Underground

I'm not dead, but I am deep in the proverbial salt mines, working hard to complete the first draft of the second edition of Thousand Suns. I'm making excellent progress on this particular project and don't want to slow the momentum, so that means that I'm devoting myself fully to it. That also means – unfortunately – that daily blogging is lower on my priority list and will remain so for a bit longer. How much longer, I can't rightfully guess.

Rest assured: I shall return when I've completed the draft. In the meantime, I may make a few posts at Grognardia Games Direct about the state of the second edition and will continue to share my drafts at Advanced Grognardia during this pause. I may even pop in here with a post or two if an idea gets into my head that I feel compelled to share. However, for the next few weeks, Thousand Suns owns me.

See you soon!

Lingvo Tera

Lingvo Tera by James Maliszewski

Thoughts on Language in Thousand Suns

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Retrospective: Earthshaker!

I mentioned in yesterday's "The Articles of Dragon" post that, by 1985, I had begun to sense a nebulous but nevertheless real shift in TSR Hobbies and its games, though I could not then have really articulated what precisely it was that I was sensing. Even now, with the benefit of hindsight, I'm still not entirely sure I can pinpoint what my younger self was picking up on – but I don't think I was mistaken in my hunch. That's why I thought it might be worthwhile to take a look at some of TSR's releases around this time to see what they were like and what, if anything, they might reveal about the early years of the Silver Age of Dungeons & Dragons.

That's where the subject of today's Retrospective post comes in. David Cook's Earthshaker!, written for use with 1984's D&D Companion Rules, is a very unusual adventure module, containing many of the elements that mark this transitional period for TSR and its games. It's very clearly an attempt to try something different, both in terms of subject matter and tone. For example, Cook, in the "How to Run This Adventure" section, notes that "this is not an entirely serious adventure." That's not to say it's a "joke" module, but neither is it self-serious in its presentation. Like I said, it's an attempt to try something different and, on that front at least, it succeeds.

The module takes its name from a massive, magically powered war machine that trundles across the landscape, leaving destruction in its wake. At once a fortress, a vehicle, and an engine of conquest, the Earthshaker is a mobile threat that cannot simply be ignored or bypassed. In some ways, it's also an interesting inversion of the traditional dungeon. Rather than the character venturing into a static, well established locale, the "dungeon" comes to them in the form of an Empire State Building-sized steam-powered robot. Most of the adventure takes the form of the characters have to infiltrate this immense machine and stop its relentless march across the domain of a local lord (who can either be an NPC or, if the Companion rules are being fully used, one of the player characters). 

The adventure begins with the arrival of traveling impresario, Formiesias of Thyatis, who has made his way to the Kingdom of Norwold with his Exhibition of Wonders. Chief among these wonders is Earthshaker. Formiesias does not know the origin of the device, though he recounts several legends about it, one of which claims that it was once an evil giant who, upon having the gem that contained his soul stolen, he turned to iron. A clan of gnomes dwells within Earthshaker and they're responsible for its operation. In fact, Formiesias doesn't really understand its operation himself, though he does command a unique spell that enables him to transport the giant machine from place to place without its having to walk across – and destroy – the countryside.

Enter a group of villains who've managed to obtain the soul gem Formiesias mentioned. Turns out that it's not merely a legend but real and the key to seizing control of Earthshaker. The main action of the adventure, therefore, is the characters attempting to stop them from reaching the Brain Deck of the machine and, with it, command of the ancient device. It's a pretty straightforward premise for a scenario, all things considered, even conventional. What sets it apart is the locale in which it takes place.

A map is provided of the Earthshaker’s interior, divided into a series of decks stacked on top of each other. Unlike a more traditional dungeon, most of these decks aren't keyed with encounters or treasure. Instead, they're simply described as environments in which battles against the villains can take place, as the characters try to foil their plan. There's also some information on the inner working of the Earthshaker, too, but it's limited in scope. The Earthshaker is supposed to be this mysterious, ancient thing rather than something explicable.

