They call this planet Vanth, and they call the starport "God City." In the old days, space merchants played the "visitors from the godly realms" routine and the locals - accustomed to sorcery, like most medievals - ate it whole. That lie is a luxury no one can afford anymore, and God City is going native, becoming as much a fantasy metropolis as anything else.

The wizards and warriors of Vanth have accepted that the "sky gods" are here to stay. The star-soldiers and space-merchants wonder if there's anything left of the galaxy they remember. In a situation like this, there's only one reasonable course of action left: make friends, form a party, and go adventuring!

Encounter Critical is an unusual free RPG from Cumberland Games & Diversions. It's by S. John Ross (Risus and Pokéthulhu and whatnot), with added illustrations (of a sort) by Dave Insel and Cody Reichenau (friends from his gaming group). But at the same time, it isn't ... This is gaming from another past, a garage-made RPG designed circa 1979 by two mythical gamer-buddies who went to the same school and listened to the same rock bands: Hank "the wordsmith" Riley and James "idea man" Ireland. It's illustrated by friends from their gaming group, the Saturday Night Dragon Slayers.

Confused? Intrigued? Vaguely horrified? The best way to explore the world of Encounter Critical is to download the game itself. You can snag the PDF from the free downloads page. You'll need Acrobat Reader (or a PDF reader of your choice) to read and print it. Go grab it; it's free and fun and Not of This Timeline!

Just by finding this page, you've made your way inside an inside-joke I'm very fond of. Now that you're one of the cabal who know the secret, join us in exploring EC - and in exploring the alternate gaming history it comes from! If you're feeling really naughty, have fun passing EC off as a genuine "lost classic" to gamers who haven't heard of it yet. You'll probably go to hell for that, but hey - there'll be gamers. If that sounds like an enjoyable path to eternal damnation, you'll enjoy The Encounter Critical Mailing List! Join and download yet more free stuff (including the mysterious Encounter Critical FAQ, character sheets, and fan material) and meet strange gamers. And it's moderated, so it won't fill your inbox with unexpected 90-post threads about how phasic Thrazar's lapels are. Ten, twenty posts on that, tops.

Play Treasures of a Slaver's Kingdom!

The most elaborate artifact of the EC reality may be Treasures of a Slaver's Kingdom, a full-size epic bad-ass text adventure in old-school text-parser fashion, unearthed from an alternate history of computer games. Download the freeware version, and if you like it, please consider supporting it by purchasing the full magilla. ToaSK is a z-machine game. If you don't have a z-machine player installed, click here or here (Windows), or here (Macintosh) or here (other platforms) for the free software you'll need to quest into the Slaver Kingdoms in a twisted (and sometimes very naughty) interactive EC adventure.

If you've gorged on the games and still hunger for more, you can support EC's future (and revel in its imaginary past) by indulging yourself with these shards of elemental fun available from groovy internet swag-merchants Lulu and CafePress.

Encounter Critical, the True Scientific Edition: The ultimate EC swag, a physical copy of the game that includes the entire original text and layout (printed from the clean digital masters), printed on cream stock and available in both softcover and hardcover. The cover is a full-color wraparound of the original obnoxious-orange "hero prop" scanned to create the PDF version (the hardcover has the same thing on a dust jacket, instead, with added map-flaps for a touch of cartographic class). The True Scientific Edition also features several pages of extras, including the armor table, character sheet, a design essay by S. John Ross, a guide to the anagrams hidden in the game, and even some (gasp) poetry. Perhaps best of all, there's a beautiful gallery of more cool Encounter Critical artwork by the original illustrators (Cody Reichenau, Dave Insel, and S. John) - outtakes that were drawn for the original game but that didn't squeeze in! Since you can't pry any staples from these books, each also includes single-page versions of the monster chart and map for easier reference.

Encounter Critical, the Phasic Cyaborg Edition: Enjoy what is probably the only retro-faux-1979-science-fiction-fantasy-game PDF with a commentary track. More than 50 minutes of audio and a stack of text annotations are just one strange feature of the ultimate Encounter Critical CD, the Phasic Cyaborg Edition. The commentary includes the lunatic ramblings of not only S. John, but also Dave "Wooky Bikini" Insel and Cody "Unheroic Decay" Reichenau, the master illustrators who helped define the look of a gaming generation that never was. That's only the beginning of the hundreds of megabytes of EC coolness, though. Click here to see a rundown on what this disc contains! In a sane world, this CD would be the hoax ... but no, it's very real and very wrong. Order along with the True Scientific Edition to save on shipping, since they're both Lulu items.

The Thrazar Bumpersticker: Because CafePress sucked me in and turned me evil. Use this sticker to guide your life (and the lives of those behind you in traffic) according to Thrazar's simple but effective philosophies. Click here.