length as previous issues (48 pages), it feels shorter. I suspect that has to do with the fewer articles in this issue and the presence of huge numbers of advertisements. Now, I actually like seeing these ads, since they're a terrific way to remind oneself of the state of the hobby in 1981, but, in terms of actual gaming content, this issue seems a slight downgrade to past ones. Here's hoping future issues will see a return to previous form.

Different Worlds: Issue #11

Issue #11 of Different Worlds (February/March 1981) is an interesting issue to me, because its content continues to differentiate the magazine from its contemporaries, like Dragon or White Dwarf. For whatever reason, Different Worlds published a significant number of "theoretical" articles about roleplaying, which is to say, articles about roleplaying rather than simply articles providing additions and options to existing games. If I had to guess, I imagine this reflects the local culture out of which Chaosium and, by extension, Different Worlds, grew. I've noted on a couple of occasions that California, like the Midwest and the East Coast, was distinctive in its approach to RPGs, so I suppose it shouldn't be surprising to see this distinction reflected in its periodicals. 

The issue begins with "Running Low Level Dungeons" by Robert Plamondon, which offers some advice to referees on the necessity of taking beginner dungeons seriously, as a means of "hooking" people into the hobby. Plamondon's concerns are twofold. First, he feels strongly that even low-level dungeons should be every bit as interesting as high-level one. Second, he feels equally strongly that low-level dungeons should be accommodating to the inexperience of new players and thus not "killer" in their approach. Mind you, Plamondon seems generally opposed to dungeons designed to kill characters, seeing this as somehow antithetical to the purpose of RPGs. 

"A Change of Hobbit" by Ronald Mark Pehr is an odd piece. It's a critique of D&D's portrayal of hobbits (halflings) on the basis that it differs from they way Tolkien portrayed them in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Beyond that, Pehr's main complaint is that D&D pigeon holes halflings as thieves and doesn't acknowledge their skills as warriors. These are fair points, if being true to Tolkien, is one's goal, but I'm not sure that was ever the point of including halflings in the game. (I resolve the matter by dispensing with halflings entirely.) Part two of "Gems & Magic" by Steve Marsh and Margaret R. Gemignani is also here, completing what began last issue. I'm a big fan of "natural" magic items like this, so the article was most welcome to me.

"A New Computer System for Traveller" by Martin Connell is an attempt – in 1981, I remind you – to offer new rules for computers to make it "truly representative of the far future." More amusingly, Connell notes that his rules are based on his experiences with an "IBM 360, and IBM 3033, a PRIME, and several hobby computers." He also consulted with "several friends who are computer science majors." I don't mean to mock Connell, whose larger point about how outdated Traveller's computer rules have always been is sound, but only to point out that, when it comes to technology, predicting the future is not always easy. Personally, I've generally found Traveller's somewhat retro approach to computers less problematic than trying to import the moving target of "realistic" far future computer rules into the game.

"The Fourfold Way of FRP" by Jeffrey A. Johnson is a follow-up of sorts to the articles by Glen Blacow and Lewis Pulsipher in issue #10. It's another stab at trying to describe types of gamers and approaches to roleplaying. Johnson offers a diagram consisting of two axes, one relating to personal goals (power gaming vs storytelling) and realism (pure fantasy vs simulation). Honestly, this isn't a bad approach, though, as with most such articles, I marvel at gamers' desire to try and codify everything into neat categories (I am as guilty of this as anyone).

There is a huge collection of lengthy reviews in this issue, starting with a positive one for Azhanti High Lightning. Also covered are Tunnels & Trolls (also positively) and DragonQuest and several smaller adventure publications of which I've (mostly) never heard. What stands out about these reviews is how lengthy they are, something I appreciated, since, if nothing else, they afforded the reviewer to explain his own perspective in detail. This is particularly useful in the case of case of the T&T review (by Ken Rolston) and the DQ review (by Michael Stackpole), since there are multiple points where their own opinions differed with my own. Even more interesting is that the review of DragonQuest was followed by a rebuttal of sorts by the designer, Eric Goldberg. Good stuff!

John T. Sapienza reviews Beasts of Antares and several other novels in the saga of Dray Prescot. Sapienza also provides D&D game statistics for some of the magical items and monsters that appear in the series. "The Cult of Kali" is a "gateway" cult for RuneQuest by Greg Costikyan. Meanwhile, "The Sword of Hollywood" by Larry DiTillio is a new column about fantasy and science fiction movies, this time focusing rumors of the D&D movie, a new Star Trek TV series, and pre-production of the third Star Wars movie, Revenge of the Jedi. 