Despite Cook's suggestion that Earthshaker! is not entirely serious, I don't detect too much in the way of humor. Certainly the gnomes who inhabit it possess a degree of whimsy that's reminiscent (probably intentionally) of the tinker gnomes of Dragonlance, but their presence here does not overwhelm the overall situation the module describes. Likewise, some of the NPCs, like Formiesias and even the villains, have a flamboyance that borders on comical, yet I don't feel they cross the line into parody. It wouldn't be wrong to call Earthshaker! "light hearted" in its overall tone, though. The Tomb of Horrors this is not!

I’d even go so far as to say there’s a certain exuberance to Earthshaker! There’s a sense that Cook was exploring the outer limits of what D&D could encompass. The presence of a gigantic, walking war machine in a fantasy setting harkens back to a time when the game’s identity was still fluid and the boundaries between genres were porous. I find that aspect of the module appealing now, though I recall being somewhat irked by it at the time. Even so, the environment Cook presents is sufficiently intriguing that I was willing to overlook any reservations I had about its blending of fantasy and quasi-technological elements.

That said, I never actually ran Earthshaker! Like many modules of this period, it offered compelling ideas but never quite rose to the level of a “must play” scenario for me. Re-reading it forty years later, I’m no longer certain whether that judgment reflects a shortcoming of the adventure itself or simply my own preferences, both then and now. Indeed, I can’t help but wonder whether some of the shift I perceived in TSR during the mid-1980s was, in fact, a shift in me. I turned sixteen in 1985 and had already been playing Dungeons & Dragons for nearly six years. It’s possible I was simply growing restless and, without quite realizing it, projected that restlessness onto the game.

Viewed in that light, Earthshaker! might be less a misstep than a sign of a game stretching beyond its earlier boundaries, sometimes awkwardly, but not without imagination. It may never have compelled me to play it, but its central idea was clever nonetheless, a testament to the power of a strong conceit even when its execution is uneven. If nothing else, it serves as a reminder that D&D has always been at its most interesting when it dares to be a little strange.

The Articles of Dragon: "Update from the Chief"

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that, for all the fanfare that accompanied the publication of issue #100 of Dragon (August 1985), it nevertheless felt like the end of an era – at least to me. At the time, I couldn't have meaningfully articulated precisely why it felt this way, but I felt it nonetheless. Something intangible had shifted and I don't think I was alone in sensing it, even if its ultimate source remained nebulous.

I was reminded of this fact as I cracked open issue #101 (September 1985) and read it for the first time in decades. The very first article in the issue is "Update from the Chief" by Gary Gygax himself. Subtitled "About the past, the present, and a bit of the future," it's a very interesting snapshot of the state of TSR during the period between Gygax's return from California in late 1984 and his loss of control of the company in late October 1985. 

Take note of those dates, particularly the second one. This article appeared less than two months before Lorraine Williams snatched TSR from Gygax's grasp, doing so just as he had begun to right the company's finances after years of mismanagement by the Blume brothers. TSR wasn't out of the woods yet. There were still plenty of problems to be addressed and it's far from a certainty that, had Gygax remained in charge of TSR, they would have been. That's precisely why I find this article so notable: it's the last gasp of the pre-Lorraine Williams TSR, for good and for bad, and, in retrospect, I find it fascinating that it somehow aligns with my own adolescent sense that the wheels were indeed coming off the wagon in 1985, even though there is no way I had any inkling of what was happening in the boardroom at Lake Geneva.

The article begins with Gygax continuing to report on the possibility of a D&D movie, something he'd been pursuing while during his exile in California. From what he says here, the project was, by this time, still not very far along. He mentions that there is still no finished script, nor any actors or director attached to it. I've never really understood the point of a D&D movie. However, it's clear that getting one made was personally important to Gygax and he beat that particular drum right up until he departed TSR for good before the end of the next year.

Next up, Gygax crows about how well Unearthed Arcana sold – and rightly so. For all my grousing about the book's shortcomings, I know it was very popular at the time of its release. For many months, it was indeed a very hot property and often difficult to find. Gygax mentions that it outsold TSR's expectations. Those purchases, along with the release of Oriental Adventures no doubt played a big role in helping to fill the company's coffers. Say what you will but Gygax understood well what would appeal to the AD&D audience at the time. He also announces the upcoming release of Temple of Elemental Evil. While I don't personally think much of this "supermodule," like UA, it sold well. After all, AD&D fans had been waiting for the conclusion to The Village of Hommlet for more than five years by this point. Pent-up demand probably served it well. 

