The Culture: A Reading List To Compliment Appendix N

JD Sauvage did everyone a solid over this past weekend and posted a nice reading list; some Appendix N overlap, but not all of it.

The full thread is here. Below is the first post.

The reason for the list? Talk about getting away from Pink Slime Fantasy slop, which means reconnecting to the fantastic literature that existed commonly before Lester Del Ray's 1975 diktat that make "Muh Tolkien" Clone into said slop.

You may balk at some of them, but you shouldn't; everything not of Appendix N that he included fits just as well if not better. (Flash Gordon and the original Buck Rogers novel certainly do, as they are derivative of A Princess of Mars as much as Brackett's novels about Eric John Stark are.)

Through that connection, notably at the pont of Dunsany, one needs to use these to bridge back to the mythic and thus past literature to mythology. (Yes, history is important, but we're talking about a failure of imagination and that stems from a lack of connection to the mythic via mythology.) Treating the myths of old, and the folklore that arised from them, as real as history and physics are- to see these as the means by which our ancestors (and some peoples today) see how life works and why it works that way.

This is what was lost during the 20th Century. It can be corrected now.

Once that connection is restored, that meaning needs to be expressed anew in ways that matter here and now. That's how this flattening is reversed.

The Culture: Dunder Does Dropship TONIGHT!

The MOOSE GETS LOOSE TONIGHT!

I'll be there in the chat. See you there.

They're talking Dropship.

The Culture: This Man Proved That "Fantasy" & "Science Fiction" Are Fake Genres

This guy didn't realize it, but he proved that "Fantasy" and "Science Fiction" ARE FAKE GENRES!

TLDR: All that changes are the trappings and the setting. The narrative structure is IDENTICAL so they play out EXACTLY THE SAME WAY!

This is why Andre Norton and Leigh Brackett can write "science fiction" that is really "fantasy" with a bare whiff of justification for the tale's telling: they are both doing Fantastic Adventure fiction, same as Burroughs, Meritt, Moorcock, Howard, Smith, and everyone else in Appendix N.

It's also why Shadowrun is just D&D With Chrome & Guns; changing the trappings and the setting didn't change the substance of gameplay one damned bit.

Dune (and its knockoffs, 40K and Fading Suns) is just a resetting of The Sabers of Paradise (go look that one up).

Star Wars (the original) is The Hidden Fortress plus The Dambusters.

Never, ever mistake a Product Category for a Genre; the former is a Brand Name thing, while the latter is all about narrative structure- seeming vs. substance.

"Fantasy" does not exist. "Science Fiction" does not exist. There are other fake genres; they also do not exist.

The Culture: There Is Only Fantastic Adventure Gaming

"Fantasy" is fake.

"Science Fiction" is fake.

This is the list from Appendix N of the AD&D1e DMG.

The "Fantasy" side:

• Robert E. Howard's Conan series — Barbarism vs. civilization, ancient sorcery, monstrous horrors, and heroic adventure (no scientific framing).
• Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd & Gray Mouser series — Urban thieves, wizards, demons, and quirky sword & sorcery in the world of Nehwon.
• J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings — Elves, dwarves, orcs, ents, halflings (hobbits), rangers, dragons, and epic quests (Gygax downplayed Tolkien's overall impact but acknowledged specific borrowings).
• Poul Anderson's The Broken Sword and Three Hearts and Three Lions — Norse/Arthurian mythic fantasy, faerie realms, regenerating trolls, paladins, and Law vs. Chaos alignment.
• Lord Dunsany's works — Dreamlike fantasy, gods, and wonder-tales.
• Michael Moorcock's Elric/Stormbringer and Hawkmoon series — Chaotic swords, multiversal fantasy, and Law/Chaos themes (influenced alignment and artifacts).
• Gardner Fox's Kothar and Kyrik series — Sword & sorcery pulp with liches and lost-world adventures.
• John Bellairs' The Face in the Frost — Wizards studying spellbooks (direct Vancian precursor, but pure fantasy).
• Lin Carter's World's End series — Distant-future fantasy (but leans more mythic than technological).
• August Derleth, Manly Wade Wellman, and others — Horror-tinged fantasy or weird tales.

