—————

Bunker Blocker — Luxury, x-hvy. chassis, hvy. suspension, large plant with superconductors, 4 plasticore tires, driver only, 3 linked RL’s front, HRSWC for RL’s, PS back, 2 linked PDG’s left, PDG linked to RL’s front, HD Shocks, IFE, roll cage. Armor (sloped): F 50, B 30, L 30, R 30, T 9, U 9, 2 10-point wheel hubs front, 2 10-point wheel guards back, 10 points CA around driver. Accel. 5, Top Speed 90, HC 3, 6,600 lbs.; $24,776.

—————

Zipper Zapper — Luxury, x-hvy. chassis, hvy. suspension, large plant with superconductors, 4 solid tires, driver only, turreted laser, 8 laser guided Heavy Rockets (4 linked front, 4 linked back), laser guidance link. Armor (sloped): F 65, L 35, R 35, B 25, T 9, U 10. Accel. 5, Top Speed 90, 6,600 lbs.; $25,438.

Division 25 option — Remove one rear HR and link, rearrange HR’s as follows: 4 linked front, 1 right, 1 left, 1 back. $24,988.

—————

Cowboy Stretch II — Pickup, x-hvy. six-wheeled chassis, hvy. suspension, super power plant with 2 extra power cells, 6 solid tires, driver, passenger, 2 linked MG’s in turret, 3 FOD’s linked to MG’s, 3 SkD’s linked to MG’s. Armor: F 25, R 15, L 15, B 25, T 20, U 10, 2 10-point wheel hubs front. Cargo capacity: 1070 lbs., 11 spaces. Accel. 5, top speed 100 without cargo, 90 with cargo, HC 2, 6,730 lbs.; $17,390.

—————

Calamarian — Station Wagon, x-hvy. chassis, hvy. suspension, sports car power plant, 4 solid tires, driver, passenger, RL front, turreted RL smart-linked to RL front, explosive tipped SD back linked to turreted RL, SWC. Armor: F 40, R 25, L 25, B 35, T 30, U 15. Cargo capacity: 1025 lbs., 7 spaces. Accel. 10 with up to 425 lbs. of cargo, 5 with more, HC 3, top speed 112.5 mph with full  load of cargo, 5,575 lbs.; $18,050.

Defense option — Downgrade plant to large, add 4 10-pt. wheelguards and a second explosive SD to the right. Move the other SD to the left and link the SD’s. Cargo capacity: 890 lbs., HC 2, top speed 90 with full load of cargo, 5,710 lbs.; $16,100.

Tow option — As basic Calamarian, but add super conductors and a standard hitch with 10 points of armor. Cargo capacity: 965 lbs., 7 spaces. Towing capacity (with full load of cargo): 3,300 lbs. Accel. 10, top speed 120 without trailer, accel. 5, top speed 90 with fully loaded trailer, 5,635 lbs.; $21,550.

—————

Gypsy — Luxury, hvy. chassis, hvy. suspension, super power plant, 4 solid tires, driver, passenger, RL front, SS linked to SD back. Armor: F 35, L 20, R 20, B 30, T 8, U 9, two five point wheel hubs front, two five point wheel guards back. Cargo capacity: 6 spaces, 850 lbs. Accel 10 (5 with cargo), HC 3, 5,200 lbs.; $11,990.

Q-Gypsy — Upgrade SS to PS and chassis to x-hvy. Add laser in pop-up turret, two HR’s left with blow-through concealment, HRSWC, 33 points of armor, and laser guidance link for all rockets (including the rockets in the front RL.) No cargo capacity. Accel. 5, top speed 100, 6,600 lbs.; $29,940.

1) How well does the story Farmer Giles of Ham follow the precepts outlined in On Fairy Stories?

2) How does the tale incorporate elements of historical and geographical fact?

3) How does Farmer Giles primarily gain his experience points: for killing monsters, finding treasure, or selling magic items?

4) How does the ending of the story comport with the implied end-game of the early editions of Dungeons & Dragons?

5) Compare and contrast Farmer Giles with the heroes of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

Making a sector map: This is a neat & simple process for making a jump-line map. I’ve tried to make such maps in the past for GURPS Space homebrew campaigns, but never came up with anything as good as this. The implied setting of these rules are that no slower-than-light travel is going to be happening at all– there are no coordinates or hard distances generated in this approach like those that plagued Traveller. This might imply that the worlds on the jump lines are so far apart that this is a reasonable assumption. The only problem here is that the algorithm for generating sector maps does not have crystal clear starting and ending conditions, which I would have preferred.

