It was a little bit of time ago that I did a review on Tod Foley’s Day Trippers game and that review can be found here. I thought that the next thing I would be reviewing was the Game Master Guide which is a solid publication but Tod and his team at As If Productions have floored me with a publication consisting of sixteen modules based on actual short stories from the golden age of science fiction. These stories are all reproduced in the book that is aptly titled Golden Age Adventures.
This book continues the tradition of the game in an old school format. The book contains black and white ink drawings that just make this tome feel like something straight out of the eighties or early nineties for me. This offers a fantastic touch of nostalgia and reminiscent of my playing Traveller and MegaTraveller of old.
But Day Trippers is a modern day story game and this set of modules encourages that style perfectly. It offers up the story that was written (by some fantastic authors by the way) and then breaks that story down. It teases out the details (aliens and important NPC’s are statted for example), maps provided and a discussion on the most likely paths for a story are laid out, with flowcharts! Such a brilliant approach to creating these adventures for the Day Trippers audience! The approach is stripped back, a little bit of advice and then the GM forms that, or weaves the details into an adventure.
This very clever approach means that sixteen adventures are not going to be told around the world with this book. Sixteen themes are going to be translated into literally thousands of adventures for all of the fans of this game. I personally have been looking for a way to run a play session of this game in my store and this is the perfect medium for it. Many of the locals in Tasmania have picked this up and commented on how original and “cool” it looks. I can’t wait to get them into the game to realise that although it is just about as alternative as a game can get that it is a totally solid, awesome little game that provides just as much fun as anything else out there.
Great work Tod and the gang. I can’t recommend this book any more highly. If you run Day Trippers, brilliant! If you do not but you do run a sci-fi exploration game – get it. Get it now. It is available through all the normal online stores as a PDF including my own Games On Board site and is easily one of the better styled prepared modules available for games at the moment.