Eighties! I'm GAMING in the Eighties!

Last week, I wrote about my teenage discovery of the horror roleplaying game, Chill back in the mid-1980s. This got me thinking about all the other RPGs that I experimented with around that time and the more I thought about it, the longer that list grew!

This was the during the so-called “Dark Times” before the internet (yes, Billy, some of us grew up before the advent of the "World Wide Web") where one learned of new games via various publications, word of mouth, rare local conventions (we were fortunate to have an annual one in our area), or just by reading blurbs on the backs of shrinkwrapped boxes or flipping through books on the shelves of your friendly local game shop. If a game looked or sounded interesting, you simply took a chance and bought it or, if you were lucky, you signed up for a session at a con to experience it for yourself, hopefully at the hands of an experienced game master.

I was fortunate that my circle of friends were all interested in roleplaying games alongside all our other shared hobbies including filmmaking, improvisational comedy, cycling, and exploring the dense, mysterious woods that surrounded our small village of Spencerport in Upstate New York.

Together we played first and later second edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (our Basic D&D days were already behind us when we became friends), but we soon began to dabble in a number of other RPGs, sometimes learning and playing a particular game just once or twice before deciding that it didn’t suit us and agreeing to move onto something else.

Throughout the ‘80s, I played, ran, or at least owned and read through all of the following. This list is by no means complete. (I still own (and in some cases still play) those titles marked with an asterisk):

• Tunnels & Trolls (1975)*
• Bunnies & Burrows (1976)*
• Gamma World (1978)*
• Villains & Vigilantes (1979)*
• Top Secret (1980) (later Top Secret/S.I. (1987))*
• Call of Cthulhu (1981)*
• Stormbringer (1981)*
• Star Frontiers (1982)*
• James Bond 007 (1983)*
• Palladium Fantasy Role-Playing Game (1983)
• The Adventures of Indiana Jones (1984)
• Arcanum (1984)*
• Chill (1984)*
• Marvel Super Heroes (1984)
• Middle-Earth Role Playing (1984)
• Paranoia (1984)*
• Star Ace (1984)*
• Time Master (1984)*
• Toon (1984)*
• DC Heroes (1985)
• Doctor Who Role Playing Game (1985)*
• Judge Dredd: The Role-Playing Game (1985)
• Sandman – Map of Halaal (1985)*
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness (1985)
• World Action and Adventure (1985)*
• Ghostbusters (1986)
• Ars Magica (1987)
• Star Wars: the Roleplaying Game (1987)
• Talislanta (1987)*
• It Came from the Late, Late, Late Show (1989)
• Shadowrun (1989)

Looking over that list of 31(!) titles, I can’t help but find myself a bit puzzled by some modern-day gamers who started their journey with the fifth edition of Dungeons & Dragons and have yet to try anything else beyond that despite now living in a world where there are hundreds, perhaps thousands of tabletop roleplaying games out there, most of which are available via download from sites like DriveThruRPG! I’ve heard every excuse in the book, but that’s a topic for another time.

If you have any questions about any of the aforementioned games, feel free to reach out! I have vivid memories of almost everything on that list and would love to share stories including the time I was running Chill for my friends in my parent’s basement and our table was suddenly invaded by a cascade of newly-hatched baby spiders! 🕷

Adventures into the Unknown

It was in March of 1985 when I first discovered a certain tabletop roleplaying game that would forever change my life, and no it was not Dungeons & Dragons!

At that time, I was a pimple-faced teenager attending the annual SimCon gaming convention on the campus of the University of Rochester in my home city of Rochester, New York when my wide eyes fell upon a boxed game casually displayed on a wall in the dimly lit dealer’s room. The evocative cover art by the late, great Jim Holloway depicted a hapless explorer bedecked in Victorian attire and gripping a glowing lantern turning to face an approaching threat within a fog-laden cemetery.

The game? CHILL: Adventures into the Unknown released by a short-lived publisher known as Pacesetter Ltd out of Delavan, Wisconsin.

