The Articles of Dragon: "The SF 'universe'"

Anyone who's read this blog for any length of time knows that I'm a Traveller man. I first encountered GDW's game of science fiction adventure in the far future, sometimes in late 1981 or early '82 – my memories are hazy – and it very quickly became my go-to SF RPG. Heck, it still is today and this is despite the fact that I've written my own science fiction roleplaying game about which I remain proud. Traveller is nearly perfect in every way that matters to me, from the elegance of its rules to depth of its official setting. That a version of the game is still in print also means that it's easy to introduce new people to the game (though, to be fair, there are many other options available as well).

Even so, as a diehard TSR fanboy in my youth, there was no way that I could pass up Star Frontiers when it was first published in 1982. Star Frontiers was no replacement for Traveller, but it was a fun game, one my friends and I enjoyed. In fact, I'm pretty sure many of my friends preferred it to Traveller, because of its more "wahoo!" approach to science fiction. That's not a knock against it by any means, just a statement of my own feeling that Star Frontiers has a much stronger action-adventure orientation than Traveller. If that's what you're looking for, Star Frontiers delivers.

Issue #74 of Dragon (June 1983) included a lengthy article, "The SF 'universe'" by Tony Watson that came to a similar conclusion. Over the course of seven pages, Watson presents an extensive review of the game, examining the setting, artwork, components, rules, and introductory module. The review is quite thorough and, I think, fair. Even though it appeared in the pages of Dragon, TSR's house magazine, Watson's review is not slavish in its praise. If anything, it errs a bit on the side of being occasionally too critical of the game and its decidedly different approach to science fiction than Traveller or Universe, to which Watson frequently compares Star Frontiers and not always positively.
Watson's main criticisms of Star Frontiers are that it's strongly combat-focused, lacks starship rules, and that its overall tenor is more like Star Wars than 2001: A Space Odyssey. Of these criticisms, the lack of starship rules largely ceased to be an issue once the Knight Hawks expansion was released (ironically, not long after these article appeared). The other two criticisms are related, in my opinion. As I said earlier, Star Frontiers is more an action-adventure RPG than is Traveller. It's about adventures in space, fighting alien saboteurs and space pirates and surviving on a weird, inhospitable planet and the game's rules and presentation reflect that. 
Watson understands this, which is why I appreciated this article when I first read it and still do. He does something I very much appreciate in reviews: he judges the success or failure of a game product on the basis of its intended goals rather than on what he might have wanted it to be. Star Frontiers wasn't trying to be Traveller or Universe but something else entirely and it deserves to be judged accordingly. It's a good standard and one I try to emulate (even if I don't always succeed).