It was a lot of fun. It had such a history. Starting off, getting huge, becoming big money where players even did things like forge documents from Schubel and Son to gain in-game currency, empires being sold off to a new owner for (IIRC) over a thousand dollars when someone decided to quit and leave the game. The mighty Dragorn Empire leaving their own galaxy after conquering most of it and spending (IIRC) over a year sending in turns travelling between galaxies to invade another one where players had been setup and sparking a war there. Then the price gouging controversies ($200 every two weeks for some empires back in the 1980s!), cheating accusations, feuds spilling out and eventually Schubel and Son giving up on the game and selling it back to the original creator of the game. He was based on the east coast I believe and wanted to bring back more hand moderation, but it just never took off again due to some of the bad blood at the end and the transfer of boxes upon boxes of papers and documents that had to be sorted through. I think only a handful of turns ever got processed ever again and it disappeared into the mists of times only to have some of it's spirit carried on in SuperNova and SuperNova:ROTE. I wish I could remember the name of the original company, but I can't think of it now.
Those special actions were unique though. Exploring abandoned temples and tombs with your spacecraft in hand written RPG-style paragraphs.
If I can remember I'll see if I can find some of my boxes. I think I had every single tech sheet for the entire game, but it is a question of whether the boxes survived being hauled around for the last 20+ years. Next time I'm in the basement I'll dig around a little. I think it is all buried with my original Traveller RPG game stuff.
I just did a quick look and found this article about StarMaster. KSK Concepts was the company that bought Starmaster back from Schubel and this article is apparently from someone who worked there.
http://greyhawkgrognard.blogspot.com/200...games.html
I found some PDFs of the old Dragon magazine. There sure were a lot of PBM games advertised in this magazine back then.
Those special actions were unique though. Exploring abandoned temples and tombs with your spacecraft in hand written RPG-style paragraphs.
If I can remember I'll see if I can find some of my boxes. I think I had every single tech sheet for the entire game, but it is a question of whether the boxes survived being hauled around for the last 20+ years. Next time I'm in the basement I'll dig around a little. I think it is all buried with my original Traveller RPG game stuff.
I just did a quick look and found this article about StarMaster. KSK Concepts was the company that bought Starmaster back from Schubel and this article is apparently from someone who worked there.
http://greyhawkgrognard.blogspot.com/200...games.html
I found some PDFs of the old Dragon magazine. There sure were a lot of PBM games advertised in this magazine back then.