The world design rules are explicitly descriptive and omit all kinds of hard scientific data. It unapologetically abstains from the gaming arms race to produce the most realistic (and useless) star system generation tables. I completely agree with this design decision. The first big improvement over Classic Traveller is that weird worlds get a population penalty and terrestrial worlds get a population bonus. I suppose it is still possible to get an asteroid megalopolis right next to a deserted garden world, but it is not as bad as Traveller where population was completely independent from world type. Unlike Traveller’s long and inadvertent use of imperial units for its size code, planetary diameters are in kilometers here.

The designer defines world tech level as being what is available through local manufacturers, but admits that high-tech stuff will be available anyway and states that tech level really doesn’t have much a game effect. I’m not sure if anyone has yet determined the significance tech level for Classic Traveller, so this seems like a pretty safe design decision in comparison. (Working out the implications of its significance is a rite of passage on par with reworking OD&D’s Thief class.) Traveller had various obscure trade codes that could be derived from the world statistics. Thousand Suns has a much more free-wheeling world hooks table. This is a cool way to do it, as a couple of hooks would seem to give you some immediately playable information instead of more data to try to figure out. The designer’s push to make the referees make up new stuff reappears here in the form of the “other” hook that requires you to make up something new even though you’re rolling on a table for inspiration.

The trade system is intentionally simple. The available trade goods and their quantity are randomly determined– I can’t tell how many times you get to roll on the chart just from the rules. (Just one good type per stop is available for purchase??) Purchase and sale multipliers are determined by Bargain (Trade) tests and modified by the tech level and good category. An example would have cleared up any questions I have about the trade system, but the rules by themselves are just not clear to me. And what if you have Bargain, but not Bargain (Trade)? Probably the most significant omission here is there’s no rules here for taking on passengers. I guess this was to avoid the complexity of having to figure out how many people are going everywhere and whether or not you can take on people to go to later stops or not. To this day I’m still not sure what the exact procedure and rates for that are in Traveller. And given the flame wars I’ve seen on Traveller economics, I’m not sure I’d touch it either….

Bottom line: these rules are a very reasonable response to thirty years of science fiction world generation sequences. Everybody else wants to fix what they perceive to be the rough edges of the game, but Maliszewski has reworked the axioms to help save you some grief down stream. The way he has omitted rules in some cases and intentionally left areas for game masters to develop themselves makes a lot of sense. My only complaint is where these appear to be unintentional or where the rules he gives are unclear or under-illustrated. The latter can easily be fixed with a few magazine articles or blog posts, but fixing them myself would actually be quicker in some cases than learning and applying other games’ much more elaborate rules.

This image does not appear in Thousand Suns.

Unfortunately, there is no epic cut-away view of a planet or space station to fire the imagination. In its place we have a random plot generator that uses D12 tables to fill out a Mad Lib in this format: “the character must [verb] [noun] near [place] while contending with [complication] and being confronted by [bad guy].” I think a natural thing to do is to take whatever idea you get from this and develop it into a patron encounter with a d12 table for determining what’s really going on. Some results would indicate that things are as they seem while other outcomes might add plot twists and maybe even plot twists to the plot twists. (Such a table is important in order to prevent the GM from doing the obvious cliché every single session– though the value of an obvious cliché should never be underestimated.)

The experience point system is fairly close to GURPS, but there is an insane hard core book-keeping option included that would fit the tone of an otherwise unplayable space role playing game. (A space role-playing game without pointlessly overcomplicated subsystems is simply incomplete.) The system for spending experience points reminds me more of my beloved Third Edition Gamma World set, but there is no incomprehensible stuff glommed into them here. Probably the biggest news here is that you can’t improve your attributes after play begins. This experience system will see a lot more use than Traveller’s incarnation ever did. Indeed… most people weren’t even aware of the experience rules that were buried in Book 2….

The only thing Starmada lacks that I can see is a good set of ship designs tailored to a particular set of scenarios and rules options.

If you’ve played a setting’s space combat games a lot, there’s all kinds of minor details that you will know that are difficult to get any other way– players will ask you stuff and you’ll just know how things work. But I still hold out for some kind of good, playable micro-game treatment for this and it doesn’t really exist. If you asked me what I wanted I’d probably say… oh… a design system more or less like Starmada’s… with a sequence of play probably closer to Starfire… and with record sheets and a quick playing feel like The Last Starfighter. From there… it’d need to have several interfaces for the role playing game rules and the character stats, but all of that needs to be optional. The game would have to stand on its own first and foremost. Yeah, I know… it’s not going to happen. But there it is.