The "Science Fiction" side:

• Edgar Rice Burroughs' Mars (Barsoom), Venus, and Pellucidar series — Planetary romance with alien civilizations, radium-powered airships/flyers, ancient tech, hollow-Earth inner worlds, and sword-swinging adventures on other planets or inside Earth. (Sci-fi framing via "science" of alien biology/tech and interplanetary travel; heavily influenced exotic settings and lost-world dungeons.)
• Poul Anderson's The High Crusade — Pure sci-fi: medieval English knights capture an alien spaceship and fight interstellar invaders. (Spaceships, aliens, and technology as the core conflict.)
• L. Sprague de Camp's Lest Darkness Fall — Time-travel sci-fi: a modern archaeologist is transported to the Dark Ages and uses knowledge to prevent societal collapse. (Temporal displacement and applied science/history.)
• de Camp & Fletcher Pratt's Harold Shea series and The Carnelian Cube — Modern protagonists use mathematical/logical formulas to enter parallel mythic universes (e.g., Norse gods, Irish legends). Magic is analyzed and countered scientifically; alternate dimensions via equations. (Direct influence on D&D's planar/multiversal travel and "logic vs. magic.")
• Philip José Farmer's World of the Tiers series — Pocket universes and artificial worlds created by god-like ancient beings using advanced technology; interdimensional gates/portals and unique solar systems. (Sci-fi multiverse and demi-planes; inspired Oerth-like settings.)
• Jack Vance's The Dying Earth and The Eyes of the Overworld — Far-future Earth where the sun is dying and ancient super-science has decayed into "magic." Spells are memorized formulas (Vancian magic system); ioun stones and bizarre tech-magic. (Core to D&D's spellcasting and thief elements.)
• Roger Zelazny's Amber series and Jack of Shadows — Shadow worlds as reflections of a prime reality (parallel dimensions); a tidally locked planet split between science and magic sides. (Multiversal travel with tech-magic blend.)
• Sterling Lanier's Hiero's Journey — Post-nuclear apocalypse on a mutant-riddled Earth; telepathy/psionics, ancient tech remnants, and priestly quests. (Science fantasy with psi powers.)
• Fred Saberhagen's Changeling Earth (Empire of the East) — Post-apocalyptic Earth where magic and technology coexist (AI "gods," changelings). (Blended sci-fi ruins and sorcery.)
• Margaret St. Clair's The Shadow People and Sign of the Labrys — Dystopian futures, vast underground labyrinths, and societal collapse. (Inspired dungeon complexes, drow/underdark ideas, and sci-fi horror.)
• Leigh Brackett, Frederic Brown, Stanley Weinbaum, Jack Williamson, and Andre Norton — Mostly planetary sci-fi, space opera shorts, or speculative tales (aliens, future tech, mutants); Brackett's planetary romances echo Burroughs.

There is NO DIFFERENCE! The trappings are not the genre. The setting is not the genre. The genre is in narrative structure, not marketing a product; these stories all have the same narrative structure, so they are all the same genre: fantastic adventures.

Therefore they can all fit into--and use exactly as written--the same ruleset because they're all part of the same game: a fantastic adventure game of Braunstein play.

This is why, decades before Banpresto gave us a different example of the same thing in Super Robot Wars, AD&D1e could and did handle all of this using the rules as they are- and it explains why, despite the Boomerism of its designer and publsher, RIFTS maintains its enduring appeal as it too put the lie to "Fantasy", "Science Fiction", and "Horror" as separate and distinct genres- they are, at best, product categories following Madlib templates like Harlequin reduced love stories to Chicklit mass production content output- something that LLMs can do better than any human writer could ever achieve.

This is why, believe or not, these are Fair Game for the Real Game.

