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I’m a big fan of Star Frontiers, which is strange because I’ve only ever played in a single campaign of it in my life. Still, that Alpha Dawn Elmore cover always drew me in, and I have everything ever produced for it just because I love to look at it, flip the pages, and imagine ‘what could have been’ if I’d just had more opportunity and drive to make something happen in this game. Instead, I played the hell out of Robotech, but that is another story.Anyway, back to Star Frontiers. In 2004 Wizards of the Coast produced D20 Modern’s...

Anyone who reads my work, either here or over on Black Gate, knows of my infinite joy concerning the artwork of I.C.E.’s Middle-Earth Role-Playing game. Today, I’m going to take a look at perhaps my favorite Angus McBride contribution to setting, Thieves of Tharbad.Now first, I say to anyone interested in playing MERP, take a serious look at both Tharbad and Cardolan as a place to start a campaign. They are extremely old and extensive places to house any campaign while still giving you access to various ‘traditional’ Lord of the Rings settings. Located southeast of the Shire, south of...

The Galtor Campaign is one of perhaps a dozen scenario driven supplements for Battletech released in the late 1980s. All of them were quality works, as was the practice of FASA in that day and age, but I found Galtor to be my favorite because it was one of the few FASA products other than Star Trek that we got to see a David Deitrick painted cover.Deitrick’s work on this supplement makes this product sing in a fashion that only he was capable of for the Battletech product line. Sure, Jim Holloway had several stunning covers, but if you really...

Tamoachan… even the name can give one shivers, and adding it to the complete title of C1: The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan gives you an instant classic. This ‘deluxe set’ module, with over 16 illustrations in a separate players pack, was written by Harold Johnson & Jeff R. Leason back in 1980. It is for levels 5-7 and pits a party against a Mesoamerican threat that not only educates by also inspires, as it did with my creation of Taux for Tales of the Emerald Serpent two decades later.The cover art here is done by Erol Otus, with back cover...

‘There Came a Reckoning…’ The year is 2097, but the future is not our own.Some great words from the intro to Deadlands: Hell on Earth reloaded [2012] from Pinnacle Entertainment Group. This is the Savage Worlds, a mechanic that I love more than perhaps anything save AD&D 1E [and that is a tough call], and this alternate reality setting is about as much fun as you can have. Combining the Wild West with a hell-born apocalypse that begins almost a hundred years in the future, it is a supreme mash up of all types of cool storylines.Still, I’m here to...