This was not a bad game in spite of the guessing stuff. FASA knew how to make things nicely degrade in capabilities until they exploded.

The Starmada rules are very difficult to dig out from the book, but the scenarios are very well designed for helping train you up.

Now the Thousand Suns space combat rules as presented in this second edition PDF… what can I say? I didn’t get very far with this before I started designing my own game, so let me just detail where I went off the rails with it. It’s a shame, as there is some good design decisions; I think there’s potential for a Thousand Suns space combat game to be really good given the overall design philosophy of the game. I just don’t think it exists yet.

• The linked weapons descriptions in the sample starships… they don’t make any sense to me. The author is clearly doing something different than either CAR WARS style linked weapons or Traveller style batteries, but I couldn’t tell you how some of these ships like the corvette or the cruiser are armed.
• The section on movement is just one giant steam of confusing text with no illustrations. What kind of map are we expected to play on…? My best guess is… this is played on squares where the diagonals are declared to be the same length as the sides. That’s weird. Well be weird, but at least make it clear what you’re doing. I need pictures for this especially given how weird it is. (Height and depth definitely ignore diagonals as well, though.)
• The sequence of play is not pulled out into a sidebar. That’s no fun for me.
• Okay… it sounds like this is a vector movement system but these ships have turn ratings when they don’t have firing arcs. I don’t think you can really have it both ways. And why having only 45 degree turns…? What is going on here? I need more pictures in order to double check that I’m reading you right. (I think you should either go full vector movement and deal with all the boredom that such a move would entail or else go more of a CAR WARS route and go mapless, give the ships an acceleration rating, and add more variety in the maneuver options.)
• In a scenario where a Corvette and a Cruiser start in the same location… the game hinges entirely on who wins initiative. If the Corvette wins, the Cruiser gets one missile shot at him before he escapes. If the Cruiser wins, then he gets two turns of fusion beam fire and two more turns of missile fire after that. I might have more confidence in such a result if sensor use and electronic warfare had a more explicit role in the sequence of play– especially if such contests could change the initiative order somehow later. As it stands, the movement system is strange and poorly communicated, the sequence of play is too lean, and the initiative system leads to bizarre outcomes.

As to the Vehicles section of the chapter, there is one glaring problem with the rules that just cause me to move on to the next chapter. It seemed kind of cute that the author left the duration of a round as being only vaguely defined…. But if you have characters and vehicles interacting on a miniatures map you really need to know how far the vehicles move in a round. The author gives us the top speeds in kilometers per hour, but we can’t do anything with that fact because the basic unit of combat time is left undefined! This is especially greivous to me, because in my opinion, no role playing game is complete until you can play CAR WARS in it.

Team Jeffro

Buck Lescynski (Security Six)
Pres: 4 (-1)
Dr: 14
Gn: 13
HG: 10
Kills: 1
8 March 2029: Won 3rd KK team event at Amex Proving Grounds. Scored MG kill, but lost salvage to fire.
17 April 2029: Lost road duel in Firehawk promotional event. Set on fire but escaped in median after fancy driving. Earned entry to Hotshot tournament round, and flown by blimp to Waco.
21 April 2029: Lost Hotshot team event at Double Drum. Killed by MG and knocked unconscious.
Ardmore: The first duelist killed in the event. Orrel Allan in the Sargasso tagged him through his right side armor early on with a lucky shot.

Coyotito Alvarez (Applause)
Pres: 3  (+2)
Dr: 11 (+2)
Gn: 12 (+2)
HG: 11
Kills: 1 (+1)
10 March 2029: Won 4th KK team event at Armadillo. Scored and salvaged MG kill, but vehicle then killed by peds.
10 April 2029: Wielded an SMG in the Grenadier Motors Sortie trials in cordoned off ruins of Forth Worth, TX.
Ardmore: Faced off against Chase Chonon (Texan) at the beginning… then slowed, turned, and pounded him into the wall with MG fire when Chase turned his back on him. It was 2-to-1 after that, so Coyotito surrendered after a token engagement.

