$2.50AUGUST 1982 NUMBER 54

NUMBER 54 — AUGUST, 1982

IN THIS ISSUEThe bad news is that the adventure game scenario originally budgeted for

this issue — "Unnight," for Space Opera — had to be bumped back a couple ofissues so that we could make cosmetic changes. Look for it in issue 56.

The good news is that the rest of this issue should hold you for a while.We have strategy for Star Fleet Battles garners, a magic variant for TFT role-players, a useful article for Wizard's Realm players, "The Conjuring" — fantasyfiction for fumblephiles, a few pieces on the human side of the hobby — gameaids, gaming widows, and gaming overseas, and our usual barrowful of capsulereviews. And columns. And departments. Lots of departments. (Shut up!) (Right.)

—Aaron Allston

ARTICLESWinning Star Fleet Battles * Jerry Silberman

S&T in SFB 4Magic Backlash in TFT * Richard A. Edwards

Or, "Oops!" 10Wargaming Widows * Martha Ladyman

They also serve who only sit and wait 12Wizard's Realm Creature Stats * Ronald Pehr

Average creature stats for a new FRPG 14Gaming in Sweden * Anders Blixt

An overseas reader describes the hobby in his country 16Megahexes * Bob Hensle

Creating durable play-aids for FRP 18

FICTIONThe Conjuring * Steven M. Tymon

Some nights, nothing goes right 6

REVIEWSCapsule Reviews 22

GAMES: The Book of Mars, Demon's Run. SUPPLEMENTS: Catacombs of the BearCult, City Book I, Dragon's Hall, Glory Hole Dwarven Mine, In the Service of SaenaSephar, Pharoah, Valley of the Mists. COMPUTER GAMES: Sorcerer of Siva.ARCADE GAMES: Barnstorming, Grand Prix, Haunted House, Ice Hockey, MissileAttack, Scarfman, Stellar Track. PLAY AIDS: Top Secret Administrator's Screen andMini-Module.

COLUMNSWhere We're Going * Steve Jackson 2Metal * John Rankin 20

DEPARTMENTSLetters 34Game Master 36Contest 37Calendar 38Scanner 38PBM Update 39Index to Advertisers 40

Publisher:Steve Jackson

Editor:Aaron Allston

Art Director:Denis Loubet

Contributing Editors:W.G. ArmintroutWilliam A. BartonDavid BolducRonald PehrLewis PulsipherNick SchuesslerBruce F. Webster

Business Manager:Elton Fewell

Circulation Manager:Chris Smith

Utility Infielders:Elisabeth BarringtonBernice FewellJ. David George

Utility Outfielder:Chris Zakes

ART IN THIS ISSUECover: George WebberGraham Chaffee: 10. Steve Cromp-

ton: 28, 32, 34. K.C. Ellis: 35. J.David George: 12, 15. Gavin Gossett:14. Janet Jackson: 23, 24. DenisLoubet: 4, 5. Kyle Miller: 6, 7, 8, 9.Pat Mueller: mailer cartoon. GeorgeWebber: 22, 30. J.D. Webster: 26, 40.

Publishers seeking free-lance artistsare invited to send for a copy of ourRecommended Artists List.

THE SPACE GAMER (ISSN 0194-9977,USPS 434-250) is published monthly bySteve Jackson Games, P.O. Box 18957,Austin, TX 78760-8957. Second class post-age paid at Austin, TX. POSTMASTER:Send address changes to SJ Games, P.O. Box18957, Austin, TX 78760-8957.

All material is copyright © 1982 by SJGames. All rights reserved.

Printed in USA by Futura Press, Austin.

Subscription rates, as of 4-7-81:In the United States — one year (12

issues) $21.00; two years (24 issues) $39.00.A lifetime subscription is $250. Outside theU.S. — please add $5 per year for surfacemail. Airmail rates vary by country — pleasewrite for your current airmail rate. Inter-national rates subject to change as postalrates change. NOTE: All payments MUSTbe in U.S. dollars, made by InternationalMoney Order, or checks drawn on a U.S. orCanadian bank.

2

Where We're GoingBarring major disaster, we now know

exactly what we're going to have forOrigins, and even how much it'll cost.We were actually able to meet all ourdeadlines, so there'll be a lot of newproducts:

Illuminati, our first $6.00 Pocket Boxgame. When you see the (real!) deck ofcards inside, you'll understand why theprice had to go up. We had a choice be-tween doing a rather scroungy $5.00edition or a beautiful $6.00 one. We wentfor class (he said modestly).

Sunday Drivers. The Car Wars adven-ture from TSG 50 made the transition toseparate publication very nicely, gettingmuch more complex in the process. For$5.00 (Pocket Boxed), the componentsinclude 160 color counters, the 32" by42" (!!) map, and 24 pages of rules. Nowyou, too, can shoot up Midville.

