I had a busy day today...

...But mostly it was spent working on my other blog and trying to decide what stuff to auction off on EBay. Check out my "20 Questions about the Mistlands" post on my other blog (button to the right) and let me know what you think of this unique area of my campaign world. I also had a Doctors appointment, and was prescribed a medication that my insurance company refuses to pay for, which is becoming all too common lately. I went back to my doctors office and got samples the drug company rep left them.

I also, of course got a bunch of stuff in the mail from EBay, almost all Star Fleet Battles universe stuff-

The non-SFB universe stuff is a copy of Heritage Models "Star Trek - Adventure Gaming in the Final Frontier". I knew they must have made all those miniatures for a reason, it's copyright 1978 though. The other two books are "Starfleet Academy Training Command- Line Officer Requirements" Volume 2 and Supplement. Pity Volume 1 didn't make it into the set. They are copyrighted to 1987 D. Schmidt, and there is an ad in the middle of the supplement to order more Star Trek and other sci-fi stuff from "New Eye Studio", lots of blueprints for ships, and some more Starfleet guides, a catalog for their Battlestar Galactica, Space:1999, Star Wars and Dr. Who stuff.

Of the SFB universe stuff I got a few doubles in there, but one of them was the Prime Directive rulebook, and if we ever play an extra will be handy. One was Carrier War for F&E, but this one is still in the shrink wrap, so I think I'll be able to resell it pretty easy. The last was a Captain's Log, that should resell easy enough too.

Games That Define Us- Great Khan Edition

Obviously, since this is an OSR blog, I feel like I should open with D&D/AD&D. I saw the ads for the Holmes Basic Set in "Boy's Life", the Cub Scout magazine and I was hooked, it took me something like a year to find a store that sold that D&D boxed set, sometime in early 1980. My next D&D purchase was the AD&D Monster Manual, then the Cook/Marsh Expert Set, followed by a Christmas present of both the AD&D Players Handbook and Dungeon Masters Guide, this set the tone for some confused rulings over the years as a DM, since I was playing a hybrid of Holmes, the X half of B/X and AD&D, but over the years I started to fall more in line with AD&D orthodoxy, with a few exceptions. Then, in 1985, I pre-ordered Oriental Adventures and it has been almost an obsession ever since.

Chess- Chess had to make the cut here because it is one of the first thinking man's board games that I ever learned. I learned how to play when I was in second grade, just because it was one of the quite games on the shelf in my classroom we got to play during recess time when it was raining or the weather was otherwise too bad to go outside and play. I really didn't learn the game until high school though when I played regularly with my principal, who was a ranked player, and occasionally I'd even win. My real claim to fame though is that I once played chess against a guy who had played against Bobby Fischer, I met him through my buddy Darryl's dad. Totally got my ass handed to me, it was worth the experience.

Risk- Ah, Risk, the game of world conquest. You taught me that the Ukraine was gigantic and the names of other exotic places. You were wrong about the Ukraine, but I guess a game produced during the cold war wasn't going to give Russia it's due, right? This game taught me two things, basic strategy and the importance of luck. Play with good strategy, take a few chances, and hope your luck holds; I was Risk champion of my dorm. On the other hand I have been beaten by people that had NEVER played the game before, so there you have it.

Axis & Allies (The Game Master edition from the 1980s)- Axis & Allies wasn't the first in this series that I played, that honor goes to Conquest of the Empire; which we also played quite a bit; but Axis & Allies we played more and better. Axis & Allies was the better game right out of the box, even it's recommended optional rules made sense. By the time Axis & Allies hit the scene, I was already a veteran wargamer, but this managed to take a lot of wargame elements and make them accessible to the masses, like a gateway wargame.

Dawn Patrol- This should come as no surprise, since I am currently engaged in a new Dawn Patrol campaign, but it was my first and is still my favorite aerial combat game. I bought it because TSR put it out, and I was a young TSR fanboy at the time, it's taken me this long to get good at it.

Star Fleet Battles- I never really understood why this game got a bad reputation as highly complex to the point where you needed a PhD in Mathematics to play it. I am not a math guy, and I have played a lot of SFB, if filling out the energy allocation sheet is too hard for you I advise going back to remedial 4th grade math. I bought the Commanders edition boxed set the year I turned 14, since my birthday is in July I don't remember if it was before or after I turned 14. I taught myself and my friends how to play, we made a few mistakes along the way in learning, but we had it down after a few games; it says right on the box "1,2 or more players Ages 12 and older". Sure it got a little more complex with each additional boxed set (or module, which I never bought), but it was building on knowledge that you had already mastered.

Up Front- The Squad Leader card game, picking on Avalon Hill title to add to the list was really hard to do, then I remembered the one we always played when we had extra time on our hands, it's quick to set up and play, even when you build you own squads with the point buy system, and it is one of the only games that I have that'll bring Lance and Darryl into the same room, although maybe not anymore, we used to have tournaments. Up Front is one of the few games I don't mind losing just because I had bad luck. Theoretically Multi-Man Publishing has the rights to it now, as part of the Squad Leader line, and they were considering making it a CCG, which would make me want them all to suffer horrible curses, but I would like to see a new edition. I have Up Front and it's official expansions Banzai and Desert War, but the cards have seen a lot of wear over the years.

Koei's Genghis Khan- Yeah, I know, it's a little odd to add a NES game to the list, and this title is really representational of all the Koei titles that were turn based war/administrative games from Nobunaga's Ambition through L'Empereur and including Romance of the Three Kingdoms; but my alter-ego here being the Great Khan, obviously I was going to pick Genghis Khan. I actually still own a NES and a copy of that game, I never play it, the battery inside it is shot so it doesn't save and I can't see leaving it on for the days that would take to complete the game. Darryl and I used to play the hell out of this game together too, in multi-player mode, usually one of us would pick England and the other Japan, since the four playable countries were Mongolia, Byzantium, England and Japan, we wanted as much space as possible between us before we had to start fighting each other.

Talisman- The 2nd edition before it got completely crapped up by the people at Games Workshop and used as yet another way to promote their Warhammer franchise, although this was sneaking into this edition too. This was a go-to game for us if we wanted to play something fantasy, fun and easy to teach/learn. I had, I am pretty sure, every expansion for this game that was released in the US except Timescape, we drew the line there. I always wanted to play in a D&D campaign set in this world, minus the out of place and silly characters. The board evoked a place that was both real and medieval, yet mythic at the same time. The only real drawback to this game was that it could get tedious after having died several times and starting over. I have played the new Fantasy Flight Games version, and while it is much, much nicer than the last Games Workshop edition, the 2nd edition still holds my loyalty, the FFG version is like a more polished, prettier version of my old 2nd edition, but it loses something in the transformation.