Lewis Pulsipher's "Personalities of Role-Playing Gamers" presents fifteen types of roleplayers, ranging from "The Barbarian," who always plays fighters and likes combat, to "The Puppet," who does what other people tell him to do, and "The Entrepreneur," who's always looking for ways to make money in an adventure. It's a fine, if limited list, but, much like Johnson's article earlier in this issue, I'm not quite sure the point of all these attempts at codifying the hobby and its players. Ending the issue is another column by Gigi D'Arn, which sadly doesn't contain any remarkable bits of gossip worth mentioning here. Oh, well.

Different Worlds: Issue #9

Issue #9 (August/September 1980) of Different Worlds features a quite striking cover by Luise Perrine that seems to tie into an article appearing later in the issue. If so, that's the first example of this I've seen in Different Worlds. Typically, the covers of gaming magazines seem to bear little connection to the issue's contents, no doubt due to the circumstances under which they're commissioned. Still, I've admired Perrine's artwork ever since I first laid eyes on her illustrations for RuneQuest, so it's a treat to see her given the cover here.

The issue begins with "Flippancy in FRP" by my old nemesis, Greg Costikyan. The article advocates, in a tongue in cheek way, for more "silliness" or "flippancy" in roleplaying game sessions and campaigns. Costikyan covers multiple areas where he thinks a bit more "chaos" would help a game, such as handling alignment, religion, money, and character names. While his overall point is fair enough – we could all do with a little less lightheartedness from time to time – the article is, in my view, delivered with the obnoxiousness typical of a young man who thinks he knows it all (Costikyan would have been 21 years-old at the time of this article). 

"Boardgames to RPGs" by Glenn L. Williams is much more interesting (and certainly less annoying). Williams examines the expectations RPGs and boardgames create in their players and the techniques employed in their design to fulfill those expectations. With that in mind, he suggests that it would be possible to use boardgames as the basis for roleplaying games. To prove his point, he takes Steve Jackson's Ogre and develops from it the outline of a RPG. What's interesting – but also slightly baffling – is that Williams makes the Ogres themselves the focus of he RPG, with the player taking on role of the artificially intelligent war machine rather than, say, a human soldier in the world the Ogres inhabit. 

John T. Sapienza presents an extensive review of the Zargonian Figures produced Bearhug Enterprises. These figures are cardboard stand-ups to be used in place of miniature figures. I'd never heard of these specific figures but I am very familiar with the concept. Sapienza thinks very highly of the figures, both for their quality and their price, which he thinks will make them popular with gamers, Later, he reviews actual metal figurines by McEwan and Citadel. I find it fascinating how lengthy these reviews are. I've said before that I never used miniatures much back in the day (or now), so it's good to be reminded how important they were in many quarters of the hobby.

 "The Imperium – A Traveller Campaign" by Marc Miller and Frank Chadwick is a five-page article, describing what would become the official GDW Traveller setting. Though I am deeply familiar with the Third Imperium as a setting, it was nevertheless a joy to read these. It reminded me of how much fun I had with Traveller and my own early days as a writer, creating adventures and setting material in the pages of Challenge. Anders Swenson reviews Judges Guild's Verbosh, which he considers a good investment for the money. Swenson also positively reviews Chaosium's Gateway Bestiary.

David F. Nalle's "Variable Alignment System" is yet another take on this venerable topic, this time presenting two point scales (Karma and Loyalty) to track a character's progress along the Good/Evil and Law/Chaos axes. It's fine, I suppose, but seems unnecessary for most people. Steve Perrin's "Cult of the Tiger" is another Gloranthan cult for RuneQuest (and the source of the issue's cover, I believe). Lewis Pulsipher's "Place for Adventure" is a short article, outlining nine unusual locations that might serve as adventure locales, such as animal burrows or giant bee hives. 

This month's Gigi D'Arn column includes some intriguing tidbits. There's a lot of talk about movies, such as the shelving of plans for a D&D movie, along with rumors about Dragon Slayer, The Last Unicorn, and Conan the Barbarian. The comments from the latter are somewhat dismissive, though it's fascinating, from a historical perspective, to learn that filming on Conan was delayed due to the death of Josip Broz Tito in Yugoslavia, where the movie was to be shot. There's also talk of a supposed "D&D/AD&D Companion" that will include lots of historical information on weapons and armor. I have no idea what Gigi is referring to here and it makes me wonder if there was ever any basis for the rumor in the first place.

