Musings and Memories from a Lifetime of Roleplaying
Needless to say, I've been very remiss in writing new posts for this blog, even within the context of the less rigorous schedule I proposed two months ago. I wish I had a better excuse beyond "I'm busy revising Thousand Suns for a second edition," except that's the truth. In fact. I've been so busy with that that I haven't even been posting as often at Grognardia Games Direct as I have been. On…
More reconsiderations posts are in the offing, probably next week, but, as has been the case since the end of April , I remain hard at work on completing the first draft of the upcoming second edition of my science fiction roleplaying game, Thousand Suns . My goal was to complete the entire draft by the end of June and, while I'll fall somewhat short of that, I'm still very confident that all of…
Believe it or not, at the very dawn of what came to be called the Old School Renaissance , there was a lot of handwringing, both within its ranks and outside them, over just what was meant by the term "old school." Now, I don't recall when I first heard the term applied either to Dungeons & Dragons specifically or to roleplaying games more generally, nor can I pinpoint its precise origin. I have a…
Toward the end of his life, St Augustine began a project called in Latin the Retractationes . Often mistranslated as "retractions," the title actually is closer in meaning to "reconsiderations" or "revisions," because, in its two parts, Augustine looks back on his extensive writings and comments on the ways in which he'd erred, was unclear, or had otherwise failed to get his point across to the…
First, a couple of brief updates: I’m still hard at work on the first draft of the second edition of Thousand Suns and, while it’s going well, it’s not moving quite as quickly as I had originally hoped. I’m still on schedule to complete most of the draft before I head off to Rome , but a few sections of it, including the High Struggle rules , probably won’t be among them. More information on the…
I know that I made some of you aware of this earlier, but, as the time draws closer, I thought I'd share the information more widely. Between May 31 and June 7, I will be in Rome, Italy on a brief holiday. I also know that I have a number of readers and colleagues in Italy, though I am unsure how many of you live in or near Rome. Assuming it's possible, I'd love to meet some of you, since I can't…
My attention remains on the first draft of Thousand Suns second edition for a while longer. However, for those of you who care about that project, I'd ask you to head over to Grognardia Games Direct , where I provide updates on it, like this one. The High Struggle (Part II) by James Maliszewski A Preview of a Preview Read on Substack
I'm still hard at work finishing up the first draft of the second edition of Thousand Suns , so I'm not yet ready to return to regular blogging here. However, I recently read something that helped me organize some thoughts I'd been having for a while and I thought they might be worth sharing, especially in light of my advocacy for long RPG campaigns . As you know, I'm a big fan of science fiction.…
I'm not dead, but I am deep in the proverbial salt mines, working hard to complete the first draft of the second edition of Thousand Suns. I'm making excellent progress on this particular project and don't want to slow the momentum, so that means that I'm devoting myself fully to it. That also means – unfortunately – that daily blogging is lower on my priority list and will remain so for a bit…
Lingvo Tera by James Maliszewski Thoughts on Language in Thousand Suns Read on Substack
I mentioned in yesterday's "The Articles of Dragon " post that, by 1985, I had begun to sense a nebulous but nevertheless real shift in TSR Hobbies and its games, though I could not then have really articulated what precisely it was that I was sensing. Even now, with the benefit of hindsight, I'm still not entirely sure I can pinpoint what my younger self was picking up on – but I don't think I…
I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that, for all the fanfare that accompanied the publication of issue #100 of Dragon (August 1985) , it nevertheless felt like the end of an era – at least to me. At the time, I couldn't have meaningfully articulated precisely why it felt this way, but I felt it nonetheless. Something intangible had shifted and I don't think I was alone in sensing it, even if its…
Chronicle by James Maliszewski A Brief History of the Thousand Suns Read on Substack
Though not my original intention , apparently I am going to be writing more posts about the stories that gave birth to the characters described at the back of the Traveller supplements 1001 Characters and Citizens of the Imperium . Taken together, these stories form something I elsewhere dubbed "Appendix T," being for Traveller what Appendix N was for AD&D : a window into the kinds of tales…
One of these days, I'll need to do a proper campaign update for my Dark Between the Stars Fading Suns campaign, which I've been refereeing since October of last year. We're only twenty sessions in, but things are evolving quite nicely. The players have all settled into their characters and the characters are now well established within both the setting and the group. They've even added a new…
Back in the far-off days of the early Old School Renaissance, when Labyrinth Lord was everyone's go-to B/X Dungeons & Dragons retro-clone, Goblinoid Games published two supplements to it that I really liked: the Advanced Edition Companion and Realms of Crawling Chaos . Among the many admirable qualities they shared were illustrations by Sean Äaberg. As I say in my linked reviews, it took me a…
I know that, for some readers, White Wolf's World of Darkness games represent a definitive break with the early days of the hobby and, therefore, aren't a fit topic for discussion on this blog. I won't argue the larger point, even though I think White Wolf's RPGs represent less a revolution than an evolution of trends begun many years before. What I will say is that these games played an important…
Though I haven't devoted many posts to the subject, Dragon magazine published quite a few adventures in its pages over the years. Most of these were, of course, for Dungeons & Dragons or its "big brother," AD&D , though there were also a handful for other RPGs, like Gamma World , Traveller , and Top Secret . I used some of them from time to time, but, if I'm honest, almost none of them made much…
The Terran State (Part II) by James Maliszewski Further Thoughts on Interstellar Governance Read on Substack
The trouble with Muses is that, ultimately, they're in control , not you. As I continue to work on the second edition of Thousand Suns – the draft is now close to half complete – my mind has been wandering ever farther away from the more well-known varieties of fantasy. Of course, as I recently argued, there's still lots of overlap between these two genres and not merely in terms of content. Many…
A couple of years ago, I wrote a post in which I briefly touched on the variety of names by which the Game Master or referee is known in older roleplaying games. Since I'm currently knee-deep in revising Thousand Suns , which uses the term GM, I found my mind wandering a bit back to this topic, trying to remember what alternate terms the RPGs of my youth employed. A quick check through my library…
I've mentioned before that one of my favorite What's New with Phil & Dixie strips appeared in issue #65 of Dragon (September 1982). In it, Phil Foglio muses on the surprising similarities between fantasy and science fiction. It's a great comic and one I can still, more than forty years later, quote almost verbatim. While Foglio probably wasn't being entirely serious, one of the reasons the strip's…
The Terran State by James Maliszewski Whether Federation or Empire, Some Truths Remain Read on Substack
Today, I make good on a promise I made two weeks ago to write a retrospective on the other adventure included in GDW’s Double Adventure 3 for Traveller , The Argon Gambit . Compared to its companion, Death Station , it rarely receives much attention, even among dedicated Traveller fans. That’s understandable to a degree, since it is more closely tied to the Third Imperium setting and therefore…
Issue #100 of Dragon (August 1985) was a milestone for the periodical, as well as for me. For the magazine, it was a portentous number to use as an occasion for celebration. For me, though I didn't know it at the time, it represented the end of an era. The same month that this was released was the last time I attended a "games day" hosted by a public library. It may have even been the last such…