The Culture: Catalyst Relies On Outsiders To Sell BattleTech

Been wondering what Sven van der Plank has been up to? Lots of Mechwarrior 5 based lore videos.

That's a Playlist. You have well over a day's worth of videos, the last of which by itself is over 9 hours.

Notice that this--like with Tex and the BPL--is from the videogame side of the property, and not the Tabletop side; Catalyst can't be bothered to do jack shit to promote the game they licensed, relying instead on the fans to do that for them.

The problem (for Catalyst) is that no one needs to give Catalyst money to play.

Meanwhile, these faggots beg on Kickstarter.

Razor was right when he cut that video and he is still right now. Cut Catalyist out, and that includes 3D Printing of any minis you want (not that you need them; standees or counters will do--and have done--just fine.

If used products aren't good enough, Captain Harlock will hook you up with the PDFs and Lulu's happy to print off new copies based on those PDFs (with a few conditions).

The same means are useable for every other Tabletop publisher that steps out of line- yes, G-Dubs, that includes you. You don't have to give money to people that hate you, so pirate away- that is one way to compete within the Network Effect.

The Culture: The Specter of Empire: Book III of the Arkwright Cycle

Late last week Dragon Award winner Brian Niemeier launched his crowdfunding effort for the final part of his current series: The Arkwright Cycle.

He did the rounds to promote it, which I've embedded below.

You can find the campaign page here.

I'll let Brian sell the book; hit the landing page or watch one of the interviews. You have just under three weeks to back it as of this post.

The Culture: Cirsova Presents Two New Wild Stars Titles

Cirsova Publishing just launched their funding campaign for Wild Stars: The Superior Griefs + Wild Stars Omnibus Vol 2

You're going to get good entertainment out of this. It's worth the $25 level pledge for the softcover.

That means you'll like the back catalog too. Cirsova has some of the best short fiction in the business. Buy the magazine and give copies to friends.

The Culture: You Can Find LOGH On The Internet Archive

We take this break from the usual Tabletop-related talk to announce the following:

The original laserdisc release of Legend of the Galactic Heroes is on the Internet Archive

This has the Central Anime fansubs, the color-coded ones, that made this series what it is in the West and paved the way for the production of Die Neue Thesis, the translation and release of the light novels, and all those wonderful memes.

Why say so? Because Hi-Dive won't have it forever, others are unlikely to pick it up, and some don't care for either the subtitle aesthetics or the translation used, but the Archive is a hardier beast- and not just because you can download everything to run locally. It will be there, ready to stream, and you don't need to give some jackass that hates you a penny.

The Culture: Lovecraft Is Played Out

"Oh no, Muh Sanity-Blasting Horrors!"

*sigh*

No, I don't think they are. Horrors? Yes. Sanity-blasting? No, and not for anyone at the time either, which is why I have long suspected that no one took the Sanity rules from Call of Cthulhu seriously because they didn't take the sanity-blasting seriously either. No, we have not gotten any better; it's only gotten worse.

Which is why I suggest, for those who still use it, to instead use it for running SCP Foundation games. No, they still aren't sanity-blasting horrors, but they are far more in line with what prospective players want out of such a play experience. Furthermore, since sweet fuck-all is going to happen if you just yoink from the Wiki and share videos like these all you need is the bare-assed bones--the literal technical manual--since COC is far more of a vibe, a vibe that SCP and similar stuff like the Backrooms does better and is easier to get folks to engage with.

We have, and have had, multiple popular videogame takes on the concept by now. Some are licensed; most are not. Some are serious; most are not. For all the high weirdness, folks still don't buy into Muh Sanity-Blasting Horrors, for no other reason than they can't engage with a game if they did take that seriously. There's been reams of studies by now, some of which actually got replicated, showing just how malleable "normal" is and thus how people can indeed adapt--even thrive--in radically changed environments.

TLDR: We are nowhere near as fragile as Mythos fans would like to believe. That should be the source of horror here.