John Turing (Econobox)
Pres: 0 (-1) Dr: 11 Gn: 14 HG: 10 Kills: 1
10 March 2029: On winning team of 4th KK team event at Armadillo. Scored MG kill, setting it on fire. Then killed by MG, set on fire and injured.
10 April 2029: Drove Firestarter in the Grenadier Motors Sortie trials in cordoned off ruins of Forth Worth, TX. Laser hit caused a Sortie to spin out, but it escaped and did not score kill.
16 April 2029: Lost Amateur Night 6-way at Armadillo. Was sideswiped and knocked unconscious.
Ardmore: Sped past Catalina Jones’ (Bombardier) and got outmaneuvered. Getting someone on your tail is guaranteed death in a Killer Kart event.

Arnold Schlamer (Scorcher)
Deceased (had been Pres 4, Dr 12, Gn 13, HG 11, Kills 1)
8 March 2029: Won 3rd KK team event at Amex Proving Grounds. Scored MG kill. Kept own KK and salvaged kill.
31 March 2029): Lost Stinger team event at Armadillo. Killed by MG and injured.
Ardmore: Killed dead by Orange Rodance (Courier) in a pass. Arnold did well by killing Orrel Allan early in the game, but could not use his speed to his advantage. Orange pulled off a devastating low-speed pivot. Arnold will be sorely missed by his peers.

Team Earlburt

Orange Rodnance (Courier)
Pres: 3 (+7)
Dr: 13 (+2)
Gn: 13 (+2)
HG: 10
Kills: 1 (+2)
17 March 2029: Lost 5th KK team event at Armadillo. Scored and salvaged MG kill, but then killed by MG.
10 April 2029: Manned a tripod MG in the Grenadier Motors Sortie trials in cordoned off ruins of Forth Worth, TX.
16 April 2029: Drove Bombardier on the losing team in a 3 vs. 3 Amateur Night team event at the Retama Duel Center Mini-Slalom in San Antonio. As last survivor, initially got the better of enemy Bomb in an ATG and ram duel, but eventually forced to surrender by rest of enemy team.
Ardmore: Kept his cool and executed a perfect low-speed pivot to outmaneuver his opponent and score a crucial kill for his team. Arnold Schlamer could not be resuscitated by the arena’s medical staff.

Catalina Jones (Bombardier)
Pres: -1 (+5)
Dr: 10 (+2)
Gn: 13 (+2)
HG: 10
Kills: 0 (+1)
21 March 2029: On winning team of 6th KK team event at Armadillo. Killed by Mg, set on fire, left vehicle, then injured.
27 March 2029: Lost Amateur Night 3-way driving a Stinger, versus a Sargasso and an Iguana II at the Double Drum. Took a turn too tight and rolled, winding up on side.
10 April 2029: Wielded a LAW in the Grenadier Motors Sortie trials in cordoned off ruins of Forth Worth, TX.
16 April 2029: Gunner in the Bombardier on the losing team in a 3 vs. 3 Amateur Night team event at the Retama Duel Center Mini-Slalom in San Antonio. Forced to surrender to end the duel.
Ardmore: Outmaneuvered and drove down John Turing (Econobox).

Chase Chonson (Texan)
Pres: -1 (-1)
Dr: 13
Gn: 11
HG: 10
Kills: 1
27 March 2029: Lost Am. Night 3-way driving a Sargasso at Double Drum. Killed by Iguana.
10 April 2029: Drove Sortie in Grenadier Motors trials in ruins of Fort Worth, TX.  Scored ram kill on Popper & wrecked.
Ardmore: Turn his back on Coyotito Alvarez (Applause) and paid for it with his car.

Orrel Allan (Sargasso)
Deceased (had been Pres -2, Dr 11, Gn 12, HG 10, Kills 0)
17 March 2029: Lost 5th KK team event at Armadillo. Killed and set on fire by MG.
20 April 2029: Lost 3-way Amateur Night event in Stingers at the Octagon. Killed by MG.
Ardmore: Got tailed early on by Arnold Schlamer (Scorcher) and was killed.

Scott Haring’s Deluxe Edition rulebook included a healthy scenario section, but this was dropped from the Compendiums. Later boxed sets included a pull-out of the same material, so it’s one of those quirks of fate that the Compendium you have is without any scenarios. The book sort of assumes you already have stacks of CAR WARS stuff, or else that it came in a box with several more essential bits….

