Weekly Geekly Rundown for September 29, 2023
Monty Python, Star Frontiers, and Spy Films
No One Expects the Zombicide Monty Python Edition!
Something strange has been happening recently in table top gaming and I don’t know if it is a good thing or a bad thing. I initially thought it was a good thing, but it’s hitting a point of saturation that I’m feeling a bit fatigued by the whole thing. What is this strange occurrence? It’s the increase in licensed products in the table top gaming space, sometimes in places where the license doesn’t quite seem to fit the property.
Before you think this is some kind of screed against licensed products in general, I’d like to remind you that I’ve been excited about and recommended licensed products here before. I know that licensed products have been a part of table top gaming since the very beginning. One of the first role playing games ever published was based on the Flash Gordon comic strip and I think it was a worthy early attempt at a non-D&D role playing game.
A Look at the First Flash Gordon Role Playing Game
I was recently rereading my copy of the Flash Gordon Role Playing Game for the Savage Worlds system. I am excited to show it and its expansions to my players and try to convince them to game in this wonderfully pulpy setting. Like Shane Hensley (the creator of the
More than advocating for existing licensed properties, and the importance of their place in the table top hobby in expanding the player base, I even lament the fact that some licensed properties never came to fruition. Not only am I mildly angry with Netflix for how they are treating Evil Genius Games, a treatment that is preventing a Rebel Moon role playing game from reaching the market, but I am sad that Steve Perrin’s Heroes of Middle Earth role playing game never saw publication. According to Perrin, back in issue 10 of the Lords of Chaos fanzine, Perrin had been working on a Runequest adjacent role playing game for Heritage based on the Bakshi production of Lord of the Rings.
I imagine the licensing for that is similar to the old Decipher Lord of the Rings role playing game that was based on the Peter Jackson license and I wish it had seen the light of day. As much as I value the scholarship in the Iron Crown Lord of the Rings role playing game products, the Rolemaster engine never seemed to quite vibe with the underlying license. Nor does the 5e engine, as much as Free League and Cubicle 7 have tried to make it. The magic system in D&D is very different from that of Tolkien’s work and the various patches and whittling done to the D&D system in an attempt to make it fit D&D don’t quite pass the verisimilitude test. To make it fit, you have to really carve out pieces of the D&D system and no one’s doing that because that removes compatibility and shrinks the market to those who are willing to play with a different system. Cubicle and Free League have seen that phenomenon with the One Ring system, a system that better captures the source material but where the potential consumer base is smaller.
I think an early Runequest based game could have provided a good foundation for an adaptation. The hobby was still expanding and D&D didn’t have as big a stranglehold on the industry, and Runequest is an easy system to learn and can be radically changed without losing what makes it work. The system works for Bronze Age Fantasy (Runequest) and Superheroes (Superworld) seamlessly, even as the games aren’t compatible.
And therein lies the crux of my concern regarding the recent trend in the increase in licensed products. Last year, I backed the Exalted Funeral Kickstarter version of a Monty Hall’s Flying Circus role playing game. I don’t know that I’ll play it, but I have no doubt that the mechanics and the intellectual property will mesh. I don’t know whether that’s the case or not with the new Monty Python’s Flying Circus expansion for Zombicide. I like Zombicide and own a number of different editions ranging from the original to the medieval to Marvel. Heck, I even own their Iron Maiden packs for the game. I mean, who better than Eddie for inclusion in Zombicide?
Setting that aside though, is Monty Python’s Flying Circus a good fit for Zombicide? I know it’s Cool Mini or Not, and that some of their products are there just for the minis, but I’m not sure it works. Sure, I bought Marvel Zombicide more for use with the new Marvel Roleplaying Game than for its own sake, but do I need Monty Python minis for my Monty Python rpg?
Weekly Luke Y. Thompson and Courtney Howard Film Article Cavalcade
Luke Y. Thompson reviews “Extreme Sets” for SuperHeroHype.
Luke gets a step closer to the role playing and miniature wargaming hobbies this week as he reviews an Extreme Set Diorama pop up set for use in photographing action figures. The size is a little large for 35mm miniatures, but there’s a growing trend for pop up terrain in the gaming hobby and it looks like the stuff coming out for the action figure hobby is pretty high quality.
Review: Saw X (Luke Y. Thompson for A.V. Club)
Luke’s early paragraphs praise Tobin Bell for his work ethic and the skilled craft he’s brought to every Saw film, and rightly so. This is followed by a good rundown of what to expect that provides information for long term fans and for neophytes.
Review: The Creator (Luke Y. Thompson for SuperHeroHype)
Luke has given The Creator a fairly enthusiastic thumbs up. I’m looking forward to seeing the film and Luke’s review helps put my expectations in proper perspective.
