[Fanzine Focus XIX] Back to the Spaceport: Phase 1, Datapacket 1

On the tail of the Old School Renaissance has come another movement—the rise of the fanzine. Although the fanzine—a nonprofessional and nonofficial publication produced by fans of a particular cultural phenomenon, got its start in Science Fiction fandom, in the gaming hobby it first started with Chess and Diplomacy fanzines before finding fertile ground in the roleplaying hobby in the 1970s. Here these amateurish publications allowed the hobby a public space for two things. First, they were somewhere that the hobby could voice opinions and ideas that lay outside those of a game’s publisher. Second, in the Golden Age of roleplaying when the Dungeon Masters were expected to create their own settings and adventures, they also provided a rough and ready source of support for the game of your choice. Many also served as vehicles for the fanzine editor’s house campaign and thus they showed another DM and group played said game. This would often change over time if a fanzine accepted submissions. Initially, fanzines were primarily dedicated to the big three RPGs of the 1970s—Dungeons & Dragons, RuneQuest, and Traveller—but fanzines have appeared dedicated to other RPGs since, some of which helped keep a game popular in the face of no official support.

Since 2008 with the publication of Fight On #1, the Old School Renaissance has had its own fanzines. The advantage of the Old School Renaissance is that the various Retroclones draw from the same source and thus one Dungeons & Dragons-style RPG is compatible with another. This means that the contents of one fanzine will compatible with the Retroclone that you already run and play even if not specifically written for it. Labyrinth Lord and Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay have proved to be popular choices to base fanzines around, as has Swords & Wizardry.

For the most part, the current wave of fanzines is all fantasy orientated, a great many of them dedicated to and supporting the Old School Renaissance in one form or another. Essentially an Old School form of support for an Old School style of roleplaying game. So when a new fanzine appears dedicated to a different genre it can be a breath of fresh air and when that fanzine approaches its subject in more thoughtful and detailed fashion, then that breath of fresh air might be more than a little minty fresh. So it is with Back to the Spaceport: A Fanzine for Science Fiction Games. This is a Science Fiction fanzine dedicated to all types of Science Fiction gaming, so roleplaying and miniatures, for example. It is also a Science Fiction fanzine dedicated to Science Fiction in all of its many subgenres—urban (Cyberpunk and dystopian), post-apocalyptic, interstellar travel, Victorian and Edwardian, and so on. It is also a Science Fiction fanzine which is very British in its approach to Science and it also a Science Fiction fanzine that when necessary, is prepared to examine the issues posed when gaming with a particular Science Fiction genre.

Back to the Spaceport: A Fanzine for Science Fiction Games Phase 1, Datapacket 1 is entirely written and edited by David Haraldson and you can tell that it has a serious intent from the moment you open the front cover. He takes the time to credit all of the artists, the fonts used for each article, and the particular games. This is not necessarily interesting, but it points to an aspiration towards a professionalism and a seriousness. Then flip through the pages of the fanzine and there are copious footnotes, often links to outside sources of research and the like. In terms of presentation, the fanzine is clean and tidy, perhaps slightly cluttered in places, with artwork used judiciously. The use of different fonts for article titles is very eighties, as is the organisation of the contents into different departments. So ‘Yesterday’s Tomorrows’ for Edwardian and Victorian scientific romances, ‘Bright Lights, Mega City’ for urban Science Fiction, ‘Into the Ruins’ for post-apocalyptic Science Fiction, and so on, which is all very White Dwarf magazine.

The first department is ‘Yesterday’s Tomorrows’ and ‘The Green Hills of Venus’. This is the write-up of the first from the Challenger Distinguished Lectures given by Professor Octavian Black. It presents his findings on the successes and failures of the first few expeditions to Venus, starting with the 1889 Chadwick expedition. In classic style, it presents Venus as a hothouse jungle planet, complete with lizardmen and megafauna, but also hints at secrets deep within the planet. Complete with a story hook and lots of knowing Easter eggs if you know the genre, its gets the fanzine off to a good start.

