Interlude: Adventurer. new introduction.

 Yeah, a job that I like, keeps me busy and is interesting, plus a minecraft addiction (but with the whole family, so its semi justifiable) have been major time priorities; the retrorockets campaign material is going along at a poky rate, but nothing worth posting yet.  So, while looking around, I pulled up Adventurer, and started giving it another look, and, naturally, fiddling with it.  A gratifyingly large number of y'all have downloaded it -probably over a thousand in all versions, and even if feedback has been infrequent, I like what I see.  So, I figured I'd post some of the revised bits as I do them -mainly simplifications of experience and combat, plus edit edit edit. Here then is the new introduction.

________________________________________              

In Principio

It’s a simple premise that started this: what if G & A had different inspirations than the one(s) that became The Big RPG . From it (so far) has come at least two variants I really like: Mazes and Minotaurs and Xplorers ; these ask “what if the font of inspiration was Greek myths, or Science fiction. Really well done, check em out.



This, then, is that, but spun thusly: what if the first RPG was Traveller? I’m not even going to get into the possibility that this might have happened (I hasten to add), but rather just follow it up . What if Fantasy was the red-headed stepchild of the RPG industry, which is seven-tenths dominated by endless SciFi worlds adventures and rules sets. Specifically…. recovered from the detreitus of a quantum chronoinfindibulum experiment at CERN, which turned out to contain this manuscript and some very, very odd dice.



In 1974, a garage-based game failed to get off of the ground due to lack of financing, and the efforts of two well known miniature and board game designers (an odd miniatures supplement called “the fantasy game” ) languished unpublished in a box in a garage. Eventually the designers ended up at GDW, best known nowadays for the breakthrough and innovative game Traveller which caught and rode the wave of star wars popularity, and created a whole new genre and audience for games. Adventure Simulations Games (as they are called) cater to an endless variety of SF settings and adventures, all ultimately derived from Traveler and an infinite variety of SF settings. Looking to expand the boundaries of the new hobby to other genres, G & A convince GDW to try a new approach to travelling: “howzabout something like that Robert E. Howard/Lovecraft genre , but the swords and sorcery version more than the pulp horror of Investigator; you know, like in Fritz Leiber's stuff ? …or, heck, Anderson's fantasy stuff...... Low tech, ya' know ? C'mon Marc, pleeeeeeze ?”

And so, in 1977, following the phenomenal success of book 8 (Droidbots), The Adventure game is dragged out and dusted off. Months later, Book 9 Adventurer is released. Always enjoying a small but devoted player base, Fantasy has remained a constant niche in Adventure simulation gaming. Adventurer has been the touchstone of the genre, and despite revisions and imitations, has always remained in print for the entire run of all editions of traveler, through Advance, 2nd and 3rd edition. With the contentious release of Traveller 4.0 considerable interest in older editions of the original ASG has developed, and GDW (now owned by Conhugebro) has now rereleased the original edition and supplements for a new generation. Whether you are a revered elder gamer from the first days, or a recent entry to the hobby, we are delighted to present the most unusual supplement Traveller ever produced.




“Scouts may come and go, and core rules change from space opera to gritty apocalyptic SF(and back), but swinging a sword and looting evil ruins always remains a comforting constant. Plus, there are no frikkin’ stellar spectra charts to constantly bicker and obsess about updating, right Marc ? "
– G, asked about the constant popularity of Adventurer at AdventuCon 22.






“Two words: Pole Arms.”
-Marc’s response

Adventurer Book 1: Characters and Conflict now available !

For those of you still interested in the progress of the project that inspired this blog, I now have a new, revised and reorganized file available for Adventurer: Book 1 Characters and Conflict. This includes what will (absent any playtest and editorial comment) be probably the final version of the character, combat and equipment rules, and two each of the combat system and equipment lists !  My byzantine versions, and the likely simpler and certainly more familiar SDR systems.  Also, it has a spiffy cover*, and interior art** to which I have added stupid captions.

Book two will likely focus on the magic system and the bestiary.  Book three will cover the campaign tools and (likely) a modification of the Traveller SRD for creating skyships and the like.  If anything else is produced, it’ll probably be a campaign, perhaps based on Heptarchia or Skyswords of Pangea.

I decided on this reorganization because it allows each of the books to be used alone to modify Traveller campaigns, depending on what one wants.  The excellent Mercator, with its own character generation and world could simply add Magic and Creatures using book two, whereas a straight low tech world SF campaign might simply use book 1 for the character generation and combat rules, and omit the magic users and spells.

I do note that the first book does include generation rules for Mages and spellcasters, but no spells.  I toyed with the idea of stripping them out and letting book 2 include them, but I eventually decided that its easier to ignore them in non-magical campaigns than to have to constantly flip between two booklets, although the latter approach is much purer old style game design..;) .

 

*Cover Art: Sade:  Fantasy book cover stock

**Interior: Joe Calkins, Cerberus Royalty Free Clip Art Pack

Both available from rpg.drivethrustuff, and highly recommended!