In old RPG news, we have a few items. First, there’s the concluding articles to Ken Denmead’s Top 10 D&D Modules series: #7 Finale. I approve of both choices (but still no Barrier Peaks?).

Second, Allen Varney (no roleplaying slouch himself) has an interview over at the Escapist with Marc Miller, creator of Traveller.

The retro videogaming department is busy this week. For recent homages, we have Greg Costikyan at Play This Thing! with a review of a Japanese rogue-like and Z over at GeekDad with a review of a NES/SNES clone. For the latter, I’m glad Mur has her old SNES — this thing sounds like a cheap knockoff.

In nods to the past, Marc Cerny, creator of Marble Madness and contributor to many a Naughty Dog and Insomniac game (disclosure: I work for Insomniac Games) has been inducted into the AIAS Hall of Fame. And around the same time Marble Madness came out, there was Starflight, one of the most complex games of its time. Erin Hoffman at the Escapist covers the story of its development.

Finally, a rather interesting story about how partnerships can go awry. Apparently, Konami, the creators of Yu-Gi-Oh, discovered that someone was creating bootleg cards, thereby both profiting from their creation and polluting the market with counterfeits. Little did they suspect that someone was their partner, Upper Deck… Cult-Stuff has all the details.

Long time listeners will remember my very early review of M.U.L.E. Well, there’s another version out there, this time at http://www.planetmule.com/. I haven’t tried it out yet, but it looks like there are clients for Windows, Mac and Linux, and eventually Debian. You do register with the site, but I don’t think they have a central matchmaking server, as they mention using the forum for that. The one strike against them is they credit Dan Bunten, not Danielle Bunten, against her wishes, but it’s probably worth taking a look if you’re a M.U.L.E. fan.

In more D&D related content, we have a repeat of a series at GeekDad, where Ken Denmead reviews the Top Ten D&D modules he found while cleaning up his storage shed. I don’t see Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, but otherwise looks to be a good list of classics: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6

In another GeekDad post (I need to get out more), Michael Harrison interviews Ethan Gilsdorf, author of Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks, a memoir/rediscovery of the geek life. Plus, until January 13 (Wednesday), you can enter a contest to win a copy of the book. See the article for more details.

Finally, yesterday Terry Cavanagh’s retro platformer VVVVVV was released. I tried out the demo and it’s definitely worth it. It’s challenging and fun, and has a very nifty mechanic where you can switch the “floor” to either the top or the bottom of the screen. For a fuller review, check out this one by Anthony Burch on Destructoid.

First, James Maliszewski has a nice little article up at The Escapist, entitled “Founding Fathers.” In it, he covers the history of wargames, from von Riesswitz’s Kriegspiel to David Wesley’s Braunstein (the progenitor of Dave Arneson’s Blackmoor campaign).

Related to this is Monte Cook’s most recent article at the aforementioned The Escapist magazine about the original supplements to D&D record the evolution of the rules. This is a follow-up to his previous post on D&D, already covered here.

Second, Greg Costikyan talks about the background for his new board game, Megacorps, and how he inadvertently created a future history through game design.

Greg also has a review of the Civil War tabletop game A House Divided (designed by Frank Chadwick in 1981). I haven’t played this one, but based on Greg’s review I think I’ll give it a shot as I’m a huge Civil War (or the “recent unpleasantness”) buff.

Finally, on the video gaming front, Nathan Barry on Geekdad reports that Tatio has released a remake of Arkanoid for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Many are the hours I spent playing Arkanoid on my Mac SE — as it was pirated, perhaps I should purchase a copy to balance the books. And you should too, because it’s tons of fun.

Hope your holiday season was a good one and you got to play lots of games! And if not, you’ve got a whole year ahead so get to it…

My friends and I were only a few years older than he was, and I’m still not sure how we figured it out. Determination, maybe. Ah well, as he says, a lifetime of gaming ensued…

As a side note, I have to agree with Mr. Cook about the quality of the writing. After looking at my basic D&D rules (the blue book mit dem Dragon), I can’t figure out how I and my seventh-grade compatriots figured out how to play. While conversational in tone, it’s nearly incomprehensible and certainly incomplete, especially compared to today’s RPGs. But then, I doubt the original Basic D&D was meant to be complete. I believe that Gygax intended that Advanced D&D was the One True Path, and Basic D&D was nod to the past (a lot of the material came from the original three books) but ultimately a gateway drug to the New Shiny. But enough of the customers disagreed that we ended up with the odd case of two different flavors of D&D (AD&D and Basic/Expert) for many years.

But enough of that. I’m moving on. I think.

For a fuller picture of the show, I recommend you check out The Spiel Origins episode for a lot more show floor interviews, and the Dice Tower Origins episode for more info and a nice interview with (Spiel des Jahres winner!) Reiner Knizia.

Featured interviews:

• Matt Duhan of Gozer Games discusses: Collateral Damage
• Rob Balder of many things discusses: The FUnny Music Project, Erfworld, Partially Clips, Get Nifty
• Peter Hansell of Tablestar Games discusses: Wealth of Nations, Martinis and Men, HeroCard Orc Wars
• Fred Hicks of Indy Press Revolution and Evil Hat Productions discusses: Heaven and Earth, Archaia Studios, Avenues and Alleyways, Solipsist, Spirit of the Season, Spirit of the Century, Don’t Rest Your Head, Don’t Lose Your Mind, Monsters and Other Childish Things, GODLIKE, Wild Talents, Dresden Files RPG
• Curt Covert of Smirk and Dagger Games discusses: Cutthroat Caverns, Run For Your Life, Candyman, Hex*Hex, Hex*Hex Next, Cutthroat Caverns: Deeper & Darker
• Greg Lam of Pair Of Dice Games discusses: Chopstick Dexterity Megachallenge 3000, Warp6, Knockabout, Marvin Marvel’s Marvelous Marble Machine

Pictures of my trip to Origins including most of these folks can be found on my flickr feed. You can also see the lovely new sewer line.