Warrior Knights- Have you ever razed a city to win a game? My old gaming group got in touch with the designer to ask him a few questions about the rules and our interpretations and we discovered we were doing the entire political phase wrong, apparently we were supposed to spend all of our votes on a single action. We didn't. We played a much more corrupt and Machiavellian version of the game than had been considered by the designer. We bought and sold votes, forged alliances to screw over whoever was in the lead, and fought over who would hold the wool concession. Games Workshop did a great job with this one, I hear that Fantasy Flight Games has put out a new edition, but, in the words of Lance, who has played it "It sucks. They screwed the pooch on this one". He tried it several times, just to try and get accustomed to the rules changes and that was his ultimate opinion; then he taught his Tuesday Night Gaming Group how we played the old GW version and they had a blast with it.

This was fun, maybe I'll do a part 2 that includes the games I cut from this list.

April 29th is a break day in the A-Z Challenge

So I thought I'd write about a couple of other things that have been on my mind for the last few weeks while I have been doing all this Norse research work, which really wasn't all that hard for me because I am pretty into Norse stuff anyway. Next year though, if there is an A-Z challenge in April, I will think to pick a subject that has more letter options.

But I am digressing from my original point here, which was to NOT write about the Norse A-Z topic I picked this year and instead write about the other things that have been creeping into my brain during that time. First there's the whole Star Trek and Klingon Assault Group thing, both Star Trek gaming, mostly through Star Fleet Battles, but also a little through the FASA RPG have been a big deal for me and my game time in the past. The Klingon Assault Group, while it coincides slightly with the gaming, is another beast altogether. I want to recruit people to KAG, because dressing like a Klingon and acting like a Klingon is awesome fun; but I guess only if you are part of a particularly brave subset of Trekkie.

I have also been slowly working on my own realization of the 1985 TSR AD&D 1st edition Oriental Adventures book. I wrestle with some of the core ideas presented in that book, and I go back and forth over whether or not the book was too ambitiously focused on presenting an entire fantasy east Asia, while still being concentrated on Japan, or if they weren't ambitious enough and should have gone further in their attempt to include everything Asian with the same "kitchen-sink" approach they gave the western world with "regular" AD&D. As it stands, the book is a mostly Japanese game that could not decide on it's focus; was it going to be about court and intrigue? Those skills (sorry, proficiencies) were presented for the first time in any D&D product in the OA book. Was the game about serving a Lord or Clan or a Temple even? That's kind of implied in several class descriptions, but no real advice was given to the DM about how to make a well balanced party work together if it included, for instance, a Samurai, a Ninja and a Sohei. The "normal" adventuring paradigm of AD&D was broken in OA, and no fixed replacement was offered.

Add on top of that the fact that the game had a real issue deciding whether it wanted to emulate a Chanbara film or Ninja film or a Kung-Fu film and we have a problem. Many of the classes don't work well together, and, even if you are not a Monk, you can easily become a martial artist deadly enough to out class the party Samurai, as I saw in my last OA campaign when the Yakuza character took Tae Kwon Do instead of weapons proficiencies. The Wu Jen spell list is inadequate, and while I intend to reverse engineer that list from the 3e compatible magic books I snagged off Ebay that were designed for Rokugan and the Legend of the Five Rings Setting, I can only come to the inescapable conclusion, despite my love of 1st edition AD&D and my nostalgia for Oriental Adventures and the fun campaigns that I have played using those rules, that AEG and L5R were better conceived and better designed than the rush job that I suspect that 1st edition OA was. The best thing I can say about 1st edition's AD&D Oriental Adventures is that it is far superior to the abortion that was 3e OA.

There are gems in the 1st edition OA books, I have seen mentioned on other blogs recently the Yearly,Monthly,Daily events tables. The court game might have worked if they had separated out weapon proficiencies from the "peaceful" ones. The Samurai class might have been less the super class that it was if it hadn't gotten a requirement to specialize in two weapons, something BANNED to every other class. The Kensai, which should be spelled Kensei, needs a total reworking, it is a valid class idea, but screwing him over by never letting him wear any armor OR have a magic weapon of his "chosen" type blows. The two "Cleric" classes of OA both suck though, the Sohei is just a second class Fighter until finally receiving some spells at 6th level? The Shukenja (which should be spelled Shugenja) can't fight anything BUT spirits? Ninja as a "Split-Class" = dumb idea, easy enough to create a Shinobi class, I did it once and I can do it again.

Currently I am reading a lot of Japanese history, watching Samurai movies about the Sengoku Jidai era and reading books about the Samurai and Bushido written during the Tokugawa era, while I am not reading and studying up on Norse history and lore. Obviously, I think the focus of Oriental Adventures should be on Japan and Japanese history and mythology, more focus is better. This is why OA1: Swords of the Daimyo was such a good sandbox to play in, it ignored all of the other nations of Kara-Tur, except for brief mentions. I think every single copy of Oriental Adventures should have come packaged with that module, although the adventures presented are weak.

The other thing that has me feeling nostalgic is my old Steppe Warriors guild, I recently spruced up our Facebook tribute page a bit, and I tried to get in touch with some of the old guys that I lost contact with over the years. AOL's Neverwinter Nights did go offline in July of 1997, we tried a few other online games, even text based ones, but none had the awesome community of AOL's NWN. We weren't there for long, and the core of us were local to the Oswego county area, which is why it was easy for us to have our reunions, at least in the beginning. But I miss all those guys, even the ones I have fought with over the years; and it kind of makes me sad that I never did get around to playing that Steppe Warrior campaign that I always wanted to. I even have a good idea for it now, but we've scattered to the four winds, and the ones left in the area mostly don't talk to each other anymore. Upstate New York's greatest export has always been it's people.

Now, lastly, I have a Dawn Patrol play report that's more than a week over due. We had decided the last time we played that we were sick and tired of random encounters with Fighters versus Two-Seaters and the whole "I fly straight for six squares to complete my mission, now try and shoot me down before I get home" BS. So we just decided on a Fighter engagement, and randomly chose French or British to engage the Germans; then rolled a die to advance the war a number of days. Since I got thee time wrong, and was running late to start with, all of this was taken care of before myself and John even made it to Big Darryl's house.

