Favorite Dead RPG company

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What's yours and why?

I'm a fan of Bard Games the folks who produced The Atlantian Trilogy and Talislanta as well as the The Complete Adventurer/Alchemist/Spell Caster.
 
I'm not sure whether I'm allowed to answer with Fantasy Games Unlimited; they have a live web site, but as far as I can tell it is to distribute copies of games that were mostly written in the 80's. They never had a break-out game that put them up there with D&D in the market, but Chivalry and Sorcery, Bushido, Flashing Blades, and V&V were all classics, and they had some good less well known games as well.

Up until recently I would have nominated Metagaming (The Fantasy Trip, Car Wars, Ogre, etc). They are still out of business but a lot of their best properties are back in print and being actively developed by SJGames.
 
FGU have been releasing new product for V&V for a few years now, so I wouldn't consider them dead.
 
Moonglum said:
I'm not sure whether I'm allowed to answer with Fantasy Games Unlimited; they have a live web site, but as far as I can tell it is to distribute copies of games that were mostly written in the 80's. They never had a break-out game that put them up there with D&D in the market, but Chivalry and Sorcery, Bushido, Flashing Blades, and V&V were all classics, and they had some good less well known games as well.
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urbwar said:
FGU have been releasing new product for V&V for a few years now, so I wouldn't consider them dead.
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They've published new adventure modules for Villains and Vigilantes, Bushido, and Daredevils in recent years, possibly others as well. Villains and Vigilantes has had probably a couple of dozen new adventure modules in the past decade. Not dead, just small.
 
K_Peterson said:
Dream Pod 9. Still alive on the wargaming side, but their Rpg lines have been dead a while.
I'm still a fan of Heavy Gear, Jovian Chronicles, and Tribe 8.
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I would love a cleaned up Jovian Chronicles. I like the setting and I like the system, but feel that it could have been streamlined some.

Jovian Chronicles also still has one of the coolest movement mechanics in its space movement rules from 1e (they are the same in 2e, but they removed the method that actually made momentum easy to track for some reason.)
 
ffilz said:
Gamelords. Publisher of Thieve's Guild and several Traveller supplements as well as a few other bits and pieces.
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I think I actually have some of the Gamelords material. In the same vein, Judges Guild. Their low production values were fabulous, but some of their material was quite good.
 
K_Peterson said:
Dream Pod 9. Still alive on the wargaming side, but their Rpg lines have been dead a while.
I'm still a fan of Heavy Gear, Jovian Chronicles, and Tribe 8.
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Pity. I recently read that their Silhouette system is "a better d6 dice pool game than WEG Star Wars." I wanted to find out for myself, but the core rulebook is only available in apparently a bad scan.
 
Nobby-W said:
I think I actually have some of the Gamelords material. In the same vein, Judges Guild. Their low production values were fabulous, but some of their material was quite good.
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Judges Guild isn't exactly dead...
 
This thread is alternately making me think of Monty Python's Quest for the Holy Grail and then The Princess Bride.

I'm not dead yet.

He's not dead, just mostly dead.
 
While not quite RPG releated, I personally miss Task Force Games the makes of Star Fleet Battles and Starfire. SFB is still going strong under Amarillo Design Bureau but Task Force Games had other interesting games as well.
 
You know what? I just want the industry to go back to where it was circa the 90s.

TSR doing D&D, Hogshead doing Warhammer and SLA Industries, classic White Wolf, FASA at it's peak...FASAness, WEG still chugging along with Star Wars, Dream Pod 9 and it's games, Chaosium doing Call of Cthulhu and Pendragon and Prince Valiant, Tri-Stat before it screwed everyone over, GURPs 3rd edition chugging out a steady line of fantastic sourcebooks, etc
 
Spartan said:
Gotta love Haven. How is the house system?
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Dense and quirky. However it not essential to using the material.

I found it was readily adaptable to Swords & Wizardry with the rules I developed for the Majestic Wilderlands Supplement. I had Tadashi permission to do a Swords & Wizardry version at one point but alas it was a step too far timewise alongside my mapping commissions and personal projects.
 
Mid 80s to Mid 90s TSR is my choice, and I think it's just down to nostalgia.

Dragonlance and Marvel Super Heroes. The big changeover to AD&D2e which was really exciting to me at the time. Then there was oddball stuff like Spelljammer and XXVc.
 
Apparition said:
Pity. I recently read that their Silhouette system is "a better d6 dice pool game than WEG Star Wars." I wanted to find out for myself, but the core rulebook is only available in apparently a bad scan.
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Yeah, all of DP9's PDFs are lackluster in quality, from my experience. They're still readable; they're just not very "clean".

JC.PNG

I'm a fan of the Silhouette system, but I wouldn't go on record as saying it's dice pools are any better than WEG Star Wars. They're certainly smaller and more manageable. The system's all about margin of success - with the level of successes achieved in tasks, and the damage dealt in combat.
 
robertsconley said:
Dense and quirky. However it not essential to using the material.

I found it was readily adaptable to Swords & Wizardry with the rules I developed for the Majestic Wilderlands Supplement. I had Tadashi permission to do a Swords & Wizardry version at one point but alas it was a step too far timewise alongside my mapping commissions and personal projects.
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I've been tempted to try and do a cleaned up version of it just for myself so I can get all the rules/subsystems in a nice organized spot. I have most of the books. What I don't have is still in stock at his site so it's just a matter of time before I pick it all up.
 
A side note,
when I started to get decent revenue from my publications (low hundreds per year). I started hunting down various RPG from the 80s I didn't have or wished I had. Not so much as a collector but to replace what was lost or destroyed.

I managed to complete my list which includes
Champions 2nd edition Boxed Set
Holmes Boxed Set with original dice (the printing I was given)
B/X rule books along with the basic B/X box (Something I wish I had).
2300 AD Boxed Set
Dragonquest 1st edition Boxed Set
FASA Star Trek the Roleplaying Game Boxed Set (2nd edition)
All the issues of Journal of the Traveller's Aid Society I was missing (except #1)
MegaTraveller Boxed Set
GURPS 2nd Edition Boxed Set
 
Faylar said:
FASA. I loved everything about them except their shitty binding.
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I must have got lucky. The only book that truly failed me was the first printing of the Earthdawn book. The second one is still going strong. My shadownrun books got used to death over the period of 20 years, and they still live.
 
Almost all my SR 3e books are rife with loose pages. The Fanpro replacements are holding up well though.

My 2nd edition books are doing well too tbh.
 
Fair enough. My SR3 stuff didn't get much of an outing at the table compared to SR2
 
Black Leaf said:
Games Workshop.
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This is what I came here to say. I still have some GW RPG product. And they were so good at what they did. But it didn't sell minis, so Citadel canned GW as an RPG publisher. To the shame of the British gaming industry.
 
Great boardgame company as well.
 
ffilz said:
Yea, and that's one of the things that means I can't list Different Worlds as dead... Despite the fact that what IS dead is their magazine... :-)
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You can't buy the core rules which is a good sign of death to me.
 
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