And it is this fact that reframing COC to SCP The Game nails: how piss-easy it is for Le Normalfags to accept that the behaviors they otherwise would not do is necessary and thus normal to do when doing it for Foundation (or whatever) reasons. Delta Green tried to commit to this, but wussed out; Kult didn't have the language or the framework to make it successful. Normies in general don't buy the premise, nor should they, and savvy horror people don't even try; they do as I noted above.

And yes, COC as SCP-The-Game? Instantly playable as a Real Game with Total Non-Stop Braunstein in full effect- even a challenge, due to timey-whimey bullshit being on the table. Unlike Muh Cthulhu, you can actually get plenty of people to play! (Dibs on playing the Wandsmen.)

The Business: Temu VOTOMS Getting Big In Them Britches Again

Perhaps you saw this late last week.

That's right, Temu VOTOMS has a third Vidya adaptation in the works now.

Good question.

I posit this as an answer: Those Quebecoi Andys actually did the smart thing with the post-3rd Edition collapse and refocused on a Brand that could be salvaged. This lead to a refocus on the origins of the Brand as a skirmish-scale wargame (Blitz) which led to a spinoff (Arena) while keeping old material available as PDFs and POD offerings. This decision satisfied two of Dream Pod 9's desires: the desire to rebuild the Brand back to something that breeches the Normiesphere (and it did; there were PC games and a TV series) and compete with BattleTech (which it does), and the desire to use Gaming as a backdoor into the more popular and profitable Narrative media industry.

What you see is exactly that happening. That's why there was big hype for the 4th edition of the Tabletop adventure game two years ago, and now this new Vidya adaptation.

What you don't see is Dream Pod 9 learning why that collapse happened: using the wrong medium for the job. You also don't see Dream Pod 9 realizing that they, like FASA and its successors, are going to run into problems if they get too big for their britches because the owners of Armored Trooper VOTOMS want a Western audience.

Dream Pod 9 is going to have a bad time in court if the owners or desigated agents thereof decide on lawfare. This won't be like G-Dubs going after MCA Hoegarth over "Space Marine"; Prior Art is not on DP9's side, and the resemblace is brick-to-face obvious to casual observors--the Reasonable Man standard--so they're relying on the hope that they are sufficiently Legally Distinct to not get bent over in a courtroom, and that presumes an American or Canadian court. Japanese? Nope; they're fucked. Somehow I doubt that DP9's corporate structure is sufficiently robust to make such events irrelevant. (That's a hint, you Temu Frogs; you have enough to make it worthwhile so do it already, and he does take Canucks like you lot as clients.)

Over at the Clubhouse I'll talk about how Heavy Gear, Jovian Chronicles, Gear Krieg,, and CORE Command should be used- and thus should be developed, published, and supported.

The Culture: Iron Age Media Presents Battleborn Magazine

Folks are trying to be the change they want to see.

The campaign link is here.

FROM THE 'FRONTLINES¯OF FANTASY

ATTENTION RECRUITS!

WHAT IS BEST INLIFE? AYE, THE THRILL OF THE FIGHT, RED MEAT AND DARK LIQUER,THELAUGHTER OF CHILDREN AND, TELLING TALES OF HEROES!

DERRING DO, AND BLOOD AND THUNDER, DASHING ROGUES AND HARDFIGHTING, HEROES, SEEKING GOLD AND GLORY, AND SPILLING AN OCEAN OF BLOOD AND GUTS ALONG THE WAY.

THE KIND OF SWORD & HEART POUND, PUTS A FIRE IN YOUR BELLY; AND BURNS A PLACE IN YOUR VERY SOUL.

IF THE LOVE FOR HEROIC FANTASY BEATS IN YOUR CHEST LIKE A BATTLEDRUM, THEN.JOIN US AS WE BLOOD AND THUNDER BACK TO THE FRONTLINES OF FANTASY!

BECOME A HERO.

BECOME A LEGEND.