Different Worlds: Issue #6

Different Worlds #6 is the December 1979/January 1980 issue and features cover artwork by Rick Becker. It begins with a brief editorial by Tadashi Ehara lamenting how hard it is to get writers to turn things in on time – or at all! – which leads him to extend an invitation to readers to submit their own articles. Speaking as both the producer of a fanzine, for which I've struggled to find submissions, and as a writer, for whom punctuality is not my great strength, I have sympathy for Ehara's frustrations. It will be interesting to see if future issues of Different Worlds feature a broader range of writers than the first six.

Leonard H. Kanterman, author of Starships & Spacemen, reviews Gangster!, a "cops and mobsters" RPG from FGU. Being a Gangbusters devotee myself, I actually know very little about other games of the genre, so this was a useful article to me. Brian Wagner's "Super Rules for SUPERHERO: 44" is a collection of rules expansions for Superhero: 2044, the first superhero roleplaying game ever published. "Finding Level in RuneQuest" by Rudy Kraft presents a system for converting characters between Dungeons & Dragons and RuneQuest. The purpose of this is to facilitate the adoption for the RQ rules by referees running D&D campaigns, allowing beloved player characters to continue to adventure under the new rules. I can't speak to their actual utility, but it's an intriguing article nonetheless (and an early example of a genre of article that continues to this day).

"How to Make Monsters Interesting" by Lee Gold is a good but short article on the matter of restoring "newness" and "surprise" to monster encounters, a perennial topic in RPG circles. Gold counsels, among other things, variability in monster abilities so that not every troll or ghost possesses the exact same powers, thereby throwing players' expectations into question. Meanwhile, John T. Sapienza offers a lengthy 10-page D&D variant called "Vardy Combat System, Part I." The system Sapienza presents here looks very similar to the combat system in RuneQuest and other Basic Role-Playing games, right down to being percentile rather than D20-based (though Part II, to be presented next issue, apparently includes a more traditional D20 approach). On first glance, the system looks decent enough and, even while including more detail about things like shields and weapons expertise, it retains most of the contours of D&D combat (like armor class). I'll have to look at it more carefully to decide my final feelings on the matter.

"The World of Crane" by George V. Schubel is an overview of the play-by-mail game The Tribes of Crane, whose advertisements I used to see in the pages of Dragon. I can't say the article told me a great deal more about the game or its setting, but I enjoyed reading it, if only for the peak it offered me of an aspect of the hobby of which I have limited experience. Lewis Pulsiphr's "Insanity Table" is a percentile table intended for use with D&D, on those occasions when a curse or other effect results in a character's going insane. Greg Costikyan's "The Cult of Gestetner" is a tongue-in-cheek cult for use with RuneQuest that should get a chuckle out of anyone who's ever been involved in old school printing or publishing. 

Gigi D'Arn's column contains a number of fascinating tidbits and then-current rumors. For example, she mentions that Chaosium will be producing a H.P. Lovecraft RPG entitled Dark Worlds, to be designed by Kurt Lortz. Then there's this section about Gary Gygax and TSR:

Lots to talk about there! Mention is also made of SPI's upcoming fantasy RPG, Dragonflayer, which is presumably an early title for DragonQuest, and Lou Zocchi's attempts to purchase TSR's remaining stock of Empire of the Petal Throne. It should come as little surprise that Gigi's columns are favorites of mine. Leaving aside their frequent wit and sarcasm, they provide useful historical information about early games, companies, and designers that might otherwise be forgotten. Anyone interested in the history of the hobby should appreciate their value. 

Different Worlds: Issue #4

Issue #4 (August/September 1979) begins with an editorial by Tadashi Ehara in which he declares – remember: this is just five and a half years after the release of OD&D – "The RPG state of the art is dull. You can count on your hands the number of innovative systems. And our hobby still plays second fiddle to historical board wargaming." If nothing else, it's a reminder that the past is a foreign country. That Ehara is bemoaning the lack of innovation in RPGs is hardly surprising; it's an eternal complaint, one that continues to echo into the 21st century and I think it's no more true today than it was then. More interesting, I think, is his assertion that board wargaming was more dominant than RPGs, based in part on the fact that "board game designers out-number RPG designers five to one." Amazing what a difference half a century can make.