‘Manchester, So Much To Answer For’ is the first entry for the ‘Bright Lights, Mega City’ department, presenting two Manchester-inspired gangs—the Rusholme Ruffians and Frank’s Gang a.k.a. the Sidebottoms. The former is a gang inspired by the eighties band, The Smiths, whilst the latter a gang inspired by the papier-mâché mask-helmet wearing media personality/artist, Frank Sidebottom. More attention is paid to the latter than the former and it shows with more ideas on their gang structure and how to use them. Certainly, Frank’s Gang makes for a fun prank/performance gang to add to a Cyberpunk roleplaying game as well as the Judge Dredd & The Worlds of 2000 AD Roleplaying Game and Vurt: The Tabletop Roleplaying Game. ‘Me And My Melancholy Motor’ for ‘Into the Ruins’ provides the TEdison Razorback, a vehicle with an A.I. and a personality for getting around a post-apocalyptic world akin to that of Gamma World or Mutant Crawl Classics. Complete with a personality table and mental health crisis table, it provides a fun NPC for Game Master to bring to her campaign and roleplay.

The highlight of Back to the Spaceport: A Fanzine for Science Fiction Games Phase 1, Datapacket 1 is ‘Mx. Land & Dr. Britling See It Through’. The longest article in the issue, it explores the nature and problems of the Steampunk genre and how it applies to gaming as well as how the Steampunk movement regards gaming. In the first case, rarely as a ’punk genre and typically as a neo-colonial, imperialist celebration, and in the case of the latter, badly. Of the roleplaying games available, it highlights Marcus L. Rowland’s Forgotten Futures as probably the best roleplaying game of Victorian and Edwardian scientific romances and it also presents a manifesto for exploring the genre in the pages of Back to the Spaceport. This is an absolutely splendid read, interesting and thoughtful, certainly all but worth the price of the fanzine alone.

The articles for the departments ‘STL Signals’ and ‘Standing Orders’ are more personal and prosaic in nature. ‘STL Signals’ looks at PBM—or ‘Play by Mail’—games and the author’s experience with a couple of PBM games, Riftlords and Phoenix: Beyond the Stellar Empire. It is diverting enough and again harks back to the heyday of the hobby in the eighties. ‘Standing Orders’ is devoted to Science Fiction miniatures wargaming and ‘21st Century Fighting in Built-Up Areas’ looks at urban conflict scenarios in miniatures games where the line of sight extends across the whole of the playing area. Written for use with Ground Zero Games’ Stargrunt II rules, the rules and suggestions here can adapt to any rules system the reader prefers, the article is useful for anyone running these types of games, but is otherwise just a little esoteric in comparison to the other articles in Back to the Spaceport.

Of more use perhaps is ‘Art Crime’. Written for the ‘Under Other Constellations’ department, it is a set-up and a cast of supporting NPCs suitable for any Science Fiction roleplaying game in which interstellar travel is possible. Here the idea is that the transportation of ordinary goods is too expensive to make it worthwhile, but the shipment of luxury items, including art, does not. It consists of four detailed NPCs—The Thief, The Investigator, The Amateur Sleuth, and The Collector—around which the Game Master can build a scenario or encounter. Written for use with FrostByte Books’ M-Space and Design Mechanicsm’s Mythras Imperative, it would easily work with any number of Science Fiction roleplaying games and adapting the plot and NPCs should be easy enough. Lastly, ‘Music for Spaceports’—a nice nod to Music for Airports—reviews three albums of music suitable for use as background sounds in Science Fiction games. Of the eight articles in Back to the Spaceport: A Fanzine for Science Fiction Games Phase 1, Datapacket 1, this feels like filler.