Car Wars Expansion Set I. $3.00,in a ziplock bag. 24 assorted road sec-tions (straight, curved, Y, and cross-roads), each with debris on the back.. .plus 120 black-and-white counters (oil,smoke, spikes, and all the other extrasyou want).

Cardboard Heroes Fantasy Set 8:Giants. 15 big figures, painted by DenisLoubet: storm giant, titan, fire giants,ogres (the live kind), Ogre Magi, etc.

Cardboard Heroes Fantasy Set 9:Dungeon Dangers. Three identical sheetsof assorted nasties, each with 44 counterson it — 132 in all. Rats, snakes, bugs,and several different kinds of slimes andgoops — some flat, some standing. Paint-ed by Denis.

Cardboard Heroes Fantasy Set 10:Traps and Treasures. Three identicalsheets of treasure chests, jewels, spilledsacks, man-traps, pits, weapons, armor,etc. . . plus a few assorted bodies andskeletons, all drawn by J. DavidGeorge.

Traveller Set 2: Imperial Marines.Three identical sheets, each with 19 Mar-ines — an assortment of figures in bothundress uniform and power armor, in-cluding officers. 15mm scale — approvedfor use with Traveller, painted by KevinSiembieda.

Traveller Set 3: Zhodani. Three iden-tical sets of 19 Zhodani each. Like theirImperial counterparts, these are dividedbetween battledress and ship uniforms.Approved for use with Traveller; paintedby Kevin Siembieda.

Cops, Crooks, and Civilians. 37 "Card-board Normals" — for spy games, super-hero adventures, or what have you.Police officers, assorted thugs, scientisttypes, businessmen (and women), teen-agers, kids — even a punk rocker. Paintedby Denis.

Autoduel Miniatures. We will finallyhave some of the official Car Wars mini-atures out at Origins.

I'm going to quit now and turn therest of the column over to Aaron. I didn'treally intend to take that much space fora plug. . . but we seem to have an awfullot of stuff coming out...

—Steve Jackson

The Editor Speaks

I was actually going to write this forissue 52, but time considerations bumpedit. Today, two months later, Steve hasflown off to Westercon to play amongthe buffaloes for a while, the CardboardHeroes boards have just been dropped offat the color separators, the SundayDrivers mapsheets have been takenback to the printers, and a period of rel-ative calm (broken occasionally by fitsof hysterical giggling) has fallen overthe office.

The Space Gamer is sliding into aslow period of transition. The editorial

content is not going to change in itscoverage of the gaming world — we'restill focusing on reviews, strategy and tac-tics pieces, scenarios, and news from allover the SF&F gaming field. What weare going to do is work to boost the over-all quality of what we publish, and pub-lish more. We're looking for better arti-cles, fiction, and art than ever before,and we don't want to make do with mar-ginal items as we have occasionally inthe past. For example, the adventurescenario originally budgeted for this issuewas a good offering, but it still had acouple of holes in it. Rather than con-front the reader with them, we pulledthe scenario for more polishing. Keepyour eyes open over the next few monthsand you'll see more polished and gener-ally useful pieces than before.

Hopefully, we'll be giving you morepages than before, as well. Our pagecount is dependent on our ad base (thenumber of companies who advertise withus on a regular contract basis). And, evenin these last months of economic reces-sion, our ad base has grown. We managed48 pages in June, and it's looking asthough we'll be doing it again soon.

Other Changes

Another thing we're trying to do in-volves increasing the time and materialdevoted to our departments section.We just added a new column — "Metal"— and reader reaction has been uniformlyfavorable. "News and Plugs" was trans-formed into "Scanner" and has also beenfavorably received. The letters page wasactually two pages in issue 52 and in thisissue; people are writing in more andwe're now able to respond on a moreregular basis.

Uncle Sam Wants You

"Why don't you do an article on wom-bats in TFT?" "I want to see a GrandPrix scenario for Car Wars!" "Publisha tactical-level space game spanning theMilky Way, would you?" You've heardthis from me before, and will continue tohear it until I'm satisfied with the flowof contributions coming into this office:If you have any writing skill, don't sendin article recommendations, send in arti-cles.

Por Fin

TSG goes in to the printers tomorrow,Mickey Mouse is still comfortably in hisgrave, and all's well. I hope to hear fromyou.

—Aaron Allston

NEXT ISSUEIn September's TSG, we intend to confront you with:

NECROMANCER, a complete tactical fantasy game by Allen Varney;Featured review and designer's notes for GRAV ARMOR;"The Splat Gun," mercenary weapon for TRAVELLER;"Advanced Campaigning," two articles on game-mastering RPGs —

one for SF, one for fantasy;And metamorphosing monsters.