FORGOTTEN REALMS creator Ed Greenwood opens the adventures of an unlikely new band of heroes who get into a bit more trouble than usual in the fabled port city of Waterdeep, but soon discover some of the seedier corners of the wider Realms-the hard way! Joined by artist Lee Ferguson (G.I. Joe: Snake Eyes), this new series kicks off a deadly tale with a kidnapping that is more-and less-than it seems...
The classic DC Comics Forgotten Realms series gets collected for the first time! Join Priam, Vartan, Ishi, Foxilon, and Minder aboard the Realms Master, captained by the powerful mage Dwalimor Omen, as they seek to dispose of dangerous magic items that threaten the Realms! This action-packed second volume collects issues #9-14 of the fan-favorite series, plus the TSR Worlds Annual that introduces Spelljammer to comics!
Role-playing game historian Ben Riggs unveils the secret history of TSR— the company that unleashed imaginations with Dungeons & Dragons, was driven into ruin by disastrous management decisions, and then saved by their bitterest rival. Co-created by wargame enthusiasts Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, the original Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game released by TSR (Tactical Studies Rules) in 1974 created a radical new medium: the role-playing game. For the next two decades, TSR rocketed to success, producing multiple editions of D&D, numerous settings for the game, magazines, video games, New York Times bestselling novels by Margaret Weis, Tracy Hickman, and R. A. Salvatore, and even a TV show! But by 1997, a series of ruinous choices and failed projects brought TSR to the edge of doom—only to be saved by their fiercest competitor, Wizards of the Coast, the company behind the collectible card game Magic: The Gathering. Unearthed from Ben Riggs’s own adventurous campaign of in-depth research, interviews with major players, and acquisitions of secret documents, Slaying the Dragon reveals the true story of the rise and fall of TSR. Go behind the scenes of their Lake Geneva headquarters where innovative artists and writers redefined the sword and sorcery genre, managers and executives sabotaged their own success by alienating their top talent, ignoring their customer fanbase, accruing a mountain of debt, and agreeing to deals which, by the end, made them into a publishing company unable to publish so much as a postcard. As epic and fantastic as the adventures TSR published, Slaying the Dragon is the legendary tale of the rise and fall of the company that created the role-playing game world.
An illustrated guide to the history and evolution of the beloved role-playing game told through the paintings, sketches, illustrations, and visual ephemera behind its creation, growth, and continued popularity. FINALIST FOR THE HUGO AWARD • FINALIST FOR THE LOCUS AWARD • NOMINATED FOR THE DIANA JONES AWARD From one of the most iconic game brands in the world, this official DUNGEONS & DRAGONS illustrated history provides an unprecedented look at the visual evolution of the brand, showing its continued influence on the worlds of pop culture and fantasy. Inside the book, you’ll find more than seven hundred pieces of artwork—from each edition of the core role-playing books, supplements, and adventures; as well as Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance novels; decades of Dragon and Dungeon magazines; and classic advertisements and merchandise; plus never-before-seen sketches, large-format canvases, rare photographs, one-of-a-kind drafts, and more from the now-famous designers and artists associated with DUNGEONS & DRAGONS. The superstar author team gained unparalleled access to the archives of Wizards of the Coast and the personal collections of top collectors, as well as the designers and illustrators who created the distinctive characters, concepts, and visuals that have defined fantasy art and gameplay for generations. This is the most comprehensive collection of D&D imagery ever assembled, making this the ultimate collectible for the game's millions of fans around the world.
‘With the arrival of the second volume of Tell You What, the sum total of New Zealand non-fiction anthologies damn near doubles,’ noted the Sunday Star-Times when they picked up last year’s edition. Well, we thought, let’s damn near triple it. Because we’ve discovered that New Zealanders love their true stories. Last year’s Tell You What was ‘quite a ride . . . a gripping, thought provoking and inspiring reminder of how much talent is out there’ (KiaOra), featuring ‘some of New Zealand’s best writers, covering subjects like bullies, Barbies, girl bands and grandads’ (The Australian Women’s Weekly). ‘Take it and read it, as, one by one, each writer tells us their what’ wrote John Campbell in the foreword. And this year? Third time lucky we say. The talent is assembling. The stories are rolling in. The 2017 edition of Tell You What once again promises an intellectually stimulating summer for New Zealanders up and down the country.
