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People Behind The Meeples - Episode 233: Sandy Petersen

Welcome to People Behind the Meeples, a series of interviews with indie game designers.  Here you'll find out more than you ever wanted to know about the people who make the best games that you may or may not have heard of before.  If you'd like to be featured, head over to http://gjjgames.blogspot.com/p/game-designer-interview-questionnaire.html and fill out the questionnaire! You can find all the interviews here: People Behind the Meeples. Support me on Patreon!

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Name:	Sandy Petersen
Location:	Rockwall, Texas
Day Job:	Game designer is the only full-time job I've ever had as a grown-up.
Designing:	Over ten years!
Webpage:	petersengames.com
BGG:	Just search for my games. They're all there.
Facebook:	facebook.com/PetersenGames
Twitter:	@SandyofCthulhu
YouTube:	Sandy of Cthulhu
Instagram:	@PetersenGames
Find my games at:	Petersengames.com; Amazon; Miniature Market; and your FLGS

Today's Interview is with:

Sandy Petersen
Interviewed on: 6/4/2020

This week's interview is with Sandy Petersen. Sandy is probably the most prolific designer I've featured in this interview series so far. Sandy has been designing games of all sorts since 1980, including RPGs, video games, and board games. Read on to learn more about Sandy's projects, past, present, and future!

Some Basics
Tell me a bit about yourself.

How long have you been designing tabletop games?
Over ten years!

Why did you start designing tabletop games?
I backed into it by accident, while looking for a job to support my family while attending graduate school. Liked working at Chaosium so much that gaming, my avocation, became my vocation instead.

What game or games are you currently working on?
A tactical game about starship combat, a co-op game about exploring ancient terrors, and a team game called Dinosaur 1944 about dinosaurs vs. army men.

Have you designed any games that have been published?
I have designed many many games that have been published. Am I supposed to list some of them here? The Call of Cthulhu RPG, the Ghostbuster RPG, Doom, Doom 2, Quake, Age of Empires series, Cthulhu Wars, Planet Apocalypse, Glorantha: The Gods War, etc.

What is your day job?
Game designer is the only full-time job I've ever had as a grown-up.

Your Gaming Tastes
My readers would like to know more about you as a gamer.

Where do you prefer to play games?
At home.

Who do you normally game with?
One of my three gaming groups! Or my adult sons when they're in town.

If you were to invite a few friends together for game night tonight, what games would you play?
We sometimes play a tabletop RPG, and sometimes playtest one of my upcoming board games. Every few months we play something else.

And what snacks would you eat?
We have kind of a contest to bring in weird stuff from Asian markets, but we also eat pistachios, chips & salsa, order in Chinese or pizza, etc.

Do you like to have music playing while you play games? If so, what kind?
We do not normally play music while we play games, unless it's relevant to the game.

What's your favorite FLGS?
Boardwalk Games in Dallas TX

What is your current favorite game? Least favorite that you still enjoy? Worst game you ever played?
My current favorite is always whatever game I'm focused on finishing up. The least favorite game I still enjoy is probably Feast for Odin. I enjoy playing it but never ever win. Argh. Worst game I ever played was the old EA game Arctic Fox. You played white tanks. On the tundra. In a blizzard. Ecch. Makes me snowblind just thinking about it.

What is your favorite game mechanic? How about your least favorite?
Not sure if it counts as a mechanic but interesting asymmetry is always fun. My least favorite "mechanic" are games that force you to earn the right to have fun. I prefer the very first game turn to have interesting decisions.

What's your favorite game that you just can't ever seem to get to the table?
World in Flames. Its major drawback is it takes about 6 months to play.

What styles of games do you play?
I like to play Board Games, Card Games, RPG Games, Video Games, Other Games?

Do you design different styles of games than what you play?
I like to design Board Games, RPG Games

OK, here's a pretty polarizing game. Do you like and play Cards Against Humanity?
No

You as a Designer
OK, now the bit that sets you apart from the typical gamer. Let's find out about you as a game designer.

When you design games, do you come up with a theme first and build the mechanics around that? Or do you come up with mechanics and then add a theme? Or something else?
Theme is number one. The mechanics are draped over the theme.

