12-19-2020, 01:16 PM
Bob mentions the Star probe/Star Empires campaign. Arneson had dubbed it stellar 7 in Corner of the Tabletop.
During the making of Secrets of Blackmoor the Star Empires RPG, as John himself called it, was spoken of frequently. Bob Meyer, David Megarry, Ross Maker, and John Snider all spoke at length and it sounds like something that goes way beyond what one might experience while playing a game such as Traveller. It followed in the Twin Cities tradition of living world game play; with players acting as rulers of empires, as well as individual RPG play.
While interviewing John he revealed that his hand typed draft was damaged in a basement flood and all that remains are some fragments which he gave to us. Since then we've been on the lookout for any other indicators of what this game may have been like, to no avail.
Jump to this past year and something astounding was revealed. In a series of email with David Megarry, he began showing us information about a manuscript he had as a set of computer print outs. One page had a history section which included a future space timeline of events. It was easy enough to match this up with what had already been published in Star Probe and Star Empire for us to realize that what Megarry had uncovered is the last remaining draft of what has come to be known as Star Master.
Right now, we are working on getting an accurate OCR (optical character recognition) of the entire text. After that we will explore exactly how much of the game is in these print outs that David Megarry saved when Adventure Games was clearing the building after going out of business.
John has already agreed to letting us publish the manuscript. Interestingly, while archiving the Arneson family archive, we discovered full color artwork that was meant to be used for Star Master thus we also have a head start on the cover.
Griff
During the making of Secrets of Blackmoor the Star Empires RPG, as John himself called it, was spoken of frequently. Bob Meyer, David Megarry, Ross Maker, and John Snider all spoke at length and it sounds like something that goes way beyond what one might experience while playing a game such as Traveller. It followed in the Twin Cities tradition of living world game play; with players acting as rulers of empires, as well as individual RPG play.
While interviewing John he revealed that his hand typed draft was damaged in a basement flood and all that remains are some fragments which he gave to us. Since then we've been on the lookout for any other indicators of what this game may have been like, to no avail.
Jump to this past year and something astounding was revealed. In a series of email with David Megarry, he began showing us information about a manuscript he had as a set of computer print outs. One page had a history section which included a future space timeline of events. It was easy enough to match this up with what had already been published in Star Probe and Star Empire for us to realize that what Megarry had uncovered is the last remaining draft of what has come to be known as Star Master.
Right now, we are working on getting an accurate OCR (optical character recognition) of the entire text. After that we will explore exactly how much of the game is in these print outs that David Megarry saved when Adventure Games was clearing the building after going out of business.
John has already agreed to letting us publish the manuscript. Interestingly, while archiving the Arneson family archive, we discovered full color artwork that was meant to be used for Star Master thus we also have a head start on the cover.
Griff