BECOME... BATTLEBORN!

Take a look. See if you want in or not. I have nothing to do with this project and thus have no opinion; I am merely boosting the signal.

The Culture: The Gab Hosted Christopher DiNote

Author Christopher DiNote was on Geek Gab last night.

It's no surprise to anyone reading this blog on the regular that the Hellmouth is not what it was.

The writers, directors, producers, and everyone but the technical personnel and the stuntmen are Cargo Cultists at best. You can get good work out of a handful of outliers, but you need to ride herd on them most of the time.

That's why more and more people, those willing and able, are not only reverting to media that isn't crap but learning how to make their own. DiNote's a successful indie author, one of many now, whose work will start filtering out of the book world and make the journey to where Normies live: Movies, TV, and Videogames.

This is not a fast process. People in those other media need to be either turfed out and replaced or parallel alternatives built as forks of the pozzed ones and shoved into the faces of the Normies so they know it exists.

There will be failures along the way; not every effort is worth it, and the enemy gets a vote.

But it can be done, and the enemy's own errors will open the window of opportunity to make it happen; folks just need to be ready to exploit it.

The Culture: Turns Out More Than SF & F Is Fake

Night Danger makes a bold, but correct, claim.

Video going up later on Lovecraft, "Cosmic Horror" isnt a real departure from Gothic, and why contemporary artists fail to capture what Lovecraft was doing

— Night Danger (@WithNightDanger) June 14, 2025

Here's the video.

Death Cultists will not react well to this. Then again they don't react well when they are confronted by reality.

Night Danger gets it. It's the matter of the Sublime that makes the difference, and it is this quality--a non-materialist quality--that is what makes fantastic literature its power. It is what makes horroric tales scary, yet satifying. It is what makes heroic tales thrilling, yet safe. It is what makes tales something more than the ordinary, and thus it is what separates a lot of slop media from the pinnacle they immitate like a Cargo Cult.

The same is true for those in Tabletop trying to use this hobby to chase a high they had with some source material, not realizing that they're using the wrong tool for the job and then getting mad when nothing they do "fixes" what they see as "broken". Why? Because when you're playing Tabletop, you are--for all intents and purposes--not separated from the danger or awesome incident at issue. You are in First Person mode, so it many respects when your man kills the dragon it is real to you and it's also why recreating what Lovecraft (et. al.) did in literature does not work; there is nothing keeping you from it- whatever it is.

Virtual experiences, so far as your brainmeats are concerned, are as real any literal ones. Trainers know this; that why they do it.

You can't do the Sublime without destroying the power of the Tabletop medium.

That's why, in addition to Gothic Horror being fake, Tabletop-as-Narrative-Medium is also fake. Virtual Experiences can only had in First Person mode; this is why Videogames are better at Muh Narrative faggotry than Tabletop because you can do that.

The Culture: Dunder Moose Does DropShip

Last night Dunder had on the Horde Wars crew talking about their new product DropShip.

I am not surprised to hear that this product preceded Horde Wars, and neither am I surprised to hear why HW went first: Pink Slime Fantasy Trumps All in this hobby.

(TLDR: Pink Slime Fantasy can be run Cold and Stupid; everything else cannot unless it has a Brand to do that cognitive shortcut for you, which is why only Brand works for getting into the Normiesphere if it's not Pink Slime Fantasy. The reason for this? There is no Pink Slime (Genre), though a few come close.)

Dropship's setting illustrates why HW was the smarter first product: it can't be run Cold & Stupid. You have to waste time explaining it--pitching it--instead of just rolling up mans and getting on with it. (This, by the way, is another reason for why Boardgames and Miniature Wargames such as BattleTech and 40K are more Normie-friendly than Tabletop; having a tactile, finite game scenario does a lot of the selling for you.)