I asked to examine the shrinkwrapped box and found myself positively transfixed by it. I adored the cover art, I dug the grotesque font used for the simple five-letter logo, and I digested each word on the back of the box with ghoulish delight:

“Fear runs down your spine like ice water. Pressing your shoulder more firmly against the door of the rotting cottage, you hope that your strength can prevail against the beast that hunts you. It lurks somewhere outside – waiting, watching. If only someone else had been sent out into the night, into the swamp to battle this creature.

“All has been quiet for two hours now. The monster wants you to believe that it has given up, gone to hunt less wary prey. But you know it can't be far away, for the night is silent as a grave and the air is fitted with a deathly CHILL.

“CHILL™: Adventures into the Unknown takes the role playing game one step beyond, into the eerie realm of ghostly horror. In this box lies everything you need to create an entire world of terrifying adventure. Inside, you will find a 64-page Campaign Book, a 32-page manual of creatures, a 16-page adventure, three dice, playing pieces, a large color map and a special introductory rules folder which allows you to begin playing within minutes of opening this box.

“Cross the threshold. Venture out into the night fog and enter the world of CHILL.”

Y’see, back in the days before the interwebs, the only way to learn about new games was reading about them in publications like TSR’s The Dragon (or White Wolf from our friends across the Pond), trying them out at local conventions, or randomly discovering them on store shelves where you had to trust your eyes and instincts and risk spending your hard-earned money on the great unknown.

Without hesitation, I purchased the game and drifted off to an unoccupied corner of Wilson Commons to free it of its cellophane prison and discover what delights were contained within. There was no disappointment on that day apart from the unfortunate loss of the gorgeous red, white, and blue 10-sided Crisloid dice which I strongly believe are still haunting some dark corner of the campus to this day, buried beneath 40 years of accumulated cobwebs and dust.

It didn’t take long for me to fill out my CHILL collection with various releases from Pacesetter including a 64-page bestiary titled Things, several adventure modules, and a box of lead miniatures from Grenadier Models many of which I promptly painted to a somewhat acceptable standard.

I also had the great privilege of meeting up with the folks behind Pacesetter when I attended the Gen Con gaming convention held in Milwaukee, Wisconsin later that year. There I acquired a CHILL T-shirt, got my copy of the Vampires sourcebook signed by authors Michael Williams and Gali Sanchez, and played in a terrifying demo game run by Mr. Williams himself.

Back home, I ran several sessions of the game for my friends and wrote a number of my own adventures with titles like Ring for Nurse, L.A. Nights (years before I moved here to Los Angeles), New Years Eve, and Subway to Hell which I actually ran at Gen Con in 1986. I even adapted Ken Russell’s horror/comedy feature film, Lair of the White Worm into a playable adventure!

After an incredibly prolific couple of years, Pacesetter eventually folded. I remained a fan of the game and its setting and when it was announced that Mayfair Games was to publish a second edition in 1990, I set to putting a few adventure ideas down on paper with the goal of getting them published and hopefully securing my very first credit as a professional writer!

In June of 1991, I finally submitted two ideas to Mayfair:

1)      Airborne Horror: A Double Adventure for CHILL. The two linked adventures included The Rage of Amenemhet and Evil in Paradise.

2)      Leap Into Terror, an adventure that pitted the envoys against the legendary Spring-Heeled Jack.

Much to my surprise, I was contacted by Jeff R. Leason of Mayfair who expressed interest in Leap Into Terror! This led to a few follow-up phone calls and suggested edits, but then, sadly, everything went quiet and I later learned that Jeff had left the company and my adventure was no longer under consideration.

While this was certainly devastating for me at the time (and it would be a few more years before I would see my first professional publication), it was certainly a good learning experience and I still have everything that I wrote in my files, some of which you can see here.