Have you ever entered or won a game design competition?
I've won awards for my games, but I didn't submit them myself. Does that count? I'm an Origins Hall of Famer and got picked for two entries in Hobby Games' Best 100.

Do you have a current favorite game designer or idol?
Shigeru Miyamoto. Man I'd have loved to be a fly on the wall when he was trying to pitch Pikmin to his team.

Where or when or how do you get your inspiration or come up with your best ideas?
Well one interesting source is that I am plagued with nightmares. During the nightmare I hate it (wouldn't anyone?), but when I wake up I am often able to take ideas from that dream into a game.

How do you go about playtesting your games?
I construct a prototype and take it the rounds of my three playtest groups. When possible I create a "how to make this game" playtest folder and post it to fans on my company forums for feedback.

Do you like to work alone or as part of a team? Co-designers, artists, etc.?
I am solidly a team player.

What do you feel is your biggest challenge as a game designer?
The occasional wall I hit when I'm working on a game and it is not doing what I want it to do. I hammer my head against that barrier for days, sometimes weeks. Once for months. It's awful when I'm not making progress and have to keep redesigning and redoing the entire game from scratch.

If you could design a game within any IP, what would it be?
Godzilla

What do you wish someone had told you a long time ago about designing games?
Almost zero of the games you publish will be based on your original idea. But that doesn't mean you can't take that idea and make it your own.

What advice would you like to share about designing games?
99% of teenagers are incapable of giving useful feedback. You can get good information from pre-teens or from adults. Something goes wrong in a teen's brain.

Would you like to tell my readers what games you're working on and how far along they are?
Published games, I have: Lots. Call of Cthulhu, Runequest, Doom, Quake, Age of Empires, Cthulhu Wars, Planet Apocalypse, etc.
Games that will soon be published are: Invasion of the Brood - a two-player game about an attempted conquest of modern-day Earth by mind-controlling aliens. Dinosaur 1944 just completed crowdfunding at the end of June.
Currently looking for a publisher I have: I own my own publishing house. I guess I could count the games I'm trying to get published in other languages partnering with foreign companies.
I'm planning to crowdfund: A tactical space combat game
Games I feel are in the final development and tweaking stage are: A more transportable version of my Cthulhu Wars game
Games that I'm playtesting are: A co-op horror game with separate chapters and settings ranging from a Yellow Sign rave, to an invasion from an advanced underground human civilization.
Games that are in the early stages of development and beta testing are: A major return to roots for me - a whole new roleplaying game.
And games that are still in the very early idea phase are: A team effort with me and my son to create a strategic worldbuilding game in a fantasy universe.

Are you a member of any Facebook or other design groups? (Game Maker's Lab, Card and Board Game Developers Guild, etc.)
nope.

And the oddly personal, but harmless stuff…
OK, enough of the game stuff, let's find out what really makes you tick! These are the questions that I'm sure are on everyone's minds!

Star Trek or Star Wars? Coke or Pepsi? VHS or Betamax?
Old Trek. Dr Pepper. Well I owned a VHS ...

What hobbies do you have besides tabletop games?
history, movies, zoology

What is something you learned in the last week?
The future existence of Roko's Basilisk. I urge you not to look it up. Seriously.

Favorite type of music? Books? Movies?
I have extremely broad views on music. Right this second I'm listening to country western, but yesterday it was Mongolian throat-singing. Favorite books are mostly non-fiction history or science but I do love a good horror, SF, or mystery. Favorite movies are almost all horror films. Got hooked on those at 6 years old, after watching Day of the Triffids.

What was the last book you read?
Riddle of the Sands by Erskine Childers, written in 1903

Do you play any musical instruments?
I played the viola and piano in my youth.

Tell us something about yourself that you think might surprise people.
I am a faithful practicing Mormon.

Tell us about something crazy that you once did.
I quit a six-figure job with a guaranteed future to found my own business. It totally failed. Later I founded another business, Petersen Games, which is still in operation.

Biggest accident that turned out awesome?
I did a crowdfunder for a digital game about Cthulhu and it was a colossal flop. My partners urged me to try again, but as a tabletop game. I knew for a fact it could not succeed, but they tricked me. It was Cthulhu Wars.

Who is your idol?
Ulysses S. Grant

What would you do if you had a time machine?
Head straight back to the Permian, when monsters ruled the earth.

