Blue Planet (role-playing Game)
''Blue Planet'' is an environmentalist science fiction role-playing game first published by Biohazard Games in 1997, set on the planet Poseidon. Setting ''Blue Planet'' is set on the alien water world Poseidon, where human colonists fleeing an irreparably damaged Earth, Terran megacorporations looking for a rare ore and the indigenous aliens who live in the extensive oceans clash over how to use and steward the planet's resources. The game includes genetically "uplifted" dolphins and orcas as playable characters on either side of the native/Terran dichotomy. First edition (BPv1): Biohazard Games The first edition (BPv1), a 348-page book dedicated to Jacques Cousteau, was demonstrated and released at Origins in 1997 to critical acclaim, receiving a nomination for the ''Game of the Year'' Origins award. Approximately 250 of the 348 pages of the rulebook are dedicated to background about the planet Poseidon. The first edition uses a complex percentile (d100) system to resol ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Pyramid (magazine)
''Pyramid'' was a gaming magazine, publishing articles primarily on role-playing games, but including board games, card games, and other sorts of games. It began life in 1993 as a print publication of Steve Jackson Games for its first 30 issues, though it has been published on the Internet since March 1998. Print issues were bimonthly; the first online version published new articles each week; the second online version is monthly. ''Pyramid'' is headquartered in Austin, Texas. It replaced Steve Jackson Games' previous magazine '' Roleplayer''. ''Pyramid'' features general gaming articles by freelance authors, as well as Designer's Notes by Steve Jackson Games product developers, industry news, cartoons, and gaming product reviews. Although articles tend to concentrate on Steve Jackson Games products such as ''GURPS'', it has published articles on other games such as '' d20 System'', ''Talisman'', ''Nobilis'', ''Hero System'', and has featured various comic strips and single-pa ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Fantasy Flight Games Games
Fantasy is a genre of speculative fiction involving magical elements, typically set in a fictional universe and sometimes inspired by mythology and folklore. Its roots are in oral traditions, which then became fantasy literature and drama. From the twentieth century, it has expanded further into various media, including film, television, graphic novels, manga, animations and video games. Fantasy is distinguished from the genres of science fiction and horror by the respective absence of scientific or macabre themes, although these genres overlap. In popular culture, the fantasy genre predominantly features settings that emulate Earth, but with a sense of otherness. In its broadest sense, however, fantasy consists of works by many writers, artists, filmmakers, and musicians from ancient myths and legends to many recent and popular works. Traits Most fantasy uses magic or other supernatural elements as a main plot element, theme, or setting. Magic, magic practitioners ( so ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Science Fiction Role-playing Games
Science is a systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe. Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earliest archeological evidence for scientific reasoning is tens of thousands of years old. The earliest written records in the history of science come from Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia in around 3000 to 1200 BCE. Their contributions to mathematics, astronomy, and medicine entered and shaped Greek natural philosophy of classical antiquity, whereby formal attempts were made to provide explanations of events in the physical world based on natural causes. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, knowledge of Greek conceptions of the world deteriorated in Western Europe during the early centuries (400 to 1000 CE) of the Middle Ages, but was preserved in the Muslim world during the Islamic Golden Age and later by the efforts of Byzantine Greek scholars who brought Greek ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Environmental Mass Media
A biophysical environment is a biotic and abiotic surrounding of an organism or population, and consequently includes the factors that have an influence in their survival, development, and evolution. A biophysical environment can vary in scale from microscopic to global in extent. It can also be subdivided according to its attributes. Examples include the marine environment, the atmospheric environment and the terrestrial environment. The number of biophysical environments is countless, given that each living organism has its own environment. The term ''environment'' can refer to a singular global environment in relation to humanity, or a local biophysical environment, e.g. the UK's Environment Agency. Life-environment interaction All life that has survived must have adapted to the conditions of its environment. Temperature, light, humidity, soil nutrients, etc., all influence the species within an environment. However, life in turn modifies, in various forms, its conditions. S ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Casus Belli (magazine)
''Casus Belli'' is a French magazine about role-playing games, published in different formats since 1980. It contains news, reviews, interviews, features, and role-playing game materials. The magazine was published by Excelsior Publications until 1999, by Arkana Press in 2000–2006, and by Casus Belli Presse in 2010–2011, and has been published by Black Book Éditions since 2011. Since 2020, it also has the online video companion ''Casus TV'', which is produced in collaboration with ''Tric Trac''. History ''Casus Belli'' has been released in different forms since 1980, originally under editor-in-chief François Marcela-Froideval and published by Excelsior Publications; for its first few issues, it was a short, black-and-white publication, before changing to a larger format printed in color. In this incarnation, it became the leading role-playing game magazine on the French market. The artists working on this edition included the cartoonist Tignous. The magazine ended publicat ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Kickstarter