This looks like it will be Very Okay, much like HW is Very Okay, and if this were 1980 it would become where Traveller and Gamma World are now- maybe BattleTech/Shadowrun. It would not be at all surprising that mixing HW and DS together gets you d12 (I Can't Believe It's Not) RIFTS or TORG. Both could be Cult Classic palette-cleanser games going forward, akin to other Indie Darlings like Shadowdark, but that's as good as it's going to get barring some further Black Swans hitting that knock out the dominant properties lording over those niches.

That's how I see it: Very Okay hobby games.

The Culture: Geek Gab Drives Offensively!

Geek Gab hosted Jay Barnson, author of DEAD TO RIGHTS, on Monday of this week. After the movie and TV reviews, we get to the meat of the show.

This is a Car Wars novel, the latest in a series. It's been years since I'd seen anyone publish any fiction related to Car Wars, so I am curious about how good these are.

Given Amazon's recent policy fuckery on Kindle, I am suggesting Paperback if you buy from Amazon.

While Jay's got other things to offer--see his site page--the Car Wars series is one I want to focus upon. There's not a lot of stories with this premise, be it set in the (now retro-)future of Car Wars (we are closer to this than it seems) or something (legally or more) distinct therefrom, these days and there wasn't a whole lot back in the day either; if you found it, you likely found all of it.

Unfortunately, this sort of thing--more technologically sophisticated then Mad Max (which is a fantastic game in its own right), but still in the general vibe--is rare in general in entertainment. Games Workshop, back in the day, had Dark Future and that was about it. (Yes, Thunder Road is a thing; it's Mad Max with the branding filed off, and that's not Car Wars.)

This dystopia is a cyberpunk dystopia before Tabletop had that term, albeit lacking on the cyberware and chrome. You've got megacorporations, hypercapitalism, weak governments, ultratech gatekept by stupid high price tags (and the transhumanist horror it provides, like Boomers Never Dying Off). All you need to do is ensure that Dudes In Cars With Guns solve the problems and you're cooking with gas. Make it happen.

The 2024 XMas Recommendations Post

"Okay, you put out a Wish List of stuff for Christmas. How about recommendations for others?"

You got it.

Fiction

• Legend of the Galactic Heroes by Yoshiki Tanaka, the light novel series. All ten volumes are now available in English. (Amazon: Kindle, Paperback, Audio) The Blu-Rays for The New Thesis are also still available, but the original series is not.
• The Heroic Legend of Arslan also by Tanaka is now past 20 volumes in English. (Amazon: Kindle and Paperback) There are a few anime adaptations out there.
• Yukikaze by Chohei Kambayashi and its sequels. Yes, there's a manga and an anime adaptation and (as one should expect) the latter has some of the best dogfights put to film.
• The Midas Star by Luigi Cozzi & Steven Ross (Amazon, co-written by the man behind Starcrash and this is a psuedo-sequel to it)
• The Complete Adventures of The Griffon Volume 1 by Arch Whitehouse (Amazon)
• The Complete Adventures of Richard Knight Volume 1 by Donald E. Keyhoe (Amazon)
• The Complete Adventures of Eric Trent Volume 1 Donald E. Keyhoe (Amazon)

Non-Fiction

• The Red Baron Manfred von Richthofen (Amazon)
• The Sabres of Paradise: Conquest and Vengeance in the Caucasus by Lesley Blanch (The story that inspired Dune, Amazon)
• Codename Tricycle: The True Story of the Second World War's Most Extraordinary Double Agent by Russell Miller (Amazon, inspiration for James Bond)
• The Franco-German War of 1870-71 by Gen. Helmuth von Motlke (First-hand account by one of the Prussian generals that fought it, Amazon)

Film/TV/Anime

• The Complete Metropolis by Fritz Lang (Amazon)
• OSAMU TEZUKA'S METROPOLIS (Amazon)
• Panzer World Galient (Amazon)
• Neo Heroic Fantasia Arion (Amazon)
• Brotherhood of the Wolf - Collector's Edition (Amazon)
• The Heroic Trio & Executioners w/ Michelle Yeoh, Anita Mui, & Maggie Cheung (Amazon)
• Hard Boiled by John Woo w/ Chow-Yun Fat and Tony Leung (Amazon)
• Ronin by John Frankenheimer (Amazon)
• Where Eagles Dare w/ Richard Burton and Clint Eastwood (Amazon)