Are you an extrovert or introvert?
I enjoy other people, but over time feel drained and enervated by this, so I am an introvert. My oldest son is energized and invigorated by being around people and can't understand why I have to build up my resources before attending conventions or doing seminars.

If you could be any superhero, which one would you be?
I think I'd make a way better Green Lantern. For an ability that relies upon your creativity to work, Hal Jordan sure seems unimaginative at times.

Have any pets?
I have always owned pets, ranging from snakes to geckos to rats to ferrets to cats to solpugids. Currently have two mongrel dogs.

When the next asteroid hits Earth, causing the Yellowstone caldera to explode, California to fall into the ocean, the sea levels to rise, and the next ice age to set in, what current games or other pastimes do you think (or hope) will survive into the next era of human civilization? What do you hope is underneath that asteroid to be wiped out of the human consciousness forever?
All traces of how to operate a totalitarian state.

If you'd like to send a shout out to anyone, anyone at all, here's your chance (I can't guarantee they'll read this though):
Hey dad! Your tattered old book from 1942 got me into this career when I read it at the age of 8. Thanks!

Just a Bit More
Thanks for answering all my crazy questions! Is there anything else you'd like to tell my readers?

I read every review. I rejoice in the good ones. I agonize and obsess over the bad ones.

The deepest game ever created was Culdcept Saga, a little known Japanese combination of MtG & Monopoly for the XBox 360. Now you know.

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Thank you for reading this People Behind the Meeples indie game designer interview! You can find all the interviews here: People Behind the Meeples and if you'd like to be featured yourself, you can fill out the questionnaire here: http://gjjgames.blogspot.com/p/game-designer-interview-questionnaire.html

Did you like this interview?  Please show your support: Support me on Patreon! Or click the heart at Board Game Links , like GJJ Games on Facebook , or follow on Twitter .  And be sure to check out my games on  Tabletop Generation.

Shattered Apollo (XCOM Files)

PFC Tom Shaw, March 1st

They told us we were the first humans to kill a creature from outer space. They told us we were heroes. They told us we were the best humanity has to offer to fight off this invasion. I'm going to be honest with you here and tell you, I don't really think any of that is true. These guys knew the aliens were coming. They must have known for a while. The XCOM project had been dormant for years before they came and picked us up and told us we were chosen to protect humanity. It's possible no one had seen or fought an alien before us, but then how did they know what to expect? How did they know when to expect it? We certainly weren't heroes. Most of us were just dumb kids who knew how to shoot. Yeah, we were trained to kill each other, but not one among us had been trained to repel alien invaders with death rays. Hell, I don't even really know what plasma is and I've been covered in the stuff.

You're here to talk about that night, right? I relive that night a lot in my nightmares. It's difficult to talk about for a lot of reasons, but as the squad leader of the first human beings to engage and defeat an alien threat - well I'm getting used to being asked about it. Well, here goes.

We were flown from the Cheyenne Mountain complex to Vancouver late on the night of March 1st. Aliens had touched down at a shipping warehouse and were in the process of abducting any humans unfortunate enough to be out that late. None of this junk sounded real to me, by the way. Here I was leading this team and I wasn't even convinced we were going to be fighting what they said we'd be fighting. I'd never seen an alien or a UFO. This was the stuff of TV shows and silly documentaries on conspiracy theories. How could this crap be real? It felt like a dream flying out to Vancouver that night. It felt like a dream until our boots hit the ground.

The Landing Zone

We dropped down on the street outside the parking lot of the warehouse. The lot itself was fenced in with a stone wall creating a bit of a fortress for these aliens to hide in. We could hear some damn strange noises coming from beyond that wall. That's when most of us knew that this was really happening. You can be dropped into a foreign country where you don't speak a word of the local language, but you know those sounds coming from the other side of the wall are human voices speaking human words that you just don't understand. This was not like that. No, sir. I can't even begin to describe these sounds to you. They were like nothing I'd ever heard on Earth. This was really happening.

First Contact

Grace was the first to lay eyes on an alien - Private Grace Russell, my fellow American that night. As she took up a position against the wall and moved forward to the entrance of the lot, she spotted three little greys working on one of their abduction pods. I guess they store humans inside these things for transportation. The science team understood more about that than I ever did, but we just called them abduction pods. Anyway, these aliens saw Grace and took up defensive positions behind the pod and some nearby cars. My Brazilian brother, Julio "Burrito" Brito, took up a position across from Russell at the entrance to the lot.

