James Nicoll Reviews

Having surpassed — they hoped—Dungeons and Dragons with their Dragonquest roleplaying game, Simulations Publications, Inc set out to challenge the dominance of GDW’s Traveller with their own science fiction roleplaying game. Heading the SPI team: John H. Butterfield and Redmond A. Simonsen¹.

SPI released Universe: The Roleplaying Game of the Future in March 1981². What wonders were concealed within the deluxe box?

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Simulation Publications, Inc.’s 1980 roleplaying game DragonQuest (DQ for short) is the third game in the trifecta of RPGs on which I imprinted some thirty-eight years ago. Principle designers were Eric Goldberg, Gerard C. Klug, David James Ritchie, Edward J. Woods, and Redmond A. Simonsen.

Nota bene: I am cheating a bit because I’ve long since lost my original box with its three stapled booklets. Instead I wrote this review based on my second edition hardcover, which I acquired after I turned twenty. 

My other RPG faves were Runequest and Traveller. DragonQuest was a fantasy RPG, as was Runequest. Traveller was SF. But RQ and Traveller were alike in that they both had extensively developed campaign settings¹. DQ, on the other hand, assumed a bog-standard medieval fantasy Europe but failed to flesh it out. This is because DQ was published by a company that was doomed. Doomed, I tell you,doomed.

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