The date was February 10, 1917. Two Fighter patrols ran into each other deep inside German held territory. My son John and I played the French, we were flying Spad VIIs and the two Darryls were playing the Germans who were both flying Albatross DIIIs. Darryl Jr. was playing his pilot Vizefeldwebel Oskar Schaeffer, who was flying his second mission. Darryl Sr. was playing his pilot Oberleutnant Erich Von Reinstadt, who was flying his 10th mission. John was flying his pilot Lieutenant Guy Bernet and I was flying my pilot, the Serbian volunteer, Lieutenant Vaclev Petrovic; Lieutenant Bernet had two missions and was deemed the flight leader.

Now is the part where I wish I had written this out while it was clearer in my memory, I took a few notes, but I didn't bring the mission logs home with me, maybe I should do that in the future.

The mission started out well enough for us Frenchmen, we were all at high altitude and the Spads outperform the Albatrosses at pretty much every altitude anyway, their only advantage is their dual Spandau guns, which are deadly. We closed to dogfighting range and ended up in a line firing at each other's tails, poor Darryl Jr. in the lead with no target, everyone took a little bit of damage, except me, because I was in the back. It got a little chaotic then, it broke into two dogfights that kept running back into each other, we ban overt table talk during the game, but we can give some pointers about rules and tactics to newer players like John or Dalton (who didn't make this game). Sadly, seven turns into the game Schaeffer scored a critical engine hit on Bernet's plane and it exploded.

Now, completely out of character, it was the luckiest of hits possible, and I felt kind of bad because I shot down John the last time he played (while he was playing MY pilot I might add), so the poor kid has played twice now, and gotten shot down twice. He's a quick learner and he didn't do anything wrong here, except be unlucky; yes, if he stuck around he might have gotten shot down anyway, he was the least experienced player in the game, but I really hope it doesn't sour him on Dawn Patrol.

At that point, outnumbered two to one, you might think I'd just cut and run for my lines, right? Nope. I stuck it out for another ten turns. I'd like to say it was purely for vengeance for my downed comrade, but part of it was also because I was, up until that point, the only one in the group with a legitimate kill scored on another player, so I was trying to shoot Darryl Jr.'s pilot Schaeffer down to keep my record intact. I almost had him a couple of times, I missed at 50' range twice, my guns jammed once, and I had to do all this while evading the other Albatross DIII, not always successfully. Not all the bad luck went in the favor of the Germans, there were a couple of occasions where I almost certainly should have been shot down, both of my wings had sustained a lot of damage and my engine was two hits away from gone, I was just incredibly lucky on critical hit rolls.

In the end, I shot Schaeffer's plane up pretty bad, and Von Reinhardt had some minor damage too, but I was in a position where, if I stuck it out any longer, I was most likely going to give the Hun another aerial victory. I managed to maneuver so that I was pointed towards home and they were either too far behind me or pointed in the wrong direction, and broke for home. My plane had sustained an incredible amount of damage in the fighting, but luckily only one, relatively minor critical hit, to the wing. My Spad was still faster and more maneuverable, so they gave up the chase and the game was over. Lt.Petrovic added a mission to his resume, Vizefeldwebel Schaeffer added both a mission and a kill, and Lt. Von Rienhardt added another mission to his pretty impressive score.

So, if you live in central NY and you have an interest in playing Dawn Patrol, or helping to fix the bugs of 1st edition AD&D's Oriental Adventures through campaign play, or want to play in a B/X Norse campaign, or are interested in alpha-testing a B/X D&D World War II game, or are an old Steppe Warrior from AOL's NWN or one of the other Ordus like Nyrthellan's Woods or The Realm or Everquest or one of the eight million Facebook games we played as a group, or are interested in Star Trek, especially Klingons, but not limited to them, leave me a comment and I'll get back to you.  

April 20th R Day

Also known as "weed-day" to pot smokers across the USA and Hitler's birthday to historians and, I suppose, neo-Nazis, everywhere. Unlike P and Q, R actually is a significant letter in Old Norse so I may actually end up cutting some stuff for space, but since my minivan died, I have more time to work on this today, so maybe not.

R is for Ragnarök, we may as well get the big one out of the way first, eh? First off this represents "the outcome of destiny" rather than "the twilight of the gods", it is more the completion of one cycle of events than the end of everything. New Gods arise, mankind is renewed, things will be rebuilt. Secondly, it arrives very late in the corpus of Germanic lore, so it is very likely to have been heavily influenced by Christian tales of Armageddon. I have issues with the idea of a Norse apocalypse just because setting it in motion changes the character of Loki from well meaning, but occasionally foolish or weak, Trickster and friend of the Aesir to Norse Satan and 5th Columnist for the Jötunn; I don't see it. Sure, I can see Loki having the monster children with Angrboða, pretty much every one of the Aesir is boning some Jötunn chick, but Odin is a little more savvy than to keep Loki on staff if he can see what's coming, and he can.

R is for Runes, a big number two on the Norse significance list. They are both an alphabet and a mystical symbol system used for magical purposes. I kind of covered them under Futhark a bit and under Galðr some. There were actually a number of different variant runic alphabets in use across the Germanic world, mostly pretty similar to each other but always adapted to the languages of the people that were using them, the Anglo-Saxons used a runic alphabet called the Futhorc for instance, there were Frisian runes and Norse runes and the ever popular, and I am not really sure why, except that it is "ancestral" to other runic alphabets, the Elder Futhark- often referred to as "The Viking Oracle" or some such nonsense; especially considering the Vikings were using the Younger Futhark when the were using runes at all, and there is very slim evidence that the Norse used them in any kind of oracular way.

R is for Rune stones, which, unlike what purveyors of necklaces at renaissance festivals would have you believe, were actually more like commemorative stones, usually bigger than a headstone for a grave, they were carved with runes telling, briefly, the reason why they were there. This might be because someone important built a bridge and wanted everyone to know it for posterity, or it might be to remember that your fallen comrades died bravely in a far away land and you wanted to make sure no one forgot who they were or what they did.

R is for River Travel, which is what made the Norsemen the bloody threat they were. Not only could their ships cross the sea, but they could sail right up river too, striking deep inside your country, coastal defenses were not enough. The Vikings attacked Paris this way. They conquered Russia this way. Let's look at it from an ancient/medieval perspective, water makes the best defensive barriers and it makes a good way to ship goods. Even today most countries on the map have some sort of impassible barrier as a border between them, and that barrier is either water or mountain most of the time. The Vikings turned the defensive advantage into a critical defensive flaw.

R is for Rus the name the Greeks called the Vikings, and it stuck to Russia.

