News

2020-11-22: Shout Out in Clarence Redd's Newsletter

It’s no secret that I’m a fan of the Mythras system (derived from Chaosium’s Basic Role Playing System and the Perrin Conventions) at the Spaceport. While, as gaming fans, we all like to mess around with probabilities and different dice conventions, it’s hard to deny that there’s something immediately accessible about percentile systems for new players (and grognards who just want to play a game with low barriers to entry).

But I’m especially fond of Clarence Redd's imaginative, stylish, and concise SF Mythras games: M-Space and Odd Soot. As soon as I read them, I wanted to ask his permission to include them in BttS.

In his November news-blast, Clarence was kind enough to give the ’zine a shout out:

Back in the early 1980s, I spent an inordinate amount of time on roleplaying games. A perfect afternoon included chocolate milk, lots of sandwiches, a new issue of RPG magazine White Dwarf and some Swedish synth-pop.

So, when I got the first issue of Back to the Spaceport, a new RPG fanzine, I was thrilled. It was like re-living those afternoons all over again ...

... Taken together, it’s a great read. The articles are well-written and I can use most of them right away with my gaming group. Layout, typesetting and illustrations look professional, standing shoulder to shoulder with its golden age fore-bearers.

Check out Clarence's games, over at Frostbyte books. Both get my highest recommendation—and discerning Steampunks and Scientific Romance fans who enjoyed the BttS article “Mx. Land & Dr. Britling See It Through” should note that Odd Soot gets the BttS Seal of Approval and a ringing endorsement as the very best kind of scientific romance-inspired RPG.

2020-07-XX: Xerography Debt

One of the great resources of the general ’zine scene is Davida Gypsy Breier’s Xerography Debt—AKA “The Zine Review Zine with Per-Zine Tendencies.” Although the focus tends to be on perzines (personal zines) and comic zines, XD and the surrounding community have been hugely inspirational. I've discovered so many little publications through reading their reviews and come to understand just how liberating the medium of the zine is.

So, you can imagine how pleased I was to get a positive review from Ken Bausert in XD #48.

This is high-quality, expertly laid-out product, using premium paper and a full-color coer on heavy stock board. There are loads of photos, illustrations and clipart, so it's visually very impressive. It's also paired with an additional zine produced on yellow, standard weight paper; together, they offer the reader a lot of bang for their buck!

Copies of XD #48 are available from Leeking Inc., here.

2020-05-11: “Reviewed in R’lyeh”

I’m delighted to be able to share an extremely positive review of the first issue from the fabulous “Reviews from R’lyeh”:

It is a pleasure to have a fanzine which covers a genre in the variety of its subgenres and one which does so in as high a standard across all of them. It sets the bar high for future issues, one that we can only hope that the author can maintain for the second issue and also when other contributors write for it. Back to the Spaceport: A Fanzine for Science Fiction Games Phase 1, Datapacket 1 is an engaging piece from beginning to end, thoughtful and interesting, the article on Steampunk a superb highlight.

Obviously, I'm chuffed to bits. Read the whole review, here!

2019-11-20: ISSN Assigned!

We now have an International Standard Serial Number:

This is your official notification that the following ISSN assignment(s) have been made under the auspices of the U.S. ISSN Center at the Library of Congress. Please print or save this notification for your records.

Back to the Spaceport

ISSN 2689-5528

... and we also acquired a catalogue record in WorldCat. See here for the details.

The ’zine is officially official!

2019-10-19: Big Day

Today has been a big day for the zine:

• I mailed two copies to the Library of Congress, to comply with the “Mandatory Deposit.”
• I mailed a copy to Xerography Debt.

Honestly not sure which makes me more nervous.