White Dwarf: Issue #61

Issue #61 of White Dwarf (January 1985) has a very strange cover by Chris Achilleos. I'm not sure if the armored bird (?) man with a whip is supposed to be a hero or a villain. Perhaps the ambiguity is the point. In any case, it's certainly striking, if a bit confusing to a man of my limited imagination. In his editorial, Ian Livingstone announces that, starting next issue, WD will include regular columns devoted to both Call of Cthulhu and GW's own Golden Heroes. I recall CoC content being a staple of the magazine during the period when I was a subscriber, so this is no surprise. Likewise, by the mid-80s, Games Workshop was well on its way toward becoming more than just a distributor and publisher of UK editions of American games, so shining the spotlight on Golden Heroes makes a great deal of sense.

Oliver MacDonald's "The Spice of Life" for RuneQuest offers an expansion of the alchemy rules in game's rulebook. It's fine for what it is, though, in my opinion, it focuses far too much on the details of the Alchemists Guild than it does on the products of its members. I'd personally have preferred more alchemical substances than the article provides, but that's a matter of taste, I suppose.

"Open Box" kicks off with a review of the Dungeons & Dragons Companion Set, to which the reviewer gives a very fair 7 out of 10. Also reviewed is Pacesetter's Timemaster RPG (7 out of 10) and an adventure for it, Crossed Swords (7 out of 10). Pacesetter's Chill is here too, scoring 7 out of 10, along with the scenario Village of Twilight, which only nets 6 out of 10. The much more obscure Witch Hunt from Statcom Simulations receives 5 out of 10 because of its "limited" scope, with the reviewer suggesting that he couldn't "imagine players wanting to bother playing it more than once or twice." Finally, there's the review of The Adventures of Indiana Jones, which gets – and I know you'll be surprised by this – a 7 out of 10 (yes, yes, I know the reviewers weren't responsible for the numerical scores). More interesting to me is that the reviewer is quite evenhanded in his treatment of Indiana Jones, a game that's usually viewed with utter revulsion. While recognizing its limited nature, reviewer Adrian Knowles nevertheless found it fun and understood that it was written "entirely with a young market in mind."

Dave Langford's "Critical Mass" is what it is, for good and for bad. For me, it's rough going, not merely because I frequently disagree with Langford's assessments of the books he reviews, but also because I find it difficult to muster much interest in brief reviews of books from more than three decades ago. This issue, he tackles, among other books, Robert Heinlein's Job: A Comedy of Justice, a book about which I have decidedly mixed feelings (like most of Heinlein's oeuvre). Reading Langford's comments, I found myself wondering what I'd think of Job were I to delve into again (not that that's very likely).

Part 3 of "Eye of Newt and Tongue of Bat" by Graeme Davis continues, focusing on rings, armor, and shields. Like its predecessors in the series, this one is fine – neither inspired nor terrible but perfectly adequate for its quixotic task of making the crafting of magic items in AD&D interesting. Andy Slack's "The Motivated Traveller," on the other hand, is much more intriguing. In it, he puts forward an alternate experience system for use with Traveller (and other SF RPGs, like Space Opera, Star Frontiers, and Universe). The system is built on the idea that each character can have up to three "motivations," such as adept, altruist, hedonist, killer, miser, and so on. A character earns "victory points" (VP) based on his pursuit of his motivations, with success bringing him an increased "victory level" (VL) that brings with it reputation and influence. Slack's system is really only an outline, but it's an interesting one that might work well in games that are about more than fighting and looting (not that there's anything wrong with that). 

Ian Marsh's "Beyond the Shadow of a Dream" is a fantasy scenario that's remarkable for the fact that it is dual-statted for both Fighting Fantasy and D&D. However, it's not a programmed adventure but instead a traditional one that requires a referee to play. The scenario takes place in an unnamed city and involves the hunt for a youthful storyteller who's gone missing after appearing several nights, to great acclaim, in a local inn. The characters are tasked with unraveling the mystery of what happened to the storyteller. It's a surprisingly moody and expansive adventure that includes lots of interesting details, not to mention twists and turns. 