The articles kick off with Rudy Kraft's "Games to Gold," in which he talks about the ins and outs of selling one's roleplaying game. The article focuses on what the author considers the major publishers at the time, namely Avalon Hill, Chaosium, Excalibre, FGU, Flying Buffalo, GDW, Gamescience, Heritage Miniatures, Judges Guild, Legacy Press, Metagaming, Simulations Canada, SPI, and TSR. The list is intriguing, because, while most of the names are recognizable and indeed notable, several (e.g. Legacy Press) are not and more likely reflect the magazine's editorial biases toward the companies of friends and contributors. Kraft offers an overview of each publisher, including their openness to submissions, pay rates, etc. Appended to the article is an anonymous note by "someone who has been bit," offering advice to would-be designers. The advice amounts to: never sell all your rights, get yourself a lawyer, and shop around for the best deal. I can't help but wonder if the author was Dave Arneson, given both his then-current lawsuits against TSR and his association with Different Worlds.

Charlie Krank's next installment of "Beginner's Brew" tackles the subject of "Mastering Your First Adventure." The article contains fine, if basic, information for a novice referee, the kind of thing most RPGs typically contain but that, in 1979, might not have been common knowledge. Emmet F. Milestone's "Kirk on Karit 2" is a report of the Star Trek scenario he ran at DunDraCon IV. Milestone incorporated elements of the miniatures game Starguard!, such as the alien Dreenoi (something J. Eric Holmes too mentions in various contexts). Milestone also presents some basic "romance" rules for use with the game, to simulate the tendency of Star Trek officers to fall in love with newly introduced characters.

John T. Sapienza offers up "Enchanted Weapons Table," a huge, 14-page article consisting of many, many tables for randomly generating magic weapons for use with "fantasy gaming," though it's clear from the text that D&D is what he has in mind. It's a bit much in my opinion, but I have known many referees who would have loved random tables as extensive as these. Stephen L. Lortz returns (yet again) with "A Perspective on Role-Play," in which he outlines the history of roleplaying – not roleplaying games but the activity itself. The article is filled with much of the pseudo-intellectual blather I've come to expect from Lortz articles – he namedrops Whitehead, Aristotle, and Einstein, as well as quoting from The Tao of Physics – but his perspective is interesting nonetheless. He gives the Viennese psychiatrist J.L. Moreno credit for inventing "roleplaying," for example, and does not, as is fashionable nowadays in some quarters, credit David A. Wesely as the "true" inventor of roleplaying games. Lortz is an odd fellow and I'm not entirely sure why Different Worlds provided him with a regular soapbox.

"Waha's Quest" by Greg Stafford is a sneak peek of the upcoming companion game to RuneQuest, HeroQuest. As fans of RQ know well, HeroQuest was never released, at least not in its originally intended form, though a later game, bearing the same name, was published by Stafford's Issaries Inc. From the little presented in this article, it seems Stafford imagined HeroQuest to be a more freeform and explicitly "mythic" version of RuneQuest, using many of the same mechanics. It's hard to say what the game's impact would have been had it ever been completed. 

"Different Views" contains numerous letters to the editor, including one by Greg Costikyan, in which he lambastes David Feldt's Legacy (reviewed in issue #2) in which he calls the game "an extrusion of horror." So humorously strident is Costikyan's letter that I reproduce it here for all to enjoy.

The issue ends with Gigi D'Arn's latest gossip column, which is surprisingly tame compared to previous installments. It's filled mostly with bite-sized reviews/announcements of new products, along with details of marriages, births, and new jobs among game designers and publishers. Here's hoping future columns include a little more red meat.

Retrospective: Toon

The various "ages" I outlined way back at the start of 2009 were intended to apply only to Dungeons & Dragons (hence the title of the original post), but D&D didn't exist in a vacuum. It's true that its preeminent position probably insulated it from many of the trends and fashions taking hold elsewhere in the hobby, but I don't think it ever managed to avoid them entirely. So, when I wrote that the Silver Age of D&D (1984-1989) by "a growing concern for 'dramatic' coherence," I don't think it's at all unreasonable to suggest that that concern was already present in the wider hobby.

Now, "dramatic coherence" can be interpreted in many ways, but what I meant by it was something akin to "emulation," which is to say, the sense a RPG's rules ought to reflect -- even encourage -- play that reflects what goes on in the sources that inspired the game. A common knock against Dungeons & Dragons, especially nowadays, is that it doesn't in fact emulate its sources very well at all. My own feeling is that this is both a fair criticism and beside the point, because, while inspired by fantasy literature, D&D wasn't written with the goal of emulating its sources, at least not in any consistent way.