The Great Kobayashi Grenade

I couldn't see a damn thing from where I was pressed up against the wall, but the next thing I know I'm hearing the bizarre sizzling sounds of these plasma pistols firing on my team. Russell and Brito open fire, but they're basically exchanging rounds with the aliens shooting their green ooze back at us. That's when Shinji Kobayashi - no one even knew this dude until that night. This guy really kept to himself at the base. He barely spoke a word of English to anyone. He was definitely a loner. So this guy, Kobayashi, decided to sneak up along the outside of the wall and toss a grenade over the top on to the aliens' positions. The crack of his anti-personnel grenade marked a stop to the plasma pistols sizzling shots, but Russell could see two were wounded, but none were killed. Burrito and I slipped into the parking lot in this short window of opportunity.

Man, the first time I saw a grey - hunkered down behind that abduction pod, staring down at the shrapnel out of its body - I just fired on the thing. I ended its life. That thing didn't even see me sweep in from around the corner. Yeah, as far as anyone can tell me, I'm the first guy on Earth to take one down. I barely even got a good look at the thing before putting a hail of bullets into its small grey body. There was a certain exhilaration among the team knowing that our simple ballistic weapons had defeated these technologically superior beings with futuristic, space rayguns. Sadly this small moment of victory was diminished by the sounds of heavy plasma fire coming from further down the street.

Kobayashi Comes Under Fire

Private Kobayashi's bold maneuver had left him alone and exposed. He was pinned against the wall farther up the road and barely holding back four greys who were trying to gain a strategic position behind our squad. Knowing this, Burrito rushed across the parking lot toward the warehouse hoping to end our conflict inside the compound swiftly. The aliens were wounded and distracted by the loss of one of their own. They didn't even see him get in close and mow down a second alien hiding behind a car in shock. Grace had only reported three aliens in the lot, so I felt confident that Private Brito and I could pincer the last one on our own. I sent Russell, Rojas and Marin to backup Kobayashi on the street. You know, I think about this moment often and wonder if splitting up the squad had been a mistake. That might have been where things went truly wrong for me and Marin, but if I hadn't sent them, then Kobayashi would probably have died in the streets of Vancouver that night.

Burrito Gets the Drop on This Alien

As Julio and I pushed forward in the parking lot searching for that final alien, Russell, Rojas and Marin made their way up the street toward Private Kobayashi. We heard Marin nscream out in pain from our position and it still sends chills down my spine. Julio and I thought she was dead. As far as we understood, no one had ever been hit by these death-rays so we expected the worst. Rojas came over the radio, though, saying she'd been hit but she was still alive. She even managed to take one of the aliens down before falling back behind a car to rest. Adriana Marin was tough.

As far as I understand, while the aliens were distracted by Private Marin, Kobayashi was able to take up a new position across the street - rushing away from the wall where he had been pinned down. From there he was able to take down an alien firing on Marin and Rojas with ease. Although Marin was hurt, it sounded to us like the firefight on the street was turning in our favor. We could hear the aliens shrieking their horrible sounds and scattering back to defensive positions further down the lot. Private Brito and I obviously wanted to pin the aliens down, but before we could rejoin Kobayashi we had to take care of our immediate enemy. We found the final alien of the initial squad hiding behind a yellow car. I took some shots that missed, which to this day still haunt me. That damn yellow car is one of the last things I remember that night. After that, things go dark.

Just Before Things Go Dark

The alien that Julio and I were tracking was leading us into an ambush. Julio told me later while I was in the med-bay that three aliens popped out of the warehouse itself right on top of my position. One of them fired several shots into my left side, nearly covering me in that burning green plasma. I went down hard and Julio thought I was dead right then and there. I don't have any memory of this, you know? The last thing I can remember is missing that damn bastard who led me into the trap. I guess after I fell, Brito rushed up taking shots on my attacker and killing it. He said I was bleeding out right there in the lot. He reported over the radio that if they couldn't get me on the skyranger soon, and rush me to medical attention I was a goner.