Though focused more on matters at TSR Hobbies itself, Gygax was still shepherding other D&D-related entertainment projects beyond the aforementioned movie. He notes that the D&D cartoon had been renewed for another season and expressed hope that it would be renewed again after that. Obviously, that didn't come to pass. Beyond that, there is talk of Amazing Stories and his own Greyhawk novels featuring Gord and Chert. 

More interesting to me is mention of "a game and companion book series based on modern-day action adventures." The game, about which few details are given, was to be written by Gygax and his son, Ernie, with assistance from Jim Ward, and Paul Yih (whoever that is). He calls the game "different" and "family-oriented." If anyone has any idea what this game might have been or if any work on it had ever begun, I'd love to know more. Could it, perhaps, have been an early version of Cyborg Commando or something in that general vein? 

Finally, Gygax takes a moment to once again excoriate "unscrupulous attacks and baseless accusations pertaining to role-playing games in general and D&D in particular." I certainly can't blame him for his distemper. There was a lot of nonsense circulating about Dungeons & Dragons in the mid-1980s and, while I personally never ran afoul of it, I've met enough people over the years who have that I can understand why Gygax was so angry about it all. The mendacity of these attacks is galling. I'm all the more grateful that my introduction to the hobby, just a few years prior, was free of this sort of thing.

"Update from the Chief" isn't really an article in the usual sense. Rather, it's just a collection of news items and musings from the time right before Gygax was booted from his own company. It's thus a remarkable historical document in its own small way. It's also a window on a period in my own personal involvement with the hobby when I began to sense a change in the wind.

Chronicle

Chronicle by James Maliszewski

A Brief History of the Thousand Suns

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Pulp Science Fiction Library: Deathworld

Though not my original intention, apparently I am going to be writing more posts about the stories that gave birth to the characters described at the back of the Traveller supplements 1001 Characters and Citizens of the Imperium. Taken together, these stories form something I elsewhere dubbed "Appendix T," being for Traveller what Appendix N was for AD&D: a window into the kinds of tales characters, and situations the creator of the game found notably enjoyable and/or influential on his thinking as he created it. 

A couple of years ago, I noted a "problem" with Appendix N and the putative Appendix T suffers from a similar problem. Marc Miller provides no commentary on the books and authors he cites, leaving it to us to figure out what and in what way they were inspirational to him. This is in contrast to, say, the literary appendix found in RuneQuest, which is much more explicit about the debts owed to its contents. This fact in no way lessens the value of reading any of these books, but it does sometimes make it harder to declare definitively that this or that element of a roleplaying game was based on something from a particular book.

And sometimes it's quite obvious. That would seem to be the case for Harry Harrison's 1960 novel, Deathworld, which was originally serialized over the course of six issues of Astounding Science Fiction before being collected under a single cover and published separately by Bantam in September of the same year. The book's success would result in two sequels, both of which were also serialized in Analog (the new name of Astounding) in 1964 and 1968 respectively. Though I've read all three of these novels, this post focuses primarily on the first and, in my opinion, best of the trilogy.

Deathworld follows the adventures of Jason dinAlt, a gambler with limited psionic abilities that prove useful to him in his chosen vocation. Jason travels to the planet Pyrrus after impressing its ambassador with his skill at gambling. Pyrrus possesses an extraordinarily hostile environment, consisting of high gravity, violent weather, seismic instability, radiation, and a biosphere in which every organism, from animals to plants to microbes is lethally adapted to kill humans. Pyrrus is quite literally a deathworld and Jason seeks to test his mettle against its many dangers. Gambling is not just his profession, it's also representative of his character. He's a risk taker by nature and the deadliness of Pyrrus intrigues him on almost a primal level. 

The planet's settlers survive there only through constant training and militarized discipline. Despite this, enough of them still die that their numbers continue to dwindle. Consequently, Jason becomes intrigued by why the planet is so uniformly hostile and why the colony is failing despite the extreme measures it has taken. While doing so, Jason discovers a second group of human colonists, the “grubbers,” who live in the wilderness in relative harmony with Pyrrus. Unlike the city dwellers, whom they call "junkmen," the grubbers use psionic “talkers” to coexist with the planet’s life and kill only when necessary. Jason then comes to realize that the biosphere of Pyrrus itself is psionic and reacting collectively to the behavior of the colonists who have settled on it. Thus, around the city, all life is telepathically unified in hostility, responding to their constant aggression with coordinated, evolving attacks. Attempts by the city dwellers to destroy the source of this hostility only worsen the situation, confirming that the conflict is systemic rather than merely localized.

Having discovered this, Jason theorizes that Pyrrus is not inherently a deathworld but has only become such in response to human attitudes. The city dwellers' indiscriminate violence has triggered the planet’s ecosystem into treating them as an existential threat, while the grubbers’ more balanced approach allows a degree of coexistence. Jason's solution is, therefore, not technological but cultural. He proposes the gradual integration of the two groups of colonists, with exchange of knowledge and a shift toward living in harmony with the planet's environment. In this way, Jason offers them a path by which Pyrrus can cease to be a deathworld and become a home better suited to human life.

As I said, it's pretty easy to see what this book inspired in Traveller. First, there's Jason dinAlt himself, who's an archetypal space-going adventurer, driven by a desire to challenge himself against whatever the galaxy throws at him. Second, there's the low-level psionic abilities, something Traveller has included since the beginning. Third, and probably more importantly, there's the mystery surrounding the deadly nature of Pyrrus and its environment. Traveller adventures are full of planets like this, where its society, history, or environment (or some combination of them) are presented as problems to be solved. Taken together, Deathworld strikes me as having obvious connections to Marc Miller's masterpiece.

On a personal note, I came to Deathworld and its sequels because of having read Harrison's other series of pulp sci-fi romps featuring the Stainless Steel Rat. Though different in both their content and overt style, the two series share certain traits, most notably their social satire and use of Esperanto. Though I can't be certain, I believe it was one or the other of these series that first introduced me to the constructed language and I've been an admirer of it ever since. That's why Thousand Suns employs Esperanto as a stand-in for the universal Terran language of the setting. Regardless, Deathworld is a quick, fun read and worth your time if you can find a copy. It's short and unpretentious, both of which I consider cardinal virtues in a literary age replete with their opposites.

Keep Them Hungry: Fading Suns Edition

One of these days, I'll need to do a proper campaign update for my Dark Between the Stars Fading Suns campaign, which I've been refereeing since October of last year. We're only twenty sessions in, but things are evolving quite nicely. The players have all settled into their characters and the characters are now well established within both the setting and the group. They've even added a new companion, an amnesiac Vorox named Guron, who'd previously been employed as a chef by Count Ennis, the governor of Pandemonium, the planet on which they're currently staying. We're still in the early days, especially compared to House of Worms, but things are going well and I have every reason to expect this campaign has taken root and will still be ongoing for some time to come.

However, there were a couple of minor incidents in yesterday's session that reminded me of a post I wrote almost a year ago. In that post, I noted that it's important to keep the characters "hungry," which is to say, they should always want more than what they're capable of acquiring. It doesn't matter what it is that they want – money, status, knowledge, etc. – only that their reach should exceed their grasp. I say this, because experience has shown me that it's a good driver of both individual adventures and the larger campaign. Want keeps the characters (and players) focused and motivated, which is important, particularly in the early weeks and months of a campaign, before other more "elevated" goals take center stage.

Which brings me to yesterday's session. The characters, led by Sir Yamashiro Li Halan, had returned to The Hub, Pandemonium's capital, after a sojourn in the Badlands. They'd come back to the city for several purposes, most importantly the acquisition of new equipment to replace gear used during their expedition. Initially, they thought this would be a simple matter, since Yamashiro is wealthy. However, as they soon discovered, he's only rich according to the prevailing standards of the Known Worlds. His annual income is 15,000 firebirds – not bad for a wandering wastrel and very good compared to, say, a skilled laborer whose monthly income is probably 20fb a month, but nowhere near as much as everyone had previously assumed.

This meant that the characters' upcoming spending spree was more constrained than anticipated. After several combats against various foes in the Badlands, it was decided both Father Kosta and Holai liTarken needed standard shields (at a cost of 500fb each). Additionally, they needed more ammunition. These small purchases alone added up to nearly 1500fb. That's nearly half of what Yamashiro had on hand. On top of that, the characters had "requisitioned" an air yacht registered to House Gilgar and needed to replace its transponder with one that recognized their current possession of it. This was beyond Iskander Ecevit's skills to on his own. Instead, he turned to his contacts in the Supreme Order of Engineers, who were suspicious of Yamashiro's claims to own the yacht (rightly so) and thus demanded 2000fb to replace the transponder in a timely manner.

Added to the other expenses already accrued, this exceeded Yamashiro's available funds. Never fear, though, as, at the same time the characters acquired the air yacht, they also acquired a case of blaster rifles that could easily be sold to the right people in the Hub – or so they thought. The task of fencing these weapons feel to Orphos the Scraver. It was a simple enough job that should have taken no effort at all. Unfortunately, a roll of 20 on any action is a critical failure and that's exactly what Orphos' player rolled. That brought the attention of the local constabulary, who after failing to extract a bribe from the Scraver to overlook his criminal activities, threw him in jail for the night, during which time they tried (without success) to find out who he was working for and how he'd obtained so many blaster rifles. Though he managed to throw them off the scent, he'd failed to find a buyer, leaving the characters without sufficient funds for all their expenses (and he was incarcerated).

The characters now have some choices to make and those choices will have consequences. Most likely they'll forgo a new transponder, the reasoning being that, so long as they continue to operate in the Badlands, they need not worry about anyone questioning whether they actually own the vehicle they're piloting. That comes with risk, of course, but probably smaller ones than having insufficient ammo or defenses. Choices like this may seem small but they're nonetheless important and I relish them, especially in the early days of a campaign. 

Lowlife

Back in the far-off days of the early Old School Renaissance, when Labyrinth Lord was everyone's go-to B/X Dungeons & Dragons retro-clone, Goblinoid Games published two supplements to it that I really liked: the Advanced Edition Companion and Realms of Crawling Chaos. Among the many admirable qualities they shared were illustrations by Sean Äaberg. As I say in my linked reviews, it took me a little while to warm up to Sean's punk, underground comix-inflected artwork – I am, after all, a stodgy traditionalist about many things – but its anarchic energy eventually won me over. His illustrations remind me a bit of Erol Otus's early work mixed with some of the stuff I saw in White Dwarf and other British fantasy from the '80s but with its own unique sensibility. I love it and think it's a great evocation of the DIY spirit of the early hobby.

That's why, when I found out a couple of weeks ago, that Sean has been working on a tabletop RPG called Lowlife based on his previously published co-op boardgame of "swords, sausages, and sorcery," Dungeon Degenerates, it caught my attention. Though I'd never played the boardgame, I knew of it and liked its garish colors and funky artwork. Likewise, the reviews of the game I found online were all very positive, praising both its mechanics and the world if presented, which piqued my interest. Plus, as I mentioned, Sean has a long history of involvement in the OSR, so I knew I wanted to give his new project a shout-out.

If you follow the link above, you can find out more about Lowlife and Sean's plans for it. There's even a preview primer of it that'll give you a bit more information, along with sample layouts of the rulebook. Elsewhere, Sean talks about the game and its inspirations – a blend of "classic fantasy tropes, the scenes you’d find airbrushed on the sides of vans, the scenes of metal record sleeves, black light posters, the grit of Oldhammer with the fun & unexpected twists of the classic Japanese Role-Playing Video Games." It's precisely the kind of gleeful goulash of elements and influences that have always characterized the best old school RPGs and I look forward to see what comes of it. 

Retrospective: Mage: The Ascension

I know that, for some readers, White Wolf's World of Darkness games represent a definitive break with the early days of the hobby and, therefore, aren't a fit topic for discussion on this blog. I won't argue the larger point, even though I think White Wolf's RPGs represent less a revolution than an evolution of trends begun many years before. What I will say is that these games played an important role in helping me to better understand what I liked and what I didn't in roleplaying games and, for that reason, I cannot simply dismiss them. 

Even so, I was never a big fan of Vampire: The Masquerade. For a variety of reasons, it never quite clicked with me and its immediate successor, Werewolf: The Apocalypse held even less appeal. Mage: The Ascension was a different matter entirely. Released in 1993, it was the World of Darkness game that made me finally take serious notice of the line. Like its predecessors, Mage presented a contemporary setting shot through with supernatural elements and an emphasis on mood, theme, and personal struggle. Unlike them, however, Mage was not content merely to reframe familiar folkloric monsters. Instead, it aimed at something more ambitious: the reimagining of Reality itself as a mutable construct, shaped and constrained by human belief.

This is the beating heart of Mage: The Ascension. As presented in the game, Reality is not fixed, but rather the product of consensus. What humanity collectively accepts as possible becomes so; what it rejects becomes difficult or even impossible to achieve. The titular mages are those rare individuals who have awakened to this truth and, through force of will, can impose their own understanding of Reality upon the world. It's an absolutely terrific premise and one that works well within a modern-day setting. It allows for a conception of magic – or magick, the rulebook rather portentously calls it – limited only by imagination. At the same time, this conception also includes the risk of paradox, the backlash that occurs when a mage’s actions too flagrantly contradict the already established consensus of the world.

Mechanically, Mage divides magic into "spheres," which are broad domains such as Forces, Mind, and Time. In principle, the system grants players remarkable freedom to devise magical effects on the fly, constrained only by their characters’ knowledge of the relevant Spheres and their own imaginations. In practice, however, this freedom comes at cost. The system demands a degree of negotiation and interpretation that can prove taxing, particularly for referees accustomed to clearer guidelines. Where most roleplaying games offered more concrete procedures for adjudicating actions, Mage often substituted a framework that must be continually interpreted and, at times, reinvented every time a character attempted to employ magic.

That's not necessarily a criticism, since Mage attempted to incorporate some of this tension into its setting as well. The conflict between boundless possibility and practical playability is mirrored in the conflict between the various Traditions to which characters belong and the agents of a rationalized, scientific consensus known as the Technocracy. The Technocracy is both a terrific adversary and brilliant bit of worldbuilding. Not entirely villainous, its agents are committed to the preservation of a stable and predictable Reality, one in which even "sleepers" (i.e. non-mages) can enjoy the fruits of magic in the form of technology. Consequently, the central struggle of Mage is not a simple battle between good and evil, but a more nuanced contest between competing visions of how the world ought to function. It's this philosophical battle that drew me in all those years ago and still compels me even now.

Despite – or perhaps because of – this, Mage is not an easy game to run or to play. Its rules, while evocative, are often vague, leaving much to the discretion of the referee. This can result in a lack of consistency, as similar situations may be adjudicated differently from one session (or one group) to another. Moreover, the demands placed upon both players and referee are considerable. To make effective use of the system requires not only a firm grasp of its mechanics but also a willingness to engage with the underlying assumptions of its worldview. Even then, if my experiences with the game are any indication, it was often tough going. 

That's why, in the end, I judge Mage: The Ascension as a flawed masterpiece that's very much of its time. Its themes of subjectivity, relativism, and the limits of objective truth remain compelling, of course, especially to the more philosophically inclined segment of the gaming population. Likewise, I can't help but admire its boldness in attempting to expand the scope of what roleplaying games might address, both mechanically and thematically. However, I think it's fair to say that its reach exceeded its grasp – but at least it was reaching for something genuinely new and imaginative. When I first read the game back in the '90s, I thought that was worth celebrating and I still do.

The Articles of Dragon: "The City Beyond the Gate"

Though I haven't devoted many posts to the subject, Dragon magazine published quite a few adventures in its pages over the years. Most of these were, of course, for Dungeons & Dragons or its "big brother," AD&D, though there were also a handful for other RPGs, like Gamma World, Traveller, and Top Secret. I used some of them from time to time, but, if I'm honest, almost none of them made much of a lasting impression on me, hence why I've never (so far as I can recall) had much to say about them on this blog. That's not necessarily a comment on their quality, since, as I said, I remember using a few of them, but simply a statement on how little I remember them.

Perhaps the only exception to this is Robert Schroeck's "The City Beyond the Gate," which appeared in issue #100 of Dragon (August 1985). There are a number of reasons why this is the case, as I'll explain, but I suspect the most likely is the image accompanying this post (by Roger Raupp). Take a good look at it and you'll immediately understand what I mean. Yes, that's a bunch of AD&D fighters tussling with a punch of punks and Bobbies, including several in riot gear. Just what the heck is going on?

The adventure, intended for use with high-level characters, is, at base, an elaborate fetch quest, with the characters tasked to find and bring back the legendary relic, the Mace of St. Cuthbert. What sets it apart – and why I still remember this adventure at all – is a bit of cleverness on Schroeck's part. Rather than, as one might expect, state that the relic is hidden away in the treasury of some powerful villain from whom it must be rescued, he instead places it on 20th-century Earth. More specifically, he places it in a historical display within the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, England!

The characters still have to locate and abscond with the Mace, of course, but now they must do so while contending with the realities of the real world – or at least a RPG facsimile of it. Most obviously, they must contend with the fact that, for the most part, the real world is not a magical one, which means many of their spells and items will have limited utility. Just as importantly, their appearance – wearing armor and strange robes, not to say anything of the presence of demihumans – will raise more than a few eyebrows. To even begin to succeed in their mission, they'll need to keep a low profile or find a way to blend in with the locals, whose customs and technological society will be utterly alien to them.

It's a great set-up for an adventure and one I enjoyed greatly in my youth. Morgan Just, a character about whom I've written in the past, was among the characters who stepped through the gate into 1985 London and he did a very poor job of disguising himself to my amusement (and that of the other players). Most of the fun comes not from fighting deadly foes but from contending with the completely bizarre (to an AD&D character) nature of the real world. Nearly everything will be unfamiliar to them and even interacting with potentially helpful NPCs becomes fraught, since the characters' ability to explain who they are and what they want will raise lots of questions, not to mention opposition.

That said, the adventure is not without certain flaws, chief among them being its treatment of the "real world." As depicted in the adventure, London is something of a cartoon version of itself. For example, its encounter charts include street urchins out of Dickens, as well as beer wagons and the aforementioned punks. Tom Baker's Doctor also makes an appearance too, but I'm more than willing to forgive that, since it actually seems much more plausible than the Artful Dodger. I'm probably being unfair about this, since the spirit of the scenario is already somewhat campy and I doubt most players, even London natives, will care too much about how realistically it depicts the city.

That's why I still look back fondly on "The City Beyond the Gate." The situation it depicts has a lot of potential for great gaming. There's an overall "rollicking" quality to the thing that's charming, even with its off-kilter version of London. Plenty of fantasy stories were about people from our world crossing over into a fantasy world, but comparatively fewer are about the opposite. That alone makes the adventure unique and memorable, but I also find the overall concept to be quite compelling in its own right. I'm a big fan of the adventure, warts and all.

The Terran State (Part II)

The Terran State (Part II) by James Maliszewski

Further Thoughts on Interstellar Governance

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Pulp Science Fiction Library: Demon Princes

The trouble with Muses is that, ultimately, they're in control, not you. As I continue to work on the second edition of Thousand Suns – the draft is now close to half complete – my mind has been wandering ever farther away from the more well-known varieties of fantasy. Of course, as I recently argued, there's still lots of overlap between these two genres and not merely in terms of content. Many of the most talented and influential writers of the past tried their hands at both and succeeded brilliantly.

A good case in point is Jack Vance. Vance is a paladin of Appendix N, being one of only a handful of writers Gary Gygax singled out as being one of the "most immediate influences" upon his vision of Dungeon & Dragons. Of course, Gygax did so for Vance's tales of the Dying Earth, whose magic system he adopted for the game, and not for his science fiction tales, of which there are a great many – indeed, far more than his fantasy stories. 

Among the most celebrated of Vance's sci-fi works is his "Demon Princes" series, the first of which, Star King, was serialized in the December 1963 and February 1964 issues of Galaxy Magazine before being published by Berkeley Books later in '64. The first three books in the five-book series appeared fairly quickly, with The Killing Machine also appearing in 1964 and The Palace of Love in 1967. The fourth and fifth books, The Face and The Book of Dreams, did not appear until more than a decade later, in 1979 and 1981 respectively, which was right around the time I first entered the hobby of roleplaying. 

However, I wouldn't take much note of any of these books until several years into my introduction to Traveller. That places it somewhere in the vicinity of 1982 or '83, depending on when it was that I first acquired Citizens of the Imperium. That supplement, along with 1001 Characters, is notable for having included Traveller stats for a selection of literary SF characters, ranging from John Carter of Mars to Slippery Jim diGriz to Dominic Flandry. At the time, I already knew many of these names from novels and stories I'd read. Others, though, were new to me and they sent me off to the local public library on a quest. 

Among those unfamiliar names would be that of Kirth Gersen. Citizens of the Imperium associates him specifically with the second book in the series, The Killing Machine, but also mentions it as part of a five-book "Demon Princes" series. To my youthful mind, "Demon Princes" didn't sound like the title for a science fiction series, so I was initially confused as to why it was included alongside more well-known pillars of SF. Likewise, I had not yet read any of Vance's space operas, so my confusion was only heightened. Fortunately for me, I eventually got around to tracking down Star King and its four sequels. I enjoyed them so much that I sought out more of Vance's science fiction and the rest is history.

The titular Demon Princes of the series are not supernatural entities by five interstellar crime bosses, against whom Gersen wishes to exact revenge for their past in bringing ruin upon his home planet. Having been trained by his grandfather for this purpose, Gersen dedicates his life to hunting down them down so that justice may be done. Each of the five novels follows his pursuit of one of these Demon Princes. Though the novels include plenty of action, one of the things that's most interesting about them – or at least is to me – is how much investigation and infiltration they include. Gersen's efforts to locate his quarry, some of whom have gone to great efforts to conceal their identities, is every bit as central to Vance's stories as is dealing with them once they've been found.

Though linked, each novel presents a largely self-contained exploration of a different world or culture, often shaped by the personality of the Demon Prince Gersen is presently seeking. Consequently, the series, like so much of Vance's oeuvre, is a picaresque adventure through strange societies with elaborate social codes and fragmented political systems where justice is personal rather than institutional. That makes Gersen’s quest more than just a hunt for enemies; it becomes an extended engagement with questions of identity, culture, and obsession in the far future, all of which play to Vance's strengths as a writer and storyteller.

Prior to writing this post, it had been decades since I last read any of the Demon Princes novels and that's a shame. Like so many of the books that inspired Traveller, they're fast-paced, pulpy adventures filled with quirky and memorable characters and equally quirky and memorable situations. They're not deep scientific speculations about a possible future and that's OK. Sometimes, you just want to read a fun, engaging novel about one man's quest to bring justice to some bad guys who deserve what's coming to them. In that respect, the Demon Princes series delivers and does so enjoyably.

By Any Other Name (Part II)

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

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

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

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

Science Fiction is Fantasy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Terran State

The Terran State by James Maliszewski

Whether Federation or Empire, Some Truths Remain

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Retrospective: The Argon Gambit

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

REPOST: The Articles of Dragon: "Dragonchess"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Reconciliation

Reconciliation by James Maliszewski

The Ominous Meaning of an Innocuous Term

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Pulp Science Fiction Library: The Rebel Worlds

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Interstellar War in the Thousand Suns

Interstellar War in the Thousand Suns by James Maliszewski

The Consequences of Time and Distance

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The Thousand Suns Campaign Loop

The Thousand Suns Campaign Loop by James Maliszewski

What the Second Edition Aims to Do

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Retrospective: Fading Suns

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Articles of Dragon: "Pysbots and Battle Mechs"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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