First Look: Wish (Courtney Howard for FreshFiction.tv)
It’s time for another Disney film to hit theaters in time for Thanksgiving break. When I was younger and worked at a Syufy theater in my first year of college, Thanksgiving weekend was our busiest day. Thanksgiving itself was a nightmare shift. I was amazed at how many people wanted to watch a film after gorging on turkey all afternoon, but they were there and family friendly fare awaited them. Disney’s Wish will be released just in time for Thanksgiving break this year and Courtney Howard got a 30 minute first look at the production. She was impressed. If you’d rather watch a movie than spend time with family tripping out on tryptophan, then you should check out her preview to see if Wish might make a good alternative.
Roleplaying Game Recommendation
Back in the before times, in the not now, the producer of the World’s Most Popular role playing game were willing to design and produce games that used entirely different mechanics than their cash cow. From Gamma World and Boot Hill to Indiana Jones and Marvel Super Heroes, TSR manufactured games that thematically and mechanically had little similarity to Dungeons & Dragons. This trend continued in the Lorraine Williams era, though in a more mixed fashion. For every Marvel Super Hero Adventure Game, a card based role playing engine and one of my top 5 super hero rpgs, there was a Buck Rogers XXVc.
As much as I like Buck Rogers XXVc, and I think Mike Pondsmith (Cyberpunk) did a fantastic job on world design and mechanics, it clearly used AD&D 2nd edition as a foundation for its mechanics. At the time, I thought it was the right choice. Now that we’ve seen what the d20 bubble did to established brands like Deadlands and are currently seeing how the 5e bubble is in some ways limiting creativity, I long for the days when the big company on the block would legitimize alternate designs, a phenomenon that grows the hobby and leads to innovation. It also helps promote to gamers that there are other ways to play games. This is one of the reasons I’m so glad that Critical Role is moving away from 5e and promoting their own designs. I love 5e, but I don’t want all role playing games to be Taco Bell.
Anyway, back in those ancient days, TSR produced Star Frontiers.
When TSR released the Dungeons & Dragons role playing game in the early 1970s, they created a new mode of gaming the role playing game. What is interesting is that they failed to rapidly follow up the success of their "fantasy" themed role playing game with a succession of game releases in other genres. While many of the first role playing games were shallow imitations of D&D...some were even Vacuous to use Gygax's terminology (cough, Arduin, cough), it was other companies who first entered the marketplace with non-fantasy RPGs.
It wasn't long after the publication of D&D that Ken St. Andre drafted a set of rules for a science fiction themed role playing game entitled Starfaring, and Marc Miller published Traveller in 1977. Where Starfaring was whimsical, and is a quintessentially 70s artifact that feels a bit like John Carpenter's Dark Star combined with a Freak Brothers indie comic as an rpg, Marc Miller's Traveller set the standard for science fiction rpgs. In fact, Traveller truly set the standard for any rpg product line that was going to compete in the rpg marketplace. Marc Miller's creation had a large following among the Space Gamer readership, and the publication of support materials for the game led to the growth of FASA -- one of the classic old RPG companies. Traveller's success extends to the present, and Marc Miller currently has a Kickstarter campaign that promises a new edition that harkens to the old version.
Even though Traveller established science fiction as a viable genre for role playing games, it took TSR five years after the release of Traveller before they released their SF entry into the RPG marketplace, the Star Frontiers game. When Star Frontiers came out, there were those who tried to compare it to Traveller, but I have always felt that the comparisons were slightly off base as they represent different kinds of SF. Traveller's rules and back story, as well as the overwhelming influence D&D had on the early RPG market, gave the game a specific feel. Characters created in the game are typically former military who are now retired, or as James Maliszewski has pointed out a good many were former Mercenaries. Traveller campaigns had narratives along the lines of the Firefly television show, though it would be more chronologically accurate to say that Firefly has a Traveller feel to it. Traveller's own backstory was heavily influenced by Asimov's Foundation series with it's dying empire. Traveller campaigns were often gritty SF adventures filled with mercenaries and retired Imperial Officers spanning the Spinward Marches in pursuit of wealth and notoriety.
The D&D influence could also be seen in many Traveller campaigns, where players essentially wandered around the galaxy as pirates raiding Imperial space ships for their loot. This isn't to say that all Traveller campaigns were "spacey dungeon crawls," the official adventures certainly weren't, just that some people played it that way.
The science fiction background of Star Frontiers was quite different from that of Traveller. Where Traveller took place in a galaxy dominated by an interstellar Empire in a fairly settled area of the galaxy, Star Frontiers took place on the Frontier of civilization where a major corporation "Pan Galactic Corporation" -- later multiple corporations -- was sponsoring the exploration and attempting to profit. The Pan Galactic Corporation had come into existence to promote exploration and trade among four major alien races -- Human, Vrusk, Dralasite, and Yazirian. These races have only just begun to interact with one another, and have banded together on the Frontier of explored space. At that Frontier, they soon discover a new enemy...an enemy that threatens to destroy any civilization that chooses to explore the Frontier. That enemy is the Sathar, a wormlike race with hypnotic powers on the edge of explored space. The exploring races have only recently completed their First Sathar War, during which they formed the United Planetary Federation, and are now having to deal with terrorist attacks and sabotage by agents of the Sathar...agents from among their own people. In response to the Sathar's new warfare strategies -- espionage and terrorism -- the UPF has formed the Star Law Rangers who track Sathar agents and attempt to foil their plots.