Kobayashi Coming in Hot

Now, from what I understand, once Burrito reported I'd been shot down, Kobayashi took charge of the team on his side of the wall. To this day, I never heard the guy speak, but if you hear Grace tell it, without Kobayashi's leadership I wouldn't be here today. She makes it sound like Shinji single-handedly killed the rest of the aliens in some kind of maddened rage, which makes Julio laugh every time we bring it up. All he would tell me is that Shinji led his sub-squad around the northern end of the wall and closed in behind the ambush in a pincer attack with Brito. Together, their counter-ambush wiped out the rest of the greys on site and we were able to be extracted soon afterward.

That's really all their is to tell. The six of us took out ten greys. Marin was wounded, and I was rendered unconscious. Technically, I was leading the mission and I got the first kill so some people think I'm a hero. Personally, I know it could have gone better. I'm still kicking myself for walking into that trap like a goddamn puppet on a string. It was my leadership that got Marin hurt, too. Kobayashi was the real hero that night as far as I'm concerned and I don't think I'm alone in that regard.

• From an interview with Tom Shaw, US Special Forces, Leader on Operation Shattered Apollo

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XCOM Report - March 1, 2015 - "Shattered Apollo" 

PFC Tom Shaw (USA) - Squad Leader

• Confirmed Kills: 1 (Sectoid)
• Condition:  Gravely Wounded
• Earned Promotion 

PFC Grace Russell (USA) 

• Confirmed Kills: 1 (Sectoid)
• Earned Promotion 

PFC Roman Rojas (Guatemala)

• Confirmed Kill: 2 (Sectoid)
• Earned Promotion 

PFC Adriana Marin (Moldova)

• Confirmed Kill: 1 (Sectoid)
• Condition:  Minor Wounds
• Earned Promotion 

PFC Shinji Kobayashi (Japan)

• Confirmed Kill: 3 (Sectoid)
• Earned Promotion 

PFC Julio Brito (Brazil)

• Confirmed Kill: 2 (Sectoid)
• Earned Promotion 

Buck Rogers: Matrix Cubed: Won! (With Summary And Rating)

There's little that's more cringy than people actually saying, "hip-hip-hooray."

          

Buck Rogers: Matrix Cubed

United States
Strategic Simulations, Inc.

Released 1992 for DOS

Date Started: 1 August 2020

Date Ended: 29 August 2020

Total Hours: 32

Difficulty: Moderate-Hard (3.5/5)

Final Rating: (to come later)

Ranking at time of posting: (to come later)

Summary:
Matrix Cubed is a sequel to Buck Rogers: Countdown to Doomsday (1990). Both games are based on the Buck Rogers XXVC tabletop roleplaying game and use the "Gold Box" engine originally designed for Dungeons and Dragons games, which blends first-person exploration and axonometric, turn-based, tactical combat. The "exploration" half of the Gold Box engine was showing its age by 1992, with limited graphics and map configurations, and the combat portion is less interesting in a game that doesn't have magic. Matrix Cubed feels more rushed than Countdown, with a shorter, more linear plot and without Countdown's side-missions. Space combat is completely optional, the characters don't seem to grow very much, there's little purpose to the economy. It has some positive points, particularly at the beginning, but overall it feels like a superfluous game.
    
*****
    
How sad to see a franchise fail. Buck Rogers had a good run, from 1928 to . . . well, roughly this game. Attempts to revive the character over the last quarter-century have been mostly embarrassing, its copyright holder is in shambles, and the character seems destined to enter the public domain, if he hasn't already. The problem is a lack of interest even in a free version of the character. If you're going to make a fish-out-of-time story, why not just call the character "Chet Bolingbroke"? (I demand only 8% of the gross.) Other than being a swaggering American war hero, Buck Rogers isn't much of anything. Either is his setting. It has been updated and revised so often that besides Wilma Deering and a couple other named characters, there's barely enough information to inform a franchise. In my account, did anyone honestly find NEO, RAM, and PURGE that compelling?
    
Therein lies the problem with both Matrix and Countdown. The only thing interesting about Buck Rogers is Buck Rogers himself--the man out of time--and you don't get to play him. At best, you get to meet him a few times, and those moments aren't interesting enough to carry a franchise. Contrast this with Star Trek or Star Wars or most other franchises, where the settings themselves are compelling enough that you'd be happy to play a group of unknown soldiers who only occasionally meet the famous heroes.
          