The most common CAR WARS scenario historically is arena duelling where 5 to 7 players each design their own cars for a gigantic free-for-all. Pick a budget and go for it! (For a high powered game, try $30,000; for a simpler death-match, try $10,000.) The original pocket box included rules for a rags-to-riches style campaign with the players taking the roles of media stars. As the game expanded, corporate play (detailed in ADQ 4/4) allowed for both continuing characters and the option to play whatever scenario people were in the mood for. L’Outrance is a great supplement because it includes lots of good arena layouts and also has the corporate rules.

If you’re in the mood for street fighting, check out the now classic Sunday Drivers scenarios. These were originally published in Space Gamer, reprinted in a black pocket box edition, and then later included with the original deluxe box. In my opinion, the victory conditions are broken and this might only be fun for hard core CAR WARS fans, but if you want to see an apocalyptic cityscape crawling with autoduelists, armed pedestrians, and crazed cyclists, this is your go-to game.

My random advice:

• Learn to drive. Cars like the Stinger and the Killer Kart will make the game about driving and shooting and create an old school biplane combat feel. (An elaborate set-up that ends after fifteen minutes with someone rolling their car at 90 mph is just silly.)
• If you play cars with heavy armor, someone will have to do a ram to win the game. (This may not be fun as it will stop the game while you hash out the rules.) Also, tire shooting becomes more prevalent the thicker the armor is.
• Hand weapons and body armor can increase playing time by 50% or more at the lower divisions. My most memorable games included pedestrians, but it was time consuming to play them out.
• There’s no need to worry about budgets or designing car at first– put everyone in identical vehicles until they get the hang of the game. Make up whatever car design you’d think produce the most fun for this. Change the design and arena layout each game until you discover what you like.
• A set of heterogeneous designs are unlikely to be balanced… and even if you have a balanced set they might not be when run with your particular house-rules, referee style, and/or rules misinterpretations.

The old role playing adventures from ADQ (Convoy, Badlands Run, Grand Theft Autoduel, Midwest Passage,  etc.) can be a nice change of pace after a lot of competitive arena combat. They can often be played on just a few road sections for the most part, making a nice compact game.

There were also many mini-scenarios published in ADQ over the years. The mini-scenario concept debuted in ADQ 2/3, ADQ 3/2 presented four more, ADQ 4/2 had two, and ADQ 4/4 had five! (When ADQ went big, issues 8/2 and 9/3 presented an epic number of mini-scenarios for the Duelling in the USA series.) Earlburt and I have managed to work several of these into our campaigns: “Midville II”, “Rush Hour”, and “The Guantlet” all provided situations that very different from the usual CAR WARS session. Note that mini-scenarios can still take hours to play out– they’re only “mini” because they’re a barebones scenario that wouldn’t have required a brand-new hand drawn map to play it on.

1. If you had to pick a single invention in a game you were most proud of what would it be?

A puzzle in my Origins 2011 scenario that gave a satisfying happy ending for most groups that played the game… but that if played with a less obvious/dramatic solution, opens the way to solving a problem that was introduced in the beginning that most groups take to be window dressing. The idea for this would not have developed had I not run the adventure five times and listened to players discuss it and criticize it.

2. When was the last time you GMed?

A couple of weeks ago. I took my six-year-old daughter to the game store and we had a quick pick-up game with some dude that was waiting on his Collectible Card Game buds to show up. The two best fighters in the group fell into the kobald pit trap and the rest of the party went to check out the rat noises. A sleep spell took down some rats while the kobalds prepared multiple waves of attackers and closed off the exit. It would have been a total party kill, but the Card Dudes showed up for their Yu-Gi-Oh contest and we broke it off..

3. When was the last time you played?

A couple of years ago playing my CAR WARS characters in a session run by Earlburt.

4. Give us a one-sentence pitch for an adventure you haven’t run but would like to.

The Gamma World Third Edition Sessions: play the macro-wilderness campaign implied by the core rulebook but that does not appear to be consistent with or developed in the supporting modules.

5. What do you do while you wait for players to do things?

Pay attention to them to assess engagement and frustration levels.

6. What, if anything, do you eat while you play?

Cokes, bananas, and granola bars.

7. Do you find GMing physically exhausting?

Yes. Running two four-hour sessions back to back at Origins wiped me out. It was grueling and demanding. (Prep for a weekly session is also a big deal due to my insane desire to do bookkeeping and session reports.) I see that other people answering these often scoff at the very idea that this might be the case. Well, maybe I’m introverted so it takes more out of me, but eight hours of game mastering is for me to be in constant host/entertainer mode. It’s exhausting.

