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Arduin (bishop Of Turin)
''Arduin'' is a fictional universe and fantasy role-playing system created in the mid-1970s by David A. Hargrave. It was the first published "cross-genre" fantasy RPG, with everything from interstellar wars to horror and historical drama, although it was based primarily in the medieval fantasy genre. Development history ''Arduin'' was one of the earliest challengers to TSR's ''Dungeons & Dragons''. It began in the mid-1970s as a personal project Hargrave created to share with friends, but became so popular that he was inspired to publish the material. Hargrave was one of several early RPG players from the San Francisco Bay area to also become a game designer, having started by creating variant rules for his weekly ''Dungeons & Dragons'' campaign which was heavily house-ruled and included hundreds of players, with its setting of Arduin, a neutral ground situated between nations formerly at war with each other. Around 1976 Greg Stafford of Chaosium played in Hargrave's ''Arduin'' ...
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Caliban (Arduin Dungeon)
''Caliban'' (also known as ''Arduin Dungeon Number One'') was a standalone short story and gaming module written in 1979 by David A. Hargrave and published by Grimoire Games. It was based upon Hargrave's gaming system known as Arduin. It is the first of only four standalone "dungeon" books created by Hargrave as an extension of his Arduin Multiverse, which at the time of Caliban's publication was known as The Arduin Trilogy. Setting ''Arduin Dungeon No. 1: Caliban'' is an adventure scenario for player characters of levels 8 and higher, a four-level dungeon containing both new monsters and magic items, and the package includes four maps. At 25 pages long, ''Caliban'' contained maps with room descriptions and trap matrices, four full dungeon/tower levels with maps and room descriptions (one level is an intricate cavern system), eight pocket sized magic artifact cards and eight illustrated monster cards with statistics. The package also contained a set of 16 unique creature and treas ...
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Lawrence Schick
Lawrence Schick is a game designer and writer associated with role-playing games. Early life and education Schick attended Kent State University Kent State University (KSU) is a public research university in Kent, Ohio. The university also includes seven regional campuses in Northeast Ohio and additional facilities in the region and internationally. Regional campuses are located in As ... in Ohio. Career Schick, as the head of design and development at TSR, brought aboard Tom Moldvay and David Cook (game designer), David Cook and many other new employees as TSR continued to grow in the early 1980s. Schick created ''White Plume Mountain'' in 1979, an Adventure (Dungeons & Dragons), adventure module for the ''Editions of Dungeons & Dragons#Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, Advanced Dungeons & Dragons'' fantasy role-playing game, published by TSR in 1979; the adventure was incorporated into the Greyhawk setting after the publication of the ''World of Greyhawk Fantasy Game Setti ...
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Gamemaster
A gamemaster (GM; also known as game master, game manager, game moderator, referee, or storyteller) is a person who acts as an organizer, officiant for regarding rules, arbitrator, and moderator for a multiplayer role-playing game. They are more common in co-operative games in which players work together than in competitive games in which players oppose each other. The act performed by a gamemaster is sometimes referred to as "Gamemastering" or simply "GM-ing". The role of a gamemaster in a traditional table-top role-playing game (pencil-and-paper role-playing game) is to weave the other participants' player-character stories together, control the non-player aspects of the game, create environments in which the players can interact, and solve any player disputes. The basic role of the gamemaster is the same in almost all traditional role-playing games, although differing rule sets make the specific duties of the gamemaster unique to that system. The role of a gamemaster in an ...
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Mike Gunderloy
''Factsheet Five'' was a periodical mostly consisting of short reviews of privately produced printed matter along with contact details of the editors and publishers. In the 1980s and early 1990s, its comprehensive reviews (thousands in each issue) made it the most important publication in its field, heralding the wider spread of what would eventually be called fanzine or zine culture. Before the widespread adoption of the web and e-mail beginning around 1994, publications such as ''Factsheet Five'' formed a vital directory for connecting like-minded people. It was the literary equivalent to such phenomena as '' International Sound Communication'' in the period of cassette culture. History The magazine was originally published in 1982 by Mike Gunderloy on a spirit duplicator in his bedroom in a slanshack in Alhambra, California, though the first issue notes he was located at Hyde Park neighborhood in Boston. The original focus was science fiction fanzines (the title comes fro ...
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Different Worlds
''Different Worlds'' was an American role-playing games magazine published from 1979 to 1987. Scope ''Different Worlds'' published support articles, scenarios, and variants for various role-playing games including ''Dungeons & Dragons'', ''RuneQuest'', '' Traveller'', '' Call of Cthulhu'' and others; play techniques and strategies for players and gamemasters of role-playing games; reviews of games and miniatures; and reviews of current books and movies of interest to role-playing gamers. Notably, ''Different Worlds'' also featured early works by artists Steve Oliff, Bill Willingham, and Steve Purcell; ″Sword of Hollywood″, a regular film review column by Larry DiTillio from issue seven onward; the irregular autobiographical/interview feature ″My Life and Roleplaying″; and the industry scuttlebutt column ″A Letter from Gigi″ by the pseudonymous Gigi D'Arn. Publication history ''Different Worlds'' was launched in 1979 by Tadashi Ehara and Greg Stafford of Chaosium ...
