Tuesday, March 2, 2021

Different Worlds: Issue #4

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

15 comments:

  1. In case you haven't seen it, Shannon Appelcline's "Advanced Designers & Dragons" column on rpg.net today is looking at David Nalle's "Paper Warriors" magazine article (in "Thrust: Science Fiction in Review") from 1980 which also considered the state of RPGs in the 1970s.

    https://www.rpg.net/columns/advanced-designers-and-dragons/advanced-designers-and-dragons46.phtml

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  2. "More interesting, I think, is his assertion that board wargaming was more dominant than RPGs, based in part on the fact that "board game designers out-number RPG designers five to one." Amazing what a difference half a century can make."

    I don't know...I think board game designers probably still outnumber RPG designers. Certainly here in Europe. Certainly as a boardgamer and a wargamer as well as an RPGer, there seems to be a lot more going on in the board game world. BoardGameGeek gives you an idea. But wargaming definitely seems to be the poor relation, these days.

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    1. The kind of historical simulationist wargames that he probably meant there were still pretty dominant in 1979. These days, they're a tiny niche - but board gaming as a broader category has never been bigger, and even with the amount of very small pdf-only or POD RPG stuff coming out now thru DTRPG and the like, there are probably more board/card game designers out there than RPG creators.

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  3. I can't even find mention of Legacy Press on the net, and Simulations Canada has been out of boardgaming since 1986 - which, to be fair, was almost a decade after this issue.

    Nice to see Starguard crop up, that game's been around forever. Think Reviresco is up to 7th edition at this point, and still going...well, "strong" may not be the word, but it has fans. I still have some Dreenoi around myself, and certainly some Ralnai starships.

    Lortz appears to have been (he died in 2017) a game designer, and was apparently inordinately fond of ducks - which may explain his DW appearances, since it was made by Chaosium and we all know how RQ is about ducks. May even have originated with him. BoardGameGeek has him listed here:

    https://boardgamegeek.com/rpgdesigner/1424/steve-lortz

    The Issaries HeroQuest did use very different game mechanics than RQ did, but it's certainly more mythic and freeform as well, so maybe not all that different from the original concept.

    That Costikyan letter is priceless, and spot on for his sense of humor. I particularly like the bit about writing clearly and concisely written in as opaque and convoluted a fashion as possible. The critique of mild-as-milk critiques is a little unfair though. The notoriously brutal "turkey" reviews in The Space Gamer were going by this point, and they pulled no punches when it came to calling out flaws. Saved me quite a lot of money, TSG did - and cost me some too when I couldn't resist deliberately picking up stuff just because of how bad it was supposed to be.

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  4. The more I read of this mysterious "Legacy," the more I want to get a copy, just to see for myself.

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    1. If you manage to locate a copy, I'd love to hear about it.

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    2. Did you find this blog post yet?

      https://retroroleplaying.com/gates-and-glamours/notes-on-legacy-david-feldt-1978-is-it-the-f-a-t-a-l-of-1978/

      If nothing else, you can get a sample of the writing style from the intro. It's...um...it's something, all right. :)

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    3. I ran into that post while I was searching; it made me want to get the thing even more. There's one up on eBay,
      but for way too much money:

      https://www.ebay.com/itm/LEGACY-JUNE-1978-SMALL-PRESS-TSR-Dungeons-Dragons-AD-D-D-D/113012010003?ul_ref=https://rover.ebay.com/rover/1/711-53200-19255-0/1?icep_ff3=2&pub=5574641063&toolid=10001&campid=5335841951&customid=US-LINK&icep_item=113012010003&ipn=psmain&icep_vectorid=229466&kwid=902099&mtid=824&kw=lg&srcrot=711-53200-19255-0&rvr_id=2834913444269&rvr_ts=fc6d4a421770aad71d45cadcffda935d&ul_noapp=true&pageci=044a2976-9c69-4bc8-92f4-3ba42d8a37eb&redirect=mobile

      Unfortunately, it looks like David A. Feldt died in 2012 (at only 55 years), and it was self-published, so tracking down the rights could be a bear also. I'll keep working at it, though.

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  5. Costikyan's critique falls wide of the mark because Legacy is not an RPG. If we are to believe its creator, it is a "second generation, multilevel, role assumption simulation game." Undoubtedly, the first RASG ever created! For reasons which may not be immediately apparent, it comes with cut-them-out-yourself stat cards for a Thompson sub-machinegun, carrots, asparagus, a Hulk comic book, a turtle shell shield, and a Lyr-Da Blastor. The Lyr-Da Blastor (used by Lyr-Da security forces to "destroy intruders and other matter") weighs 1 kilo, has a decay rate of 14, a half-life of 27,400 years, etc. Don't forget to fill out a Geological Time Line for your world charting major developments over the last 4 billion years. Need a break from memorizing the 6 pages of definitions, terms, abbreviations, distance-time-volume conversions, and symbols? Why, treat yourself to some of the creator's poems. What was Costikyan thinking? Legacy is priceless!

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    1. But it can't be the first RASG ever created. He clearly indicated it was "second generation" right in that quote. What, I wonder, were the first generation RASGs like, if Legacy is a refined version of them? The mind boggles at the mere thought. :)

      In all seriousness, this one probably belongs up there with Realm of Yolmi and World of Synnibarr when it comes to "What Were They Smoking?" game designs.

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    2. 1st gen... 2nd gen.... what was I thinking? Anyway, it's a hoot and I would never sell my copy. Flip through it again reminded me that I need to generate some characters and take it out for a solo dungeon-crawl sometime.

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  6. I remember owning a few issues of an RPG magazine called Gateways, which I no longer own. They didn't feature much in fantasy RPG's, but I remember they had a regular by Gygax. Anybody else remember this?

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    1. I had a few issues but was never able to get it reliably when it was being published. RPG Geek has a listing for it here:

      https://rpggeek.com/rpgperiodical/2110/gateways

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  7. I loved the Enchanted Weapon Tables, and whilst they don't quite fit how I currently use magic weapons they were heavily cannibalised to create my current system. Especially when it came to the abilities of weapons of the fourth rank (aka +2 weapons).

    We played lots of Starguard at my wargames club. The Dreenoi were quite popular (at least three players had Dreenoi armies so really large bug invasions were possible). We even had a standard Dreenoi walker tank consisting (IIRC) of an upside down turret of a M551 with six articulated wire "spider" legs and a plastic dome on the former underside of the turret (sometimes with an embedded Dreenoi driver).

    Waha's Quest was one of the rare pieces of official heroquesting to escape. The original Heroquest that Greg promised in 1978 crashed and burned because it did not support Greg's fiction. The players raided the Other Side for personal power, often quite destructively (as is normal and expected for most gamers). Neither of which was what Greg actually wanted for the game. He wanted to present an actual transformative experience (which was probably the spur for the passions and traits of Pendragon, so at least the characters transformation could be measured).

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