Meanwhile, "The Dark Usurper" by Jon Sutherland and Gareth Hill is a straight-up, 104-entry Fighting Fantasy solo adventure. The player assumes the role of a knight wrongly imprisoned, who must escape the tower where he is held – fairly conventional stuff. Simon Burley's "Days of Future Past" is the final part of his article looking at setting up a superhero campaign. This time, he focuses on how on to make use of adventure modules for other games (and genres), converting them to the conventions of superheroism. It's an admittedly odd approach and one I wouldn't have expected, but I think Burley does a good job with it. 

"All Creepies Great and Small" is a collection of new bugs for use as D&D monsters by Russell May. Most of these are wholly imaginary insects rather than simply being giant versions of terrestrial arthropods, though we do get a few real-world examples, like the giant mosquito. I'm a well-known fan of vermin monsters, so this article definitely caught my fancy. "Treasures" is a collection of four unique magic items for RuneQuest. They range from the relatively mundane (stones that glow in the dark) to the mythological (fang warriors who spring from hydra's teeth) to the epic (the helm of a hero of old). I'm also a sucker for unique magic items, so I enjoyed this article as well.

"Prize Competition" announces an adventure design competition. Entrants are to use a map (see below) provided by White Dwarf and then write a 4000-10,000-word scenario for a game of their choosing. The winner's submission will be published and he will receive a cash prize of £150. 

I'll be curious to see the winning entry.

"High and Dry" by Gary Chalk and Joe Dever looks at dry-brushing techniques for miniatures. As usual, the article is accompanied by lots of color illustrations, which is a delight to a guy like me, whose painting skills have always been poor. The issue also includes "Gobbledigook," "Thrud the Barbarian," and "The Travellers." Needless to say, I enjoyed them all, particularly "Thrud," which pokes fun at the well-worn trope of a weakling spending years developing his body and unarmed fighting skills to seek vengeance against those who mocked him. Mind you, "The Travellers" is great this issue too, as it continues to parody every science fiction franchise Mark Harrison can think of.

All in all, White Dwarf continues to impress. The magazine is now in a very comfortable spot, with a very diverse coverage of games for every taste. 

White Dwarf: Issue #25

Issue #25 of White Dwarf (June/July 1981) features a cover by Fiend Folio cover artist, Emmanuel. In addition, Emmanuel provides all of the issue's interior art, except for graphical elements and headers that first appeared in previous issues. Having a single artist handle all the artwork of a single periodical issue is quite unusual in my experience, which is why it's all the more striking in this instance. Mind you, compared to, say, Dragon of the same era, White Dwarf had a lot less artwork per issue. Still, I couldn't help but take note of it. Also worthy of note is that this issue marks the fifth anniversary of White Dwarf's publication.

Part III of Lewis Pulsipher's "An Introduction to Dungeons & Dragons" focuses on playing "the spell-using classes," as he calls them – but not all of them. Druids, for example, are specifically excluded as being very different from magic-users or clerics. Illusionists are not discussed either, but I am assume that's because this article is geared more toward original Dungeons & Dragons rather than AD&D and illusionists do not appear in any OD&D rulebooks or supplements, having debuted in The Strategic Review. In any case, Pulsipher's advice on playing these two classes is fairly straightforward and sensible. He emphasizes their distinct roles and the spells and abilities they possess that best support those roles. There's not much new here to longtime players of D&D and much of what he says has passed into widely accepted conventional wisdom. However, he does make one point worthy of mention, namely that clerics are, in fact, potent warriors in their own right and ought to be played as such rather than as magic-users with a less spectacular selection of spells. To that end, he counsels that "rough 20% of a party" should be clerics, as their hybrid nature makes them very valuable to any dungeon expedition.

