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Jump Back! Quatro-Decadal Review, Looking Ahead to November 1989

Jump Back! Quatro-Decadal Review, Looking Ahead to November 1989

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The Holy Trinity

With the 1969 and 1979 magazines behind me I prepare to delve into 1989.  A problem with the decadal review is that, well, it comes in decade intervals. I was 10 years old in 1979, but in 1989 I was a well-seasoned 20.  The answers?  I had them.   In the intervening decade I had gotten a car, a job, started taekwondo, finished high school, and was deep into college.

Unlike 10-year-old me, 20-year-old me had a full handle on SF/F in popular culture.  In fact, the 80s were a watershed decade for SF/F — the promise of green screen special effects and the progress of practical effects really come to fruition in the 80s. Television was more hit and miss, but the decade that started with The Phoenix, progressed through V and  Knight Rider and ended with Star Trek:  The Next Generation. What started with Adventure Atari 2600 ended with Wizardry and The Bard’s Tale. I discovered Dungeons and Dragons in 1982 and never looked back.  My awareness of SF/F books started with Asimov’s juveniles Lucky Starr through Andre Norton and C.J. Cherryh and into Tolkien, Joel Rosenberg’s Guardians of the Flame and the discovery of REH, Fritz Lieber, Richard and Wendy Pini (which ties into the first round of graphic novels into the public imagination). 

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The Many Worlds of Dungeons & Dragons (Fifth Edition, that is)

The Many Worlds of Dungeons & Dragons (Fifth Edition, that is)

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When I began playing Dungeons & Dragons as a teen in the early 1990’s, my initial few games were played in homebrew worlds of the Dungeonmaster’s creation. And, while this has always been a popular part of Dungeons & Dragons, it wasn’t long until I became enamored with the established worlds that were officially sanctioned and supported by setting materials, nor was I the only one. These worlds have been the setting of countless adventures throughout the decades.

For me, the first D&D world I fell in love with was Krynn, the world that is the basis of the Dragonlance storyline. The first trilogy of novels that introduce the world, Chronicles, is a solid adventure, but I could at times almost feel the dice rolling in the background of the combat encounters. The follow-up trilogy, Legends, has a completely different feel, with a much deeper and personal storyline, time travel, complex morality, and an overall that I was surprised to find in novels that were in a tie-in series. I’ve since read some great tie-in literature (see, for example, my reviews of the Pathfinder Tales novels by James L. Sutter, Death’s Heretic and The Redemption Engine), but Legends continues to stand out. And, in terms of adventure, the unusual Dark Sun setting made for some of the most memorable adventures of my teenage years.

These settings were released in AD&D 2nd Edition in the form of setting boxes, with adventures and rulebooks that gave the specific information needed to design characters and campaigns. The current edition of Dungeons & Dragons hasn’t begun releasing similar setting boxes, but they have released supplements spanning a variety of gaming worlds … though not spanning all of their traditional worlds (yet!).

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Traveling the Imperium: Agent of the Imperium by Marc Miller

Traveling the Imperium: Agent of the Imperium by Marc Miller

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Agent of the Imperium (Baen Books, November 3, 2020). Cover by Alan Pollack

For having been created and played since 1977, the Traveller roleplaying game (RPG) has very little in the way of official fiction. Nothing like the Dragonlance or Drizzt series for Dungeons & Dragons or the Warhammer 40,000 line of novels. Those series have spent decades fleshing out stories and setting, acted as entry points into their respective RPGs, or stood alone for those not interested in the gaming stuff.

Traveller, on the other hand, with its rich setting and incredible scope has only seen a few (compared to the other cited series) official fiction releases. A few novels in the 1990s supporting the Traveller: New Era edition, one supporting the Marc Miller’s Traveller (the fourth edition), and few others (for example, Fate of the Kinunir and Shadow of the Storm) were published. Recently, Mongoose Publishing published as series of Traveller short stories, mostly set in the Trojan Reach that they mined and developed so excellently in the Pirates of Drinax campaign.

Perhaps the relative lack of fiction (again, compared to the hundreds of novels in the D&D and Warhammer settings) is because so many excellent science fiction novels already exist and function as surrogates for Traveller fiction. Though Traveller’s setting is unique to that RPG, it is a universe that has its roots in the science fiction of the 60s and early 70s.

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Cyberpunk Red: Style and Substance

Cyberpunk Red: Style and Substance

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IMG_0957

In 1990, R. Talsorian released Cyberpunk 2020, a revision to the original game from the 1980s. This was followed by many supplements and the gaming world had a tabletop RPG that enabled players to engage with a world with elements they saw and read in Blade Runner, Hardwired, Neuromancer, and Strange Days. The game proved so popular that many still play it today. When a third edition was released, it proved so unpopular that it is basically forgotten.