After Mayfair abandoned CHILL following the publication of Unknown Providence: SAVE in New England in 1996, the game once again drifted off into obscurity, eventually seeing a third edition as well as a retro clone of the first edition (with specific references to various organizations, personalities, and noted original beasties removed for copyright reasons) known as Cryptworld and published by Goblinoid Games.

I reached out to Goblinoid a few years ago about writing some material for Cryptworld, but as of this writing, that company has also gone dark.

In 2023, my horror RPG, Pinebox Middle School for Savage Worlds (set in the Pinebox, Texas setting made famous in the college-age RPG, East Texas University) was published by Pinnacle Entertainment Group. While most of the book was comprised of wholly original material, there are a few bits and pieces that I carried over from my experiences with CHILL. I suppose that was my way of finally making my college dreams of publication a reality, decades later.

And that, my friends, is the tale of how “a frightfully fun role playing game” had a significant impact on my creative life.

DunDraCon 48!

Over the weekend (Friday, February 14th through Sunday the 16th), I attended DunDraCon 48 in Santa Clara, California. This was only my third DunDraCon and like the previous two, I had a really nice time!

While there are things I wish they would do a bit differently, particularly in regard to event registration (it really is time for them to sign up with Tabletop.Events), overall, it is a worthwhile event.

My good friend Michael Kelly and I set off for the con at 7am Thursday morning as it is a five-and-a-half to six hour drive when you factor in breakfast, a stop or two for gas, and unforeseen traffic and weather issues. We dealt with rain for much of the drive and this was quite challenging with a lot of blinding mist kicked up from cars on the way into Santa Clara on the 101N.

At Noon the following day, I ran De-MING-netized, an adventure I wrote for the Savage World of Flash Gordon that originally appeared in the Moons of Mongo supplement. I had a full table of enthusiastic players and the session went very well indeed. I gifted a couple players copies of Savage Worlds Adventure Edition (older printings) and did my usual promotion of KublaCon and our Savage Saturday Night event.

I had pre-registered for a game Friday night, but was not one of the lucky few selected to participate and so I spent the evening prepping my Saturday game and filling out lot slips for the Sunday auction as I had brought a couple large bins of board and card games to sell.

Saturday morning at 10am, I ran the Forsaken Vault of the Crimson Oracle for Dungeon Crawl Classics. This adventure was written by Brendan LaSalle and served as the 2023 Gen Con tournament module. You can find it within the pages of the Goodman Games Yearbook #11. The notes contained within are pretty clear that it can come in well under four hours (and a previous playtest wrapped up after three), but in this case, the players were done about two-and-a-half hours in!

As games at DunDraCon are free of charge, I don't think anyone was particularly upset about the short-ish runtime and we all had a lot of fun! Pity about that short-lived, bag-draggin' goat, though!

Saturday night, my Dungeon Crawl Classics adventures continued as I managed to get into a game run by "booth babe" Jon Wilson of Goodman Games, the publishers of DCC.

The main issue with this session came down to two young (teenage) "kids" who seemed more interested in doing their own thing than actually contributing to the party's success. We would be walking down a corridor, moving from room to room, and one of these young players would ask if they could cast some completely inconsequential spell and then spend a couple minutes going through the entire process. It was annoying and I wasn't entirely happy with it, but it was still fun playing a halfling (aka "a good luck charm") in a published Dungeon Crawl Classics adventure.

Finally, my Sunday was mostly devoted to the game auction. If you have never attended one of these, you really should consider it sometime as it is not only a great way to get your hands on some choice items, often for bargain prices, it is also entertaining and informative. This year's auction was one of the best I've ever been a part of with no noticeable technical issues, a reasonable selection of quality items that ensured the event only ran for a few hours, and an always full room of eager bidders.

And with that, my DunDraCon was complete and we were on the road before sunrise on Monday, returning to the L.A. area before Noon.

See y'all in Santa Clara in '26!

The Curse!

OK, so this is a bit of a "sour grapes" post. Let's just get that out of the way right up front.

