Category: Island of Lost Games
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Island of Lost Games: Fading Suns
It's been a while since we visited the Island of Lost Games, but there are still a few old and obscure titles on my shelf to explore. Today's game is 1996's Fading Suns, by Bill Bridges and Andrew Greenberg. It's probably the most well-known and successful of the Island's titles, but it never did manage…
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Island of Lost Games: A Footprint in the Sand!
Exciting news about one of the first titles I covered in the "Island of Lost Games" series — John Hill, one of the original Droids gaming group, ran across my post and sent this reply: I enjoyed your recent post about the game "Droids", though the circumstances that led me to discover it leave much…
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Island of Lost Games: Epiphany
Throughout the history of roleplaying as a hobby, there have been attempts to remove the dice from the games. The argument usually goes something like this: real life isn't random, at least not on the scales at which humans act in day-to-day life. Events have causes. So why do we roll dice to see if…
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Island of Lost Games: Tales of Gargentihr
This may rival Droids as the most obscure game on the Island of Lost Games. Tales of Gargentihr was published in 1994 by Sanctuary Games, a startup game company based in Scotland. Unfortunately, that meant that Tales of Gargentihr hit the market precisely when the initial success of Magic: the Gathering sucked all the oxygen…
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Island of Lost Games: Nephilim
Nephilim, published by Chaosium in 1994, is one of the handful of French roleplaying games which have been translated or adapted into English-language editions — Steve Jackson Games's In Nomine is the only other one I'm familiar with. Compared to Anglophone games, the French ones all seem more cerebral, more mystical, and much more closely-coupled…
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Island of Lost Games: Dream Park
One could write a whole series of blog posts on the theme of "unlikely licensed roleplaying games," and somewhere near the top of that list (but below GURPS Planet Krishna) you would undoubtedly find Mike Pondsmith's Dream Park: The Roleplaying Game, from R. Talsorian Games. The 1981 novel Dream Park, by Larry Niven and Steven…
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Island of Lost Games: Droids
(Sorry for the hiatus. Events happened.) No, it has nothing to do with Star Wars. Droids is a fascinating and unique little roleplaying game which came out in 1982 from a company called Integral Games, in Arlington, Texas. The lead designer was Neil Patrick Moore, and according to the RPGGeek Web site Droids is his…
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Island of Lost Games: Universe
Universe was a science fiction roleplaying game published in 1982 by the well-known wargame company SPI, in partnership with the mass-market paperback house Bantam Books. That meant the game got fairly wide distribution in bookstores rather than just the hobby shop ghetto. Despite that, I don't think it sold many copies. The game itself was…
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Island of Lost Games: Metamorphosis Alpha
We recently got more bookshelves installed, which meant that my roleplaying game collection emerged from the closet where it had been piled up for more than a decade, and now stands again in proud alphabetical-by-title ranks, easily accessible. I found some forgotten treasures in there: my original Call of Cthulhu box set, the battered little…
The Cambias Digression 