September 13, 2010: The Past

Nostalgia makes everything better. This is a known phenomenon, since we seem to be programmed to remember the good more clearly than the bad. So sometimes it's useful to get a fresh viewpoint. For instance, some of the "good old days" of gaming, circa 1981, can be remembered as a golden age. Ok, I remember it as a golden age, but mostly because I was 9.

But Space Gamer helps cut through the haze of the years, providing a portal to what games were actually considered good at the time, as opposed to "I remember having fun, so I'll spend $350 for a copy on eBay." In addition to the dozens of reviews (including one for the classic adventure "Isle of Dread") in issue #38, SJ has an article on print buying, the designers of The Lords of Underearth talk about their design process, and there's alternate (for the time) rules for buying a used ship in Traveller by William Barton, who would go on to write material for GURPS Bio-Tech, Space, and Ultra-Tech.

And speaking of Traveller, and of fans who started writing articles and ended up contributing big chunks of major books to the GURPS line, the second e23 release this week is GURPS Traveller Alien Races 3, featuring the Hivers, Ancients, and the Droyne. One of the authors is none other than David Pulver, who designed GURPS Spaceships and crunched a bunch of numbers for that little tome we call GURPS Basic Set.

-- Paul Chapman