Encounter Critical: Kitchen Sink Settings

Most roleplaying historians look at Encounter Critical as the first “kitchen sink” setting. Empire of the Petal Throne (the “Tekumel” setting) also combined science fiction and fantasy elements, recieved wider distribution, and has enjoyed greater longevity and critical success, but EC claims the earliest publication date, as well as True Scientific Realism.

I think the first time I ever heard of both EC and Tekumel was at summer camp, when a camper and a counselor were debating the relative merits of both games. The camper, Doug, was a huge EC fan and I later found out he went on to do some writing for Palladium Games on some early Rifts material. Kirsten, the counselor, was deeply into Tekumel and drawn to its rich history, Professor Barker’s development of languages, and the variety of character types. Doug’s final argument was that Tekumel could be if it had doxies. We were 14 year old boys. It was difficult to argue with Doug’s logic.

I frequently cite my friend Murat’s statement against kitchen sink settings, which boils down to “when everything is possible, nothing matters”. More recently he uses the infamous Pun-Pun to make his point, but he used to talk about being able to create Thri-Kree sorcerer-paladins that fart nerve gas. I’m thinking that, depending upon how high the Thri-kreen’s Robot Nature score was, that would make an awesome EC character. He and Pun-Pun could wander the world together, having adventures.

Kitchen sink roleplaying game settings drawn upon some of the finest traditions in science fiction and fantasy. Flash Gordon was a kitchen sink setting. Marvel and DC Comics’ universes are kitchen sink settings. Samurai Jack is a kitchen sink setting. I’ll be spending a little more time going over each of those, and howe they relate to Encounter Critical, in future posts.