Games

• UFO ROBOT GRENDIZER – The Feast of the Wolves (Steam, GOG; major consoles)
• SKALD: Against the Black Priory (Steam, GOG, consoles)
• The Great Rebellion (Steam, GOG, consoles)
• Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord (Remake; Steam, GOG)
• The Traveller Book for Classic Traveller (POD best option, DriveThru)

Bonus Moment

The best moment for my 2024: my oshi referencing my favorite anime series when starting her anniversary concert.

That was hilarious. The concert was also a lot of fun. Shine on, Shork.

The Business: A Mech-v-Kaiju To Play While Grummz Works On His

Dunder Moose is back with a second episode this week.

Yep, we have a Mech-v-Kaiju game, getting such a game out before Mark Kern gets his Emb8r MMO out of Alpha.

This is a game whose design, with plenty of factions, is ready for Braunstein as even the designer admits. That approach would solve all of the problems that typically dog adaptations of this style of media into the Tabletop Gaming medium and hobby, especially things like putting pressure on the opposition and .

And yes, if you know the Deep Lore then you'll catch all of the inspirations that go into this game. Plenty of things for you to play with. The campaign is not yet live as of this post, but it will be soon. Here's the link.

Good luck!

And remember the mission:

The Business: Marc Miller Sells Traveller

A different happening occured.

News seems to have broken that the Emperor, Marc Miller, has officially passed the Traveller torch onto us here at Mongoose.

We have a little Q&A thread running on ours forums if you have any questions:https://t.co/SkGyXE3sr1

— Mongoose Publishing (@MongoosePub) August 28, 2024

That Q&A link is here.

The important thing is here:

Will Mongoose support previous editions?

We will keep previous Traveller editions available in electronic form, but active support is... a lot, and probably not financially viable, if we are being honest.

That said, over time, we hope to return to some of these PDFs and update them, which will then be made available to anyone who picked them up from our website or Drivethru (we will also make them available to Marc, as he is still selling his Traveller CDs from his website). For example, there is a T4 book that was fully laid out but never given a cover - we have already commissioned a new cover for it, and will be putting it up on our website (and sending out a free update via Drivethru for existing owners) in the next month or two.

Beyond that... our passion is for the Traveller universe and the stories that can be told within it rather than a particular set of mechanics, so older editions are going nowhere.

We would like to expand both their mechanics and timelines to the TAS programme (for example) but efforts are going to have to be made to avoid that turning into an unholy mess. We are going to be adding Classic Traveller to the TAS programme (so you will be able to publish and sell your own Classic Traveller titles) first, for no other reason than we think it will be the easiest. Expect to see that happen relatively soon (before the end of the year certainly), and we will see how it goes.

There is only one thing to say about this:

If you do not have copies in your library--and I mean real books, not PDFs--you had better source and acquire them now lest Mongoose (for purely Commercial reasons, not anything to do with the Death Cult; we're dealing with Mammon here, not Molech) decide that they can't even be bothered to offer Print On Demand options going forward.

And if there are only PDF options, then consider getting the PDF and setting up a guerilla POD offering because retroactive editting of publications is a thing now. Get the real thing while you can, then archive it and set up secure routes so others can follow later.

My Life As A Gamer: Putting A Proper Campaign Together (Part Five)

(This is part of a series. The first post is here, the second here, the third is here, and yesterday is here.)

Your Patrons are ready to drive the campaign, and your calendar is ready to track their progress. Now it's time to remember that some tasks are done better with some tools than others.

The Rules

There are three keys to a proper campaign. One is strict timekeeping. The second is Patron-driven play. Both of them rely on the third element: complete and competent rules.

