Sunday, August 19, 2007

Starblazer Adventures

In the third episode of my 'Starblazer Memories' columns below, I mentioned that Starblazer was set to return. Well, here's the story...

Starblazer has been licensed by British games publisher Cubicle 7 Entertainment, who also publish SLA Industries and Victoriana. Starblazer Adventures is a collection of detailed RPG settings based on elements from many of the 281 issues of Starblazer. The story elements are being pieced together by Chris Birch who told me recently "I'm hoping to make this RPG as accessible as possible non-gamers and borderline gamers. I've already organised playtests with non-gamers via dinner parties."

Chris say the games are based on "a fabulous story-telling focused game system called FATE." FATE, a tweaked version of the rules system that has been used recently for Evil Hat Productions' popular Spirit of the Century RPG.

Chris is incredibly enthusiastic about Starblazer and has been working hard to create a Starblazer Universe from the 24 dozen stories that appeared in Starblazer. "The core release will include three detailed settings based on the very best stories from Starblazer. It will also detail recurring characters, organisations, empires and aliens such as the Fi-Sci (the Fighting Scientists of Galac Squad), The Star Patrol, The Suicide Squad, The Planet Tamer, Cinnibar the barbarian warrior of Babalon and galactic cop Frank Carter to name just a few."

Chris has a background as a long-time fan of video and roleplaying games and set up a video games fashion label called Joystick Junkies which will be producing clothing designs based around Starblazer images. "There's so much more we can do if it goes well," Chris says. "I'm hoping we'll win over a lot of the old fans with the collections of stories and game play."

At the moment, you can see some of the work Chris has put in on his MySpace page. Eventually he will be be launching a website, starblazeradventures.com, but at the moment that address links through to his MySpace page... I'll be keeping an eye on the www address and will let you know when it goes live. Cubicle 7 has its own website, as do Joystick Junkies.

I'll bring you more news as it comes in.

2 comments:

  1. i read them in dutch and in french but cant remember what magazine they were published in french. They were lightweight pocketbooks you could hide in your jacket pocket. Often there were more stories in them then just starblazer but at the end i tore the starblazer stories out.during a change of housing the starblazer stories got send in a dustbin

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  2. In France they were primarily published in Super Force and Antares before finally finishing in Janus Stark. In Holland it was reprinted as Starblazer.

    There's a good listing of non-UK editions to be found here...

    http://tiny.cc/61jR5

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