R is for Raids and Raiding, and isn't that what everyone really remembers about the Viking Age? I am not going to play Devil's Advocate here and point out all the good things the Vikings did for Europe too, the raids were bad, at least from the point of view of the people being raided. The "Dark Ages" weren't a particularly nice time to live in for anyone, anywhere on Earth.

R is for Riddle Games, Tolkien didn't invent this for Bilbo and Gollum, he was using a pattern established by none other than Odin in Vafþrúðnismál.

R is for Rán, a Jötunn woman who is nevertheless considered the Goddess of the Sea Bottom. She is the wife of Ægir, who is also a Jötunn and considered a God of the Sea. Both are friends and allies of the Aesir, and they have nine daughters, who may be the mothers of Heimdall.

R is for Ratatosk, a Squirrel that lives in the branches of Yggdrasil and carries insults between the dragon at it's base and the eagle at it's peak.

R is for Rind, a Goddess of the Aesir, who will become the mother of Vali, the avenger of Balder. The stories of how Odin convinces her to bear him a son to avenge his dead son Balder are slightly conflicting, but unsavory in any case. He either uses seið magic to strip her of her will to resist (and seið magic is the kind of gay lady's magic) or he just attempts to seduce her several times, fails, then poisons her and rapes her. Odin is an ends justify the means kind of a God.

Oh, and I got this stuff in the mail today-

I already had Commander's SSD Book #2, but it came with Captain's Log #1 and they were dirt cheap.

Not for nothing...

...But when I showed this picture to my youngest daughter Ember, we both agreed that it kind of reminded us of her. It looks like her a bit and has her attitude. Lamentations of the Flame Princess has certainly been an interesting look at old school gaming, and it's had a pretty good effect on my blog, I get a lot of hits from Finland. But I think it's starting to seep into my daughter's brains, or maybe it's just that Raggi and I are a little too alike and they'd be what his daughters would be like?

Next Question- If you had to pick an old school Star Trek game to play, would you go with FASA's Star Trek RPG and it's associated Starship Tactical Combat Simulator or Task Force Games/Amarillo Design Bureau's Federation & Empire/Star Fleet Battles/Prime Directive? I know that Prime Directive made it on to the scene a little late, but I also know that the Tactical Combat Simulator was a later add-on. Both games suffer from having to make up a lot of new Star Trek material and extrapolate from what they had available at the time, SFB/PD is still in print, although PD has undergone numerous rules changes from d20 to GURPS to the upcoming Traveler,they are still restricted by their license to ONLY use elements of Star Trek from the original series, the animated series and what they snuck in from some of the original series cast movies; everything elsethey were forced to make up as they went along. FASA did the same thing, only with a better, but more restrictive license until they got smacked down for assuming that Star Trek: The Next Generation was covered by the same license. So which old school Star Trek game do you prefer and why?

I only ask because I already had this.

But this came in the mail today.

And so did this.

All of these miniatures came today too, a good many Celts, always good for my Garnia campaign; and some Norse and Normans, which should be handy in most other cases, as well as in Garnia.

GM Questionnaire

So, I decided to fill out Zak's Questionnaire, here are my answers.

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

I am apparently a one trick pony, I can come up with good campaign settings. I can fill them with interesting NPCs and get some action started via plot hooks, after that it's all on the players. I don't really invent stuff like tricks, traps, spells or monsters.

2. When was the last time you GMed?

December 18, 2011, but that session and the one before it weren't all that great.

3. When was the last time you played?

Sometime in 2009? Right after Hackmaster Basic came out, my Daughter Ashli decided to debut as a gamemaster using that system, it went well for the first couple of sessions while she had pre-prepared material to work with, but once she had to start working with her own material and we started to do things that weren't covered in the book, things started to go bad; it ended shortly after that while we waited for the release of Frandor's Keep. I bought that for her when it came out, but we never went back to Hackmaster Basic, I think that the ultra-busyness of her senior year of high school and the bad memory of how it had ended before turned her off to the system. No, I forgot, it was last Spring when Lee's 1/2 Orc died, she DMed my campaign for a few sessions while I recharged my DM mojo.

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

B/X Pendragon, more of a campaign really though.

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

Eat, drink, chat with the other players; eventually roll a random encounter.

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

Usually Beef Summer Sausage, a variety of Cheeses, Ritz Crackers and Ranch Dressing or A couple of Different Types of Mustard make the standard "During the Game" snack tray, also Coffee (always), Hot Tea (Black, Green, or some types of Herbal- upon request), Hot Cocoa (upon request), usually some type of soda, always with a couple of diet options for soda. Sometimes the snack tray will include vegetables or other cold meats, this week's game will have Smoked Herring, for example. Since my game is every other week, I have the opportunity to stock up on snack foods when I find them on sale for a good price, so various Potato Chips and flavors of Doritos make their way here pretty frequently too. Since we always break for dinner, we almost always have some kind of food that is either easy and quick to make, or that we can throw in the oven or on the stove and not have to watch too closely, at recent game sessions we have had Beef Stew and Chili Con Carne; or alternately we order Pizza & Wings or Subs. Players are free to bring whatever other snacks they want to as well, as long as they bring enough to share, so this usually adds some Chips, Cookies and Soda to the mix too.

7. Do you find GMing physically exhausting?

No, but I'm not 16 anymore either. I can't play D&D for 16 hours straight and then take a 5 hour nap before another 16 hour session.

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

Planning a tactical assault on a well guarded and somewhat fortified urban mansion with a party of low level PCs? I played a 1st level Magic- User. Seriously, I don't get to play much.

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

Sometimes they do, sometimes I do. It's a game. Sure I may get a little ticked off when one of the players decides to not take the game as deadly serious as I am, at the moment, but aren't we all doing this to have fun and blow off a little of our real life stress and hang out with our friends, and, in my case, my family too? Sometimes this game just takes a turn for the absurd, and there is nothing you can do to turn it around. When it's one player, it CAN get contagious, when it's the DM it WILL get contagious. The less said about the gay Orc discotheque, the better or the naked no-thumbed Orcs. Why do these things keep happening to Orcs?

10. What do you do with goblins?

After what happened to the Orcs, do you really want to know? Seriously, they're mostly evil cannon fodder.

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

The floor plan of a Korean bath house.

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

Funny things happen all the time at my game. We have a pretty fun loving group of players, but nothing springs to mind specifically.

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

Moldvay Basic Book, reading it cover to cover for a blog post.

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

Tough choice here, but I am going to go with Dave Trampier.

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

I would have to say no. Occasionally a little creeped out, but really scared, no; again, it's just a game.

