State-of-the-Art Science-Fiction Role-Playing

That's a lot of hyphens! This advertisement, which appeared in issue #114 of Dragon (October 1986) was the first time I'd heard that GDW was preparing to release another science fiction roleplaying game. Based on its title, I assumed – falsely, as it turned out – that it was some kind of prequel to Traveller. Of course, being the Traveller fan I was, the date included in the title struck me as even more intriguing. Why 2300? In the history of the Third Imperium setting, 2300 AD is just a handful of years before the Terran defeat of the Vilani (First) Imperium and the establishment of the Rule of Man (aka the Second Imperium). That really excited me, as I often thought the Rule of Man would be a great alternate setting for Traveller. My assumption proved mistaken, however, and Traveller: 2300 proved to be a very different game than I was initially expecting.

"Trespassers! This is my home."

For all my current misgivings about the 1983 AD&D module, Ravenloft, I don't actually dislike it and indeed have many fond memories associated with it. I was reminded of this when I saw this ad from issue #78 of Dragon (October 1983). Whatever you think about Ravenloft and its influence over the subsequent history of D&D, there's no denying that this is an effective advertisement. It piqued my interest when I first saw it and, even now, decades later, it grabs my attention. 

"Experience the Life of a Secret Agent ..."

Though I played a fair bit of Top Secret in my youth, I think my favorite espionage RPG was James Bond 007 from Victory Games. Even ignoring its connection to Ian Fleming's novels and the United Artists film series, James Bond 007 was in my opinion a great bit of game design, with elegant, emulative rules and terrific graphic design. I had a ton of fun with it during the brief time when it was in production (1983–1987). 

Star Frontiers Commercial (1983)

The Brink of a New Dawn

Real life intrudes, so my Retrospective on Traveller: The New Era must wait until tomorrow. In the meantime, enjoy this advertisement for the game from 1993.

Breakthrough, Evolution, Alliance

From issue #57 of GDW's Challenge, a teaser advertisement for Mythus before it had been formally announced by the company.

Issue #58 featured a similar ad:

Issue #59 ran a third variation on the ad:

Finally, issue #60 spilled the beans (note the Dangerous Dimensions) title:

Crypt of the Undead

Did anyone own this game? I ask, because I very vividly remember the advertisements for it, like this one that appeared in issue #69 of Dragon (January 1983). Epyx was a very prolific publisher of early computer games, some of which I did actually played, but Crypt of the Undead was not one of them. From what I've been able to gather from online sources, it wasn't all that good. If so, that's disappointing, given how evocative this ad is. I'd much rather learn that it's a forgotten gem, so, if you owned or played it, I'd like to know more.

Oldies but Goodies!

One of the most vexing aspects of middle age is looking back on the past with hindsight and thinking, "If only I knew then what I know now." That's precisely the thought that entered my head when I saw this advertisement from the Armory in issue #69 (January 1983). 

Marvel at how inexpensive all these early TSR products were! Had I but known and been interested in this stuff, I could have really cleaned up, since the prices, even adjusted for inflation, are all quite reasonable, especially for the OD&D supplements. Now, as it turns out, I would eventually acquire a complete set of everything produced for OD&D for similarly low prices at the end of the '80s, so I can't complain too much. Still, ads like this make me wish I had access to a time machine.

What the @!¢%*# is GURPS?

Though I was a fan of Ogre and Car Wars, both designed by the American Steve Jackson (not the British one), I didn't pay close attention to the other games his company was publishing. Consequently, when GURPS arrived on the scene in 1986, I largely paid it no heed, aside from the very peculiar advertisements I remember seeing in the pages of Dragon and elsewhere, like this one.

What's most immediately striking to me about this ad – aside from the painful lack of a question mark – is that nowhere does it explain what GURPS actually stands for. That's probably intentional, since the oddity of the game's title is memorable and might serve to pique interest in it. By the time I first played GURPS in the early '90s, it was already common knowledge that this was the Generic Universal Role Playing System, so it never really bothered me. But to a contemporary reader of Dragon? I wonder what he'd have thought.

Fantasy Lives!