Typical RPG talk doesn't comprehend why this is necessary. That is because they do not deal in adversarial play, which is required to consider due to Patrons driving campaign play, and competent adversarial play insists upon all parties strictly adhering to a single set of rules and procedures.

Players, be they Patrons or not, rely on the rules and its procedures to inform and govern their decisions and actions. It is unwise to change these at all because the rules define the game, not the Referee. The Referee's function as administrator and adjudicator means that he--like the rules he uses--is an uncaring, unyielding, disinterested neutral party. He is not God; the game is not so because he says so.

The consequence of this necessity for a neutral party means that the rules must be fit for purpose. The problem with tabletop RPGs as a business is that well over 90% are not fit for purpose because they cannot fulfill the requirements of proper campaign play.

Therefore the Referee is required to choose the proper tool for the job; do not use a ruleset for one type of campaign play to do another for which it is ill-suited. That said, all worthy options will be complete, competent campaign rulesets with procedures and mechanics to support it.

The Options

I wrote this series, and write in general, with Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1st Edition in mind because it is a complete and competent ruleset. There are other options.

I will list a few below. Regular readers will see some repeats. This isn't an exhaustive list, or a comprehensive one; omission is not necessarily disapproval.

• Classic Traveller: Still the go-to for most forms of space adventure campaigning. Lacking on stompy robots (substitute A Time of War + BattleTech or Mekton Zeta for that) and Cyberpunk (Cyberpunk 2020/Shadowrun for that), but otherwise fine. Its three core modes--explorer, merchant, mercenary--apply to most viable space campaigning.
• Gamma World: The go-to for post-Apocalypse adventure campaigning, and like AD&D the first edition is still the best. Honorable Mention to Palladium's RIFTS for being almost there but not quite making it (because, alas, Palladium can't grok proper campaign play due to Siembieda's comic background).
• Top Secret: Still solid for the spy campaign, especially set during the Cold War or earlier, where Patrons run the Agencies and other similar players. Honorable mention to AEG's Spycraft 1st Edition for almost getting there (you'd have Threats run as Agencies instead, with their own agents) and Ninjas & Superspies for kind-of seeing how things have to go (and then mucking it up because Palladium).
• Call of Cthulhu: Patrons run cults, particular entities, rival investigators, etc. as the major change to how COC plays because Crime is Spy-Lite so doing Weird Crime is Weird Spy; All Flesh Must Be Eaten, for all its faults, always focuses on scenarios where Patron play (with Domains) is an easy retrofit that always improves the experience because Survival Horror is a wargame scenario variant at its heart.
• Twilight 2000: More than any other option for "realistic military campaigning" (e.g. RECON), this '80s-era "Cold War Goes Hot Into WW3" game set in post-war Europe (but wisely making it so that you can play anywhere) runs with the excuse of "You can just read the real manuals for the details!" If you wanted something after the bomb, but not Gamma World (or its competitors, such as RIFTS and the titular After The Bomb), this remains the go-to despite it being long out of print and unlikely to ever come back.
• TORG: The only RPG that attempte the multi-genre-as-setting thing and made it work (at least in 1st edition) as a proper campaign scenario. The new edition rubs me the wrong way with its Narrative Logic creeping in, but the original 1990s game--with one rule change--is still a fantastic time despite its known card gimmick. Dismiss the potential for a great campaign here at your peril, assuming you start at the original State Of Play at launch and ignore the "updates".

You'll note that I didn't put down a superhero game, ignored all licensed games (including some that I like for sentimental reasons), and left out some others that I know I wrote about in the past.

There's reasons for that. Tomorrow I will get into why as a stand-alone post.

My Life As A Gamer: Putting A Proper Campaign Together (Part Four)

(This is part of a series. The first post is here, the second here, and the third is here.)

The Benefit Of Patron-Driven Play

It will become obvious to the Referee why he should delegate all of the typical talk of "plotting" or "adventure creation" to the subset of players playing the Patrons in the campaign shortly after he launches the campaign.