A few years ago the creators of The Witcher video game series, CD Projekt Red, reached out to R. Talsorian. See, they had played Cyberpunk 2020, and they wanted to create a new video game and thought it might be fun to use Cyberpunk 2020 as the basis. Thus, Cyberpunk 2077 — a much anticipated video game — was born.

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The Season of Gaming: Pathfinder

The Season of Gaming: Pathfinder

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Since its release at 2019 GenCon, the RPG Pathfinder Second Edition has been growing in popularity. With a character creation system that allows for immense character customization, it has won over many converts among the scores of existing fans of the game’s first edition, even with all of the difficulties involved in getting those fans together to play the game during a global pandemic.

It’s worth a quick recap of what Paizo has put out to support and expand this game in just a little over a year:

You can get the harcopies of these gaming resources through pretty much any game shop, but digital copies (as well as the hardcopies) are available directly through Paizo.com. If ordering Paizo products – including First Edition Pathfinder, Pathfinder Adventure Card, or Starfinder products – through their website, there’s a one-time promotional code of “holiday21” good through January 17, 2021.

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The Season of Gaming: Star Trek

The Season of Gaming: Star Trek

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There has been something of a Star Trek television renaissance in recent years. Ranging from the all-too-near future (first contact with the Vulcans is slated to take place in 2063, after all) to the far distant future, the ever-growing setting provides ample fodder not only for new episodes and storylines, but for gamers who want to experience the universe by diving into the setting, there are a variety of different games that offer different levels of engagement with the themes of the show. And ones which, if you’re looking for a game to play while in lockdown with family over the holidays, might do the trick … particularly if your family consists of Trek fans.

One of the more curious Star Trek games I’ve run across was the Ferengi-themed sales game Star Trek: Galactic Enterprises, a card game where you spend bars of gold-pressed latinum in an effort to corner the market on a given product. There are of course the various games that are just re-skins of existing games that incorporate elements from the setting, like Star Trek Monopoly, various editions of Star Trek Fluxx, Star Trek Risk, and even Star Trek Catan.

But beyond those games, there are some which delve much more deeply into the concepts, alien species, and lore of the Star Trek universe to provide a more immersive gaming experience, boldly going where no game has gone before.

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Take Advantage of the Thanksgiving Sale at Dark City Games

Take Advantage of the Thanksgiving Sale at Dark City Games

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Dark CIty Games

If you’ve been paying attention, you know we’re big fans of solo role playing games here at Black Gate. Whenever someone asks me for a superior modern example, I point them without hesitation to Dark City Games.

George Dew and his talented team of writers and artists at Dark City Games have been producing high quality solitaire fantasy and science fiction games for nearly two decades. They started with programmed adventures in the mold of The Fantasy Trip classics like Death Test, and soon graduated to much more sophisticated fare. Their games include ambitious fantasy epics likes The Island of Lost Spells (which I reviewed as Todd McAulty in Black Gate 10), and The Sewers of Redpoint, exciting SF fare like Void Station 57 and At Empire’s End, a line of Untamed West western adventures, and even tactical wargames set in WWII. Howard Andrew Jones took a fond look at their early catalog back in 2008, and we even published a free Dark City sample adventure titled S.O.S. in 2010.

That’s why I was so excited to see they have a Thanksgiving Sale. Every game in stock is discounted to $10. I ordered four — the SF horror title Into Chaos, dark fantasy Punisher’s Keep, Battle of the Bulge, first in their Combat Boots series of tactical wargames, and the SF mystery tale The Dark Star Incident.

Whether you’re a new gamer curious about role playing who wants to dip your toe in at your own pace, an experienced player looking for a real challenge, or just someone looking for a great bargain, Dark City has a game for you. Have a look at their catalog here, and try a game or two for just ten bucks each. And tell them Black Gate sent you!

Mutants and the End of Days: Mutant Year Zero

Mutants and the End of Days: Mutant Year Zero

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Mutant Year Zero RPG

The premise of Mutant: Year Zero is simple. You play a mutant (“human but more than human”) living amongst the wreckage and devastation humanity left behind and searching for something called Eden, but the world is full of dangers, ruins, and other mutants. You live in the Ark, the only safe haven. Even it is struggling. A person simply known as the Elder — the only person above the age of 25 – is declining in health. Factions in the Ark are vying for a place in the post-Elder Ark. More importantly, supplies are dwindling. Food. Water. Even Mutants. No one has been born in the Ark.

