In 1978 Fantasy Games Unlimited released
Starships and Spacemen one of the first Science Fiction roleplaying games to hit the market -- the first three were Ken St. Andre's
Starfaring (1976),
Metamorphosis Alpha (1976) and
Space Patrol (1977) which eventually became a licensed
Star Trek game.
These early science fiction games varied in quality and theme. The science fiction of Ken St. Andre's
Starfaring is reminiscent of the John Carpenter film
Dark Star and had rules that focused on playing the ship as a whole rather than on individual members of a crew seeking adventure as a team. The game had a humorous bent and like much humor of the 1970s might offend some readers due to the sexual nature of some of the jokes/illustrations.
Space Patrol's system was inspired by
Star Trek (though it did have rules for playing Laumer-esque Bolo tanks as well), so much so that Heritage Models was able to use the same system in their licensed
Star Trek game. Heritage's
Space Patrol based
Star Trek was one of the earliest licensed role playing game properties.
Like
Space Patrol, Fantasy Games Unlimited's
Starships and Spacemen was inspired by the
Star Trek television series. Fantasy Games Unlimited also produced a board game in the
Starships and Spacemen universe entitled
Star Explorer which expanded on the themes set forth in the
Starships and Spacemen game.
This week
Goblinoid Games announced that they had acquired the rights to publish an edition of
Starships and Spacemen and they have made the
original rules available in pdf format. In the long run, they plan to adapt the system to be compatible with their
Mutant Future and
Labyrinth Lord d20 Open Game License/Old Game Renaissance systems. This should be a fairly easy process. Like many early role playing games,
Starships and Spacemen shares some mechanical qualities with the
Dungeons & Dragons role playing game. For example, six of an S&S character's 8 primary attributes are determined by rolling three six-sided dice -- just as in D&D. S&S differs from D&D in its use of attributes in that it distinguishes between inborn attributes which remain the same for that character throughout play and acquired attributes which can improve over time. The game also contains "Branches" and "Subclasses" similar to the class system used in D&D. The acquired attributes mentioned earlier, expand the basic class/level system and incorporates an early skill/point system into the mix.
Sadly for
Starships and Spacemen, and a number of other promising SF role playing games, Game Design Workshop had released the first
Traveller rulebooks in 1977. The
Traveller rules were more closely related to SF literature, having a heavy
Foundatiom influence, and this combined with an ambitious support schedule led to
Traveller dominating the SF rpg market for years to come. Fantasy Games Unlimited eventually dropped support for S&S and moved on to their
Space Opera project which had a broader scope with regard to the kinds of SF it emulated -- everything from hard SF to Pulp.
It's nice to see games like
Starships and Spacemen return from the dead due to the long tail effect and the low cost of distribution through the internet. I look forward to seeing what Goblinoid Games have to offer in the coming months. In the meantime, I will have to dig up my S&S rulebook from storage and write a review soon.