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Don Turnbull (game Designer)
Don Turnbull was a journalist, editor, games designer, and an accomplished piano and pinball player. He was particularly instrumental in introducing ''Dungeons & Dragons'' into the UK, both as the managing director of TSR UK Ltd and as the editor of the ''Fiend Folio''. Early career In his early career Turnbull was as a high-school teacher of mathematics in the north of England. However, he was an early and enthusiastic follower of wargaming, subsequently winning awards as a designer. A feature which assisted his work as a game developer was the use of correspondence to run board games. ''Albion'' magazine In July 1969 he published the first issue of ''Albion'' magazine, one of the first European zines, supporting correspondence play of the board game ''Diplomacy''. Although it only had a few subscribers, ''Albion'' was influential and ran to fifty issues. In 1974 it won the Charles S. Roberts Award for ''Best Amateur Wargaming Magazine''. It was an informal publication that ...
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White Dwarf (magazine)
''White Dwarf'' is a magazine published by British games manufacturer Games Workshop, which has long served as a promotions and advertising platform for Games Workshop and Citadel Miniatures products. During the first ten years of its publication, it covered a wide variety of fantasy and science-fiction role-playing games (RPGs) and board games, particularly the role playing games ''Advanced Dungeons & Dragons'' (''AD&D''), '' Call of Cthulhu'', ''RuneQuest'' and '' Traveller''. These games were all published by other games companies and distributed in the United Kingdom by Games Workshop stores. The magazine underwent a major change in style and content in the late 1980s. It is now dedicated exclusively to the miniature wargames produced by Games Workshop. History 1975: ''Owl and Weasel'' to ''White Dwarf'' Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone initially produced a newsletter called ''Owl and Weasel'', which ran for twenty-five issues from February 1975 before it evolved into '' ...
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Goodreads
Goodreads is an American social cataloging website and a subsidiary of Amazon that allows individuals to search its database of books, annotations, quotes, and reviews. Users can sign up and register books to generate library catalogs and reading lists. They can also create their own groups of book suggestions, surveys, polls, blogs, and discussions. The website's offices are located in San Francisco. Goodreads was founded in December 2006 and launched in January 2007 by Otis Chandler and Elizabeth Khuri Chandler. In December 2007, the site had 650,000 members and 10,000,000 books had been added. By July 2012, the site reported 10 million members, 20 million monthly visits, and thirty employees. On March 28, 2013, Amazon announced its acquisition of Goodreads, and by July 23, 2013, Goodreads announced their user base had grown to 20 million members. By July 2019, the site had 90 million members. History Founders Goodreads founders Otis Chandler and Elizabeth Khuri Chan ...
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Lich
In fantasy fiction, a lich (; from the Old English , meaning "corpse") is a type of undead creature. Various works of fantasy fiction, such as Clark Ashton Smith's "The Empire of the Necromancers" (1932), had used ''lich'' as a general term for any corpse, animated or inanimate, before the term's specific use in fantasy role-playing games. The more recent use of the term ''lich'' for a specific type of undead creature originates from the 1976 ''Dungeons & Dragons'' role-playing game booklet ''Greyhawk'', written by Gary Gygax and Rob Kuntz. Often such a creature is the result of a willful transformation, as a powerful wizard skilled in necromancy who seeks eternal life uses rare substances in a magical ritual to become undead. Unlike zombies, which are often depicted as mindless, liches are sapient, retaining their previous intelligence and magical abilities. Liches are often depicted as holding power over lesser undead soldiers and servants. Historical background ''Lich' ...
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Avatar
Avatar (, ; ), is a concept within Hinduism that in Sanskrit literally means "descent". It signifies the material appearance or incarnation of a powerful deity, goddess or spirit on Earth. The relative verb to "alight, to make one's appearance" is sometimes used to refer to any guru or revered human being. The word ''avatar'' does not appear in the Vedic literature; however, it appears in developed forms in post-Vedic literature, and as a noun particularly in the Puranic literature after the 6th century CE. Despite that, the concept of an avatar is compatible with the content of the Vedic literature like the Upanishads as it is symbolic imagery of the Saguna Brahman concept in the philosophy of Hinduism. The ''Rigveda'' describes Indra as endowed with a mysterious power of assuming any form at will. The ''Bhagavad Gita'' expounds the doctrine of Avatara but with terms other than ''avatar''. Theologically, the term is most often associated with the Hindu god Vishnu, though th ...
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Role-playing Game
A role-playing game (sometimes spelled roleplaying game, RPG) is a game in which players assume the roles of player character, characters in a fictional Setting (narrative), setting. Players take responsibility for acting out these roles within a narrative, either through literal acting or through a process of structured decision-making regarding character development. Actions taken within many games succeed or fail according to a formal role-playing game system, system of rules and guidelines. There are several forms of role-playing games. The original form, sometimes called the tabletop role-playing game (TRPG), is conducted through discussion, whereas in live action role-playing game, live action role-playing (LARP), players physically perform their characters' actions.(Tychsen et al. 2006:255) "LARPs can be viewed as forming a distinct category of RPG because of two unique features: (a) The players physically embody their characters, and (b) the game takes place in a physica ...
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