Advertising age

Today, James at Grognardia reflects:

When I entered the hobby, if you played a science fiction game, you either played Traveller or Space Opera. I was a Traveller man back then, so Space Opera was one of those games I noticed on game store shelves and whose ads and articles I saw in the pages of Dragon but which I never actually played.

I've already written about how I didn't actually play D&D that much (though I was fascinated by the rulebooks), but I have such strong memories of reading the ads in Dragon—for games I'd never play, for games that I'd never even seen on the shelves. I'm coming to believe that, in their unavailability—shall we call it invisibility?—they were as fascinating to me as the few games (D&D, Gamma World, Top Secret, a few others) that I did play.

Part of the fun of reading Grognardia is that James (who I gather is around my age) will frequently review a game that I recall seeing ads for in Dragon: Bushido (RPG of feudal Japan), Superhero 2044, et al. It's like hearing the other half of a conversation that got broken off decades ago.

Uniques, Toolmasters, Ubermenschen

I. Carl Wilson's close reading of a new Destroyer song.

II. Grognardia on Superhero 2044:

Character creation uses a point-buy system that was unusual for its time. 140 points are used to purchase attributes (there are seven), as modified by the character's "type." Superhero 2044 presents three types of characters: uniques ("possessing powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men" -- think Superman), toolmasters (think Iron Man), and ubermenschen (think Tarzan). Up to 50 points may be allocated toward a character's super powers and related abilities. However, there are no rules or descriptions of super powers. This was done consciously by Donald Saxman "for copyright reasons," which is bizarre from both a legal and a game design perspective. Instead, it's left to each player, in cooperation with the referee, to model a character's super powers so that they work with the game's various systems, particularly combat.

III. I enjoyed my appearance on a panel at Fordham the other night (thanks to Helene Stapinski), where I met Arthur Phillips, Mary Elizabeth Williams, and Jim Dwyer. (I also met two students from Buffalo!) Jim read one of his columns, about Marie Ponsot—a great piece, with this nugget on writing every day:

“I used to have babies all over the place, and the people I was teaching, and I could find 10 minutes every day,” Ms. Ponsot said. “You’ve always got 10 minutes.”