I've written about Powers & Perils before, so I won't repeat myself here. I will, however, share this advertisement for it that I remember seeing in several gaming magazines in the mid-80s.

Naked Sword

I saw this advertisement in issue #89 of Dragon (September 1984):

Since I can find no evidence of its existence, I assume that it never came out. Is that correct? Does anyone by chance know anything about this? From the scant information here, I can only assume that it was a warrior-centric counterpart to Thieves' Guild, but it's hard to say for sure.

"Don't Be Another Statistic!"

Since my Retrospective on the video game Pitfall! was so well received, I found myself delving a bit deeper into the history of the game. In doing so, I was reminded of several things related to it that I had long forgotten, starting with this advertisement that appeared in various magazines around the time of the game's release.

As advertisements go, this one is pretty well done. I especially like the depictions of Pitfall Harry submerged in a tar pit and being eaten by a crocodile. 

Speaking of advertisements, the television ads for the game famously feature a young Jack Black in his first acting role:

Pitfall! was successful enough that Pitfall Harry (along with his niece, Rhonda, and pet mountain lion) made an appearance as part of the CBS cartoon, Saturday Supercade, in 1983, alongside other video game celebrities like Mario, Donkey Kong, and Q*bert.

Yes, the 1980s were a weird time.

Now Available from Your Favorite Game Dealer

Since I'll be looking more closely at Boot Hill over the next couple of weeks, I thought it might be useful to share this advertisement for the game, which appeared in issue #28 of Dragon (August 1979). 

With luck, you can read the two paragraphs above, because they make no mention of campaign play and indeed suggest that Boot Hill is anything more than a roleplaying game as the term had come to be understood at the time. Even though my friends and I never did much with the game beyond run gunfights and similar mayhem, we nevertheless considered it an RPG little different from others available at the time (except perhaps that its rules were thinner). I doubt we were alone in this.

Authentic Dungeon Masters Prefer ...

During the period between 1979 and 1982 when Grenadier Models held the license to produce official Advanced Dungeons & Dragons miniatures, the company ran lots of advertisements in the pages of Dragon magazine and elsewhere. Because they frequently made use of people dressed up in fantasy garb, I've always found them quite memorable (and silly – but in a good kind of way). Here's one I came across from issue #61 (May 1982) while preparing my earlier post from today.

Capture Action Packed Fantasy Adventure

In light of yesterday's post about Revolt on Antares, this advertisement from issue #58 of Dragon (February 1982) seemed like it would be of interest.

I owned and enjoyed all these games in my youth. After Revolt on Antares, I think Saga was probably my favorite, though Vampyre was also fun. Does anyone make games like this today? I don't mean reprints of older games, like Ogre, but new, original minigames with simple components that can be played in an hour or so? If so, I'd love to hear about them.

TSR's Latest, Greatest, Science Fiction Thriller

While searching through the Players Manual of the 1983 Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set for illustrations of goblins for today's earlier post, I came across this advertisement on its inside back cover.

As you can see, it's an ad for Star Frontiers, TSR's 1982 science fiction RPG. SF – a fortuitous abbreviation – was not the company's first foray into the genre, it was the first into what is popularly imagined by the words "science fiction," which is to say, space opera filled with jumpsuits, robots, aliens, spaceships, and laser guns. On that score, Star Frontiers delivered. Though I was (and remain) a Traveller man, I nevertheless had a lot of fun with Star Frontiers, especially its Knights Hawks starship combat expansion.

What's amazing in retrospect is how well supported the game was. Over the course of four years (1982–1985), TSR published a little more than a dozen modules for it, in addition to the aforementioned Knight Hawks, a referee's screen, character sheets, and then, finally, Zebulon's Guide to Frontier Space. That's more than Gamma World has ever received in any of its many editions. Despite this, TSR seems to have simply given up on Star Frontiers after 1985, while Gamma World kept re-appearing every so often (to increasingly little success, to be fair). Why was that?

