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Download the first issue of Cepheus Journal. There is an article about CE skills, part one of a scifi adventure on salvage and recovery, a Sword of Cepheus NPC, a description of a free trader with deckplans, a small pseudolizard species to encounter, a piece on modern war, tech level comparisons and more. We want … Continue reading Cepheus Journal Issue #001

Rosalis Cluster is Sector generated using the Cepheus Engine rules. It can now be downloaded from the downloads page. The download includes a huge PNG-image (4227 x 5305 pixels), and two text-files with the UWPs and the XML-data. In the map of the sector we can see two multi subsector empires. The Raniera Worlds and … Continue reading Rosalis Cluster

You are rolling up a new Traveller character and you aren't sure which Background Skills to choose. In this article, I will show you the best background skills for your Traveller character.

You need scout ship deck plans for your virtual tabletop game. Check out my new Pioneer-Class Scout Ship Deck Plans For Roll20 AnD VTT.

The Cepheus Journal is a free and ad-free Fanzine. We are looking for submissions. While we wait for the first issue, these mock-up covers might provide some inspiration.

Looking for sci-fi RPG adventure seeds for your next game of Cepheus Engine or Traveller? Check out The Missing Survey Vessel.

Need a new hairdo?  Need that crooked nose straightened out?  Need to go incognito for a while?  Try the new Cosmedoc Cosmetics Autodoc!

My players needed something larger than the standard air/raft, so I created this civilian g-carrier for them.

The eighth and final live Traveller player panel for Mayday Traveller RPG Day 2020.  The Crew discusses more Traveller character backstories.

The eighth Interview for Mayday Traveller RPG Day 2020 is Marc MIller of Far Future Enterprises.  We discuss the origins of Traveller with the creator himself!

The seventh live Traveller player panel for Mayday Traveller RPG Day 2020.  The Crew discusses more Traveller character backstories.

The seventh Interview for Mayday Traveller RPG Day 2020 is Matthew Sprange of Mongoose Publishing.  We discuss the origins of Mongoose and the Mongoose Traveller 2nd Edition.

The sixth live Traveller player panel for Mayday Traveller RPG Day 2020.  The Crew discusses more Traveller character backstories.

The sixth Interview for Mayday Traveller RPG Day 2020 is Mike Leonard of El Cheapo Products.  We discuss Traveller RPG Paper Minis, starship deck plans, and other great sci-fi expansions.

The fifth live Traveller player panel for Mayday Traveller RPG Day 2020.  The Crew discusses more Traveller character backstories.

LINK to Description and Ordering:  https://www.tlbgames.com/collections/the-red-book-line/products/merlynd-the-magician

OK. Merlynd the Magician has been laid out and we are going over pre-press proofing today and the next, giving it a final look. It will then, with the 3 special color prints and the 1 special bonus print, be sent along to our printer (uploaded). From there that takes about 7 days until they ship to our fulfiller, Paul Stormberg, in the US. Then he has to weigh the combined single items for shipping costs. Then we will e-mail its availability to those on our list and post here and elsewhere about its availability and go live! And you thought these things were easy?? Nope. But they are a joy in the long road to producing them.
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I am now an author for EN World with a monthly column.  Six lead columns have been submitted to EN World with the first being published several days ago:

https://www.enworld.org/threads/the-beginning-1968-and-meeting-gary-gygax-and-the-gygax-family.667636/

This describes my meeting Gary Gygax in 1968.  Take a look and do consider subscribing to EN World to keep up on such discussion I am having with fans, game historians and designers interested in the history of our great hobby.

TLDR: this book is a hot mess, but buried in it is an interesting, if IMO flawed, perspective. 




CaveatThis is my reading of Rob Kuntz' book: Dave Arneson's True Genius. It was not an easy work to unlock. Any errors in representing it are mine. I am very critical of Rob Kuntz in this summation and review, even though I found some of his thoughts "interesting." I don't want anyone to interpret my dislike of this work, or its execution, as in any way devaluing Arneson's contribution to D&D. It has been established in very authoritative forums (like Peterson's Playing at the World) that Arneson contributed a number of critical, innovative, and formative ideas to role-playing in general and D&D in particular.
Who is Rob Kuntz?Rob Kuntz, as a teenager, lived with Gary Gygax's family. He was there when Dave Arneson demoed Blackmoor to Gary in 1972 and was an early playtester, taking part in Gygax's Greyhawk campaign of the same year. He literally saw the birth, a good portion of the evolution of D&D. Rob also worked for TSR from its founding through 1977.
Part 1: Assertions About GygaxIn Arneson's True Genius, Rob Kuntz makes the following claims:

When Gygax used Arneson's ideas to design D&D, he did irreparable harm to Arneson's legacy and the entire potential future arc of the hobby by:

• "Redacting" Arneson's ideas. Gygax built a marketable system of role-playing by taking what was already established – wargame rules – and adding to them some of Arneson's ideas that were groundbreaking but neutralized through systematization. Kuntz refers to this as "enchaining" D&D and reducing it to a "market +1" state. Meaning Gary used Arneson's ideas to make the next predictable market thing.
• Setting the precedent for the industry. The fact of D&D's success created inertia that moved the entire hobby community in one direction and defined the role-playing industry. This financially-proven groove meant that other possible futures were left unexplored, e.g. one that extended from Arneson's way of playing the game. 
• Discouraging others from creating. When Gygax created AD&D, he moved D&D from an open system – which encouraged players to invent – to a closed system – an "official" rules set that discouraged innovation and established TSR's intellectual property. This was directly contradictory to an Arneson's open and flexible system ideas.
• Doing all of this in bad faith. Gygax (like Arneson) never played D&D by the rules he set forth. In selling the D&D rules to the world, Gygax actively suppressed the true style of play in which he and Arneson indulged themselves and their players.