The digital technologies of the 21st century are reshaping how we experience storytelling. More than ever before, storylines from the world's most popular narratives cross from the pages of books to the movie theatre, to our television screens and in comic books series. Plots intersect and intertwine, allowing audiences many different entry points to the narratives. In this sometimes bewildering array of stories across media, one thing binds them together: their large-scale fictional world. Collaborative Worldbuilding for Writers and Gamers describes how writers can co-create vast worlds for use as common settings for their own stories. Using the worlds of Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, A Game of Thrones, and Dungeons & Dragons as models, this book guides readers through a step-by-step process of building sprawling fictional worlds complete with competing social forces that have complex histories and yet are always evolving. It also shows readers how to populate a catalog with hundreds of unique people, places, and things that grow organically from their world, which become a rich repository of story making potential. The companion website collaborativeworldbuilding.com features links to online resources, past worldbuilding projects, and an innovative card system designed to work with this book.
The first Forgotten Realms title ever published, now available as an eBook! Darkwalker on Moonshae was the very first novel ever published in the Forgotten Realms setting. Appearing in 1987, this title launched what has now become a robust and ever-expanding land of adventure for millions of readers.
Falina is the apprentice to the greatest wizard of her world, the Crystal Realm, but her talents in magic is nothing legendary. When her teacher, Lord Cristar, mistakenly hands her the wrong errand Falina goes out to do the impossible; dragging along a very reluctant swordsman, Kilian, on the adventure. But this tale isn't about the end-results as much as it is about the journey along the way, infallible faith, and friendship. Can Falina find a way to enter the ever-moving, existent/non-existent Eternal Door to the Kingdom of Forgotten Realms? Or will she and Kilian wander aimlessly in vain hope? Will Kilian go insane from the ridiculous mission, or from the equally ridiculously goofy Falina? Will YOU join them on the Impossible Mission, or wander and wonder what might have been...?
Many of today’s hottest selling games—both non-electronic and electronic—focus on such elements as shooting up as many bad guys as one can (Duke Nuk’em), beating the toughest level (Mortal Kombat), collecting all the cards (Pokémon), and scoring the most points (Tetris). Fantasy role-playing games (Dungeons & Dragons, Rolemaster, GURPS), while they may involve some of those aforementioned elements, rarely focus on them. Instead, playing a fantasy role-playing game is much like acting out a scene from a play, movie or book, only without a predefined script. Players take on such roles as wise wizards, noble knights, roguish sellswords, crafty hobbits, greedy dwarves, and anything else one can imagine and the referee allows. The players don’t exactly compete; instead, they interact with each other and with the fantasy setting. The game is played orally with no game board, and although the referee usually has a storyline planned for a game, much of the action is impromptu. Performance is a major part of role-playing, and role-playing games as a performing art is the subject of this book, which attempts to introduce an appreciation for the performance aesthetics of such games. The author provides the framework for a critical model useful in understanding the art—especially in terms of aesthetics—of role-playing games. The book also serves as a contribution to the beginnings of a body of criticism, theory, and aesthetics analysis of a mostly unrecognized and newly developing art form. There are four parts: the cultural structure, the extent to which the game relates to outside cultural elements; the formal structure, or the rules of the game; the social structure, which encompasses the degree and quality of social interaction among players; and the aesthetic structure, concerned with the emergence of role-playing as an art form.
The Digital Age has created massive technological and disciplinary shifts in tabletop role-playing, increasing the appreciation of games like Dungeons & Dragons. Millions tune in each week to watch and listen to RPG players on podcasts and streaming platforms, while virtual tabletops connect online players across the world. Such shifts elicit new scholarly perspectives from a variety of disciplines. This collection includes essays on the transmedia ecology that has connected analog with digital and audio spaces. Essays explore the boundaries of virtual tabletops and how users engage with a variety of technology to further role-playing. Authors map the growing diversity of the TRPG fandom and detail how players interact with RPG-related podcasts. Interviewed are content creators like Griffin McElroy of The Adventure Zone podcast, Roll20 co-creator Nolan T. Jones, board game designers Nikki Valens and Isaac Childres and fan artists Tracey Alvarez and Alex Schiltz. These essays and interviews expand the academic perspective to reflect the future of role-playing.