For those who want to play the original Traveller, QLI/RPGRealms has a single book that reprints the first three “little black books”, plus many other reprints and Classic Traveller-related items. They also have a d20 version of Traveller, but really, why bother…

Link

• Apologies for long hiatus
• News about reprints and rereleases, especially Cosmic Encounter and Titan
• Get yourself a Geeklabel T-shirt!
• Interview with Eric Goldberg
• Listen to Midnight’s Lair!
• What’s up with me
• Closing

Links:

• Junta (board game)
• Highway to the Reich (wargame)
• War of the Ring (wargame)
• Descent on Crete (wargame)
• John Carter: Warlord of Mars (?)
• Swords & Sorcery (wargame)
• Commando (wargame)
• DragonQuest (RPG)
• Imperium Romanum (wargame)
• Campaigns of Napoleon (wargame)
• The Compleat Enchanter (reference to book)
• Paranoia (RPG)
• Mongoose’s Paranoia Page
• Star Wars RPG
• Tales of the Arabian Nights (board game)
• Air Cav (wargame)
• Crossover Technologies (from 3D Gamers site)
• MadMaze
• Tom Peter’s Business School in a Box
• Article on Unplugged Games

Final thoughts:

Another big thank you to Eric Goldberg for agreeing to sit down for this interview. He’s a very busy guy and I appreciate all the time he was willing to give me.

• Apologies for long hiatus
• Now a member of the Gaming Podcast Network!
• Politika games have finally shipped
• Game Developer’s Conference update and upcoming interviews
• Listen to Groovy Gamers Groovecast!
• Interview with Greg Costikyan
• Attend the UK Games Expo!
• Feedback
• Closing

Links:

• Supercharge (wargame)
• Swords & Sorcery (wargame)
• The Creature That Ate Sheboygan (wargame)
• SPI Died For Your Sins (article)
• Bug-Eyed Monsters (wargame)
• Toon (RPG)
• Paranoia (RPG)
• Mongoose’s Paranoia Page
• Star Wars RPG
• The Willow Game (board game)
• Crossover Technologies (from 3D Gamers site)
• MadMaze
• Article on Unplugged Games
• Violence: the roleplaying game of egregious and repulsive bloodshed
• Gaming Needs an Indy Label (originally published in Game Developer)
• The Scratchware Manifesto
• GDC 2005 Rant
• GDC 2007 Maverick Award acceptance speech

Final thoughts:

A big thank you to Greg Costikyan for agreeing to sit down for this interview. He’s a very busy guy and I appreciate all the time he was willing to give me.

Despite my earlier and unfounded skepticism, Matt Barton of the blog Armchair Arcade has posted the second of a series about the origins and history of the computer RPG. It’s currently up on Gamasutra, but he’ll be posting it on his own blog in a few weeks.

This installment features games from the time period that he calls the Golden Age of CRPGs: 1984-1993.

As someone who wrote a basic RPG for his Zenith computer out of frustration (not a lot of games for that platform) I found this pretty fascinating. I’m looking forward to the next few installments, assuming that he gets to them.

(Yes, this is from last month — still catching up).

• Intro
• New website!
• Sound issues solved
• Thanks to BoardGameSpeak
• Domain of Apokolipz format change
• New podcast: The Square One Podcast
• New podcast: The Voice of the Revolution
• Realpolitik update: RealWorld
• Promo: Listen to Random Signal (50 episodes, woo!)
• DragonQuest publishing history
• DragonQuest personal history
• Character creation
• Combat
• Magic
• Skills
• Additional material
• Thoughts
• Promo: Listen to After Serenity
• Closing

Links:

• DragonQuest (Wikipedia)
• Recent RPG.net review
• Greg Costikjan’s history of SPI
• John Carter, Warlord of Mars (Eric Goldberg game)
• Tales of the Arabian Nights (Eric Goldberg game)
• The DragonQuest Players Association
• Index of published DragonQuest materials
• Arcane Wisdom and some DQ mods
• Snafaru’s DragonQuest fan page (includes DQ Open Source)
• Library of the Seagate Guild of Adventurers
• Additional DQ links

Final thoughts:

Eric Goldberg was also a co-creator of the Paranoia RPG. I should have remembered that.

Paul Tevis (Have Games, Will Travel)
Mike Sugarbaker (OgreCave Audio Report)
The Mad Three (Gamer: The Podcasting)
Don Dehm (Pulp Gamer)
Yours truly
Tom Vasel (The Dice Tower)
Mike Stackpole (Podcast Entertainment Network)

Many thanks to Paul Tevis for organizing this — it was fun! But boy, can podcasters talk…

• A song of spring and iTunes
• Basic character creation
• Common gameplay: shooting, fighting, obtaining information
• Brief coverage of Top Secret/SI
• Thoughts on Top Secret today
• Next time: GDC reports

Top Secret Links:

• Wikipedia entry
• Top Secret articles on Modus Operandi
• G2 File: Top Secret articles
• Spies-R-Us – A resource for Top Secret/S.I.
• Recent thread on Merle Rasmussen