Trevor Graver's "The Self-Made Traveller" is a set of optional skill acquisition rules for Traveller. The purpose behind the rules is to eliminate the randomness of Traveller character generation by giving players points to spend on selecting skills of their choice for their characters. I can't say I see much appeal in this, as Traveller's random character generation system is one of its strongest – and most fun – elements, but I have no doubt there are those who disagree. "Open Box" reviews Space Opera (8 out of 10), Plunder and RuneMasters for RuneQuest (5 out 10 and 9 out of 10 respectively), and Double Adventure 2 for Traveller. Of these reviews, I think the one for Space Opera is the most fascinating, as it's written by Andy Slack. Slack praises the game as "complicated" but nevertheless full of "rewarding and entertaining" detail that some might find more enjoyable than other SF RPG offerings.

"The Dungeon Architect" by Roger Musson is one of the more celebrated series of articles from the early days of White Dwarf. Part I, entitled "The Dungeon Interesting" kicks it off with an overview of the concept of dungeons, followed by thoughts on why a dungeon might exist, what manner of beings might exist within its labyrinths, and who or what might dwell nearby on the surface world. In and of themselves, these questions are not particularly interesting and most referees have probably given them some thought before creating their own dungeons. What makes this article valuable, though, is the way that Musson presents each question and then methodically lays out a series of possible answers to each one, along with ideas to spark the reader's creativity. It's an excellent kick-off to a series that will continue in the issues to come.

"Lower Canon Court" by Tony Chamberlain and Paul Skidmore is an odd little mini-game to be used with AD&D. It's intended to represent a clerical court for the trying of those who've gone against the dictates of their alignment and/or religious beliefs, but it's presented as a skirmish complete with a map, two dozen NPCs, and crypts filled with undead beneath the court. At first, I thought this was intended as a kind of trial-by-combat affair, but that doesn't seem to be the case at all. Instead, players are given control of the various NPCs, each of whom has notes about how he views the court and will judge potential defendants. There's a chance the undead might escape the crypts and disrupt the judicial proceedings, but that's an extra feature of the situation rather than its purpose. I suppose this might fun as a one-off scenario.

"Treasure Chest" presents four new miscellaneous magic items and some quick rules on character handedness. The byline of Roger E. Moore once again figures prominently in this section, as it has in several recent issues. "Blowout!" by Andy Slack is a set of expanded rules for vacuum suits in Traveller and is quite well done. I'd recommend making use of it, if your campaign features the regular use of vacc suits and you'd benefit from the added detail. "The Fiend Factory" presents a series of five "themed" monsters, all of which can be found in The Black Manse, the cursed dwelling of a benevolent baron whose son is not so well-intentioned. This is a good structure for presenting new D&D monsters and I think it sets this installment of "The Fiend Factory" apart from most other collections of new monsters.

"The Ship's Library" by Bob McWilliams discusses books, both fiction and non-fiction, that every Traveller referee ought to read to help in setting up a campaign. "What Makes a Good AD&D Character Class" by Lewis Pulsipher concludes the issue with his thoughts on the subject at hand. Most of those thoughts are common sense, such as "don't make the class too powerful," but what is commonsensical now might not have been so in 1981. Consequently, I doubt many reading it today would derive much benefit from it.

Issue #25 is a very good one, filled with numerous interesting articles. These articles also seem to be getting longer, which I appreciate, but this comes at a cost. Since the magazine's page count hasn't increased noticeably, the size of the text is getting smaller. That probably would have been fine when I was a teenager, but nowadays, I find it vexing. Oh, to be young again!

Retrospective: Casino Galactica

When it came to "adventures among the stars" science fiction roleplaying games, Traveller was my preference. Consequently, FGU's Space Opera was merely a game of which I was aware but whose unique pleasures I did not appreciate until many years after the fact. This was partly the result of not knowing anyone who owned, let alone played, the game, as well as the fact that, for whatever reason, the hobby shops and bookstores I frequented never seemed to stock Space Opera products. Looking back on it, this strikes me as odd, since there were actually a large number of these products – not as many as Traveller but more than, say, Star Frontiers. 

