Old School RPGs – the Philippine View

There are three RPGs that define my memory of old school RPGs in the Philippines: Dungeons and Dragons, Star Frontiers, and Top Secret. The astute members of the Dice and Pixel audience may notice something interesting about these three games – they were all created by TSR.

In those days, TSR was the go-to company for an RPG in the Philippines. Mainly because the folks who bought RPGs from the U.S. and then sold them in their stores probably went, “Hey, you got any OTHER game stuff like D&D?” and so we got the other products from the same company.

Remember, this was back in the 70s and 80s, when SF and Fantasy novels were few and far-between and you could identify your fellow geeks because you haunted the same aisles in National Bookstore. This was back when the Philippine Sci-Fi / Fantasy fandom was held hostage to the endless repeats of whatever SF/Fantasy episodes had been purchased for one of the few TV channels that actually aired them.

So what were these three RPGs about? Well, unless you’re a rank newbie to the RPG hobby, you should know that Dungeons and Dragons, the grand-daddy of the RPG industry, covered the fantasy genre which was and still is the most dominant genre in RPGs today. I remember when I was a rank newbie, and didn’t know that you had to buy the rulebooks in order to play the modules. Furthermore, I was confused by the difference between the Basic and Expert rulesets of D&D and the Advanced D&D rulesets. Still, I tried my best to get the overall flow of things and managed to run one or two games in school. I ended up buying most of the books and modules that I could and reading them from cover to cover, and eventually got rid of them (mostly unplayed).

Star Frontiers was the science fiction offering of TSR, with four good races (which – if memory serves – were the humans, the insectoid Vrusk, the simian-ish Yazirians, and the amorphous doughboy-looking Dralasites) and one bad race: the worm-like Sathar. I remember actually playing in some games run by a classmate, but don’t clearly remember if we ever got to enjoy ship-to-ship battle scenarios.

Top Secret was the espionage RPG of TSR. I had no idea how to run this game (though I tried a series of questionable adventures with some of my cousins), but I was fascinated by the hardware – the guns and the gadgets – and intrigued by the list of martial arts styles and maneuvers.

What happened to all these games? Though TSR no longer exists, Dungeons and Dragons has thrived and is now in its 4th edition of rules. Star Frontiers was revived (and re-laid out) by some die-hard fans, and it’s safe to assume that some people still play it. Top Secret is no longer with us, alas. It tried to modernize and streamline itself with a new set of rules: Top Secret / S.I. but has joined a long list of RPGs that are no longer published and probably no longer played and haunt the memories of aging gamers across the world.