After the huge success of Dungeons & Dragons, its creator, TSR, began creating new games. First came the espionage game Top Secret in 1980. Soon after came the roaring-20s game Gangbusters. And in 1982 came Star Frontiers.

The game, edited by Steve Winter, was a space opera influenced by Star Wars, with a bit of Star Trek and some of Andre Norton's 1950s YA sci-fi novels thrown in. The setting was the Frontier Sector, on the edge of known space, which included 17 inhabited star systems and 23 inhabited planets. There were also 21 unexplored planets that could be inhabited, or habitable, or home to any villains or creatures the Gamemaster desired.

Three alien races were allied with humans: The insect-like Vrusk ("Bugs"), the flying squirrel/primate hybrid Yazirians ("Chimps"), and the gelatinous, shape-shifting Dralasites ("Blobs"). The four races formed the United Planetary Federation, a name that should have undergone more thought. There were lots of NPC races, but the most hostile were the worm-like Sathar, mysterious creatures who killed any being that tried to contact them and would die rather than be taken prisoner.

Within this setting, the player-characters could do just about anything. The default campaign was that they were mercenaries hired by the Pan-Galactic Corporation to fight the company's enemies and explore the Frontier.

About a dozen adventure modules came out, with great names like Starspawn of Volturnus, Sundown on Starmist, and Mutiny on the Eleanor Moraes. A ship-to-ship combat supplement called Knight Hawks was very useful. Three Endless Quest novels (the TSR version of Choose Your Own Adventure) were published in the setting. In 1985, a general supplement called Zebulon's Guide to Frontier Space came out, adding campaign ideas, new races, psionic abilities, and supplemental rules. It was supposed to be the first of three such sourcebooks.

No other books followed. TSR stopped producing anything Star Frontiers-related after 1985. What happened?

My guess is that several factors contributed to the game's demise. First, the setting was not as familiar as the fantasy world of D&D. While there were humans in the game, there seemed to be no Earth, so players couldn't explore, say, a Blade Runner-type Los Angeles (the film came out the same year as the game). The Sathar were interesting, but sci-fi fans probably have preferred fighting aliens from Doctor Who or Robotech or Battle Beyond the Stars.

But the real villain here? Buck Rogers.

In the 1980s, the president of TSR was Lorraine Williams, whose family owned the rights to the famous comic-strip time traveler. And Williams decided that if TSR was going to have a science-fiction game setting, it should be the one that would directly benefit her family. So Star Frontiers faded away while Buck Rogers XXVC arrived in 1990.

By that point, West End Games had released The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, letting fans around the world finally participate in those beloved stories. In 1986, Steve Jackson Games's GURPS was introduced, and Space was one of its first sourcebooks. The game system allowed players to role-play in any sci-fi universe they wanted.

TSR was also busy with other projects besides Buck Rogers; the company was working on Marvel Super Heroes, the Oriental Adventures supplement for D&D, and various Dragonlance works. It's possible they simply had to pick, and Buck Rogers, Marvel, and D&D were familiar, popular brands. Star Frontiers was not. In fact, a few years later, TSR even stopped releasing supplements for Buck Rogers XXVC.

Still, you've got to give credit to Steve Winter. While Gary Gygax could create D&D by stealing from Tolkien—he even wanted to include Hobbits, but the Tolkien estate forced him to change the name to Halflings—Winter and his staff made up a sci-fi setting from virtually nothing. There's no one "standard" world for space opera the way there is for high fantasy, so the Star Frontiers writers just created an environment they thought was cool, leaving room for stories of war, espionage, trade, exploration, horror—whatever the Gamemaster wanted.

Supposedly TSR isn't even defending the game's copyright at this point, as long as no one tries to profit off the name. This has led to fan-created adventures, as well as sites like StarFrontiers.com, a great resource for rules, character sheets, and modules. If you're interested in exploring the setting, or even running a campaign there, I recommend that site along with the Star Frontiers Wiki.

Could Star Frontiers ever make a comeback? That's up to TSR's parent company Wizards of the Coast... and RPG fans around the world.

Jason Ginsburg grew up playing Dungeons & Dragons, Star Wars, Teenagers From Outer Space, and other role-playing games.

Jason Ginsburg

The Rise and Fall of Star Frontiers