FSpace Publications

FSpace Publications[1] was originally established in 1991. The founding members consisted of Martin Rait, Aaron Barlow, Michael Kerse and Gary Ammundsen. The group originally published under the trade name of Future Systems.

Focussed originally on publishing a single science fiction roleplaying product. Its original working title was The Federation Science Fiction Roleplaying Game. A small series of articles about the development of the original version of the game appeared in the New Zealand gaming magazine Generals, Dragon and Dice, ISSN 1170-5787.

As playtesters often referred to the game in public as FED Space, the title was shortened to FSpace, and both the trade name of the company and its product was shortened to that shortened name in 1994.

FSpace Publications also published a fanzine The Meshan Saga for the Traveller science-fiction role-playing game beginning in 1995 with the last issue done in 1999. Copies of the publication are lodged with the National Archives, Wellington, New Zealand, both physical copies and digital PDFs on CDROM in their collection under ISSN 1174-8710. They are held in the Alexander Turnbull Library, Serials Collection, Call Number: Per MES. In 2001 Martin Rait obtained a license from Marc Miller for FSpace Publications to publish a small set of commercial books for Meshan Sector during the Classic Traveller period. In late 2002 the project was put on hold, while some minor work continued.[2]

The team worked under contract to Jolly Roger Games[3] to produce boardgame maps for Orcs at the Gates[4] and Chopping Maul.[5]