Midkemia Press was started by a group of friends in 1977 in San Diego. Steve Abrams was an enthusiastic wargamer and was regularly attending the Triton Wargaming Club at the University of California at San Diego (where he was a graduate student). There he met Jon Everson and Conan Lamot (yes Conan is his real name). As well as being wargamers, Conan one day (in 1975) returned from a trip to Los Angeles and returned with this 'neat new game' - Dungeons and Dragons, the original 3 book, boxed set put out by a new company called Tactical Studies Review (TSR).
Conan had copied a number of relevant tables out of the books and produced a mini players guide which he had titled - The Tome of Midkemia. Being frustrated actors at heart, we took to this new game concept like ducks to water. But there was a fly in the sugar -- it became obvious that because of the outline nature of the original game rules, the direction the local games were taking was oriented heavily to bash and crash and building giant characters (that only could be threatened by fighting their own dopplegangers -- don't laugh, it really happened). This didn't appeal particularly to a group of us, so we split off from the main-stream D&D crowd and began writing our own rules set based on our knowledge of medieval history, fantasy literature, and our experiences recreating medieval fighting in the Society for Creative Anachronism.
During a particularly extended mult-night, miniatures oriented scenario (i.e. The Battle of Here), we were introduced to a friend of a friend, named Raymond Feist, at that time a 'poor starving student' at UCSD like the rest of us. Having trudged down the path of building all these rules up into a playable game, Jon Everson and Steve Abrams decided that they might as well start a company and produce gaming products for the burgeoning Fantasy Role Playing (FRP) market. Thinking the name was really trick, they checked with Conan, who originally coined the name and got permission from him to use the name Midkemia for 'all future time'. Midkemia Press was born (formally still known as Abrams & Everson) and produced their first (and arguably their best) product , the book CITIES, in 1979. This book was usable with any FRP game system and provided tables for generating encounters when running games in city environments and a set of rules for running 'character catch-up' - sort of a solo adventure that your character had while waiting for the next game. Typed completely on a rented IBM selectric typewriter, with artwork done by friends Mary Coman, Richard Spahl, Ray Feist (yes Ray even thought he could draw...) and April Abrams (Apperson), the product was a real success for what at that time was still pretty much a cottage industry. It became obvious that April and Anita Everson were really part of the company and Ray was brought in as a partner.
The second product was Midkemia's first fully populated role-playing city, The City of Carse. Based on a revised map of medieval Carnarevon in Wales (it's amazing how many people told us "a 'real' city would never look like that!"). Here was the first look at the whimsical capabilities of Ray. Steve and April had blocked out the city in terms of who was where and left Ray typing over the weekend on our new, powerful, Apple II (not II+, not IIe - the original Apple II), SuperText word processor, and a case of beer. For a real peek into those early days, I recommend reading the sections on the 'Bazaar' in Carse.
This was followed over the next years by: The City of Jonril; Tulan of the Isles; Towns of the Outlands; The Black Tower; The Heart of the Sunken Lands, (for Chaosium) Thieves World, (an abortive city project for Simulations Publications Inc. [SPI] Dragonquest game) and (for Sorcerer's Apprentice magazine) The Village of Hoxely. During this time, Ray became a world famous author, writing novels of Midkemia's history and formally parted company with Midkemia Press to clarify the respective ownership rights regarding the game materials and novels. Midkemia products have been licensed and printed in German and have until recently been in print through Chaosium Inc. The CITIES product, in particular, has been most recently in print as Avalon Hill's RuneQuest Cities.
Today, Midkemia Press, is principally a license holder to Midkemia game products, which we share with Ray Feist. The future looks to be oriented toward computer and on-line gaming products. The first computer game set in Midkemia, was Betrayal at Krondor, by Dynamix, Inc. The second computer game had a difficult birthing, first being handled by 7th Level, then Pyrotechnics and finally back to Sierra (Dynamix). Return to Krondor, while not the ground-breaking game that Betrayl was has enjoyed moderate success and spawned several new books by Ray Feist.
Discussions continue off and on with various publishers regarding the publishing of the entire game system for the Tome of Midkemia, including the original modules and all new modules. At this time there is no date set. Additionally, Midkemia Press is working on play-by-email games based in the Midkemian universe. Look for more information on this web site as that project nears completion.
Steve Abrams