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In addition to the fanzine itself, Back to the Spaceport: A Fanzine for Science Fiction Games Phase 1, Datapacket 1 comes with an Old School Renaissance Science Fiction pullout. ‘On Xanadu, A Stately Pleasure Sphere!’ is written for use with White Star: White Box Science Fiction Roleplaying and similar Science Fiction roleplaying games, as well as Mindjammer – The Roleplaying Game: Transhuman Adventure in the Second Age of Space, it presents a Space Opera-style scenario/hexcrawl on the planet Xanadu, the best source of the Star Flowers, a delicacy amongst the galaxy’s elite. The planetary governor, Magnus Dominus, spends his time in seclusion in his imperial palace whilst working the planet’s population piteously hard growing the precious star flowers. The set-up is open to multiple plots, including assassinating the governor, abducting him and putting him on trial, stealing something from his art collection, fomenting rebellion, and so on. This could easily be mixed in with the ‘Art Crime’ article from the issue. Overall, this is a nice extra to the actual issue and easy enough to add to a Game Master’s campaign.

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It is a pleasure to have a fanzine which covers a genre in the variety of its subgenres and one which does so in as high a standard across all of them. It sets the bar high for future issues, one that we can only hope that the author can maintain for the second issue and also when other contributors write for it. Back to the Spaceport: A Fanzine for Science Fiction Games Phase 1, Datapacket 1 is an engaging piece from beginning to end, thoughtful and interesting, the article Steampunk a superb highlight.

Graverobbers in Outer Space

In some distant star system, great armada mass, dreadnoughts manoeuvring to bring their massive batteries to bear on their enemies, starcruisers unleashing barrage after barrage of missiles, destroyers darting in to fire torpedoes, and carriers launching wave after wave of single seat starfighters to swarm over their targets to attack pinpoint weaknesses. Energy beams scour away ablative armour, explosive missiles shatter ships’ hulls as nuclear-powered missiles explode and pump their energy as laser blasts which pierce ships’ hulls, freeing oxygen and ships’ crews to the vacuum of space, setting fires to race between the bulkheads, and compartment after compartment is lost… When the battle ends, it does not matter who won, for massive hulks remain, whole or broken by the battle, some still burning or fizzing with freed energy, others venting life preserving, whilst still contain sealed compartments holding the last of their crews, desperate to escape or hoping for rescue. Clouds of energy and radiation swirl amongst the fields and trails of debris left behind by damaged or destroyed ships. The combatants may have gone bar perhaps a picket ship or rescue boat perhaps, but into this scene of devastation come other ships and crews, each bent on other missions. Perhaps they have come to salvage the wreckage, to rescue the survivors, or to get aboard the ruined ships to go in search of data, secrets, or something else… 

This is the set-up for The Graveyard at Lus: A Dynamic Space HexCrawl for OSR Sci-Fi Games published by InfiniBadger Press. Designed for use with White Star: White Box Science Fiction Roleplaying, its contents would not only work with other Old School Renaissance Science Fiction roleplaying games, but with other Science Fiction roleplaying games in which large scale space battles take place. Mostly obviously, Traveller, but also Starfinder, Golgotha: A Science Fiction Game of Exploration and Discovery at the Edge of Known Space, and These Stars Are Ours!.

What The Graveyard at Lus does is take a staple of Dungeons & Dragons-style fantasy roleplaying games and apply it to another genre—that is, Science Fiction. Specifically, it takes the Hexcrawl and turns it into a Spacecrawl, but instead of exploring a a region of space marked with star systems and planets and asteroid belts, and so on, or the ruins of a previously unknown planet, it has the Player Characters exploring a much smaller area and really, during a particular period of time. That is, in the aftermath of a great space battle. It is a toolkit, but one in which the designer takes the Game Master step-by-step through the process of creating her own space graveyard.

By default, starship graveyards created using The Graveyard at Lus are twenty-by-twenty hex grids. From this starting point the Game Master can roll for or choose the height and width of the battle area, the factions involved in the battle—those suggested can come from White Star: White Box Science Fiction Roleplaying or from the new ones included in The Graveyard at Lus, debris fields and their density and degree of radioactivity, what starships can be found in the graveyard and how damaged are they, and lastly populate unique space hexes—for example with a starbase or a rip in the fabric of space. Further tables enable the Game Master to generate events which could occur whilst the Player Characters are exploring the graveyard.

