Lulu.com 20% off in November 2012 and DWD Star Frontiers

Quick, quick, we've burnt Guy Fawkes - time to get on with the rest of November!

Here's a magic code for you to whisper to the robot cashier over at Lulu.com

NOVBOOKS12

Books & eBooks from Lulu.com 20% off- Enter code NOVBOOKS12 - Save up to $25

The code blerb says "US site only" - which is confusing because as a British customer I've just had no trouble getting a reduction in my shopping cart. Valid until 30th Nov.

Whilst checking this code out, I saw this in the top ten sellers in the Games section:

Star Frontiers Alpha Dawn published by DWD / Bill Logan $9.35

"Star Frontiers - a classic science fiction role-playing game from the 80's that should have persisted today. Here it is for your gaming pleasure!""

I've been aware of some harmless free downloads online at starfrontiersman.com for some time, but this seems like a very bold move.  I'm hoping that DWD have full rights to the game mechanics and art.  Naturally, I'm assuming here that the text is different (at least the downloads I've seen in the past were like that)  I recommend having a browse about the web before you buy this, also if you're really interested in procuring a piece of TSR RPG history, have a look on Ebay or other second-hand stores - the intact box set is lots of fun to delve through.

Some thoughts regarding the original Star Frontiers:

After discovering that the Space Opera RPG was way more like Traveller than I had first assumed. apart from 15mm figure games like Laserburn, Star Frontiers is still looking like one of the earliest games to embrace a more cinematic approach to sci-fi, i.e. Star Wars or BattleStar Galactica, where everyone is packing a sidearm with city maps, hover car chases, outdoor location maps, and kill-first-ask-questions-later creatures that wouldn't be far out of place in Gamma World.  It's interesting that the Star Frontiers writers only included starship combat in the following set, Knight Hawks.  Compare this to the Traveller starter rules (first 4 books) which cover the very basics of character generation, combat, space combat, skills, world gen, vehicles, interstellar trade, but did so with the broadest brush strokes (refined and expanded in later booklets).  If you wanted, Traveller could be very "sandbox" in play.  Star Frontiers was very much played specific to a dramatically set scene: -alien terrorists walk into the bar / you've crashed - survive / you're being chased by something big and vicious / out of control city monorail - now deal with it!  In fact the similarities between the original Star Frontiers set and Gang Busters are notable - there's press-out character and vehicle counters, city floor-plan, location driven adventures (you are here - place counter on map) - although Star Frontiers does have an exploratory hex-crawl in it's introductory module -which was not uncommon in some Traveller adventures as well.

[-- Random thoughts end --]

I seem to have a terrible cold - possibly caught off some late night geomorph designing ...

Happy Shopping!

And remember, if you can't afford it: do what I do, buy it for yourself then thrust it upon a loved one to give you for Christmas (demanding the full retail price, of course). ;)