StarFrontiers.com is a treasure trove for those who love beautifully conceived and produced adventure modules.

For 14 years, webmaster Timothy Norris has paid to maintain the site out of his own pocket. Hard times are about to force Timothy to shut this wonderful website down.

With the blessing of TSR and Wizards of the Coast, StarFrontiers.com has been online since the early 1990s.

It doesn't cost much to maintain a website, but when you're looking for a job, taking care of three kids, and your wife is returning from Iraq, it costs a lot.

Timothy, like his wife, has served in the U.S. military. In 1995, after completing a tour of duty with the Air Force in South Korea, Timothy got involved with the Star Frontiers website. "I came across an online listserv run by Roy Crisman and got to know him. After a year or two he decided to give up on running the site due to personal reasons and let me take the reigns," Timothy said in a recent interview with AdventureMiner.

TSR had given Roy "Roymeo" Crisman, the original webmaster, a letter authorizing him to collect and scan all StarFrontiers materials and burn them to 30 compact discs (plus 1 for TSR). Timothy holds that letter today.

TSR also informed Roy that they were creating a place for all Star Frontiers materials on their website and that Starfrontiers.com would soon be asked to remove all the posted rules and adventures. That never happened, of course, TSR went under and Wizards of the Coast stepped in. Wizards was focused on the future, a bright and shiny fantasy future filled with dungeons and dragons, not an out of print 1980s-era science fiction role playing game.

For a time, Timothy was left to his own devices. He hosted Star Frontiers.com on a server in his own house, allowing the world to download PDFs of the rules and adventures free of charge. Costs eventually caused him to rethink running his own server. "Cox Communications business was costing me too much so I rented server space," Timothy said.

Having these materials freely available has been a boon to fans who continue to collaborate and produce material for the game (e.g. Starfrontiersman.com, Starfrontiers.org).

As time passed, fans continued visiting the website and downloading the plethora of rules and adventures. Then, in 2001, controversy struck Timothy and his website. A member of a gaming forum posted a challenge to Timothy's right to post Star Frontiers materials on his website:

So I did some searching and yep, some bastard has posted what looks to be every Star Frontiers product.  . . . This guy needs to be shut down."    

More posts followed, emails flew, phone calls were made, and it wasn't long before Timothy found a message from Wizards of the Coast in his email inbox. Wizards' role playing games business manager wasn't heavy handed, but his message was clear:

You're going to need to take down our copyrighted materials.

Timothy complied and in his reply to Wizards he explained how he came to be care taker of the Star Frontiers website, the game materials, and his relationship with Roy "Romeo" Crisman. As Wizards considered the legal implications of Timothy's response, Roy sent his own email to Wizards explaining TSR's permission and the letter they gave to him.

A few days passed and it seemed that Goliath was about to show David what happens in the real world.

Timothy didn't have to wait long to receive another email from Wizards of the Coast. This time the reply was from the licensing director for RPGs at Wizards, David Wise. In a rare and magnanimous display of a company's respect and admiration for the "little guy," Wizards gave Timothy their permission to continue hosting their StarFrontiers materials along with their compliments for his efforts over the years:

Thanks for your hard work through the years, and your obvious commitment to quality. We don't lightly grant permission to pursue projects such as yours, and it's good to see that you have taken such good care of our brand. Well done.

David Wise
RPG Clubs and Subsidiary Rights Director
Brand Manager, Star Wars RPG

With that decision from gaming giant Wizards of the Coast, Timothy has continued as webmaster of StarFrontiers.com. Anyone would be hard pressed to find a better collection of professionally produced gaming materials costing nothing more than the click of a mouse. The detailed starship and space station maps in the adventure modules alone stand toe to toe with any for-profit adventures available today.

A review of the website and the available PDFs will reveal a collection of adventures, rules, and character screens that are obvious labors of love, created by writers and artists on the frontier of the role playing hobby: http://www.starfrontiers.com. (The website has a bandwidth limit, if you find a "bandwidth limit exceeded" message, you'll have to wait until the next month for the site to reset.)

For 14 years Timothy has been running StarFrontiers.com and paying for it out of his own pocket. Let's help keep StarFrontiers up and running while Timothy guides his family through tough economic times. Let's step up and add a new chapter to the history of this unique website.

Let's help a brother out.

Please send $5.00 to Timothy Norris's PayPal account: donations @starfrontiers.com

Send words of encouragement to Timothy: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it