Over the years, I have put in the hours as well as the blood, sweat, and tears (oh, so many tears) to deliver quality books, tabletop roleplaying games, audio drama scripts, short fiction, podcasts, and other exciting works to fans, and seeing my name on these things has been both rewarding and empowering. What puzzles me, though, is that even today, many people act surprised when I inform them of my accomplishments.

A recent thread about Pinebox Middle School posted in the Official Savage Worlds Facebook Group made mention of three contributors to the project, but completely skipped over me in the conversation despite my name being the very first one on the title page! I wrote the original 80,000+ word draft of the core rulebook, I've been interviewed about it (both podcasts and livestreams), I've participated in AMAs, and my name topped the list of credits when it was nominated for an ENNIE Award in 2024!

Related to this, I've been completely ignored when I've enquired about being a convention guest or even when I've simply offered to sit on various panels, and I once had a "guest liaison" (note the air quotes) at a small, local con tell me to my face that they only wanted "professionals" as guests despite my bibliography and resume. At the time, that con was promoting two guests – one who had a Kickstarter for a card game he had designed (it didn't fund) and another who hosted a little-known gaming podcast (to my knowledge, it no longer exists).

I just find all this so baffling.

Are there any other creators out there who have found themselves in a similar predicament? I don't recall kicking the dogs of any of these people and I have always been civil and polite to each and every one of them. 

Perhaps we are truly cursed!

Roleplaying in a Winter Wonderland

Every December, I try to get some holiday-themed roleplaying game adventures to the tables. With everyone focused on work, family, shopping, and travel plans at this most hectic time of the year, this is often extremely difficult to coordinate, but as I write this, I have already run two games for my group and next week we are looking at getting a third one in before the end of the year!

Additionally, over the past few years, I have written some holiday-themed One-Sheet adventures for use with the 2018 Origins Award-nominated (I believe I'm contractually obligated to mention that) Savage World of Flash Gordon Roleplaying Game, all of which have been hosted on the Pinnacle Entertainment Group site and are available for FREE. Next week, my fourth and FINAL(!) One-Sheet for Flash will drop, and if you haven't grabbed the first three yet, visit the site today to collect 'em all:

• ‘Twas the Night Before Crystal Fest One-Sheet for The Savage World of Flash Gordon™
• The Titan of Tropica One-Sheet for The Savage World of Flash Gordon™
• The Cave of Fire One-Sheet for The Savage World of Flash Gordon™

Back to this year's run of games.

Last week, I playtested the latest aforementioned One-Sheet with the group in order to ensure it all worked so I could get it into PEG's hands in time for a mid-month release. Titled A Star! A Star!, this short adventure launches the heroes into space and then drags them back down to a frozen corner of the planet Mongo where they must do battle with Imperial forces and challenge a beast of legend before they can secure a most valuable treasure.

The playtest went very well and everyone was amused when I revealed the final boss in all its glory (no spoilers)!

This week, I finally got another Pinnacle release to the table in the form of One Foggy Krampus Eve, a scenario penned by Erica Balsley back in 2022. I had prepped this adventure to run in 2023, but things got in the way and it just sat on the shelf until a few days ago.

For this adventure, I went all out and prepped maps, character pawns, and custom tent card character sheets. I even tracked down a set of Santa Claus playing cards for the Action Deck, pulled out a transparent red and green dice set, and used vintage red wooden poker chips for Bennies, thus theming the entire event.

Without spoiling anything, One Foggy Krampus Eve has the players taking on the roles of kids captured by the one-and-only Krampus and taken off to the North Pole where they must defeat that dreaded horned beastie and his minions and rescue Santa Claus.

If you can, I recommend having Tchaikovsky's 'The Nutcracker Suite' on standby for certain scenes. It added to the fun!

As mentioned above, next week, there are plans in place to gather one more time before the end of 2024, this time to experience Silent Night, Hungry Night, a Deadlands One-Sheet written by Shane Hensley himself! I'll be playing, not running, and I'm really looking forward to facing a few frightful fiends out on the frost-laden frontier! 

How festive! 🎄