Today, I think the Space Atlas series tends to get a great deal more attention and perhaps understandably so, since it's in these volumes that we get a sense of the wider "kitchen sink" setting of Space Opera. Yet, FGU also published a fair selection of adventures for use with the game and some of these are well worth examining, starting with Casino Galactica, published in 1984.

Written by Steven B. Todd (of "Gnome Mountain Workshops," a would-be third party publisher of Space Opera support material under license from FGU) and illustrated by Steven S. Crompton, Casinto Galactica is billed as an "adventure setting & scenarios" on its front cover. That's a good description of its contents, as we'll see. The bulk of the book consists of an extensive description of the eponymous Casino Galactica, a luxury resort hotel on Arcturus VI established by Cosmo Filroy, a wealthy man with a mysterious – and possibly criminal – background. It's a decidedly clichéd set-up for a location, but clichés are Space Opera's bread and butter. I don't mean that as a criticism. Clichés persist because they're useful and fun; one of the genuine joys of Space Opera, in my opinion, is the way it leverages pulp SF clichés to present lively, if not necessarily coherent, settings and situations for roleplaying.

Casino Galactica is divided into several sections, the first of which focuses on "personalities," which is to say, important NPCs. Each NPC is given game statistics, as well as a background and suggestions for using them in an adventure. Accompanying many are illustrations by Crompton. The NPCs run the gamut from Filroy himself to the staff of the casino to notable guests. As one might expect, many of the NPCs have hidden agendas and goals, with some being agents of governments both foreign and domestic. The book also includes maps of the casino and its environs, along with keys of the same. Much like the NPC descriptions, some of these include suggestions for their use in an adventure. This being a casino, the book discusses the various types of gambling that take place here, along with rules on how to use them in the game. There's also a series of random encounter tables, for use with the NPCs descriptions. Likewise, the flora and fauna of Arcturus VI (with illustrations) get write-ups, completing the description of the planet on which the casino is located. 

The final section of the book outlines a series of six scenarios set in and around the casino. I use the verb "outlines" advisedly, since none of these scenarios consist of no more than three or four short paragraphs presenting a skeleton of an adventure. If you're expecting fully fleshed out, ready to run scenarios, you'll be disappointed. On the other hand, if you're simply looking for a few hooks on which to hang your own ideas, they're not bad – nothing amazing, mind you, but enough to get the referee started if he's in need of a quick adventure to drop into an ongoing campaign.

I really like RPG supplements like Casino Galactica. They're reflective of an approach to refereeing that largely matches my own. I prefer to be given lots of "raw materials" from which to craft my own adventures. Give me lots of NPCs, maps, and hooks rather than a highly structured scenario anytime. Of course, I rarely use any published adventure as-is, so perhaps I'm biased. Nevertheless, I can't help but feel positively toward a book like Casino Galactica, which is both gleeful in its use of pulp SF tropes and very flexible in the hands of a confident referee. It's not for everyone, but what is?

Retrospective: Space Marines

I've talked about Space Opera and its kitchen sink setting in several posts previously, but what I don't think I've ever talked about (much) is the game that laid the groundwork for both, 1977's Space Marines by A. Mark Ratner. To be honest, I've never seen the 1977 edition of Space Marines, which was self-published by Ratner under the FanTac Games label. Sometime after its publication, the game was sold to Fantasy Games Unlimited, which led to a second edition, published in 1980. That's the only edition I've ever seen, so I cannot comment on whatever differences there might be between the two versions, but I welcome details in the comments by anyone who has seen both.