Kickstarter is an American public benefit corporation based in Brooklyn, New York, that maintains a global crowdfunding platform focused on creativity. The company's stated mission is to "help bring creative projects to life". As of July 2021, Kickstarter has received $6.6 billion in pledges from 21 million backers to fund 222,000 projects, such as films, music, stage shows, comics, journalism, video games, board games, technology, publishing, and food-related projects. People who back Kickstarter projects are offered tangible rewards or experiences in exchange for their pledges. This model traces its roots to subscription model of arts patronage, where artists would go directly to their audiences to fund their work. History Kickstarter launched on April 28, 2009, by Perry Chen, Yancey Strickler, and Charles Adler. ''The New York Times'' called Kickstarter "the people's NEA". ''Time'' named it one of the "Best Inventions of 2010" and "Best Websites of 2011". Kickstarter repo ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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GURPS
The ''Generic Universal RolePlaying System'', or ''GURPS'', is a tabletop role-playing game system designed to allow for play in any game setting. It was created by Steve Jackson Games and first published in 1986 at a time when most such systems were story- or genre-specific. Players control their in-game characters verbally and the success of their actions are determined by the skill of their character, the difficulty of the action, and the rolling of dice. Characters earn points during play which are used to gain greater abilities. Gaming sessions are story-told and run by " Game Masters" (often referred to as simply "GMs"). ''GURPS'' won the Origins Award for ''Best Roleplaying Rules of 1988'', and in 2000 it was inducted into the Origins Hall of Fame. Many of its expansions have also won awards. History Prior RPG history Prior to ''GURPS'', most roleplaying games (RPGs) of the 1970s and early 1980s were developed especially for certain gaming environments, and they were lar ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Steve Jackson Games
Steve Jackson Games (SJGames) is a game company, founded in 1980 by Steve Jackson, that creates and publishes role-playing, board, and card games, and (until 2019) the gaming magazine ''Pyramid''. History Founded in 1980, six years after the creation of ''Dungeons & Dragons'', SJ Games created several role-playing and strategy games with science fiction themes. SJ Games' early titles were microgames initially sold in 4×7 inch ziploc bags, and later in the similarly sized Pocket Box. Games such as ''Ogre'', ''Car Wars'', and ''G.E.V'' (an ''Ogre'' spin-off) were popular during SJ Games' early years. Game designers such as Loren Wiseman and Jonathan Leistiko have worked for Steve Jackson Games. Today SJ Games publishes a variety of games, such as card games, board games, strategy games, and in different genres, such as fantasy, sci-fi, and gothic horror. They also published the book ''Principia Discordia'', the sacred text of the Discordian religion. Raid by the Secret S ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Role-playing Game System
A role-playing game system is a set of game mechanics used in a tabletop role-playing game (TTRPG) to determine the outcome of a character's in-game actions. History By the late 1970s, the Chaosium staff realized that Steve Perrin's ''RuneQuest'' system had the potential to become a "house system", where one set of game mechanics could be used for multiple games; Greg Stafford and Lynn Willis proved that theory by boiling down the RuneQuest rules into the thin 16-page ''Basic Role-Playing'' (1980). Hero Games used their ''Champions'' rules as the basis for their Hero System. The Pacesetter house system centered on a universal "action table" that used one chart to resolve all game actions. Steve Jackson became interested in publishing a new roleplaying system, designed by himself, with three goals: that it be detailed and realistic; logical and well-organized; and adaptable to any setting and any level of play; this system was eventually released as ''GURPS'' (1986). The ''D&D'' ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Ray Winninger
Ray Winninger is a game designer who has worked on a number of roleplaying games, including the ''Dungeons & Dragons'' fantasy roleplaying game. He is the former Executive Producer for the Wizards of the Coast ''Dungeons & Dragons'' studio. Career Ray Winninger was a competitive chess player as a child, and at age nine he discovered Avalon Hill games and ''Dungeons & Dragons'' while looking for chess opponents at a local hobby shop/game store. He designed his first game as "a futuristic man-to-man miniatures system", and by age fourteen he had designed an enormous campaign world for the ''Dungeons & Dragons'' game system. His first published work was an adventure called ''Countdown!'' for FASA's '' Doctor Who'' role-playing game. He worked for TSR, including work on ''Dungeons & Dragons'', throughout the 1980s and early 1990s. Winninger was the co-designer of '' DC Heroes'' and ''Torg''. He then worked on staff at Mayfair Games, and became Editorial Director for Mayfair after ' ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Origins Award
The Origins Awards are American awards for outstanding work in the game industry. They are presented by the Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts and Design at the Origins Game Fair on an annual basis for the previous year, so (for example) the 1979 awards were given at the 1980 Origins. The Origins Award is commonly referred to as a Calliope, as the statuette is in the likeness of the muse of the same name. Academy members frequently shorten this name to "Callie". History Originally, the ''Charles S. Roberts Awards'' and the Origins Awards were one and the same. Starting with the 1987 awards, the Charles S. Roberts were given separately, and they moved away from Origins entirely in 2000, leaving the Origins Awards as a completely separate system. In 1978, the awards also hosted the 1977 ''H. G. Wells awards'' for role-playing games and miniature wargaming. Categories The Origins Awards were originally presented at the Origins Game Fair in five categories: ''Best Professional Gam ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |