Dragon's Eye: Jerome Bixby

Although many of you may not know the name Jerome Bixby, there's a good chance you're familiar with the man's work.

Remember that Billy Mumy episode of the old B&W Twilight Zone? (Okay, there's actually three episodes of tTZ in which Mumy starred, so I'll be more specific). Remember that Billy Mumy episode of the old B&W Twilight Zone in which he possesses certain "magical" powers which allow him to read minds, control others, et al? Sure you do. Spielberg remade it as part of his Twilight Zone movie. Well... Bixby wrote the story on which the episode/segment were based. It first appeared in Star Science Fiction Stories No.2 from Ballantine Books in 1953 and, in 1970, was voted as one of the 20 finest science fiction stories ever written by the Science Fiction Writers of America.

In addition to his work as a sci-fi writer, he was also editor of Planet Stories from Summer 1950 to July 1951. Planet Stories was a the pulp mag offshoot of Planet Comics, and was actually funded by the comic's success.

Given Bixby's background as a writer and editor, it was interesting to find the illustration above (obviously penned by him) in issue 61 of Planet Comics over at the Digital Comic Museum. Especially considering it accompanied a short story by Thornecliffe Herrick, the writer of the comic's The Lost World series. Although Bixby's illustration was published during the summer of 1949, I think it captures the same essence of the art of the earliest generations of RPGs from the early 1970s... art done by those who weren't always/necessarily professional artists, but with capabilities enough to execute those cool ideas. It just sort of "works."

BTW, it took me a while to realize that was probably a human space explorer of some sort clutched in the beast's fist.

Lovecraft's Guidance on Literary Composition

While doing some Lovecraft research this week, I stumbled across this article he authored on literary composition in The United Amateur. It's a very good "go to" piece for all of us that fancy ourselves writers. Want the whole collection Writings in the United Amateur by H. P. Lovecraft? Download it from Gutenberg.org.

d30-based RPG Update! (or "Some Old-school Love for the King of Polyhedrals") and "The Nice Price!"

Okay... I know that's a lot to absorb in one blog post title, but I've got a lot to cover, so let's get to it!

First, some old-school love...

So for any of you who read my post on Friday, you know that I mentioned making a great leap forward on my d30-based RPG. I'd been toying around with a form of that mechanic in furtherance of the idea that most pulp heroes are just that... heroes, able to quickly vanquish hirelings and henchmen, and performing most tasks with larger than life artistry and aptitude.

As part of another blog post, I was working on a set of 1E-inspired tables to create "Mutant Humanoids" (hawkmen, crocodile-men, rat-men, et al.) akin to that beloved Saturday-morning cartoon of "savagery, super-science, and sorcery." Now... combine those two thoughts (a d30-based pulp RPG and an OSR approach to that Saturday morning cartoon), and you get "Magic, Men, Mutants & Machines: The d30 RPG of the Mutant Fantasy Future."

And now, the d30-based RPG update...

The game is tentatively retitled Magic, Men, Mutants & Machines (or MMM&M for short, or 4M for shorter. FYI, in the book I use MMM&M as it seems much more tongue-in-cheek.)

The introduction and the character sections are done. There are six character classes: 1. barbarians (men only); 2. Amazons (women only); 3. sorcerers/sorceresses (that's a mouthful); 4. technologians (aka "super-scientists); 5. Stonians (muscle-bound rockmen); and 6. Florm (amorphous utilitarian shape-changers.)

At this point, I expect the combat, magic and technology sections to be simplified/modified pickups/reworks of some the Starmasters* and The System: Expanded content, and I'm hoping to have a beta playtest version in a couple of weeks. (I'm still debating whether to include psionics rules, but I'm leaning towards "no" as they seem out of place in this setting for some reason.)

*On a side note, my co-conspirator David Welborn has been leading the charge on playtesting the Starmasters character and combat rules and it seems to be coming along nicely.

And finally, THE NICE PRICE!!!

I've sized the book a bit smaller than letter size so that it can be printed at Ka-Blam!. I'm planning on selling it at just a fraction above the hard costs, which means you should be able to get a 36-40 page rulebook (and that's a fairly dense copy layout; see the image above) with a B&W white cover for $3.50! If you want the color cover version, it will cost you $5 (+S/H in both cases.) Now, when's the last time you bought a printed RPG rulebook for five bucks? Hell, that's what the original Holmes D&D Blue Book (48 pp. + cover) cost when it came out in 1977! (To keep it truly old-school, I'm considering not releasing a PDF version. Thoughts?)

Knock knock. Who's there? Cthulhu. Cthulhu who?

So at Half-price Books yesterday, I came across this vintage magic magazine from the 1950s and procured said magazine. The cover image struck me as rather "dark," considering this issue featured a host of rope tricks and a bunch of ads selling parlor style magic tricks. Originally, it said "In this Issue: Encyclopedia of Rope Tricks." I think my retouched description suits the image much better.

A d30-based RPG System

A few weeks ago I had a chance to visit/hang with my best friend from grade/high school. He was never a gamer type, but he didn't judge me for being one either. Better yet, he (in a weird, silent way) seemed to encourage it. In fact, on a trip to Colorado in the mid-1980s, he returned with a birthday gift from a game/hobby store he'd come across in the mall... one of Gamescience's original d30s, and a white cover edition of The Armory's 30-sided Dice Gaming Tables.

About the same time he'd given me that, I started to get into Champions and Car Wars and all of those other games at the time that forsook the polyhedrals that the birth of the industry had so wonderfully embraced. I'd even started to work on my own generic RPG using nothing but d6s. Needless to say, the d30 languished unused in my dice case, even as I started to re-embrace the d10s and d20s, and eventually even the d12s, d8s, and the lowliest of all dice... the d4 (though I still don't like the way the d4 "rolls.")

So after my recent reconnection with my friend, I decided to reconnect with my d30 as well. And as most people tend to do when they've run into an acquaintance, or met somebody at a bar, I googled it. I looked to see how available they were, and what my copy of the gaming tables were selling for. I found a few proponents, like The Order of the d30.

Then I looked to see if anyone had developed a d30 RPG system, and I found Nexus Arcana. I was a little more than disappointed when I looked through the basic rules and the first die I saw mentioned was the d8... then the d6... then finally the d30. So my new goal came to be an RPG that uses the d30—and ONLY the d30. But what genre? What era?

Well, between my unhealthy obsession with Boardwalk Empire, and PBS's recent airing of Ken Burns' "Prohibition" documentary, I started thinking gangsters, and that led me to pulp stories. What better era for a d30 game than the 1930s? So that's where I landed.

I have the basic mechanic developed and it uses the versatility of the d30 in  way reminiscent of Marvel Superheroes Universal Table from the '80s. Don't misunderstand, it will not handle the wildly diverse power levels of a comic book supers game. It does, however, seem to support well the pulp hero who is capable of taking out lackey after lackey and henchman after henchman without trouble, and take on stronger opponents without dying.

Stay posted for updates and previews!