Once defined, in order to help the Player Characters explore the graveyard, The Graveyard at Lus provides the Game Master with expanded rules for exploration and combat by spaceship. Building on the rules in White Star: White Box Science Fiction Roleplaying, these cover movement—both realistic and cinematic, dangers such as debris, collisions, and radiation, scanners, weapon ranges and targeting, rounding out with notes on explosions, surviving in space, and singularities. Already included in earlier tables, the new alien species in the supplement include the giant jellyfish-like space-going Dremwan who can harden their skins and eject bolts of venomous plasma; the Koldar are a parasitical scorpion-like race which strip planets of their resources; Neemen are a genetically engineered human species whose egos drive them to become the dominant version of humanity; and the TakTakTak, a four-armed race of telepaths divided into three castes, each with different psionic abilities. Stats are given both races and their starships—or just the race in the case of the Dremwan—but they do feel slightly underwritten in terms of  their motivations. The Dremwan seem written to be mysterious, the Koldar strip planets, and the Neeman want supremacy, but the TakTakTak? No idea as nothing is really said.

As well as updating some of the races from White Star: White Box Science Fiction Roleplaying to include the ships they use, The Graveyard at Lus includes several new creatures. Feroozes are magnetic oozes which squeeze through hulls and exude acid break down other species for their iron content; Graveworms feast on dead starships; Space Sharks feed on the energy given off by starships and sometimes their engines too; Space Syrens are energy beings which psionically lure ships’ crews to dangerous stellar objects and feed on their dying life energy; and the Unquiet are space zombies. There is not great invention on show here with these creatures, their parentage being fairly obvious as they are adaptations of classic Dungeons & Dragons monsters. To be fair though, White Star: White Box Science Fiction Roleplaying is a pulpy kind of Science Fiction roleplaying game and monsters like Space Syrens and the Unquiet do not feel out of keeping with the genre.

Rounding out The Graveyard at Lus is a selection of new technology, such as FTL Jammers and Teleporters, before it provides a fully worked example with ‘The Graveyard at Lus’. It nicely takes the Game Master through the process step-by-step before presenting it as an example for her to run. Lastly, the supplement provides half a dozen forms ready for the Game Master’s use when she comes to create her own space graveyard.

Physically, The Graveyard at Lus is neatly and tidily presented, though an edit is needed here and there. There are no illustrations as such, but silhouettes are used for ships throughout and together with several hex maps serve to break up the text. The various forms are very nicely done and the tables clear and easy to read.

The idea of a space graveyard is full of possibilities and adventure, and if the Game Master’s Science Fiction campaign can support them, then The Graveyard at Lus is a worthy addition to her toolkit. Indeed, it would also be possible to adapt the concept to the fantasy genre, whether that is on the high seas of the Game Master’s fantasy campaign or in a space-going fantasy a la TSR, Inc.’s Spelljammer. And yet, what The Graveyard at Lus leaves the Game Master to decide is the motivations of the Player Characters—just why have they come to this graveyard in space? And since this is a ‘SpaceCrawl’, what spurs them on to go from one location to another, rather than simply head for the dead or dying ship they want? And once the Player Characters have got there, what do they find aboard the space derelicts? Just a table of hooks and ideas would have been enough to answer these questions and possibly serve as spurs for the Game Master’s imagination. As written, The Graveyard at Lus does feel as if it tells the middle of the story, but leaves the beginning and the end for the Game Master to develop herself.

The Graveyard at Lus: A Dynamic Space HexCrawl for OSR Sci-Fi Games takes a fantastic idea and does a good job of developing it into a solid little toolkit for creating an interesting, and of course, dangerous environment. However, it needs the input of the Game Master more than it should to fully round it out and perhaps a new addition might address the purpose and the destination in a way that it currently does not.

Pulp Space Wizardry

When you are at an international gaming convention and an Italian man comes barrelling at you in order to thrust a copy of his book into your hands in order to review it, then it would seem churlish not to review said book. The book in question is Dare the Stars! The Future as it Once Was, a Sci-Fi RPG based upon the Pulps of the 1930s and 1950s. Thus with Dare the Stars! we are firmly in the territory of Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon, et al. Published by Wild Boar Games, LLC, it is a retroclone based on the Old School Renaissance RPG, White Star: White Box Science Fiction Roleplaying published by Barrel Rider Games, which means that Dare the Stars! is not only compatible with White Star: White Box Science Fiction Roleplaying, it is also compatible with the recently released White Star Companion.