A rare space combat.

          
My last session began with a mission to find a RAM spy on NEO's Fortuna Base, which is on an asteroid. As usual, it was difficult to find a particular asteroid amidst the constantly-rotating ring. I fought a few space battles against RAM cruisers so that I could afford to re-fuel as I searched for Fortuna. Space battles are otherwise a completely superfluous part of the game, which makes it all the more ridiculous that they have a separate economy. 
  
When I finally found it, Fortuna Base was five small levels. As usual, the developers stretched things out by requiring the party to circle the area multiple times, first collecting a variety of passes and other items needed to access the full base, the second time clearing out attacking RAM forces. The spy turned out to be someone named Zachary Cebert, which we discovered too late to be of any good, since the overwhelming RAM invasion force forced us to evacuate and destroy the base.
         

Setting the base to explode.

         
Back at Salvation base, we learned that the Stormrider scientist we freed from PURGE, Dr. Makali, had already abandoned the project to help her people with some kind of revolution. The whole issue with the Stormriders was introduced very late in the game. From what I could gather from the materials, a group of humans established a colony on Jupiter's moon Amalthea, and from there created a race of genetically-modified creatures called Stormriders, which look like muscular humans with fish heads. The Stormriders live in "spherical cities that float above the high-pressure atmosphere" of Jupiter. The Amaltheans expect the Stormriders to serve as slaves for 100,000 years "in repayment" for their creation, but the Stormriders are naturally a bit unhappy about that, and the two sides are functionally at war.
   
Since we had unwisely decided to locate the Matrix project in Jupiter's orbit, the worsening tensions between the two societies were threatening the project. (It occurs to me as I type this that I'm explaining things far more eloquently than the game does.) My team had to head for Jupiter, but without a ship with enough fuel to get us there, we had to take a long route by sailing to a "fungus asteroid" near Juno, then transferring to a living ship operated by the Stormriders.
           

A ship--a living ship--full of strange alien life forms.

           
Despite some nice graphics, the "living ship" was never very well explained. As it approached the asteroid, it was clear that something was wrong. It eventually swallowed the asteroid with us on it, and we found ourselves in its guts.
           
It turned out the ship had been invaded by pirates. We had to run around the ship's six levels fighting them, freeing Stormriders, and fixing things. I have to be honest--I had largely checked out by this point, but I feel that the situation would have been confusing even if I hadn't. There were multiple places where it appeared I could facilitate some kind of truce between the pirates and Stormriders, but although I passed some of these encounters, it never seemed to affect anything. Similarly, there were numerous places where I found the ship wounded, or some of its equipment damaged, and had to pass a medical or technological skill check. Sometimes I passed, sometimes I failed, but I have no idea what the net result was.
              

This went nowhere.

         
All I know is that I kept circling the ship, and eventually I had killed all the pirates. By now, my party was relying on explosive weapons (rocket launchers, plasma launchers, grenade launchers) almost exclusively, but I never got to the point where I could just ALT-Q the combats and put them under computer control. This is because you not only have to win the combats, but do so in a good enough state that the doctor in the party can heal the damage afterwards. This means the doctor can't get knocked unconscious himself, and it's best if none of the other characters do, either.
          
After we were victorious, the Stormriders took us to one of their cities, and we met Dr. Makali. This was the last place we could train and restock ammo for our weapons. My characters were Level 8 when we started the game, and they ended at Level 11 or 12, which isn't a lot of development. My warrior only got to pick one new weapon specialization during the game, and my characters could only learn 4 new skills.
             

On my last level-up, I could choose a new weapon.

          
Dr. Makali refused to return to the Matrix Device project because the Amaltheans were planning to attack the Stormrider colony. Naturally, they attacked shortly after we arrived. We had to run around the map (a single-level 16 x 16), defeating parties of Amaltheans, defusing bombs, rescuing hostages, and putting out fires.
           

A typical encounter in this section of the game.

           
When the invasion was over, the Stormriders revealed a plan to end the Amalthean threat by releasing genetically-modified "wasphoppers" into the Genetics Foundation headquarters where the Stormriders had been created. We volunteered for the mission and were successful.
            