The universes of the Traveller rpg and the Star Frontiers rpg have parallels in history. One is of an empire in decline, the other is of mercantilism on the rise. The tones of the settings are very different, but so are the rules. Where Traveller characters are retired from former professions and already have a number of skills at which they are proficient -- especially if the characters were generated using the Mercenaries or High Guard supplements -- Star Frontiers characters are relatively inexperienced. Even in the Expanded Star Frontiers rules, the characters have training in only two major skills -- and that training is at the lowest level. The characters start near penniless and are in need of employment. Players can be thankful that the Star Law Rangers are always looking for recruits, that the corporations are always looking for someone willing to risk Sathar attack while exploring planets on the Frontier, and then there's always the possibility of playing a group of Sathar agents.
Star Frontiers is a game that has a background that is rich in ideas for development, but it is also a game where one has to dig in order to find these ideas. Trying to find out the history of the Star Frontiers universe is not an easy task. Prior to the publication of Zebulon's Guide to Frontier Space there was not a clear timeline of the development of civilization. One had to induct heavily from the introduction in the Basic Game rule book, read and reread the racial descriptions, and scour every module for minutiae to get a sense of what was going on. Zeb's Guide did some of the work for you, as it advanced the timeline to a point after the modules and to a point where the Sathar had developed mind controlling organisms that latch on to the victim's back to take over the nervous system (fans of Puppet Masters and Iron Empires take note). Taking the Frontier beyond an outline and into a fleshed out campaign setting takes time, but it is worth it.
It's an easy system, though I've recently come up with an even simpler version of their Basic Rule with my own Extremely Basic rules. I mentioned the d20 glut earlier and they did write a Star Frontiers setting section for the d20 Future book in the 2000s as well as a web expansion with stats for the Sathar, but I think I’d like to start up a campaign using the original rules.
Music Recommendation
Since last week’s musical recommendation came from the 1970s, let’s dip into the 1980s with a band that has been extremely influential and has been a part of a couple of internet misinformation memes. I’m recommending Killing Joke’s song Eighties because it’s a damned fine too and an example of Gothic Punk at its finest. You can hear the influence on bands like AFI. Just listen to Girls not Grey after listening to Eighties.
The first misinformation meme is that the band got their name from the Batman comic book. Given that the band was formed in 1978 and the comic came out a decade later, this is unlikely. The second is that Nirvana ripped them off for Come As You Are. Let’s just say that there are a lot of songs that use the opening riff in this number, so many that I have no idea who is ripping who off. It’s almost a never ending spiral. All I know is that all the songs are different and they are all bangers.
Classic Movie Recommendation
So…as is typical for the classic movie recommendation, I had one plan but something came up that distracts and redirects my choice. I had my selection for this week lined up and ready to go. I even watched it again last night on the Criterion Channel in order to make some observations about what held up and what didn’t. All of that was shot to hell when I saw the preview for the upcoming Matthew Vaughn film Argylle. No, I’m not recommending it, but it is a mashup of so many of my favorite films that it made me replace my first choice with a film I think is underappreciated.
Before I continue, check out the trailer.
How many films did you see referenced in that short clip? A really fun clip BTW. Among the films I saw referenced were Spy, Romancing the Stone, Mission Impossible, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, and this week’s recommendation Hopscotch.
Hopscotch is a 1980 espionage action comedy starring Walter Matthau as Miles Kendig, a retiring CIA agent who is writing a memoir that could shake the very foundations of the intelligence community. The film is a wonderful spin on what had previously been a various serious topic in John le Carré’s seminal spy novel Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. John le Carré’s (David John Moore Cornwell) was among the many victims of Kim Philby’s betrayal of British and American spies to the Soviet Union. Philby blew his cover in 1964. Cornwell wrote under the name le Carré because the Foreign Office prohibited him from using his real name for his first two novels, something that was made unnecessary when Philby exposed him. He kept using the pseudonym though and got revenge of a sort by giving his examination of Philby in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.
In the case of Hopscotch, Miles Kendig would be the le Carré substitute, though one who is lighthearted and whimsical. His job as a spy based in Germany makes the connection to le Carré a little more plausible, if not actual, since le Carré was a German language interrogator. What’s great about Hopscotch is how it manages to maintain the cynicism of le Carré’s novels about the nature of the intelligence community in general, while also showing that there are hard working and noble people in the profession. As corrupt and sinister as G.P. Myerson is, and Ned Beatty like Wilford Brimley can make one hell of an intimidating villain, the agent Myerson sends after Kendig is honorable and kind. That agent, Joe Cutter, is ably played by Sam Waterson and he like everyone else in the film is fantastic.
Like Argylle above, Hopscotch references a ton of pre-existing fiction and includes a number of Easter Eggs ranging from specific camera shots to character names (cough, Ludlum, cough). There’s a ton of backstory to the film and I highly recommend buying the Criterion edition, even if they don’t have a 4k version yet.