My Impressions of the Book and the Above ClaimsDave Arneson's True Genius is frustrating to read because of its poor organization, vague ideas, and ridiculously stilted and ornate language. Some paragraphs are so convoluted that I had to guess at their meaning after several failed attempts to decode them into English. The entire book has only about 55 pages of actual (widely-spaced, large font) text, and they contain the same half dozen ideas repeated throughout. 
The argument that Gygax damaged Arneson's ideas, and his future potential, and hoodwinked us all by selling us a set of rules that falls short of the Platonic ideal of a role-playing game is academic, rhetorical, and immature. It boils down to crying over what might have been. This is especially silly when one realizes that Arneson had decades in which to present an alternative by a) fully describing his original play style and b) building on it. Arneson failed to do either of those things in any way that engaged or inspired a significant portion of the community.
In assuming that the move to a closed set of rules (with AD&D) was solely about denying the creativity of DMs, Kuntz misses that it enabled a more communal, common play experience and the production of adventure modules (some of which Kuntz helped write). Otherwise he makes a fair point about the shift in corporate attitude regarding extensive "home rules."

As for the accusation that Gary never played his own rules as written, I say "a designer designs." It's no wonder that both Gygax and Arneson sessions were more "R&D" than "QA."

Part 2: The Garden of Eden When he is not blaming Gygax for putting D&D on the wrong path from the outset, Kuntz is lauding Arneson's genius, ascribing to him amazing feats of intellect without actually describing most (any?) of them. In trying to imagine what we missed due to Gygax's nefarious activities, Kuntz suggests that any forward trajectory from Arneson's conceptual model would essentially end in a recreation of "the human brain." Any "throttling" of the system would damage its potential.

If we were to indeterminately throttle his [Arneson's] conceptual model into the future what we would note as an end result would be akin to a massive array of information having multi-functional processes interconnecting at all points. Eventually we would have the workings of the human brain (Kuntz, 41).
It sounds like Kuntz is talking about artificial intelligence or perhaps a Futurama-like visualization of Arneson's brain in a jar. It's a game of passive-aggressive keep-away in which Kuntz tells us we have done/are doing RPGs all wrong while simultaneously telling us it's virtually impossible to describe the right way – the Arnesonian way. "... what system(s) organization transpires in their [TSR/WotC D&D] place would be anyone's guess (Kuntz, 40). [Emphasis mine.]

To read him in a more charitable light, the best possible role-playing system would be one that exists only in the heads of every DM running a game and would be entirely unfixed – free to evolve and iterate as needed. Kuntz calls this the "Garden of Eden" state. Mechanics are fluid and the hivemind of players both allows for expansive movement by invention and contraction by a general consensus of best methods.

To me, this is the real meat of the book. The thing I was waiting for. Perhaps the best way to read Arneson's True Genius is to just start on page 40 and end on page 48.

My Thoughts on the GardenThis Garden of Eden argument reminds me a bit of Dawkin's Selfish Gene (1976) in which he invents the term meme (with a meaning quite different than it has in today's social media) and discusses the way songbirds communicate ideas through imitation and innovation without losing an innate quality of sameness. I kind of wish Kuntz could have made his argument (only) along those lines. Had he simply defended role-playing as an activity owned by everyone – and left off blaming Gygax for bottling spring water – he might really have been saying something important.

As it is, Kuntz' writing reads like an academic fever dream that would be "like, really deep, man" after the joint has been passed a few times around the circle. He is reluctant (unable?) to quantify anything about Arneson's genius and leaves it almost entirely to broad, unsupported, and ultimately meaningless declarations.

Sadly, I would have to say this book is an embarrassment and possibly does more harm to Arneson's legacy than good. And yet, if you can get past all of its flaws, there is at least one clever thought in Kuntz' rambling manifesto.

AftermathThe final few pages of the book are an attempt to debunk Arnesonian D&D as a derivation of Chainmail and/or Brauenstein. The conclusion is that they were influences, but not ingredients, and I'm fine with that. The argument isn't worth reading.

I made a new game.





I'm almost too tired to talk about it right now, so I'm just going to let you have a look! It's a pastiche of John Carter of Mars based on Nate Treme's Tunnel Goons. More on the making of it, and its future, tomorrow.

Enjoy. Comments, typos, etc. welcome.

Get it here: https://rayotus.itch.io/lords-of-mars