Game News 1
Been enjoying looking through the "Tales from the Loop" RPG, very high quality product, art and writing both. Very nostalgic, had 80s music on my little MP3 player most of the last week. One book I've asked my brother to retrieve from Mother's house in Swansea is a colour encyclopedia of technology from around 1983. It's got mention of portable phones, of electronic word processors that send a screenful of text to another unit over telephone lines, of how you can use a computer to order goods from a shop of buy tickets, of laser discs for music and film.
It doesn't mention mobile phones, CDs, DVDs, email, the internet or any mention of "being online". All the core technologies we take for granted now are there in nascent form, but haven't yet acquired the terminology we now use. Should be a useful little guide, not only for what players should expect from technology of the era, but what they shouldn't as well. One of my favourite books during my teens, I imagine it will be another nostalgia-fest when it arrives.
On the Star Frontiers front I am continuing to tinker with my "Landstrider" concept, having great fun with it. I did pick up a set of very battered main rulebooks from the Alpha Dawn and Night Hawks boxed sets to carry around so I can work on it away from home, but now there is another option. Wizards of the Coast have started to pay attention to the fact that Star Frontiers is still quite popular and have started to publish it again, as pdfs and print-on-demand titles from DriveThruRPG/RPGNow. Currently it's just the Alpha Dawn and Knight Hawks rules that can be bought at books (they combine all the books from each set into one), I imagine that once enough modules have been released as pdfs they'll do a book of them too.
The pdfs were all available free at one of the fan run sites but now as WotC publishes each one the download link there is being replaced by a link to the relevant shop page. I suppose that someone at WotC noticed that there was a demand and hence good cashy money to be made from resurrecting the old line. Bit of a pity you won't be able to pick it all up for free now but I do have it all anyway and the purchased pdfs are all high quality and indexed. I know because I have availed myself of the opportunity to buy a set of the rulebooks (in hardback no less) to act as a reference set and got the pdfs as well. Got them already and the books should arrive some time next week, see what they're like quality wise.
Of course, being originally released in 1982, Star Frontiers could easily be used in a Tales from the Loop game, perhaps all the kids meet up once a week to play. The robot rules might influence them to see what they could do to actual robots in the game...
It doesn't mention mobile phones, CDs, DVDs, email, the internet or any mention of "being online". All the core technologies we take for granted now are there in nascent form, but haven't yet acquired the terminology we now use. Should be a useful little guide, not only for what players should expect from technology of the era, but what they shouldn't as well. One of my favourite books during my teens, I imagine it will be another nostalgia-fest when it arrives.
On the Star Frontiers front I am continuing to tinker with my "Landstrider" concept, having great fun with it. I did pick up a set of very battered main rulebooks from the Alpha Dawn and Night Hawks boxed sets to carry around so I can work on it away from home, but now there is another option. Wizards of the Coast have started to pay attention to the fact that Star Frontiers is still quite popular and have started to publish it again, as pdfs and print-on-demand titles from DriveThruRPG/RPGNow. Currently it's just the Alpha Dawn and Knight Hawks rules that can be bought at books (they combine all the books from each set into one), I imagine that once enough modules have been released as pdfs they'll do a book of them too.
The pdfs were all available free at one of the fan run sites but now as WotC publishes each one the download link there is being replaced by a link to the relevant shop page. I suppose that someone at WotC noticed that there was a demand and hence good cashy money to be made from resurrecting the old line. Bit of a pity you won't be able to pick it all up for free now but I do have it all anyway and the purchased pdfs are all high quality and indexed. I know because I have availed myself of the opportunity to buy a set of the rulebooks (in hardback no less) to act as a reference set and got the pdfs as well. Got them already and the books should arrive some time next week, see what they're like quality wise.
Of course, being originally released in 1982, Star Frontiers could easily be used in a Tales from the Loop game, perhaps all the kids meet up once a week to play. The robot rules might influence them to see what they could do to actual robots in the game...