The Diversity of Publishers and Games

[MGibster]

And 40 years later, most RPG companies are still just one or two guys with a day job who work from their home.

Shouldn't you be shackled to a desk somewhere working on another game?

 

[MGibster]

I am currently listening to the audiobook edition of Shannon Applecline's Dungeons and Designers and I am almost shocked at how many different publishers and games there were even in the early days of the hobby, and how many of them survived into the 90s or even 00s. I am almost done with the 70s volume (the chapter on Chaosium actually inspired me to buy and run CoC for the first time) and will be following up with the 80s (which will have a lot of the companies I came into the hobby watching and playing their games).

Once in a while I discover a game that was around, sometimes for quite a while, and I had never heard of. En Garde! has 4 editions published from 1975-2005 and I don't think I ever heard of it until this year. I thought Traveller was the first science fiction RPG, but apparently Metamophosis Alpha came out in 1976 beating it out by a year. I don't know how comprehensive it is, but you can find a list of RPGs by year published on Wikipedia. There's a lot of games I have dim memories of seeing at the game store back in the 1980s.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Once in a while I discover a game that was around, sometimes for quite a while, and I had never heard of. En Garde! has 4 editions published from 1975-2005 and I don't think I ever heard of it until this year. I thought Traveller was the first science fiction RPG, but apparently Metamophosis Alpha came out in 1976 beating it out by a year. I don't know how comprehensive it is, but you can find a list of RPGs by year published on Wikipedia. There's a lot of games I have dim memories of seeing at the game store back in the 1980s.

There were a lot of things that had, charitably, hit or miss distribution back in the day. I remember seeing what appeared to be at least a semi-professional looking Earthsea game someone had (its production values were at about the 2.5 tier publication for the time) but it appears unlikely to be official, which doesn't mean it didn't end up in stores or sold at conventions; but I've never even seen a reference to it anywhere else. And of course you had things like Ken St. Andre's Starfaring.

 

[Cadence]

I find it really interesting to look at the variety of ads in the old Dragon magazines.

 

[MGibster]

I find it really interesting to look at the variety of ads in the old Dragon magazines.

I remember an ad for an RPG that appeared in multiple Dragon magazines in the late 80s or early 90s. All I remember is that game used a d16. Was it fantasy, science fiction, or something else? I can't remember.

 

[Hussar]

There were quite a few fairly large RPG companies back in the day too. Palladium, FASA, and others. There have always been a pretty wide range of games catering to different ways to play.

 

[Cadence]

I remember an ad for an RPG that appeared in multiple Dragon magazines in the late 80s or early 90s. All I remember is that game used a d16. Was it fantasy, science fiction, or something else? I can't remember.

I really hope someone posts what it was soon so I don't start going through old Dragons to find it...

 

[Thomas Shey]

Might have been Fireland or its SF buddy Imperial Earth. Never saw the light of day.

 

[aramis erak]

Once in a while I discover a game that was around, sometimes for quite a while, and I had never heard of. En Garde! has 4 editions published from 1975-2005 and I don't think I ever heard of it until this year. I thought Traveller was the first science fiction RPG, but apparently Metamophosis Alpha came out in 1976 beating it out by a year. I don't know how comprehensive it is, but you can find a list of RPGs by year published on Wikipedia. There's a lot of games I have dim memories of seeing at the game store back in the 1980s.

Starfaring (by Ken St. Andre) was released within hours of Met Alpha. Same convention.