"Success."

          
With the Amalthean threat handled, Dr. Makali agreed to help finish the Matrix Device. We sailed with her to a "mining rig" in Jupiter's atmosphere, where Leander was overseeing the final touches for the project.

The mining rig map was the last map (except for a small shuttle). It wasn't even a full 16 x 16, but it was annoying as hell. We had multiple rounds of RAM forces arriving in the living ship (there was no information about how they had managed to commandeer it) and rappelling to the mining rig's platforms. Each round involved one battle on the platforms and then a search of the rest of the rig for additional RAM forces to clean up. Sometimes it was human troops, sometimes robots, sometimes gennies. At one point, we were overwhelmed (this was scripted) and had to retreat to a shuttle, from which we flooded the rig with efanite and lit it to burn out an infestation of gennies.
            

A typical enemy contingent on the rig's platform.

           
Dr. Makali suggested that one of the party members fly with her by jetpack to the living ship and free it from RAM control. Despite choosing a character with a skill level of 142 in "Use Jetpack," the attempt failed and, I guess as punishment, we had to fight a few more rounds of invading RAM forces.
   
Finally, we seemed to drive them away. But there was an explosion and the rig started sinking into the atmosphere. The only thing that would save it was the Matrix Device itself, which for some reason needed to be flown through Jupiter's high-pressure atmosphere at high speeds. My pilot had to do this, and I guess the game made a skill check for "Pilot Fixed Wing," a skill that was never needed before because there were no such aircraft in the game before (or the previous game). Fortunately, I'd been putting some skill points into all the pilot skills, and Starbuck must have passed. Reviews of the time are filled with stories of people who didn't, and at this point in the game had no recourse if they had failed to invest in that skill.
         

I guess this means we passed the skill check.

           
We had to endure one last attack by Sid Refuge (I have accidentally typed "Sid Vicious" at least half a dozen times), even though it made no sense that he was there. The battle involved two back-to-back combats with no resting in between, but neither was particularly difficult using our "blow the living hell out of everything with rocket launchers" strategy.
        

I admire his spunk, but fighting him is like flogging a dead horse.

         
When we had defeated Refuge for like the fifth time, his cyborg skeleton crawled into the crucible of the Matrix Device. We locked him in there and used him as the necessary matter to fuel the device, which I admit was a fun turn of events and a genius solution to the problem, akin to Doc and Marty solving their problems by cramming Biff into the "Mr. Fusion" reactor. The rig got the power it needed to return to a stable part of the atmosphere.
   
The Living Ship appeared for what seemed like another attack, but the soldiers descending from it were NEO rather than RAM. No word on how NEO managed to take over the Living Ship from RAM in such a short time, nor indeed how they managed to get here at all when we had to go through a big rigmarole. In any event, two of the soldiers were Buck Rogers and Wilma Deering. When they found that the Matrix Device was working, Buck demanded "three cheers for these heroes!" I cringed as the assembled NPCs literally shouted, "hip-hip-hooray!" three times before the game dumped us unceremoniously to the DOS prompt. That hasn't happened in so long that it was literally startling.
             

Part of the short denouement.

         
In a GIMLET, I give Matrix Cubed:

• 4 points for the game world. I feel like I'm being generous. I couldn't have cared less about it, but I can't say it didn't have original elements or make the party's place clear. Too many of the story turns were just arbitrary, though.

• 3 points for character creation and development. It gets most of this for creation. The system of races and classes and skills isn't terrible, but the amount of development you get in the sequel is minimal. The number of skills should have been cut in half (at least) and made more meaningful.

            

This guy feels like he should have been able to fly a jetpack.

            

• 3 points for NPC interaction. There are some NPCs; you get journal entries from some of them.

• 4 points for encounters and foes. Humans were just humans; "gennies" just re-skinned Dungeons and Dragons monsters without even an interesting set of attacks and defenses. There were some decent non-combat encounters involving the use of skills or even a role-playing choice here and there.

• 4 points for combat. An engine designed with magic in mind just didn't transition well to science fiction battles. I was mostly bored with combat, which is something that I never thought I'd say about the Gold Box. I want to give it extra credit for the space combat, but it isn't any more interesting.

           

The robot enemies were generally the most difficult in the game.

