Rangers and Robots

[cmdr_zoom]

I haven't kept up with things D&D, so to speak, in years; my last solid point of contact was looking over the new books and noting the irony that, in an attempt to recapture market share, they were transforming the mechanics to make the game play more like the massively-popular computer games which were originally inspired by it. (Very snake-eating-its-own-tail, there.) I gather that a more recent edition has since dispensed with this and gone back to something more traditional, but that's about as much as I know.

But today, as a result of a friend's offhand mention of a bit of background from the official Pathfinder setting, I had cause to consult a wiki for same. And I was much amused, after a bit of wiki-walking, to learn that this fantasy world (yet another analogue for Earth, where the continents are differently shaped but all in the right places, and the cultures are likewise fictionalized but familiar) has had several starships crash-land on it.

It's so very Blackmoor, y'know? (See also Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, et al.) Forty years on, and we're still handing out laser pistols to barbarian warriors and having them make saving throws to point the right end at the monsters, some of which may be "metal men."

Comments

[seawasp]

Zarathan's had many alien visitors over the years, because the solar system's a cosmic roach motel; starships can go in, but they won't come out. One of the characters seen a few times in _Phoenix Rising_, Ingram Camp-Bel, is part of a clan that claims descent from such a visitor, and Ingram is shown using some kind of high-tech gadget and wearing armor that certainly sounds like more modern body-armor.