In presenting an Old School Renaissance take upon the all-action prewar and postwar Sci-Fi of the last century it provides six new Classes, rules for assistants and followers, Insights and Alien Powers, as well as a setting. In addition it also includes complete rules based on Swords & Wizardry so it can be played complete as is or expanded with other White Star compatible supplements. The six Classes are Adventurous Noble, Android, Brave Soldier, Clever Scientist, Daring Explorer, and Wise Spacer. Each Class has ten Levels and various more abilities. So the Adventurous Noble can persuade others to do his bidding with ‘Let’s Talk This Out’, inspire others with Initiative and To-Hit bonuses by leading the way ‘To the Breach’, and later gain a retinue of Brave Soldiers as bodyguards and normal humans as personal servants. The Android differs in that it is only an eight-Level Class rather than the standard ten Levels. Otherwise, the Android has high Intelligence, but low Charisma. Low-Level Androids cannot initiate combat, but every Android has ‘Keen Senses’, and is both a ‘Living Computer’ and a ‘Walking Cyclopedia’. The Brave Soldier is one of a ‘Band of Brothers’ and can organise allies to grant a To-Hit bonus, can use weapons of any type—including alien weapons, knows how to use ‘Camouflage’ to hide himself and others so that the negative To-Hit numbers for targeting with long range weapons are doubled, and as ‘War Driver’ is skilled enough to improve the Armour Class of any vehicle he drives. 

The Clever Scientist can use ‘Science!’ to repair tools, machinery, and the living as well as to build devices; temporarily fix things with ‘Jury Rig’; and as a ‘Gimmick’, disassemble two similar items of technology and reassemble them to create better, if irreplaceable prototype. For example, a Clever Scientist might redesign two pieces of armour as one to improve the new armour’s Armour Class or the wearer’s Saving Throw, or two weapons to improve the new design’s damage or rate of fire. The Daring Explorer can once per day withstand deadly damage with ‘Man of Steel’, reroll a single failed roll with ‘Hero’s Luck’, and with ‘Jack-of-all-Trades’, make a single roll with +4 bonus. He also has a ‘Signature Weapon’ that he can use faster than anyone else. The Wise Spacer is all about his prior experience, so can lend a ‘Helping Hand’ to grant another character a bonus to his roll, and once per day draw upon his ‘Secret Stash’ for that piece of equipment you really need in a tight situation and because we are all ‘Brothers and Sisters’, can persuade other not to attack him or even to become an ally. More importantly, a Wise Spacer trusts his instincts and can provide Insights into whatever situation he and his companions find themselves. The Wise Spacer has access to a wide range of these, for example, ‘As a Sibling to Me’ let's him persuade an NPC that they are friends, whilst ‘Find the Way’ means that he can always successfully plot a Jump between star systems. There are over twenty Insights given in Dare the Stars!, enabling a Wise Spacer to bring wisdom aplenty into the game as well as offering some fun roleplaying opportunities for his player. All that player has to do now is channel his inner Walter Houston.

In the basic version of Dare the Stars!, the RPG does not offer anything in the way of Race options, so effectively, a player cannot create a Alien character. As an option though, rules are provided to enable a player to create his own. Two methods are provided, one more complex than the other. The more complex method enables a player to create a variety of Races, for example, the Hawk-Men and the Lion-Men from Flash Gordon. 

The equipment list is kept relatively short, but covers most things that a Pulp Sci-Fi RPG will need. Of course it includes the Raygun, something that every good Earthman—and Earthwoman—will want to equip themselves with. It also includes the Atomic Grenade, which is of course ludicrous, but perfectly in keeping with the genre. This being a Sci-Fi RPG, Dare the Stars! gives various types of starship and vehicle, the latter including the aircar and the moon buggy, the former, this being is a Pulp Sci-Fi RPG, the atomic warship, the exploration rocket, and the gunship rocket. The various vehicles feel more workmanlike than exciting though, perhaps not helped by their bulky rather than sleek-looking appearance.

