Rents

[bluegargantua]

Hey,

So my folks came out this past weekend. Things went pretty well overall. They left me with 4 large barrels of concentrated childhood. Lots of gaming stuff from my past including:

* BattleTech 2nd Ed. -- This is the version of Battletech with the Warhammer mech on the cover. That (along with all the other mechs in the boxed set), were ripped off from a variety of anime sources (mostly Robotech) and had to be painful excised in later editions lest they get their asses sued off. I also have the original tech manual with more lovingly stolen mech designs in it.

* Kingmaker -- Fun game. Bit broken, but fun. GMT is developing a new block game in the style of Kingmaker so we'll see how that goes. Love all the heraldry.

* Star Fleet Battles -- the basic 3-box set and a few tactical manuals.

* Star Empires -- The TSR game of, well, empires in space.

* Traveller stuff a-go-go -- but I don't need any of it anymore since I've got the CD-ROM. Still, fun times.

There's also a huge host of books and a ton of other ephemeral crap that I have to sort through. None of it was particularly well-cared for. I've got a pile of "keep", a pile of "sell", a pile of "trash it" (most of it sadly), and a pile of "see if you can find a better version of this on-line because this copy is busted".

The visit itself was pretty good. On Friday we went to Mass MOCA and exposed my folks to contemporary art -- they seemed to enjoy themselves. Saturday we did a spot of shopping and on Sunday we went over to Annie's folks' for dinner.

So we survived another visit and my folks are now heading back home to Nebraska via Canada...we can only hope their lack of passports will not get them detained or cavity-searched by paranoid TSA drones.

later
Tom

Comments

[bonisagus.livejournal.com]

How is Star Empires different from Star Frontiers?

[bluegargantua]

The former is the pencil and paper version of Masters of Orion. The latter is an RPG. No connection at all.

later
Tom

[bonisagus.livejournal.com]

Ahhh...a paper version of Masters of Orion how...long that game must be.

[z-gryphon.livejournal.com]

Just to be That Guy for a moment: The Japanese designs that appeared in the original BattleTech weren't ripped off. They were licensed fair and square from properties that were at the time quite obscure in North America. They had to be removed from later editions because those licenses expired.

[bluegargantua]

Huh. I wonder what it would take for Catalyst Games (current standard bearer for BattleTech) to get those back?

The very latest edition of the tech manual contains entries for all the deleted designs -- there are no *pictures* of the designs, just the basic stats.

later
Tom

[z-gryphon.livejournal.com]

Quite a lot of money and expensive lawyer wrestling, I would imagine. The designs from Fang of the Sun Dougram (such as the Griffin and Shadow Hawk) would probably be fairly cheap, since that series didn't catch on outside its native market and doesn't, as far as I know, retain much of a cult following even in Japan nowadays.

The ones from Super Dimension Fortress Macross, on the other hand... well, not only is that franchise huge in its own right, the rights to everything to do with the original series in North America are tied up in the kind of mess that sees generations of IP attorneys retire rich. (Harmony Gold did indeed sue FASA over the use of the Macross designs, not because they alleged that FASA stole them, but because they maintained that the company which licensed them to FASA did not have the rights to do so. And that, in all its which-third-party-has-the-button glory, is about as straightforward as that ever got. :)

[mgrasso.livejournal.com]

So what's specifically in the "trash it" pile? :)

[bluegargantua]

Mildew.

More specifically, I printed out the internet when it was young. Now I don't need it anymore.

later
Tom

[twwombat.livejournal.com]

Mmmm.... Traveller Little Black Books.

Yummy.

[foxtown.livejournal.com]

Yeah I just did this with my home back in Schenectady. I threw out all of my old Dragon magazines, and got complaints about the heaftiness of the trash bags...

[insegnante.livejournal.com]

Ooohh! Star Fleet Battles! I haven't played that in years!