It's been revamped!
A surprisingly historic role playing game, 80 pages of background, pd-artwork, system,
setting, examples, very historic but adventurous characters, and a full campaign of six episodes based on true events.

A free, diceless, fast paced Role Playing? Game
Where you are the movie STARS and the WRITER-DIRECTOR
Of the many Adventure B-Movies of Oblivion
Movies that never were, but that you would have loved to see.

Enjoy them during college, your coffee break, when you can't sleep on the phone, while you're on the bus, or just when there's nothing on TV.

I was pleasantly surprised to see that Rob Lang on the free rpg blog somehow discovered Dark Dungeon? on the googoogle-twisted highways of the internet, and gave it a very sweet and positive review. Makes me kind of shy. But it also helps to rediscover my own old enthusiasm again. It seems positive feedback is unnervingly essential to carry on, even if you think you know what you're doing.

Star Wars, The Roleplaying Game
first edition hardcover
by Greg Costikyan
1987 West End Games

What Tolkien did for Fantasy, Star Wars in a way did for Science Fiction. Or Science Fantasy, more properly, because Star Wars is not exactly hard core Sci Fi, with it's religious Jedi knights waving their light sabres driven by the mystic “Force”. It's a special kind of Science, obviously. And maybe that is partly why the movies became such a phenomenon.

Interactive fantasy writing also hit the Yaddrin? - Dark Dungeon? universe. The Funny Farm has opened a special forum for their written adventures taking place in Yaddrin. For now, the focus of the moderators is on the rich city of Brugghes?, and the spinoff Inner Worlds. If you want to have a peek, or even want to join in the writing, take a look at:

http://www.phpbbserver.com/funnyfarm/

Call of Cthulhu
boxed set (Games Workshop edition, UK market)
by Sandy Petersen
1981, 1986 The Chaosium

Many horror stories don't end well for their heroes. Many Call of Cthulhu games also don't end well for their heroes. The heroes die, turn into monstrosities, or most often they just go completely and utterly insane because of what they have seen. In that respect the Call is a successful attempt to turn horror into role playing.

RuneQuest
First Edition Boxed Set, Games Workshop version (UK market)
by Steve Perrin, Ray Turney and friends
1980 The Chaosium

Certainly in the days the game was published, its cover was sure to draw a boy's attention. And a girl's attention too, maybe. The lady on the cover is not only beautiful and fighting a vicious lizard, she is also hardly wearing anything. Yes, she does wear a helmet and some scant armour, but I would not want to go into combat in her clothes. Then again, she is very nice to look at. I see now she even wears make up. Hm.

Traveller
Starter Edition and Booklets 4 (Mercenary) and 5 (High Guard)
by Marc W. Miller
1983 Game Designers' Workshop

For a long time, Traveller was the only science fiction role playing game worth knowing about. There were many others of course, including a D&D spin off, but there was no serious contender. What D&D was for fantasy, Traveller was for Science Fiction.

This is to be the first of a series of reviews, not just for the games in the store, but for the games you do not find in the store. Many of the games I plan to review (or have reviewed) here have been out of print for some time, may be virtually impossible to buy second hand, or may never have been sold at all – or not for profit anyway. Why? I believe our hobby has evolved a lot in the thirty-plus years it exists, and not all of this evolution is visible in the current commercial trends. To the contrary. Looking at the older games and current non-commercial games as well as the current commercial ones may be quite insightful. Or at least it will be nostalgic!

Advanced Dungeons & Dragons
Dungeon Masters Guide and Players Handbook
by Gary Gygax
TSR/Random House 1979

Yes, I am speaking of the first edition here. Probably no one had an inkling that a fourth edition game would be upcoming now, nor that it would have become such big business. The Dungeon Masters Guide is heavier and twice as thick as the Player's handbook, and it looks more like a mysterious spellbook than most game books look nowadays. It lacks gloss, the artwork is not as slick yet, and the small typesetting looks a bit as if it is a 1920's book about the Assassins and the Knights Templar. And yet there are small comic strips that indicate otherwise. It looks like something you could find on a dusty shelf in an antique bookshop. There are indexes and glossaries, but neither makes it more insightful to what the book is about.