Space Marines is a science fiction miniatures wargame that uses a scale of 25 meters to the inch and twenty-second turns.  The rules are quite comprehensive, covering wide range of topics -- unit integrity, suppression fire, bombing from air and orbit, electronic warfare, morale, and so on. However, the rules aren't particularly lengthy, especially when compared to other SF miniatures games with which I'm familiar, such as Striker. The relative shortness of the rules is at least partially a consequence of the fact that some topics are treated only sketchily. Orbital and sub-orbital bombardment and combat, for example, are largely left up to the referee to adjudicate, with only some very basic guidelines provided in the text. That's not to say that Space Marines is a simple game. It is, however, a lot more clearly written and intelligible than the game it spawned, Space Opera, which, despite my fondness for it, is far from a paragon of clarity.

About a third of Space Marines is devoted to background material. It was this material that Ed Simbalist drew on when creating Space Opera's setting. Indeed, I don't think I ever really understood the full scope of Space Opera's setting, until I'd actually seen a copy of Space Marines. Races and governments to which the RPG only alludes are given write-ups in the wargame. Granted, those write-ups mostly focus on military matters, such as organization, tactics, even uniforms, but at least they exist. Without the benefit of Space Marines, I'd never really know who the Mekpurrs were, let alone even more obscure races like the Rauwoofs or the Whistlers. Ultimately, that's the main reason I still find Space Marines interesting. It works very well as a supplement to Space Opera, filling in some blanks that the RPG's author didn't think needed to be filled lest precious page space be taken away from more important topics like ranged combat status modifiers.

Amusing Space Opera Quote

One of the first products released to support FGU's Space Opera was an adventure module entitled Martigan Belt. It was published in 1981 and written by Stephen Kingsley, who, judging by his "Dedication & Thanks" must have lived on Long Island, as he talks about Waterloo Hobbies in Stony Brook (no surprise, since I believe this was Scott Bizar's original game store). In any event, Kingsley's introduction includes a couple of sentences I found amusing:

Welcome to the universe of Space Opera. Space Opera presents a more complex set of rules than average, but also more complete. That's not an apology since life is also complex.

That's probably about as succinct a description of both Space Opera and the philosophy behind its design as any I could find. It's also why, despite my unhealthy fascination about the game, I have zero interest in actually playing it.

The Ads of Dragon: Fantasy Games Unlimited

I've highlighted ads for Fantasy Games Unlimited RPGs before, but this one, from issue #82 (February 1984) is particularly memorable in my opinion:

I've long felt that FGU had a knack for creating compelling advertisements and this one, for their five biggest RPGs, was definitely attention-grabbing. I played several of these games at various times and, with the exception of Aftermath, still own versions of them all, but none of them ever won my heart the way that other companies' products did. Still, I can't deny that ads like this one make wish I were playing one of them right now.

Retrospective: Star Sector Atlas I

When I entered the hobby, if you played a science fiction game, you either played Traveller or Space Opera. I was a Traveller man back then, so Space Opera was one of those games I noticed on game store shelves and whose ads and articles I saw in the pages of Dragon but which I never actually played. Like most FGU games, it had the reputation of being "unplayable," or at least unnecessarily complex to the point of incoherence without heavy house ruling by the referee. It was thus light years away from the elegant, minimalist approach that Traveller had adopted in terms of content and presentation.

And, yet, even then, there was something strangely attractive about the game, particularly compared to Traveller. Space Opera was a "lumpy" game, which is to say, you could still easily recognize the undigested hunks it had chewed off its many inspirations, which simultaneously made Space Opera feel less "refined" and more "open" than Traveller. Traveller, on the other hand, had a stronger, more consistent esthetic and more "serious" tone to it that, while very evocative, sometimes felt constraining. You'd never randomly drop a Jedi or a Cylon into Traveller, but I always got the impression no one would have batted an eye if you did that in Space Opera.