However, many others RPG were written with this goal in mind, the first one I remember encountering being Champions, since its rules, particularly for combat, were clearly an attempt to model the worlds of superhero comic books. Another good example of a RPG written with genre emulation in mind -- and a more successful one in my opinion -- was Toon, written by Greg Costikyan and published by Steve Jackson Games in 1984. Toon describes itself as

set in the crazy world of cartoons. In this world, anything can happen. The laws of physics only work when you notice them. Mice, rabbits, ducks, and moose all speak perfect English. Characters spend most of their time plotting to cheat each other, blow each other up, eat each other, or otherwise commit mayhem. But nobody ever dies!

What's interesting about the paragraph above is that while Costikyan is very clear about the intentions behind Toon, he also sneaks in a (largely) unspoken assumption: "the crazy world of cartoons" is like that of the Warner Brothers' Looney Tunes. That's not a flaw; my friends and I certainly didn't see it as such when we bought and played the game. But, much like D&D, Toon's inspirations aren't as expansive as one might think. Rather than being "the Cartoon Roleplaying Game," as it titles itself, it's actually focused on emulating only a sub-set of cartoons, just as D&D looked primarily to a sub-set of fantasy literature for its inspirations.

Toon also stands out as a lot more meta-textual than I remember other RPGs as being. For example, the rulebook (which is 64 pages long, as God intended all RPGs to be) includes "A Special Message for Experienced Roleplayers," which I'm going to reproduce in full here, since it's quite unique for its time:

TOON isn't like any other roleplaying game you've ever known. In most RPGs, the idea is to plot and plan — to think before you act — and to make sure your character survives, thrives, and becomes more proficient at everything he or she does.

FORGET ALL THAT.

Survival? Who cares? You can't ever really die, so you've got nothing to lose by jumping right into the thick of things and having fun.

Think before you act? No chance. If you take the time to think every action through, the game's going to get bogged down and nobody will have any fun, The action in a TOON game should be fast — insanely fast. Remember, you're supposed to be a cartoon character. When was the last time you saw a cartoon character do something logical? ACT before you THINK.

Here's something else that's special about TOON: It doesn't matter how stupid, weak, or inept your character is. Poor die-rolling doesn't mean a bad character. Half the fun of TOON is failing . . . because of the silly things that happen when you fail! So "bad" characters are just as much fun — maybe more fun — than "good" characters.

So, to repeat:

FORGET EVERYTHING YOU KNOW and ACT BEFORE YOU THINK.

Much of the foregoing is commonplace nowadays, banal even, but it wasn't in 1984, at least not to me. That's probably why I was so blown away by Toon and really wanted to play it. Here was a game that took emulation of its source material seriously while at the same time not taking itself (or roleplaying games generally) very seriously. It's hard to convey how revelatory that was to my teenage self. The only other game I had played that did something similar was Paranoia, released the same year and written, not coincidentally, by the same author.

None of this is to say that Toon is perfect, because it isn't. As a game, I think it's a bit schizophrenic, simultaneously providing lots of specific rules for certain activities (like breaking down doors and tracking, to cite two examples that come immediately to mind), while also encouraging the referee -- or Animator -- to ignore these and other rules in the name of "fun." Again, that's not really a criticism, so much as an admission of frustration on my part. Toon has one foot planted, albeit precariously, in the earlier era of RPGs and another in the new one that was aborning. So the game is neither fish nor fowl, which made it a lot harder for me, despite my keen interest in it, to get a handle on how it was meant to be played. I suspect the answer is "however you want to play it," but I've never been wholly convinced, then or now, that that's a satisfactory answer. At the very least, it's not an answer with which I'm always comfortable.

In the end, I rather like Toon, both for its subject matter and for its approach, despite the frustration it arouses in me. That probably says more about me than it does about Toon itself. There's no question I had fun with the game when I first got, as did my friends. Mostly, we were just winging it, using the rules as inspiration and suggestions for our own rather loosely-framed sessions of comic mayhem. I suspect that's exactly how Greg Costikyan imagined the game would be played and, since we enjoyed ourselves, I can't really complain, even if the game isn't one I have much desire to pick up again anytime soon.

The Ads of Dragon: Paranoia

Appropriately enough, the final issue of the year 1984 (#92) saw the appearance of this ad:

Paranoia is a game about which I've written before. It's also a game for which I have many fond memories, despite some of my misgivings about what its appearance heralded for the hobby. On that point, I think it interesting that it appeared when it did. While I'm pretty sure that the 1984 release date was, in part, an attempt to play off its pop cultural associations to Orwell, I can't help but wonder if Paranoia is the kind of RPG that could only have been written a decade after the public dawn of the hobby. By that I mean that Paranoia is clearly the product of a mature/decadent and inward-focused hobby and would thus have been impossible to imagine much prior to this point in history.

