02-10-2010, 01:15 PM
gsvenson Wrote:But Sci-Fi and Fantasy are lumped into the same section in most bookstores.
Historically, by 1973 there was a concurrent Star Empires campaign, run by John Snider, going with an RPG element which we naturally combined with the Blackmoor campaign, making Blackmoor's world part of a star system in the Star Empires campaign (which was almost immediately quarrantined due to the loss of several scout ships from two empires, one human and one avian)...
The Star Empires RPG rules seem to have sat on a desk at TSR through the late 70's. Adventure Games (Dave Arneson's game company) got them in 1983 (I edited the rules during the summer of '83 - no I didn't keep a copy), but they were never published. Traveller was already deeply intrenched. If they had been released in the 70's they would have given Traveller a real run for the money, as they solved the 2D-3D issue of space in Traveller and they worked with the Star Probe and Star Empire rules among other things.
Point taken of course. I'm sure lots of people like the mix of scifi and fantasy elements, and even in the version of Blackmoor I'm putting together that stuff could all still be there, but be so rare that my players never actually encounter a laser gun or a tricorder or avian aliens (although that does sound kinda cool).