Paradoxically, Traveller's ready-made star sector books, like The Spinward Marches, weren't very evocative. They consisted primarily of simple maps and alphanumeric strings of statistics without any details, leaving those up to the referee to decide. This approach is great if you're a do-it-yourself kind of referee who prefers only the most minimal hand-holding, but it doesn't do much for you if you're ever at a loss for ideas. By contrast, Space Opera's sector books, like Star Sector Atlas I: The Terran Sector, are dripping with details. Though larger in both size and length than their Traveller counterparts, they describe fewer worlds in their pages. However, these worlds are all usually given at least a half-page of information, including an overview of their histories, societies, and cultures.

Star Sector Atlas I details 66 worlds from the heart of human space, including Terra itself, as well as plotting the locations of 22 other planets and leaving their details up to the referee. Furthermore, the Terran Sector is noted as occupying a volume of space 8 million cubic light years in size, holding approximately 32,000 stars, thereby making it effectively endless in its expansion, should the referee desire to do so. Useful though that is, it is ultimately the 66 worlds described in Star Sector Atlas I that made this product so attractive. With it, a Space Opera referee could easily run a sandbox-style campaign at the center of the United Federation of Planets -- I told you the game didn't make any pretense of hiding its inspirations -- for years without exhausting this single sector.

When I wrote my retrospective post about The Spinward Marches last summer, I think I overstated how useful its minimalist approach was in play. I know I enjoyed there not being much detail in the book, because it gave me a lot of freedom. Yet, there were also moments in my old Traveller campaigns when I would have liked some more details -- or any details really -- about the world the PCs decided to visit in their merchant ship without any prior warning. I've always been good at thinking on my feet, so I made do with the bare bones GDW provided me, but I also know I'd have appreciated a product like Star Sector Atlas I: The Terran Sector. I'm beginning to think that something like it might better serve a lot of referees than did The Spinward Marches, since the details it offers are more than enough to kickstart one's imagination without being onerous or limiting.

Just goes to show that, even after all these years, I can still learn a thing or two from these old games.

Forgotten Sutherland Art

I make no bones about the fact that, for me, David C. Sutherland III ranks up there with David Trampier and Erol Otus as one of my favorite artists of D&D's Golden Age. Certainly his artwork lacks the technical skill displayed by Trampier's best pieces or the otherworldly trippiness to be found in Otus, but there's a groundedness to Sutherland's work that I think more than makes up for its flaws. Perhaps it's because the first D&D product I ever owned was the Holmes boxed set, whose cover features a piece by Sutherland, that I was taught early to associate the game with his artwork, I don't know. All I can say for sure is that I like Sutherland's illustrations.

Which is why I was delighted to discover that FGU's Space Marines, a science fiction miniatures rules set published in 1980 and whose setting is a precursor to the Space Opera RPG, includes a whole bunch of Sutherland pieces I've never seen before. Quite a few of them follow:

I love the retro-tech look of this vehicle. It reminds me a bit of the thing Robby the Robot drives around in Forbidden Planet.

Ah, those were the days! When space marine dropships looked like flying saucers!

Here are some soldiers abandoning their damaged hover tank.

Here's a Space Nazi -- I mean trooper of the Azuriach Imperium.

This is a soldier of the alien Hissss'ist. I adore the fact that he's only wearing a helmet and an equipment harness -- no other protection!

This fellow is part of the military of the Irsol Confederacy, wearing powered armor because his species is so used to living in freefall conditions that they cannot operate in a gravity environment without artificial assistance.

An inscrutable soldier of the crustaceous Klackon species.

Not to be confused with this Bug, which is, of course, ripped bloody from the corpse of Heinlein's Starship Troopers.

Here's a soldier of the avian Whistler species. I don't remember these guys from Space Opera, though there are rules for generating avian aliens.