That's why I can't shake the feeling that 1984 really does mark an important year for the hobby -- the high tide of its mass market faddishness, when designers and publishers alike began to realize that the future, such as it was, lay in selling more, different games to a shrinking market of hardcore devotees. Or maybe I'm just overthinking this, as I so often do ...

Retrospective: The Price of Freedom

1986 is usually well outside the timeframe of the gaming products I highlight in my weekly retrospectives, but I'm going to make an exception in the case of Greg Costikyan's The Price of Freedom. Published by a pre-Star Wars RPG West End Games, back when the company produced more wargames than roleplaying games (though it had released Costikyan's earlier effort, Paranoia, two years earlier), The Price of Freedom was a game of "roleplaying in occupied America," as its cover proclaimed. Its basic premise was that, thanks to the election of a "gutless" president and the USA's signing of agreements that prohibited the continuation of the Strategic Defense Initiative -- agreements by which the USSR of course did not itself abide -- the Soviets gain the military and political upper hand that enables them to launch a successful invasion and occupation of North America. Players take the role of individuals committed to fighting the Soviets and ending their reign of tyranny.

Students of history will no doubt chime in that The Price of Freedom's premise was always a ridiculous one, particularly so in 1986, a year after Mikhail Gorbachev launched a series of wide-ranging initiatives intended to reform the policies of the USSR and a mere three years before the fall of the Berlin Wall. And, if you actually read The Price of Freedom, there's little doubt that Greg Costikyan didn't think its premise plausible either, but to fixate on its plausibility is to miss the point entirely. This is, after all, a game that includes a brief English-Russian phrasebook that includes the phrase, "I am not now, nor have I ever been, a member of the Republican Party." This isn't exactly a game that takes itself too seriously.

In an amusingly titled section of the rules called "A Note to Liberal Readers," Costikyan asks his readers to "think of the game as The Lord of the Rings meets William F. Buckley" -- in short a fantasy roleplaying game, but with an Evil Empire and "orcs" grounded at least partly in the real world. Costikyan goes on to say, "The question isn't whether or not such a terrible thing could happen, but whether or not you could enjoy pretending it has." My limited experience suggests that a lot of gamers could not bring themselves to do so. Indeed, I met many who seemed to believe that The Price of Freedom was deadly serious, a kind of right-wing fever dream given life as an RPG. How anyone familiar with Greg Costikyan's earlier work could think such a thing beggars the imagination, but there it is.

And that's a shame, because, like Paranoia, The Price of Freedom is actually a well-designed little game. System-wise, it's straightforward and (mostly) uncomplicated, using a 1D20 roll under an attribute or a skill. Characters also have Hero Points that can be spent in order to save a character from death or enable them to perform an action above and beyond what would normally be allowed (such as taking two actions in a single combat round). Hero Points can only be accrued through "heroic" actions, at the discretion of the Gamemaster. What's interesting is that the Player Book, which includes everything needed to play, is only 32 pages long and much of it is taken up with topics other than rules, such as information on the Soviet occupation and how to wage a guerrilla war. The Gamemaster Book is 64 pages long and less than half of its pagecount is devoted to rules. Instead, you get several sample scenarios, adventure hooks, and advice on creating and running a campaign.

The Price of Freedom is thus an object lesson in the virtues of concision. Granted, the focus of the game is quite narrow -- rebels against the Soviet empire -- but a great deal of ground is covered nonetheless. You really could run a successful campaign with nothing more than what's in this box, which, in addition to the two rulebooks, consisted of maps and counters for use in adjudicating large combats. After all, what's a game of righteous insurgency against the godless Commies without the opportunity to engage in mass battles? The Price of Freedom is a game that knows what it's about and provides you with all the tools you need to play many adventures based on its central premise.

But, ultimately, it's that very premise that wrecks the game for a lot of people. For whatever reason, they were unable or unwilling to use the overblown fears of Soviet aggression as a springboard for a different flavor of fantasy roleplaying. Consequently, I never had the chance to play The Price of Freedom back in the day. I don't imagine the situation would be even better nowadays. It's hard, in 2010, to really remember what it was like to unironically look on the Soviet Union as a modern-day Mordor and, for many gamers, the Cold War is about as intelligible as living in fear of Napoleon Bonaparte or the Spanish Inquisition. That's too bad, because I've long wanted to run a campaign about guerrillas warfare against an implacable foe, but I've never managed to find the right inspiration to do so. For someone of my generation, the USSR seems ready-made to fill a role that, at the moment, only extraterrestrials could conceivably occupy as well -- except that aliens probably won't have an anthem as strangely compelling as the Gosudarstvenniy Gimn SSSR. Ah well.