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

Tough to say, I almost always heavily rewrite adventure modules anyway, because if I don't I am afraid I'll forget something important because I didn't write it, and the potential problem of players having read the adventure before hand. The only adventure I can run with a minimum of preparation AND be sure I am not forgetting anything is B2.

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

That would depend on the game now wouldn't it? An ideal set up for a WW II board game is going to be different than the ideal set up for a Star Trek RPG, but for the sake of argument I'll assume you meant ideal for D&D. Ideal for D&D would need to have some medieval ambiance in the room, a table large enough to seat 9 people at least, with room for books, snacks, an optional battle mat and minis. Good lighting. Access to a nearby rest room and kitchen facility, should probably be the DM's residence. Side table for the DM. Bookshelves are a plus, so reference books are in the same room. A good sound system would be nice too. Since we're going for ideal, I'd have a computer at the DM station too. The DM's chair would be more like a throne, so he sat higher up and in a nicer chair, projecting his more powerful status to the players. Actually with some redecoration, my old DM Marty's dining room where we used to play in his 2nd edition campaign comes pretty close, the only issues are that I am the usual DM now, his reference books were in an upstairs library room and it was a little on the small side.

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

Star Fleet Battles and Munchkin, they have got to be sitting at opposite ends of the spectrum.

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

Higher education, my 1st edition AD&D DMG, Conan the Barbarian, King Arthur.

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

People who follow the Wheaton Rule. Other than that be clean, no stereotypical gamers here; be on time and attentive to the game, it's respectful to the rest of the gamers here. It helps if we're already friends and would hang out with each other even if there wasn't a D&D game going on, because sometimes shit happens and we don't get to play D&D when we're supposed to and that can get awkward when there is a stranger that I only really know from D&D in my house.

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

Armored Combat with Sword & Shield (and other weapons) both in singles tournaments and in mêlée.

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

AD&D 2nd edition Oriental Adventures. I think it would have cleaned up a lot of the problems of the 1st edition version and probably would not have abandoned the Kara-Tur setting like 3e did.

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

I have in the past talked with people about RPGs that didn't play, but not with any regularity. Usually they either decide to give RPGs a shot themselves or we don't really talk about them after a while.

Resolutions II: Oh Yeah, Those Too-

Image by Balsavor.deviantart.com used without permission.


KAG- I am a Quadrant Commander in the Klingon Assault Group. I really need to make an effort to get much more active again. I have kind of let things slide since Klingon and Star Trek fandom took a hit when the last series went off the air. I haven't suited up in full make-up and head-piece in years now, and it's time to spruce up my uniform to a more professional quality and look the part, then get out there and recruit. The next Star Trek movie is rumored to have a big Klingon presence, so we KAG Klingons need to be ready to capitalize on the imminent popularity of our favorite sci-fi species once again.

Read all the stuff I bought over the course of the last year. This is like one of those quests that I had to read everything I was supposed to read in college and didn't have time for, but at least all this is stuff I am interested in; I just bought so much I fell way behind. Most of the RPG books I have flipped though, but I have about twenty novels and probably ten history books to read in addition to 199 unique game books and supplements I just counted, and 7 board or card games that I have not played since buying, without leaving my computer desk, that I bought last year; some of which I did read, or had already read; but most of which remain merely skimmed through, and that doesn't count pdfs or stuff I put in other rooms of my house. Seriously, I need to read more stuff. Currently, it seems I mostly use it as research material for my blog, or my OA game, or my wife's possible Star Wars game.

I have 67 unique Legend of the Five Rings books (counting Clan War books and novels), 10 GURPS books, 13 D20 Star Wars books (for all 3 d20 versions) 11 D6 Star Wars books and 4 modules (mostly 1st edition), 10 Star Fleet Battles (and 3 Prime Directive) books, and those are just the things that I bought more than ten books for in the last year. So, I guess I am actually going to have to take at least one day per week off from reading blogs and blogging and just read the stuff I already have. Maybe I'll review it.

It's Snowing Here Today.

And the snow is sticking to the ground, and the dog. Snow marks the official beginning of the bad part of the year. I didn't get everything winterized completely, but at least I managed to get a propane delivery first. On the plus side, I apparently did not tear the ligaments in my knee and will not need surgery, I did end up wasting half a day at the doctor's office running between his actual office and the x-ray department so they could get various different angled shots of my knee.

I got this bit of old school goodness in the mail though-



FASA Star Trek may not be what most people are thinking when they think old school RPGs, but it is from 1982. Big Darryl had pretty much everything for this game back in the day but I don't think we ever played it. He was always trying to integrate it into some vast Star Fleet Battles campaign, which he never quite got to mesh. I bought ADB's Prime Directive recently and haven't had a chance to play it yet, but I think that's the game he really wanted there. FASA Star Trek we never got past the "making characters" stage, which I think is a shame. I'd like to give it a shot.

3e and I: Why We Broke Up

As promised yesterday, the semi-bitter story of my experience with 3rd edition D&D.

At the end of the day, I guess you just can't teach an old dog new tricks. I was the "go-to" DM for a bunch of different small groups here in Oswego county by the time 3e came out. I had been involved in the 2nd edition era with a bunch of my own campaigns and I played in a couple of fairly long running campaigns too*. Mostly my players were older players that I grew up with, or younger players that me or my friends taught how to play, so the weird proficiency checks for everything style of play that became common in the 2nd edition era** was largely absent from gaming in my neck of the woods. When players, usually newer players or rules lawyers, tried to use proficiency checks instead of playing things out I metaphorically slapped them down for it some; at best I'd give you a bonus of some sort. I wouldn't smack you for things that can easily be handled by a die roll, like say, identifying a plant or heraldry, but stuff that SHOULD be role played, like bluffing or pretty much anything that involves talking to NPCs and coming up with a story or an excuse or whatever; just making a proficiency check for that kind of annoyed me.

3e players, even my older players eventually, hated my DMing style in 3e. I couldn't just wing it and come up with a "roll a die and I'll let you know if it works" ruling on the fly, there was already a rule for whatever the PC was trying to do, and if there wasn't one you could assume that he couldn't do it. The skill checks though are what did me in. They drained the life out of the game and made every damned thing a rules mechanics issue. The players started to play the rules system instead of the game. Suddenly I had players planning their character builds out for levels in advance to maximize their potential.

