The perils of a "D&D" pitstop

In the mid-’80s, our group of five was heavily into “Dungeons & Dragons”, playing most of most weekends, with the odd break for swimming, bushwalks or Commodore 64 appreciation. However, we also longed to be able to emulate action sequences from the blockbuster science-fiction films of the era. MD would eventually get hold of TSR’s “Star Frontiers”, but before we even knew that game existed, we decided to make our own pen’n’paper sci-fi RPG. What we came up with was a hodge-podge that had some severe limitations and only briefly supplanted “D&D” in our affections. And yet, in its way, it was kinda visionary. It was called “Space Perils”.

I’m not sure who thought of the name (the moderator was the Space Master), but I know I supplied the thick exercise book into which the rules were penned. That’s right – penned. It was years before any of us saw the need to get a printer for our C64. Anyway, said parameters borrowed large chunks from “D&D”, notably the THAC0 mechanics and set of ability scores with values from 3-18. In the case of the latter, I believe we added PSI, for psi power…and maybe LCK, for luck. Not positive on that second one. To be honest, though, the majority of the rulebook was lists of spaceships from movies and TV shows, the relative values of which we spent ages debating, e.g. should a Battlestar cost more galactic credits than a Star Destroyer?

So far, so not visionary. The innovative aspect of the otherwise-derivative system that I’m still amazed/proud we came up with was having a player take on the role of the party’s starship computer as a sort of co-GM (technically, co-SM). This person handled space combat and worked out the amount of fuel needed to reach planets, etc. They didn’t control the plot, but they stepped in occasionally when number-crunching was required, freeing the Space Master from having to stop and perform these calculations. I distinctly recall us playing out on my parents’ front lawn – how did we not lose our dice in the grass? – and asking the ship’s computer technical questions which he’d work on while the rest of the adventure continued.

It’s obvious to me now what inspired this idea – the A.I.-in-a-box Orac from telly’s “Blake’s 7”, who we all liked almost as much as we did the sarcastic-bastard character of Avon. At the same time, it took lateral thinking on our part to break from the classic format of having a single all-powerful GM. And it would be years, not counting convention freeforms and wargame hybrids, until I again played in a tabletop RPG with two moderators. (A weird session of “Mage: The Ascension” during the glory days of White Wolf springs to mind.)

As I said in the beginning, “Space Perils” proved a fad and we quickly returned to the fantasy genre. The game’s lack of longevity probably had a lot to do with the fact we put loads of effort into quantifying Lightsabers and Colonial Vipers and so on, and barely any into developing the politics and personalities of the future setting. I’m confident in saying every “S/P” scenario could be summarised in three words: blow shit up. Nevertheless, the memory remains a fond one, even if the lone rulebook is buried fathoms deep in landfill.

Back in “D&D” land, we were soon facing a much bigger problem than a 99% complete Death Star: a friendly little homebrew creature known as the Emerald Dragon, whose breath could transform anything to emerald. This critter threatened to ruin not only the Oerth economy but, as we PCs vied for control of it, the continued existence of the campaign itself. Ah, but that’s another anecdote…