8. What was the last interesting (to you, anyway) thing you remember a PC you were running doing?

Attacking an armed vehicle on foot after your own vehicle is destroyed is always interesting.

9. Do your players take your serious setting and make it unserious? Vice versa? Neither?

At Origins, I believe that the 20+ players I encountered immediately accepted the premise of my game universe. If they were over the top having fun and goofing around, it was always directed at the other players and not at the expense of the integrity or tone of my setting. I think following an Infocom format for adventure design makes the scenario slightly more impervious to player sabotage.

10. What do you do with goblins?

Kill them and take their stuff.

11. What was the last non-RPG thing you saw that you converted into game material (background, setting, trap, etc.)?

The Ewok net-trap in Return of the Jedi was implemented by the dudes at the Lizard Man Mound in module B2 Keep on the Borderlands. The kids loved it.

12. What’s the funniest table moment you can remember right now?

Session 2 of my Prime Directive game at Origins 2011. The doctor player attempted surgery on himself to remove an Alien-like parasite. The other players razzed him at length about it… and then he failed critically. The situation was funny in and of itself, but the way the players went off on it with each other left me gasping for air.

13. What was the last game book you looked at–aside from things you referenced in a game–why were you looking at it?

I was looking at GURPS Reign of Steel to determine if it would be a good candidate for a weekly readalong project where I compare and contrast it to every other role-playing game setting I know of.

14. Who’s your idea of the perfect RPG illustrator?

Denis Loubet

15. Does your game ever make your players genuinely afraid?

It has, but it wasn’t something I was trying to do. I was surprised when the players got frightened and it was just a silly adventure seed type thing I had expanded out with a quick pencil sketch. (Looking at other people’s responses, it seems like most OSR people find this totally laughable. Well, no… the players weren’t scared themselves… but they were scared for their characters, more-or-less emotionally invested in the scenario, and acting scared as far as the game was concerned.)

16. What was the best time you ever had running an adventure you didn’t write? (If ever)

Well… I guess I developed an adventure seed into a full-blown adventure for Origins 2011, so that doesn’t count. My recent B2 Keep on the Borderlands games with Moldvay basic have been surprisingly fun. It is almost zero work from a prep standpoint and the rules are so simple the game practically runs itself.

17. What would be the ideal physical set up to run a game in?

My ideal would be a public, neutral location like a game store… but game store hours and card-game tournaments and crying children and comic-book-guy type clerks destroy this option. That leaves me having to hide in my basement or else driving to a large convention far from my home.

18. If you had to think of the two most disparate games or game products that you like what would they be?

Steve Jackson’s GURPS and Old School Revival products are pretty disparate… but micro-game design constraints for pocket quasi-rpg/wargame hybrids are even further afield of both of those.

19. If you had to think of the most disparate influences overall on your game, what would they be?

Infocom for overall plot structure. Movies and television for a vast reservoir of clichés that players can immediately grasp and relate to. Tolkien for the basic principles of setting design.

20. As a GM, what kind of player do you want at your table?

I just want people that can show up at all, really, but if I had my druthers, I’d take people that are enthusiastic and ready to game. I can hold the rules and the universe together, but it is much more fun for me if all I have to do is turn the players loose in my setting.

21. What’s a real life experience you’ve translated into game terms?

I actually can’t think of anything here. I form my games primarily out of the collective unconsciousness that is derived from a stew of dramatic clichés. It’s all escapist fantasy as I (like Tolkien) am not particularly enamored with Real Life™. CAR WARS should simulate TV action vehicle violence, if anything. Physics is far less important than dramatic flourish or even meaningful gaming choices.

22. Is there an RPG product that you wish existed but doesn’t?

A space role-playing game with tested, well-developed micro-game subsystems that both work well and are fun to play.

23. Is there anyone you know who you talk about RPGs with who doesn’t play? How do those conversations go?

Yes… they just don’t have time to play board games and role-playing games anymore, so all they do is video games now. We hash out little nuances of awesomeness from comics, movies, and games of the eighties whenever we drive or go out to eat.

1) Tolkien seems to represent a sort of Old School Revival in reaction against a pernicious New School phenomenon. What examples of literature best represent each approach to fairy-stories?

2) How is the origin of fairy-stories related to the origin of language?