Retrospective: Paranoia

Paranoia was first released, appropriately enough in 1984. Set in a sealed habitat called Alpha Complex sometime in the future after a nuclear war has destroyed human civilization, the game centers on the missions of "troubleshooters" working on behalf of The Computer, an artificially intelligent machine that acts as lord and God of Alpha Complex, both maintaining it and protecting against enemies internal and external. Paranoia's central joke -- the game is, after all, a broad satire of the Cold War and then-contemporary culture -- is that The Computer is insane, having ordered human society within Alpha Complex into something humorously inhuman and who sees imaginary enemies everywhere, most especially from secret societies (such as "Commies") and mutants. Naturally, all player characters are both mutants and members of secret societies as well as troubleshooters, fostering an atmosphere of madcap secrecy and dissimulation that plays nicely into the game's central premise.

Consequently, the missions on which the characters are sent by The Computer are often absurd, based on false premises and riddled with untruths, half-truths, and outright falsehoods, because the society of Alpha Complex largely functions by lies agreed upon. Thus, characters, as well as NPCs, must continue to say and do the "right" things, even when they know that those things are mistaken or incorrect, because, to do otherwise runs the risk of one's being denounced as a traitor and executed. And while Paranoia provides each character with six clones, thereby making it easy, both rules-wise and in the game's setting, to replace a dead character, self-preservation is nevertheless a prime motivation for many, if not most, characters, especially if it can be achieved at the expense of another character's own quest for the same.

It's here, I think, where a large fault line in Paranoia lies. Paranoia is an unambiguously "confrontational" game. Or perhaps it might be better better to call it "competitive." Regardless of the term used, the GM most definitely is out to get the player characters and player characters can advance by backstabbing their fellows. Now, those of who enjoyed Paranoia recognized this dynamic as all part of the fun and, given that Greg Costikyan was one the game's designers (along with Dan Gelber, Ken Rolston, and Eric Goldberg), I think it's safe to bet that this dynamic was intended, at least in part, as a commentary on the way many roleplayers enjoyed their hobby. However, not all gamers, then or now, find Paranoia's explicit encouragement of slapstick-riddled betrayal to be enjoyable. Indeed, I've known several roleplayers who considered Paranoia to represent everything they hate about the hobby and their fellow gamers.

Now, I've always had a soft spot for Paranoia, in part because it plays to my strengths as a referee. I'm good at creating quirky, possibly insane NPCs and portraying them in an amusing, if slightly sinister, fashion. Likewise, I have little difficulty switching between Three Stooges-esque hijinks and black humor, both of which are, in my opinion, essential to a good Paranoia game. Note that I didn't say "campaign." While there are rules in the game for improving one's character over many adventures, I can't recall ever using them. Likewise, though I've played the game many times over the last 25 years, I've never run anything more elaborate than extended one-shots with it. I'm not sure that Paranoia could be played over the course of many adventures, except in very special circumstances. Instead, like many humorous RPGs, I enjoy it most as a change of pace, a "palette cleanser" to be played between longer campaigns of a more "serious" sort.

Which reminds me: a note on "seriousness" seems in order here. Paranoia is a humorous game. On the face of it, you're not supposed to take any of it seriously and I think that attempts to play the game straight bleed some of the joy out of the game. At the same time, I don't think there's any question that, like all satires, its designers meant for its critiques and commentary to elicit thought and examination about the real world. The jokes here aren't all just pratfalls and Warner Brothers-style lunacy; they're intended to serve a purpose.

In my opinion, it's here, rather than in all the player vs. player and players vs. GM silliness, that Paranoia's biggest fault line lies. Many gamers -- and rightfully so -- don't want a RPG to be used a platform for political discussion (or diatribes), however thoughtful or amusingly presented. In the hands of an unskilled referee or one with a transparent agenda, I suspect Paranoia could prove a very unenjoyable experience for many players and that's the game's real Achilles heel. However, to eliminate the political/social satire would similarly drain away the much of the zany genius that makes the game so appealing to those of us who love it. It's a fine line, one that many referees simply cannot discern, making a good Paranoia adventure difficult to pull off. But in the hands of the right referee, it can be a thing of beauty.

Speaking of Greg Costikyan ...

Here's a presentation he recently gave about the value of randomness in game design. Be warned: it's long and a bit rambly, but it's definitely interesting, especially if, like me, you see randomness as an essential feature of games rather than an accidental property of "primitive" designs.