If there is a real issue with the spaceships in Dare the Stars! it is the inability of the player characters to get hold of, and crew, one. It would probably take ten player characters to roll enough starting credits to purchase their own ship and that is before they even think of purchasing their personal equipment. Really though, owning a spaceship in a Pulp Sci-Fi RPG should not be a matter of having enough money and Dare the Stars! needed to address this problem.

The combat rules covers the usual melee and missile combat common to all OSR retroclones, but it also details combat between vehicles and starships. These rules are compatible with White Star: White Box Science Fiction Roleplaying, so the spaceships and vehicles nicely integrate between the two systems. More interesting though are the rules for Followers and Assistants. These enable the player characters to hire anyone from an animal trainer or assassin to starship repairman or translator, or alternatively any of the Class-based Assistants. This is in addition to the Followers that every Class in Dare the Stars!—except the Android Class—gain as they go up in Level. Whilst a Follower is essentially a member of one of the RPG’s Classes, but of a lower Level, each type of Assistant is nicely described as what he can do and what equipment he has. These not only serve to provide the means to crew a player character spaceship, for example, they also provide a ready supply of NPCs.

The setting detailed in Dare the Stars! posits a galaxy populated by races seeded in the past by the mysterious Progenitors who have long since disappeared. Their interaction with the Space Shadows, spurred the Space Shadows to attack our galaxy just as humanity took its first footsteps beyond the Solar System. The resulting War of Shadows only ended when the Space Shadows mysteriously disappeared. Earth and the nations of the Solar System have since formed the Solar Compact to protect humanity’s colonial expansion against the predations of space pirates, the Aleph Theocracy, and the Empire of the Wolf. Various alien species, such as the (prairie) Dogs of Venus, the insectoid Moonfolk, and the blue-skinned, nomadic Truggen, all native to the setting, are also given as NPCs.

Beyond some decent advice for the GM, Dare the Stars! goes further in its appendices by detailing some of the alien races native to the RPG’s setting as playable Classes. They include the Kheethee Warrior, jolly if naive warrior reptiles allied with mankind; the four-armed, short tempered green Martian Brawler and the red Martian Nobles known for their psychic abilities and thus make use of the Alien Powers rules included in Dare the Stars!; and the cat-like Taucetian Rogue, forced to leave his homeworld. These nicely expand the options available to the player characters and showcase what can be done with RPG’s alien creation rules.

Now as much as Dare the Stars! presents the means to run a Pulp Sci-Fi game, it's content is let down in terms of its presentation. The fundamental problem is that it suffers from issues that plague too many first books from new publishers. It needs another edit. Another good edit. The problem is not necessarily the writing, which given that it is not in the author’s native tongue, is decent enough, but rather the inconsistent formatting and some of the phrasing. Worse though, it needs more development, first and foremost to make the RPG’s default background more coherent and accessible, but then to give reasons for the player characters to go adventuring. That and the means for the player characters to gain a spaceship and start adventuring. The last thing that Dare the Stars! is missing a bibliography, which is disappointing.

That said Dare the Stars! includes some a good range of artwork. Some of it nicely evokes the genre it is seeking to emulate, while other illustrations are quite creepy. Others though, are a bit bland and at best merely okay.

Where White Star: White Box Science Fiction Roleplaying very clearly drew upon Star Wars for its inspiration, Dare the Stars! draws from the very same source as did Stars Wars for its inspiration—the Pulp Sci-Fi stories of the thirties and fifties. Dare the Stars! provides the means to run an RPG game in that genre, not quite as effectively as it could, but the Classes it provides to that end are solid and the setting is not without potential, but the presentation and the lack of development undermines much of that designer’s efforts. At the moment, Dare the Stars! feels like a late draft. Neither unplayable or unuseable, Dare the Stars! The Future as it Once Was is just not quite as polished, quite as professional as the designer would have intended.