Character creation was a bloody nightmare in and of itself, when the Player's Handbook comes with software for generating characters you know there's going to be a problem. Not that I noticed at first, at first I just noticed that it was pretty cool to have a unified XP chart and that feats were pretty cool for customizing your character and all the stuff that makes players happy with 3e. I kind of liked the simplification of saving throws. Then I started DMing and got the complex stuff. I hated having to remember all of the different effects for various feats that applied here, but not there, et cetera and monster stat blocks and combat rules that made everyone move around the battle board in odd ways to avoid attacks of opportunity and combats that lasted quite a bit longer than before. Oh, and the odd changes just for the sake of change, like Orcs going from Lawful to Chaotic Evil, and I hated the art; not that I was in love with the art of 2nd edition either, I just thought 3e's art really sucked. I also hated the super fast leveling, and I missed real multi-classing.

A quick observation here; when I finally made the switch to 3e D&D I was DMing for two different groups of players. Why two groups? Because each group contained some of my friends, but all of my friends don't play well with each other; there were also some scheduling issues since people my age were 30-ish when 3e came out. Mainly it was the A-Team and the B-Team though, that's how I thought of them at the time anyway. By the way, you should never let that slip either. The A-Team consisted of two guys that I had regularly played 2nd edition AD&D with for most of it's run, we also played wargames regularly for the same period (everything from Titan to ASL); one guy that was the cousin of one of those guys and also a pretty hardcore AD&D player and wargamer; and a married couple the husband had been an old AD&D player in the 1st edition era, a member of my old group actually, and a wargamer from way back then too, but the wife had never played any RPGs. The B-Team consisted of three guys that were in college, but had been playing 2nd edition for a few years; the younger brother of one of those guys that was still in high school, and had played mostly CRPGs; my wife, who has played a lot of D&D over the years, but isn't a "rules" person; and one old buddy of mine that I had been playing D&D and other RPGs and wargames (including the really complex ones like Star Fleet Battles, he was a Romulan lover) with since I was in 7th grade.

Actually, because of all the set up necessary, this observation really wasn't all that quick. My observation was that the wargamer heavy group took to the new rules a lot easier than the more casual group of gamers. All of them really liked the idea of customizing their characters, except maybe my wife, who really customizes her characters through roleplaying them; but it took longer for even the combat monster in the B-Team to start figuring out how to exploit the rules and rape them best to his advantage; that was a sad day for me. He once played a Fighter in 2nd edition game that had aspirations towards being a Bard. In that same campaign my wife played a Cleric that had always wanted to be a Fighter, but was forced by her family and her natural ability into the church. He used to write songs and poems about her character between game sessions or even during them he'd whip off little snippets of poetry. That would never happen in a 3e game. Those games were all business, working out tactical advantages and using every skill and feat to their synergistic best.

But what irked me the most was the damned skill checks. Suddenly the power behind the game was taken from a godlike DM and given to a set of books, and with those books came rules lawyers who would milk every drop of advantage they could out of every possible skill point and feat. Dragon magazine even ran a column for a while in the 3e era teaching you how to build super bad-ass characters by exploiting the rules; that's just not right. Pretty much overnight, after we converted to 3e, without any fanfare and really without anyone noticing, we all just stopped roleplaying all together. I blame the skill checks for that too.

What's worse is that I know it wasn't the players and it wasn't me, it was the game, 3e killed all the roleplaying and turned D&D into pretty much just a fantasy tactical miniatures skirmish game, and a fairly complex one at that; I know because I dumped D&D shortly after the 3.5 conversion, I only ever bought the 3.5 PH and DMed briefly in the 3.5 era before I realized I wasn't having any fun any more; I dumped D&D and bought into HackMaster and we played it and everyone had fun. People roleplayed their characters. We played through combat encounters without the use of miniatures. People once again laughed and had a good time at my table. HackMaster 4th edition was AD&D cranked up to 11.

Don't get me wrong, it wasn't 3e, it was me. Pathfinder sales and Paizo's nearly fanatical fan base are clear evidence that 3e was, and still is, a fun game; and I had a lot of fun playing it from time to time. I didn't like the extra workload it placed on me as a DM. I didn't like the power it stole from me as a DM. We just weren't a good fit, irreconcilable differences.


*Although one of them was run by Luddite DM/Old School Prophet Steve S. who ran a 1st edition AD&D game during the 2nd edition era. We all thought it was quaintly eccentric at the time. He said "I already bought this game, these books still work."; whatever, I just liked the break from DMing all the time and he was an engaging and quirky DM. Sadly prone to sudden burn out though, three times his campaigns just ended abruptly.

**Yes, I am well aware, especially since I am running a 1st edition AD&D OA game right now, that non-weapon proficiencies were introduced in 1st edition AD&D, they were kind of a mess there and didn't see much use outside of OA from what I saw. 2nd edition made them pretty much standard issue and made the system work better, separating them out from the weapon proficiencies (if only someone had thought to call them skills, eh? Much less cumbersome than non-weapon proficiencies). Splatbooks proliferated them and made super non-weapon proficiencies and redundancies and I always thought that Player Characters got kind of hosed on the number of NWPs they got based on my own number of skills at the time, I grew up in farm country, next to the woods near a river and Lake Ontario, by the time I was a teen-ager I could swim, sail, fish, hunt, farm, cook and a bunch of other stuff in the PH, not counting the stuff I learned in school, like a foreign language and math and literacy. Now I figure it must have been a game balance issue, but I still give out background skill packages in systems that use skills.

Mail Call 24 JUN 2011

Pics from EBay auctions. This stuff was waiting for me when I returned from the barber shop today.

Ashli will be driven into at least a slight fit of nerd rage by having both Star Wars and Star Trek in the same post. I used to do the same thing to her by putting Star Wars aliens or items into her Star Trek neighborhoods on the Sims 2. Or vice versa, it drives her a little crazy to mix different shows/movies together so every now and again we get a Klingon Jedi or a Twilek in Starfleet.



Prime Directive was a game I was always kind of interested in because I was a Star Fleet Battles player, but never actually got around to buying. The announcement of the new Mongoose Traveller Prime Directive piqued my interest, so I sought out a copy of the original for comparison, because you know, I haven't got anything else I am doing right now.




This I got pretty wicked cheap despite it being a near pristine copy of the first printing. I have a copy of the Saga edition, but never really gave it a go. This is the only D20 edition I ever had any experience with and it didn't really go well. None of us were really familiar with the rules, despite being 3e D&D players at the time. We only had one book for the whole group to use, it just didn't really work out. Still, I have a lot of D20 Star Wars stuff if you count every issue of Star Wars Gamer,and now this and Secrets of Naboo and the Saga edition book. I still think I like D6 better but maybe I'm just being a dick about it. Plus I bought all those Star Wars minis from WotC, I was using them as a lure to get John to game with me; it was semi-successful.