          

• 3 points for equipment. The problem is that everything is standard. There's no place in this setting for unique artifact weapons and armor. Meanwhile, a few types of grenades don't make up for all of the potions, wands, scrolls, rings, and wearables that you'd find in a fantasy RPG. The developers had no imagination here.

• 2 points for the economy. It was useful for restocking ammunition.

• 3 points for quests. The game had one main quest, mostly linear, with no choices or alternate outcomes. It mostly lacked the side-quests and side-areas that Countdown offered, with a few small exceptions.

• 5 points for graphics, sound, and interface. The best part of the game was the engine, which still works as smooth as butter. Both regular and cut scene graphics were nice. I could take or leave the sound.

            

Sid Refuge's appearance was narratively senseless but graphically okay.

            

• 3 points for gameplay. Matrix is far more linear than its predecessor. It's a bit too hard in some places, and it has no real replayability. The best I can say is that its length was right for its content.

        
That gives us a final score of 34, a dozen points lower than Countdown, and the first time that a Gold Box game has fallen below the "recommended" threshold. It mirrors how I feel, though. I tried to be positive about the game, even thinking that it might be good during my second or third session. But it just collapsed into a nonsensical narrative with boring mechanics.
             

If I knew nothing about the game, this cover would make me think that you play as Buck Rogers.

        
I knew Scorpia would be with me on this, and she was. In the May 1992 Computer Gaming World, she levies particular criticism at the way the game handled skill checks (the "Pilot Fixed Wing" issue getting a couple of paragraphs to itself), the uselessness of space combat, and the scripted moments when the party has no equipment. She had to do the same thing I did and lower the difficulty meter. She also found the final sequence repetitious and nonsensical. But her worst invective is reserved for the "three cheers" followed by the DOS prompt, which she compares to the end of Eye of the Beholder.

It was reading Scorpia's review that I was reminded that the whole business with the Sun King and his counselor De Sade never had any resolution, nor did the Mercurians attacking us on Venus. It's a measure of the game that such things happen and the player just shrugs them off.
     
Our opinions aren't universal, though. The editors of Dragon (June 1992) quite liked it, with a 4/5 star rating praising its character development, story, and combat system. I've had commenters tell me that it was better than Countdown, and I see passionate defenders of both games all over the Internet.

In my first entry on Matrix Cubed, I called it a "corporate game." The story that I've heard--without a lot of primary source references, you understand, so don't take this as gospel--is that Lorraine Williams forced SSI to make the Buck Rogers games as a condition of their Dungeons and Dragons license. (As we've covered, the source of Williams's fortune was the rights to Buck Rogers, which she inherited from her grandfather, and by in 1985, Williams gained a controlling share of TSR, owners of Dungeons and Dragons.) This strategy wasn't just to make a few bucks off the games. Rather, Williams hoped that a few successful Buck Rogers games might re-ignite interest in a film or television series, the last attempt having fizzled in 1981 after two low-rated seasons. Unfortunately for Williams and the Dille Family Trust, the two SSI games failed to serve as kindling for anything more significant.
    
Matrix Cubed isn't technically the last Buck Rogers creation. In 1995, TSR tried again by creating something called High-Adventure Cliffhangers: Buck Rogers Adventure Game, a tabletop RPG that returned Buck Rogers to his original earthbound setting. It produced only a single module before it was discontinued. Since then, there have been a few comic books and action figures, but every attempt at something more substantial has failed. This includes a 2009 web series that was announced, then canceled, then subjected to a Kickstarter revival, then canceled again when it failed to meet its funding goals. A Frank Miller-written movie in the 2000s never went anywhere. More recently, Transformers producer Don Murphy announced plans to make a film based on the first Buck Rogers novella, which has since entered public domain, which led to a suit and counter-suit with the Dille Family Trust, which filed for bankruptcy in 2017.

The legal status of Buck Rogers remains in controversy, but I end as I began, wondering: why bother? Does Don Murphy or anyone think the name "Buck Rogers" is regarded so fondly that it's going to sell tickets on its own? If not, why not make the same type of movie and name the character something else? That's basically what Farscape did, and it did fine. I apologize to anyone who really loves Buck Rogers, but in general I'm happy that most RPGs do not feature licensed characters.

Chic Collection: Rug & Painting

 

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