Over the years I've entertained numerous theories, but I have no real evidence of any of them. The most likely is that Star Frontiers simply didn't make enough money to justify the effort. That's not to say it was doing badly, only that it wasn't doing as well as TSR hoped it would do, especially when compared to RPGs like D&D or even Marvel Super Heroes, both of which had a much higher return on investment during the same time period. TSR was never a particularly well-run business, it's true, but I suspect even they would recognize when their resources might be better spent on other more lucrative projects.

Again, I have no idea if this theory is true. It's just as plausible that someone in the company simply disliked the game and wanted it canned or that the main movers and shakers behind it moved on or could no longer devote much effort to developing it. Whatever the reason, it's a shame, because, as I said, Star Frontiers was fun and had some interesting setting and game mechanical elements. I would have liked to see how it evolved if it had been given the time to do so. Ah, well!

Slaying Monsters Should Be Mostly Fun and Games

Witch Hunt

Does anyone else remember this game? And, by "remember," I mean remember its advertisements from Dragon magazine?

I've looked into it and apparently, unlike other games I also saw advertised around the same time, Witch Hunt was actually released in 1983, along with an adventure module for it the following year. I've never seen it, but that's not unique to Witch Hunt. There are quite a lot of RPGs from the 1980s that whose existence I know only through advertisements. 

At the moment, the barriers to creating and selling a new roleplaying game on some niche subject are lower than they've ever been. Back in 1983, putting together and selling even a slapdash RPG involved a significant outlay of time, effort, and money. That's why there were so comparatively few in number and nearly everyone I knew in my youth all played games selected from a fairly small constellation of games. It's also why I find myself strangely fascinated by the few weird little games like Witch Hunt that somehow made it to print and sale. Clearly, it didn't do very well or else we'd all likely remember it from more than its advertising, but I nevertheless have respect for its creators for having been willing to take a chance on bringing their dream project to fruition. 

Curse the Baggins!

I've long been a defender of amateurish old school art, but even I have limits. 

While re-reading some old Dragon magazine issues from the mid-1980s, I came across an advertisement Riddle of the Ring, a Middle-earth boardgame originally released in 1977. The ad mentions that a new edition of the game, from Iron Crown Enterprises, which, at the time, held the Middle-earth license, was in the works. However, a limited number of the original edition was still available from its original publisher, Fellowship Games of Columbia, South Carolina.

The only reason I even paid any attention to this full-page advertisement is that it included examples of the artwork found in the original edition, like this:

Or this:

To paraphrase the great philosopher David St. Hubbins, there's a fine line between charming and just bad and I find it difficult to judge either of the examples of Riddle of the Ring's artwork above as anything but the latter. Maybe that's unfair, given the relatively early publication date of this game and the likely limited resources of the publisher. I understand that they're not going to look as awesome as the Brothers Hildebrandt Tolkien calendars of the same era, but, surely, they should be better than this.

Am I wrong?

Why Women Don't Play Wargames

Roger E. Moore's article in issue #20 of Polyhedron about "Women in Role Playing" reminded me of this ad that I first saw on Jon Peterson's blog. According to Jon, it first appeared in the June 1977 issue of Fantastic, a Ziff Davis pulp magazine founded by Howard Browne (a protégé of Ray Palmer).

I don't have a lot to say about this particular topic beyond relating to you my own limited experiences. I started playing RPGs in late 1979 with my neighborhood friends and classmates. Not one of them was female, but that's hardly surprising, given my age. I recall encountering a very small number of girls and women who played roleplaying games at the local games days organized by public libraries to which I'd sometimes go. When I went to college in the late '80s, I likewise encountered a handful of women who gamed, but, as in my childhood and teen years, they were unusual. I don't think I started to see female roleplayers in any number until the 1990s, thanks in no small part to White Wolf's World of Darkness games, particularly Vampire: The Masquerade. 

Obviously, girls and women are much less rare in the hobby nowadays than they used to be, though I'd still wager they're a minority overall. For example, my adult daughter has gamed with her friends since high school; most of them are men. I won't make any claims to how representative any of this with the hobby as a whole, of course, but it's all I've got when it comes to this question (which, I'll be honest, isn't something that occupies my thoughts all that much).