Old school games I never played.

Back in the 80's I was a teenager in a rural area of upstate New York. My friends and I were big fans of D&D starting in about 1980. However, since we were teens, we didn't have an unlimited cash supply to buy new games or gaming supplements. We focused on getting D&D stuff and tried to avoid too much replication of items in our collective gaming inventory.

Slight rant here- Why don't kids these days work? I never knew anyone in the 1980's that just got money for nothing from their parents. I mean, sure, birthdays occasionally visits with grandparents and maybe Christmas netted some free cash, but mostly we worked for our gaming dollars. Farm work, apple picking at the orchards, odd jobs when people needed some help. I used to get paid like five dollars for taking care of my neighbor's pets when they were on vacation. Splitting and stacking firewood, along with a variety of household chores was how I earned my allowance of five dollars a week as a teenager. Seeking out other opportunities to make money was pretty common for us teens at the time. If we wanted something we earned the money to purchase it or we went without. Except for Christmas and birthdays, but those are always iffy on whether or not you are going to get what you asked for. Rarely one of our parents would buy an item and then let you work it off with extra chores. We also walked or rode our bikes places. Now I see kids needing a ride everywhere. I never got a ride for anything less than an hour's walk away. My parent's time was important, it had value of it's own and us kids would never have dreamed of asking them to drop whatever they were doing so we could have a ride to our friend's house on the spur of the moment.

Now get off my lawn! -end rant here

The nearest city to us was Oswego, NY (famous now mostly for SUNY Oswego, alma mater of Al Roker and Star Trek actress Robin Curtis. Jerry Seinfeld also briefly attended) at roughly 12 miles from my house. Oswego did not have any place that had D&D stuff, beyond the Basic set, for most of the 1980's. There was a place called "The Book Cellar" in Fulton, NY (11 miles south of Oswego) that had some D&D stuff, including many of the "Gold Box" sets of Grenadier's official AD&D line of miniatures. I bought several sets there before the place closed.

Other than that you had to go to Syracuse (40+ miles south) to find D&D stuff, which I found in various malls in the Syracuse area and eventually at the nerd mecca of New York state "Twilight Book and Game Emporium". Twilight is sadly closed now, but in the 80's it was awesome, a combination Science Fiction bookstore/Comic shop/Wargame and RPG store. With lots of miniatures. Plus, it was literally around the corner from the pretty awesome "1/2 Price Book Warehouse" which, unsurprisingly, was literally an old warehouse chock full of books on pretty much every topic sold at 1/2 price or less. At the height of awesome in the late 1980's there was also, on the next block over, "Midway Hobbies" which kind of took Twilight's wargame and wargaming section and expanded it into an entire other store.

I am sad to see Twilight gone, but at least it didn't have to exist long enough to be associated with that literary abortion of the same name. So that's good I suppose. I also would not really want to keep trekking into that neighborhood anymore, it has gone dramatically downhill. It's successor stores aren't nearly as cool though.

Anyway, enough setting the scene here, it was a giant pain in the ass to get game stuff and our hard earned gaming dollars were largely spent on D&D and stuff for D&D, mostly miniatures and Dragon Magazines. Some modules. Most of us didn't have all of the books. Some of us didn't even have Player's Handbooks of our own. Kaybee toys filled up my D&D inventory when they would periodically purge the D&D stuff they had from the shelves and I'd buy old modules for like fifty cents a piece and boxed sets for like two dollars, this continued through the 2nd edition era. I also sometimes got Avalon Hill or SPI games there really cheap.

What I wanted to talk about was the rest of the games out there that I never had a chance to play. In many cases I was aware of these other games. I made my first (and only) Traveller character in the cafeteria at lunch time when I was in 7th grade. I never got to play him, but at least I got to check out the classic Traveller game a little. Some games from the early days weren't so lucky. My first Superhero game was Marvel Super Heroes from TSR. I was aware of Champions and Villains and Vigilantes, mostly from ads in the Dragon, but I never got to play them. Or see them really. Not until much later, when my friends and I started purchasing "old" games that we'd missed out on.

Some old games I got to see or read or make characters for only because my friend Darryl's dad, Big Darryl, was a gamer himself and had an adult's spending money for his hobby. He preferred wargames, but in the interest of having a common interest with his sons and their friends and considering that the wargamer/RPGer split wasn't really there yet, he bought and played a wide variety of games. Usually we'd play any given game once with him, then it'd just go into the library. We had full access to the library though and played some games repeatedly regardless of whether or not we really "got" the game. Pendragon is a great example of us playing a game the way it wasn't really intended to be played. We played it as if it were D&D with a variant combat system. Sorry Pendragon, you deserved better.

Superheroes were not Big Darryl's thing though so we never got any of those games added to the library. There was a great flowering of RPGs in the mid-1980's and most of them never got seen or played by me or my buddies. Science fiction games suffered there, except for FASA's Star Trek RPG (Big Darryl was a Star Trek fan from the dawn of time, so pretty much that entire line made it into his library.) and TSR's Star Frontiers which me and my poor teen-aged friends bought into for some Sci-Fi fun and only played a couple of times. West End's Star Wars game doesn't really make the cut-off for early games in my estimation because it was released in 1987 and I graduated from high school that year along with most of my gaming buddies, so we entered the world of "adult gamer" there. We did get pretty much every fantasy RPG that was commonly available though, except RuneQuest, and several that were less than common, like DragonQuest.

Getting back on topic, I never played much else besides D&D, even if we bought it, except Dawn Patrol, we played the hell out of that game and we played it as an RPG. Darryl lived 16 miles from my house and his dad lived a few miles further away (after he moved back to the area, before that he lived in Plattsburgh, then Utica; I really didn't get to know him until he moved back to area though) so his library wasn't always immediately available.

If I keep getting ramble-ey and off topic it's because my elderly mastiff keeps wandering in and demanding attention, she's a good girl. I also stopped for lunch and a phone call from my mom.

