BookLife Talks with Jonathan Nolan
A sponsored Q&A with the author of 'FASERIPopedia'
Why did you decide to put this game manual together?
Primarily because the Old School Revival (OSR) movement in tabletop role-playing includes superhero games but no one had done a proper “vanilla” retroclone of the world’s most popular licensed property game from the 1980s. FASERIPopedia is that retroclone.
What was your first experience with a FASERIP game?
Buying the original game in the 1980s and running a campaign for two years. There was a lot of resistance in my gaming group to the “no killing” rule.
Media like Stranger Things and Critical Role have firmly put tabletop RPGs back in the pop culture zeitgeist. How would you introduce FASERIPopedia to someone who might be familiar only with Dungeons & Dragons?
FASERIPopedia is the same as old-school Dungeons & Dragons in that one takes on a role and solves problems. But other than the basic gaming experience, the two games are completely different. There are no “murder hobos” in FASERIPopedia. The point of the game is not to kill monsters and take their stuff but rather to adventure as a superhero or secret agent. The stories can be and usually are more sophisticated and more layered and have a strong moral or ethical axis. In many respects, FASERIPopedia is much better at re-creating the heroic or anti-heroic adventures with which people are familiar from blockbuster movies or their favorite streaming shows, such as the one you mentioned.
Can you explain what the process was like collecting the material?
I reviewed everything everywhere on FASERIP and drew on my own past experience as a player and gamemaster. I also read as many reviews from non-gamers as possible. Tabletop gaming is plagued with echo chambers and quite insular online forums. I want my games to embrace a vast general audience. So far, that has succeeded.
Are there any similar projects you’re working on for future release?
I’m currently editing two sourcebooks for the TidalWave Universe, which we licensed for FASERIPopedia, and we aim to publish at least one TidalWave and one non-TidalWave FASERIPopedia book each month for the next two years. My current writing projects include High Beam, which is highway speed racing versus alien horrors; Juliet, a TidalWave sourcebook; and the Gamers Guide to the TidalWave Universe, which is an ongoing project to publish old-school character sheet compilations of their entire universe! Exciting times!