3) How is the modern assumption that fairy-stories are for children related to similar attitudes that comic books and board games are “just for kids”? What is the consequence of this banishment to the nursery?

4) Why is it that a need for fantasy actually increases as we age?

5) What historical event served to awaken Tolkien’s desire for fantasy?

6) Why is drama inimical to fantasy? Do the technologies underlying modern cinema address this deficiency? Why or why not?

7) What assumptions underly Tolkien’s concept of “sub-creation” and how is it significant to the development of The Lord of the Rings?

8) What is “Real Life” as Tolkien’s opponents might define it? How could one legitimately desire to escape from it? How is this illustrated in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe?

9) According to Tolkien, what historical event explains the recurring themes of arbitrary prohibitions and fellowship with animals in fairy-stories?

10) What is “eucatastrophe” and how does it emerge in fairy-stories? According to Tolkien, how does this literary device correspond to reality?

11) How does Leaf By Niggle correspond to Tolkiens beliefs, aspirations, and his life? Would you say the story is metaphorical, allegorical, or something else?

12) Leaf By Niggle was written when Tolkien was not even halfway through writing what is now called The Fellowship of the Ring and Tolkien seems to have despaired of ever completing the work. If Leaf By Niggle is any indication, how did Tolkien expect his life’s work to be regarded after his death? Contrast this to how he is actually viewed today.

Steve Jackson created a thing of lasting beauty when he developed the armor units for Ogre. Designing your perfect force is just one of those great things in life… like making a power structure in Illuminati. The CAR WARS equipment list is also one of those quintessential things. Okay, expand it out to an Uncle Albert’s catalogue or two if you want… but fix the rules for the stupid stuff and rig it so that no single design philosophy dominates the arena floor, right? Whatever you game designer types do, though, could you please just make it sort of fun for me to spend my 3d6x10 gold pieces…? Huh? Please?! An end-all-be-all list just kills it. There has to be a meaningful set of trade-offs in the various equipment. There has to be enough to accommodate a variety of approaches without having so much that I stop caring.

Based on what we've seen so far, I don't think Thousand Suns is going to need a euphemistically titled "Rules Supplement" like this one.

So what does Thousand Suns bring to the table? Something like the still-suits from Dune. Something like the personal shields from Foundation. Armor options have a bulk stat that dings your move rating. Weapons have a concealment stat that modifies Concealment skill tests.  There’s about one page of armor stats, one page of weapon stats, and one page of equipment stats– enough of each for some options, but not so much your brain explodes. The tone is closer to Peter F. Hamilton’s Pandora’s Star than it is to anything else, in my reading. The crunch level here is more or less what Gamma World Third edition wished it could have been: enough to have sort of a flavorful microgame, but without anything so complicated or broken that you’d ignore it in perpetuity.

The cybernetics section just looks fun to me. This is the closest thing I’ve seen in a long time to something even trying for that old Steve Jackson fiddly nerdy design-a-thing awesomeness. You have a limited number of attachments and swapping them out is not trivial or cheap. You’re really not done with character creation until you spend your benefit money on some of this. This might be where this game gets a double dose of awesome.

The robots section was a pleasant surprise as well. The stats are pretty much the same as the character stats, so you don’t have to learn a completely new system to run them in your game. (I never figured out how to run Gamma World robots back in the day, so that is a relief.) There is a CAR WARS style design system for them, but you have to buy another book to get it. That would only be necessary if the costs for these robots really mattered, I guess. The only way I can really see that is if players were playing robots and had a strict budget with which to build themselves. The real acid test would be arena combat for robots of a specific cost class. (Don’t ask me where I got the idea for that.)

So there you have it. With the first eight chapters covered, I’ve picked through most everything related to characters and combat. That’s really all you need for a role playing game; the rest is just gravy. My previous suspicions are now confirmed. This game is old school science fiction retuned for a modern overtone. It is not an end-all-be-all monster game, but it is an unabashedly a game. That means you can relax and crank the wahoo up to eleven, because this is not about modelling reality or getting things “right”. The designer has more of an eye on getting things fun than anything else. People that are already committed to GURPS won’t see much new here beyond a potentially nifty setting and possibly an interesting new way to frame up their templates. However, the closeness of this game to old school D&D and Gamma World means that groups that wouldn’t touch GURPS or Traveller with a ten foot pole might just give this a shot.

One more typo:

• p. 126: “there” should be “their”

See you here next Tuesday when we continue the Readalong with Chapter 9: Starships and Vehicles.