To provide the Ark the precious resources needed to survive, some brave (or foolhardy) mutants explore beyond the Ark’s protective walls and out into the Zone. Rare artifacts of unknown purpose can be found. The Stalkers, as they are called, bring back valuable items, scrap, clean water, and tales of a better place, Eden. If they come back that is. If they survive the monsters, the Rot, and any number of untold disasters.

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Uncover the Frozen Secrets of the Forbidden Lands in The Bitter Reach from Free League

Uncover the Frozen Secrets of the Forbidden Lands in The Bitter Reach from Free League

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Forbidden Lands The Bitter Reach-back-small Forbidden Lands The Bitter Reach-small

The Bitter Reach by Free League, an expansion for the Forbidden Lands RPG

Last year at the Spring 2019 Games Plus Auction (when it was still legal to go to such things), I was supposed to be saving all my pennies for auction bargains. But before I even reached my seat, a new games on the shelves caught my eye: Forbidden Lands, a boxed RPG developed by Swedish development house Free League, and distributed in the US by Modiphius. Here’s what I said about it at the time:

What drew me to Forbidden Lands? Truthfully it was the cover art by Simon Stålenhag, and the impressively sized (and heavy!) box. Once I picked it up however, it was the back-cover text that fired my imagination.

In this open-world survival roleplaying game, you’re not heroes sent on missions dictated by others — instead, you are raiders and rogues bent on making your own mark on a cursed world. You will discover lost tombs, fight terrible monsters, wander the wild lands and, if you live long enough, build your own stronghold to defend.

Last thing I need is another fantasy RPG crowding my shelves, especially one in a generic fantasy setting. But the evocative text sold me on the promise of a dark world far-removed from routine high fantasy tropes, and characters that sounded a lot closer to sword & sorcery archetypes than I’m used to. The price on the box was $49.99, and I decided to take a chance.

Well, I’m very glad I did. Forbidden Lands proved to be one of the most exciting and successful new role playing games of 2019, and the early expansions looked very promising. So when I returned to Games Plus for Free RPG Day in July and found a brand new expansion, The Bitter Reach — a handsome and imposing 312-page hardcover — I snatched it up immediately.

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New Treasures: Agent of the Imperium by Marc Miller

New Treasures: Agent of the Imperium by Marc Miller

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Agent of the Imperium Marc Miller-smallMarc Miller created Traveller back in 1977, and over the last forty years it’s become pretty much the de facto science fiction role playing game. It’s certainly the one to beat, anyway.

A few years back Marc Miller launched a Kickstarter to fund the publication of the Traveller novel Agent of the Imperium. It was a huge success. raising $35,113 from 970 backers, and the book appeared in 2015. Like most Kickstarter-funded book projects however, it’s early success didn’t immediately translate into a lot of readers.

Baen Books is hoping to rectify that with a 2020 reissue, which arrived this week in a handsome new trade paperback edition. Here’s an excerpt from Shannon Appelcline’s thoughtful review at RPG.Net.

Jonathan Bland is a dead man, but he lives on in a technological wafer that allows him to exist again for 30 days at a time as an Agent of the Imperium. When called upon, he continues the work of the Imperial Quarantine Agency — which as often as not requires the scrubbing of dangerous planets. Jonathan Bland is a dead man, but that doesn’t mean he’s stopped learning… The threats of Agent of the Imperium include rogue robots, virulent diseases, and psionic infections, but at its core it’s a journey into the heart of a man who lives the most unusual life imaginable….

Agent of the Imperium is a troubleshooter novel, much like the Retief series (1967+) that Miller has listed as an influence on Traveller. Here, you can see the connection; where Keith Laumer wrote silly tales of a diplomatic troubleshooter, Miller instead offers the serious and sometimes grim tales of a quarantine troubleshooter in the Official Traveller Universe….

It is surprising that Marc Miller is able to incorporate so many elements of the Traveller universe in such an effortless, organic way. Vilani, psionics, newts, stasis globes, Geonee, naval officers, Threep, and amber zones. They’re all here, and they never feel gratuitous. Somehow, Miller is able both to fill Agent of the Imperium with the wonders of the Third Imperium and to convince us that he had to include those many and varied elements to give us the complete story…. Agent of the Imperium also does a great job of depicting Traveller‘s history. Because his book is set so far before the Golden Age, Miller is able to easily introduce historic elements such as the Frontier Wars and the Emperors of the Flag that could be backstory for any Traveller game… At the same time, Miller also foreshadows some of the future problems of the Imperium — great mysteries from the final days of the classic game. It’s an impressive (and surprising) trick.

Agent of the Imperium was published by Baen Books on November 3, 2020. It is 368 pages, priced at $16 in trade paperback and $8.99 in digital formats. The cover is by Alan Pollack. Read a generous sample at the Baen website.

See all our recent New Treasures here.