Which came first, Starfaring or Metamorphosis Alpha

[harlandski]

So I've been reading Eric Holmes' 1981 Fantasy Role Playing Games. In it he claims that Starfaring was the first space RPG, before Metamorphosis Alpha. Other sources I've dug up claim Metamorphosis Alpha is the first. I wonder if anyone here can shed light on this question?

It's also a shame that you can't buy a pdf of Starfaring, as you can for early T&T editions. Can anybody say anything about its contents? Is it just "Tunnels and Trolls in space" or does it have a different underlying system?

[derv]

I think SF and MA were published about the same time, with MA being the first Sci-Fi RPG.

Starfaring actually has more in common with and predates Traveller as a Star Exploration RPG.

It contains rules for building ships and Star Systems to explore. You create a crew to man your star ship. Characters have four attributes: Mentality (3 die x 10), Psi rating (3d6): # of uses (d6) & recovery time (d6), Physique (3d6), and Health (3d6). You can create humans, androgynes, androids, robots and aliens.

The combat system is not well defined and I think general actions use a Saving throw mechanic.

[Zenopus]

The Wikipedia pages for each give July 1976 for Met Alpha and August 1976 for Starfaring, but I'm not sure what their exact sources are.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starfaring
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metamorphosis_Alpha

But Playing at the World on page 564 (in the footnote) states that Metamorphosis Alpha was not ready for Origins II, which was in late July 1976, and then on page 570 states that Metamorphosis Alpha came out in November 1976, which would place it after Starfaring if the August date is correct. Perhaps increment can shed some light on this?

[increment]

Mar 14, 2020 14:47:55 GMT -6 Zenopus said:

Perhaps increment can shed some light on this?

Well, yes, as far as I can tell Starfaring was available around the summer of 1976, and MA was not out until the end of the year. I'm sure the Wiki is based on the fact that the "copyright date" asserted in the Starfaring booklet is August 1976, and the foreword in MA is dated 15 July 1976 - but forewords in TSR books do not usually reflect publication date, and this one is off by more than usual. Starfaring is advertised as available in August 1976 zines (like Space Gamer, or Wargamer's Information), whereas you don't really see notices that anybody had MA until the very end of 1976 (in, say, A&E #17, or Wild Hunt #11). As far as I know, the first place TSR advertises MA as available is the December 1976 issue of the Dragon, and I'd guess triangulating among the early notices I'd still go with an early December date.

[Finarvyn]

To me, it's an odd question -- assuming that one is trying to compare the two games to establish some "first" -- because Starfaring isn't really a RPG at all but instead is more like a starship combat game where the "character" you play is the ship. (Similar to Star Fleet Battles in many ways, actually.)

[derv]

Mar 15, 2020 4:50:39 GMT -6 Finarvyn said:

To me, it's an odd question -- assuming that one is trying to compare the two games to establish some "first" -- because Starfaring isn't really a RPG at all but instead is more like a starship combat game where the "character" you play is the ship. (Similar to Star Fleet Battles in many ways, actually.)

I think you're thinking of Snider's Star Probe instead of Ken St.Andre's Starfaring. In Starfaring you are a "Ship Master" who describes the actions of their ship and crew (who each have their own attributes) or you're the Galaxy Master (GM) who describes the setting, determines results of Ship Master's actions, and plays the aliens.

Though, I agree it's focus is primarily on the use of starships. It's an open system in presentation, unlike a war game such as Star Probe.

[harlandski]

Mar 15, 2020 4:50:39 GMT -6 Finarvyn said:

To me, it's an odd question -- assuming that one is trying to compare the two games to establish some "first" -- because Starfaring isn't really a RPG at all but instead is more like a starship combat game where the "character" you play is the ship. (Similar to Star Fleet Battles in many ways, actually.)

The way Holmes describes it, it sounds like a roleplaying game:

"The rules are fairly conventional. There is a GM, a game master or galaxy master, who writes a scenario, and one or more players who roll up the characters of the crew, outfit a ship and sail off into the unknown." (p. 124)

Edit: Having said that, the way it is described in this post: jrients.blogspot.com/2007/07/tripping-through-galaxy.html?m=1 makes it sound as if it was not quite a roleplaying game in the modern understanding. The artwork also goes some way to answering my question about why this game hasn't been released as a pdf :-D

[derv]

Something worth considering is that Ken St. Andre was/is self admittedly not a war gamer. But, during the period of these publications you were seeing some cross over in game design. Is it a war game, is it a RPG? Possibly both. Traveller definitely has elements of both.

What makes this categorization as "first" less significant is that many were already infusing elements of roleplay into their war games prior to either of these games being published.

For instance, Snider was part of the Twin City group. Star Probe was published by TSR in 1975. In it's Forward by Gygax dated Sept 1974 it says:

"As of this writing they are still engaged in a campaign, currently in the stage of imperial expansion, with one lost vessel from an Avian race having had the misfortune of somehow arriving at the world of "Blackmoor" (and promptly losing all to an angry wizard whom they foolishly disturbed)!"

Sounds like there may have been some roleplaying with Star Probe happening. Part of the adopted mythology in Blackmoor is that it's magical artifacts are of alien design with the connection to how these campaigns intertwined.

[bigjackbrass]

As derv detailed above, Starfaring certainly isn't T&T in space. Honestly, if you presented it to a modern gamer I don't think they would consider it an RPG as such at all: in many ways it reminds me of En Garde, which both is and isn't an RPG, depending how you look at it and define role-playing. As for whether it's the first SF RPG... probably. I've seen plenty of arguments that Metamorphosis Alpha isn't SF at all but is really science-fantasy, which is the sort of nit-picky categorisation that inevitably reduces everything to opinion rather than identifiable facts. Empire of the Petal Throne muddies the waters by being a fantasy game on the surface but having a science-fiction / science-fantasy history underpinning the setting, but it's not usually considered to qualify as an SF RPG.

There actually was a T&T in space game, which sadly never made it to production. WEB took the T&T-derived rules for Mercenaries, Spies & Private Eyes and adapted them to the setting of Flying Buffalo's popular play-by-mail game; shelved when the market took a nose-dive around 1984/85. Mike Stackpole found the manuscript for it a few years ago, but unfortunately, in part because it uses IP belonging to the estate of the late Fred Saberhagen, I'm told it will likely remain unpublished.