We kids bought most of what TSR had to offer Gamma World being the chief exception there and it doesn't really make sense because there were conversion rules for Gamma World in the DM's Guide. We bought and played Boot Hill, not very much, but we had fun with it. Darryl even ran a cross-over to AD&D with it. Actually it was AD&D characters crossing over to Boot Hill. I bought Marvel Super Heroes when it came out and only Darryl and I played it at the time really. My wife likes it though, due to her having had an awesome campaign of it when she was in college before I met her. We tried playing in the early 90's, before she was my girlfriend even, and it wasn't that great. Some games only work because of the group you are playing with or the time period in which you played it. Playing MSH in the 90's with our D&D group just wasn't the same as it had been in the past for either of us. Star Frontiers was Tim's baby, he bought both boxed sets and kind of jealously guarded them. He ran just one adventure for me and Lance. I played it maybe twice with Darryl and that crew, his dad GMing. We did play some starship combats with it though as an alternative to Star Fleet Battles.

I guess my point here is that, with rare exceptions, if it wasn't made by TSR we didn't buy it. TSR was the king of game companies and had a proven track record. Most of their early role playing games are somewhat compatible, so they had play value with D&D too. That made sense to us because our budgets didn't allow for a lot of "useless" gaming stuff. As we got older we were in a position to change this somewhat, we could better afford other game company's things. We bought into more game types too. Board wargames mostly, ranging from "Axis and Allies" and "Conquest of the Empire" to more unusual and exotic choices like SPI's "China War" (which I loved) or West End's "Air Cav" (which Tim bought solely because he knew he was going to be an army helicopter pilot, a dream he achieved). Star Fleet Battles makes the list here too.

Today's Mail

I got a couple of things in the mail today.

First is Star Fleet Battles volume III. I previously have never owned this so I am looking forward to checking it out, despite the fact that many SFB fans consider this to be the straw that broke the camel's back rules-wise. I bought it opened but unpunched really cheap on Ebay. It also inexplicably contained the map for the 1981 edition of Federation Space, a game I never owned or played, but I am familiar with it's successor game Federation and Empire, although I never played it either. I'll be perusing the SFB v. III rules tonight if I finish last book of the Soldier's Son trilogy as quick as I think I will.

The other thing that came in the mail was a package containing 2 AD&D books I won cheap on Ebay. One was a copy of the Fiend Folio. I didn't need another copy of the Fiend Folio, but it was in a package deal with the Wilderness Survival Guide. I have never owned or read the Wilderness Survival Guide, or it's counterpart the Dungeoneer's Survival Guide for that matter. By the time TSR was pumping them out I was pretty much done with TSR, first edition anyway; when second edition came along I jumped back on board briefly.

I have heard some bad things about the WSG (and the DSG), but I am looking forward to reading a first edition AD&D book that will be new to me. Plus, both of those books and the SFB boxed set are in absolutely pristine condition. It's like for less than $20.00 (including shipping!) I got a time machine to a mid-1980's gaming experience.

Curiously, now that I am in my forties, I am starting to rebuild and expand upon the gaming library that I had when I was a teenager. I'd like to blame the loss of so much stuff solely on my mom, but I know I had a hand in this too. My nomadic ways in my twenties lost stuff along the way, I sold a bunch of it because I either needed the money, needed the space or just figured I'd never play again. That was short sighted, I knew I'd eventually have kids and those kids would most likely share at least some of the geeky interests of their parents.

Change of Weekend Plans

No Sunday game this week. This means no Monday after-action-report.

Ashli has the Army Reserve this weekend and Lee Ann has to take her nursing boards. Ashli and Victor broke up this week too, so I don't imagine he'll be coming back at all.

I am thinking about playing a board game with the rest of the clan this weekend or maybe introducing them to painting minis. Maybe a little of both. I was thinking Axis & Allies for a board game, it's a step up from the "family" style games in complexity and, in my opinion, fun. Definitely easier than trying to teach them Star Fleet Battles. Besides Ashli is the only one that has shown any interest there.

Both of the other kids have shown interest in painting minis though, and I have all of those new ones that they picked out from MegaMinis. John was a little disappointed with them because he thought they were too small. Scale creep ruined his expectations for what a miniature figure for D&D should be. He said he was worried that it would be too difficult to decently paint something so small.

Star Fleet Battles- Update

I still haven't had the time to play SFB with the kids. Ashli is still interested and I think it will be fun, but she had a drill team competition and didn't make it home until 2:00AM on Saturday night, followed by our regularly scheduled AD&D game on Sunday. She has today off but we have to work on her SCA armor so it'll be ready by Wednesday. Then she has drill this coming weekend.

However, I managed to grab the SFB volume 2 rulebook and the volume 3 boxed set on EBay this week, so I'll be able to play some serious SFB pretty soon :)

I am still looking for the Commander's Edition Volume 2 boxed set though, so if anyone sees it reasonably priced, I'd appreciate a heads-up.

Star Fleet Battles

Back when I was a kid I was a huge Star Trek fan. I discovered the show when I was in kindergarten. I may have seen a few animated episodes before then, but didn't really make the association. For the record I started kindergarten in September of 1974. I remember coming home from school, sitting down in front of the TV and looking for something cool to watch. It must have been raining or something because back in those days kids played outside. Anyway, I found Star Trek and was captivated,it was probably my first introduction to science fiction and I have loved it ever since. I even made my dad take me to see Star Trek: The Motion Picture when it came out and I loved it too.

As an aside, I don't think that ST:TMP gets enough trekkie love, sure it pales in comparison to the later original series cast movies, but they forget what it was like to not have any new Star Trek for so long, plus we were dependent on the whim of broadcasters for when we could see the old stuff. I was fortunate that the Canadian tv station we got (when the weather was good) ran syndicated Star Trek every day after school at 4:00PM until after I was out of high school. Thank you CKWS!

The point of all of this is that I loved Star Trek. I picked up Star Trek fan magazines when I could find them and when I could afford them. Same thing with Star Trek novels, of which there were far fewer in those days and the quality was all over the map. When I found a Star Trek game in the early 1980s I was pretty psyched and bought it. I was already a regular wargamer and had been playing D&D for a couple of years too, so the rules were not too complex for me. Me and my buddies (and one of their dads) started playing Star Fleet Battles pretty regularly.

I got the volume 2 boxed set in January of 1986. I remember it clearly because it is wrapped up in the memory of my Grandfather's death. My friend Tim M. went to Twilight Book and Game Emporium in Syracuse to pick it up for me and brought it to my house the day after his funeral. That Sunday also featured Superbowl XX, in which the Chicago Bears absolutely destroyed the New England Patriots.

I don't know what happened to my original Star Fleet Battles boxed sets. I think Tim might have my Volume 2 set, borrowed decades ago for whatever reason. But I just got a copy of my first boxed set, pictured above, off of EBay and when my Daughter Ashli saw it she said she wanted to learn to play.

I call that a win.