Ozymandias

It is hard for those of us who grew up with wargames, who loved them, who spent so many years studying them and taking them seriously as works of scholarship and art, it is hard for us to acknowledge this. We keep on hoping for some last minute reprieve, some renaissance; how could so much effort, so much inspired work, go for nought? How can it be that all of our labors will be forgotten? Yet it is so: whole artforms, whole genres grow and disappear. Where now is vaudeville? Radio drama? The air story? Perhaps board wargaming will survive in some form, greatly diminished from its glory days, as have poetry and the western; but that is all that can be hoped for.

In one of those odd bits of synchronicity, I was reading the above earlier this morning just as it was being linked to in another forum. With Fall finally upon us, I suppose it's natural to think about senescence and death and, for those of us in the RPG hobby, especially those of us who picked up our first polyhedral dice in the late 70s, the shade of our hobby's "old brother" -- wargaming -- looms very large.

Costikyan's essay is a little out of date, since wargaming has in fact had something of a renaissance in recent years, though it's a fairly modest one, driven largely by hobbyists. The days of selling 50-200K copies of a hex-and-chit Civil War or World War II games are long gone and they ain't ever coming back. But, from what I gather (not being a wargamer myself), there are now more games available from more small companies than there have been in some time. That's a Good Thing™ for guys who love wargaming as a hobby.

I think this offers an instructive example for us in the old school renaissance. I won't go so far as to say that traditional roleplaying's future will be the same as that of wargaming. Nevertheless, I remain committed to the notion that our hobby's previous glory days -- in the sense of mass market popularity and success -- are gone, unlikely ever to return, except through some unexpected wave of nostalgia for the 80s. I'm perfectly fine with that and, much as I'd enjoy seeing traditional roleplaying take off in a big way again, I don't expect it. And I don't think there's some "magic bullet" RPG publishers could find to change the course of history.

As Costikyan writes, lots of entertainment forms rise, fall, and effectively disappear and roleplaying as it was constituted in its Golden Age may be one of them, but that has almost zero effect on my continued enjoyment of it, since, so long as there are others who share my particular idiosyncratic passions, I don't really lack for anything. I'm not a big corporation that needs to make tons of money off gaming nor am I a salaried employee of same whose livelihood depends on huge sales. Except for the fact that I'm older and thus have less free time overall, I'm enjoying gaming as much as I ever have.

I won't go so far as to proclaim that today is a new Golden Age by any means, but it's a pretty good one. There's lots of cool stuff happening on my side of the fence and it's enriched my OD&D gaming considerably. And even if there weren't, the best part about this hobby is that you really don't need anything beyond the rules (and even they are optional) and some people to play with. Beyond the people who sit around my table each week, I don't owe anyone else anything, least of all game companies. With the notable exception of Paizo, I don't think I've bought anything from a long-established game company in about two years and I don't see that changing anytime soon. It's a really liberating feeling, honestly. If every game company with more than 2 employees ceased to be tomorrow, I wouldn't be adversely affected one bit and that's how it should be.

In short, I'm very happy with my gaming these days and have been for some time. I don't care if what I do is appealing to a wide audience and neither should anyone else. The value of any hobby is the personal enjoyment one derives from it and I get a heck of a lot of it from gaming. End of story.

Rhyme

All that is left to carry on the tradition are a few small companies like Fresno Game Associates, run as labors of love by hobbyists, who manage, in these days of desktop publishing, to produce games of remarkably high graphic quality which are, by and large, thoroughly derivative and quite mediocre. Where wargames once sold in the hundreds of thousands, a game that sells a few thousand units is accounted a success; an industry that once sold in department and chain stores across the country now has products only in a few scattered hobby outlets. Wargaming is not quite extinct, no; but all that remains are the reflex twitches of a still-warm corpse.

It is hard for those of us who grew up with wargames, who loved them, who spent so many years studying them and taking them seriously as works of scholarship and art, it is hard for us to acknowledge this. We keep on hoping for some last minute reprieve, some renaissance; how could so much effort, so much inspired work, go for nought? How can it be that all of our labors will be forgotten? Yet it is so: whole artforms, whole genres grow and disappear. Where now is vaudeville? Radio drama? The air story? Perhaps board wargaming will survive in some form, greatly diminished from its glory days, as have poetry and the western; but that is all that can be hoped for.

From a very interesting essay by Greg Costikyan on the decline and fall of RPGs' big brother. Thanks to Justin Alexander for pointing me toward it.