Here's one of the Mekpurr, feudal feline aliens whose population consists such a small percentage of males (and whose females are wholly non-combatant) that they must rely heavily on robots for their infantry, such as this guy:

More Space Opera Amusement

Before moving on to the point of this entry, let me clarify something about yesterday's "Strange Dream" entry. The skill system I recounted in that entry, the one I finally "understood" in my dream isn't the one from Space Opera nor is it a system I'm suggesting anyone use for playing Space Opera or any other game. I posted it only because it's so rare that I remember any mechanical details from game-related dreams that I wanted to preserve it for posterity. Now, if anyone found it helpful, great, but my intention was not to present a workable skill system, let alone an ideal one, for use with any RPG.

Anyway, one to the real point of this post.

In Space Opera, one your character's 14 randomly generated personal characteristics is Empathy, which is described thusly:

Empathy represents the unconscious and largely uncontrolled broadcast of a character's personality aura and its interaction on the auras of those around him. In this context, Empathy has little to do with one's intentions toward a particular being. Rather, it is a quantification of the character's 'openness' to contact and will be sensed by those he meets. Generally, the more a character is empathic, the more others will be prepared to reserve final judgment and 'hear him out.' The ability is especially valuable to Contacts personnel charged with opening new relations with new races, but virtually every type of character will find the ability useful, whatever their calling.

Note the part I italicized above, because it'll be important shortly.

There's a chart accompanying this description that divided Empathy scores into seven categories by its numerical value, with 1-6 being one category, 7-8 another, and 9-13, 14-16, 17, 18, and 19 rounding out the chart. Only the lowest and highest category say much of any value and, even then, what they say is mostly "fluff" with few game mechanics attached to it. The lowest category (1-6) is interesting, though, because it notes that such a character

is a 'loner' who keeps very much to himself. Players should regard such a character as ranging from 'anti-social' to outright psychopathic. The lower the score, the 'colder' and more 'withdrawn' the character should be in his impact upon others -- which influences the general role-play of such a personality by the player. An Empathy score of 01 to 02 means a character with psychopathic and anti-social tendencies, the man with the true 'killer instinct.' Such a character will never check morale and may prove to be a berserker in combat. He simply does not relate to anyone not 'useful' to him (comrades tend to be 'useful' and so come under his area of concern; his loyalties are based upon personal survival and a code of conduct uniquely his own.) In summation, he chooses his 'friends' very carefully, stands by them to the death because he takes threat to them as a personal affront, and could care less about everybody else. He is a man without a conscience in search of a personal, living 'god' to give his troubled life security and purpose, a sword looking for a strong hand to wield it.

That's actually a very evocative description, if one a bit rough around the edges. You'd think, given what it says here and in the previously quoted section, that it'd be a very bad thing to have a low Empathy score.

But you'd be wrong. As it turns out, a character who works for the Bureau of State Security (or BOSS), which is "a paramilitary organization which combines the duties of such services as MI5, the FBI, the KGB, and similar security institutions," doesn't need a low Empathy to join this service, but it sure helps with advancing within it. There are 15 ranks within BOSS, beginning with Agent/5 (Rank Grade 0) and going all the way up to Minister of Security (Rank Grade 14).

Ranks below grade/3 require a maximum Empathy of 13 to qualify. Ranks above grade/3 require -1 per Empathy per rank above grade/3, and also minimum Leadership/12. PCs with Empathy/1-6 obtain a +1 DM on promotion rolls.

Consider what this means. Each rank above grade/3 has a maximum Empathy associated with it, which is -1 per rank above grade/3. Therefore, to become Minister of Security, a character must have, at most, an Empathy of 2! This makes me wonder what the authors of Space Opera had against intelligence agencies.

I like quirkiness like this, even if there are lots of problems with it from both a game mechanical and meta-game standpoint. Still, there's something rather charming about a game where having a low score in a particular characteristic is actually a benefit rather than a drawback.

Strange Dream

I didn't sleep well last night, which is usually when I have weird dreams. I had a number of them in fact, but one in particular stayed with me this morning. In it, someone came to me and asked me to explain the Space Opera skill system. Oddly, I was able to explain the system quite easily and simply to the person who came to me and they thanked me for my help. I say "oddly," because I'm still not sure that I actually understand how the skill system works, as it's one of the more confusing aspects of the game (for me anyway).

As is so often the case with dreams, the "knowledge" I'd possessed in it lingered for a time after I woke up. Usually, I forget it once I become lucid; this time, though, I retained it. Indeed, what I remembered from my dream was so clear that I briefly thought that my unconscious mind really had unraveled the mystery of Space Opera's skill system for me. Alas, what my dream had taught me, while interesting, bears little connection to what's in Space Opera.

In my dream, all skills had levels. These levels were plugged in to a simple calculation to give a base percentile chance to succeed at a skill under "standard" stressful conditions (no rolls were required otherwise). The base chance could be modified (always downward -- remember, there are no skill rolls for non-stressful situations) by the complexity of the task at hand. Finally, each characteristic of a player character had a characteristic modifier associated with it, a bonus or penalty ranging from (I think) -15% to +15%. At the discretion of the Star Master (what Space Opera calls the referee), one modifier from an appropriate characteristic can be applied to the D% roll to determine success with a skill. Which characteristic is appropriate is up to the player, with the Star Master's concurrence. There is no standard one-to-one correspondence between skills and characteristics, thereby allowing leeway for player creativity, as he might argue that, in a particular case, Empathy is more pertinent than Intuition or whatever.

It all great sense to me at the time and I found myself cheered by this newfound understanding of the main part of Space Opera that continues to elude my comprehension. I have no idea whatsoever why I was thinking about Space Opera. It might well have been a spin-off from my immersion in the first edition of Chivalry & Sorcery, written by the same authors and published by the same company. Still, it was a very strange dream.

A Tale of Two Covers

When I think of Space Opera, I think of this cover by Bob Charrette, because it's the cover I remember seeing back in the early 80s when I first encountered the game:

There's a lot to be said about this cover, not the least being that I tend to forget that Bob Charrette, much like Paul Jaquays, frequently did illustrations as well as writing and design. There's also the fact that this cover likely represents the first and only time anyone has ever ripped off Battle Beyond the Stars in SF RPG art, as you can see if you compare the alien next to "Chewbacca" with the ones in this image from that Roger Corman film:

Despite that -- or maybe because of it -- I have a great fondness for this cover. It's an unashamedly gleeful cover that amply demonstrates Space Opera's "kitchen sink" approach to sci-fi gaming. It's the polar opposite of the way Traveller portrayed itself and the way many of its most vocal proponents (including myself) presented it to others.

Anyway, looking more carefully at the cover, I noticed something that had somehow eluded me all these years. Charrette's signature on the illustration reads "©82 Charrette after Gene Day." Now, Space Opera was first published in 1980 and lots of the interior artwork of its two rulebooks, not to mention those of its early supplements is by Gene Day (and Jeff Dee). But the only cover I'd ever seen was Bob Charrette's.

Or was it? As it turns out, I probably had seen Gene Day's original 1980 cover before, but hadn't been paying close enough attention to notice. Here's what it looks like:

As is obvious -- except to me, apparently -- the two covers are not identical and quite obviously so. The space girl in Day's original is much less conservatively dressed than Charrette's and her hair color is different (as is her pose). Day's bug alien is replaced with a T-Rex with a blaster and his robot companion and the Boris Karloff lookalike in the bottom left is replaced with a Kzinti wearing more or less the same getup. There are lots of other differences too, if you look carefully, which, as I said, I didn't.

I did some quick digging to find out just why the cover image was changed and I found a link to an interview with Charrette, where he explains the change:

It was a technical issue as I recall. There needed to be a new printing and the original artwork was unavailable, so a new painting needed to be made. Scott liked Gene's piece and I wanted to follow it closely as an homage.

Though Charrette doesn't say so, it's possible that the unavailability of Day's original had to do with the artist's unexpected death in 1982 from a heart attack.