Hard Times (Traveller)
''Hard Times'' is a supplement published by Game Designers' Workshop (GDW) in 1991 for the science fiction role-playing game '' MegaTraveller''. Contents ''Hard Times'' moves the ''Traveller'' universe forward into a time where the galaxy is riven by economic stagnation and collapse of the empire. Rick Swan wrote, "Planets are gasping for life like guppies flung from a fish bowl, and the luckless survivors face a future of staggering adversity." The book is divided into two main sections: * An introduction, where gamemasters are advised what adjustments they should make to their ''MegaTraveller'' campaigns. This section also includes tables about damage to planetary biospheres, changes to tech levels, and new maps of the Shattered Imperium. * Most of the book is taken up by a ten-adventure campaign, with each adventure covering one step in the decline and fall of the now-defunct Imperium: # Destruction of interstellar transport # Collapse of financial markets # Economic recession ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Game Designers' Workshop
Game Designers' Workshop (GDW) was a wargame and role-playing game publisher from 1973 to 1996. Many of their games are now carried by other publishers. History Game Designers' Workshop was originally established June 22, 1973. The founding members consisted of Frank Chadwick, Rich Banner, Marc Miller, and Loren Wiseman. GDW acquired the Conflict Games Company from John Hill in the early 1970s. GDW published a new product approximately every twenty-two days for over twenty years. In an effort to bridge the gap between role players, board wargamers and miniature wargamers, the company published RPGs with fantastic settings alongside games with realistic themes including rulesets for 15mm and 20mm miniatures set during the American Civil War, World War I, World War II, and the modern era; and boardgames involving these eras such as the ''Air Superiority'' series and ''Harpoon''. The company disbanded February 29, 1996 after suffering financial troubles. Products Role-pla ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Dave Dorman
Dave Dorman (born 1958 in Michigan) is a science fiction, horror and fantasy illustrator best known for his '' Star Wars'' artwork. Early life Dorman's parents are Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Jack N. Dorman and Phyllis Dorman. Both parents are deceased. Dorman is married to award-winning TV/video producer, writer and publicist Denise (McDonald) Dorman of WriteBrain Media. He has a son, Jack, who was born in 2004. Dorman's father Jack Dorman was renowned for his work and awards in the field of radio-controlled airplanes. Jack Dorman created historically accurate interiors for the planes and was an expert at model building. Dorman attributes his attention to detail to his father and credits both parents with giving him emotional and financial support early in his career. Together, Dorman and his father won numerous awards for their model building projects. Dorman attended Saint Mary's Seminary and University in Maryland and The Kubert School in New Jersey. Dorman also taug ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Science Fiction
Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel universes, extraterrestrial life, sentient artificial intelligence, cybernetics, certain forms of immortality (like mind uploading), and the singularity. Science fiction predicted several existing inventions, such as the atomic bomb, robots, and borazon, whose names entirely match their fictional predecessors. In addition, science fiction might serve as an outlet to facilitate future scientific and technological innovations. Science fiction can trace its roots to ancient mythology. It is also related to fantasy, horror, and superhero fiction and contains many subgenres. Its exact definition has long been disputed among authors, critics, scholars, and readers. Science fiction, in literature, film, television, and other media, has beco ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Charles E
Charles is a masculine given name predominantly found in English and French speaking countries. It is from the French form ''Charles'' of the Proto-Germanic name (in runic alphabet) or ''*karilaz'' (in Latin alphabet), whose meaning was "free man". The Old English descendant of this word was '' Ċearl'' or ''Ċeorl'', as the name of King Cearl of Mercia, that disappeared after the Norman conquest of England. The name was notably borne by Charlemagne (Charles the Great), and was at the time Latinized as ''Karolus'' (as in ''Vita Karoli Magni''), later also as '' Carolus''. Some Germanic languages, for example Dutch and German, have retained the word in two separate senses. In the particular case of Dutch, ''Karel'' refers to the given name, whereas the noun ''kerel'' means "a bloke, fellow, man". Etymology The name's etymology is a Common Germanic noun ''*karilaz'' meaning "free man", which survives in English as churl (< Old English ''ċeorl''), which developed its depr ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Gamemasters
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 ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Evil Hat Productions
Evil Hat Productions is a company that produces role-playing games and other tabletop games. Chief among them is the free indie RPG, ''Fate'', which has won numerous awards. History Fred Hicks had been working with Lydia Leong, Rob Donoghue, and others to run LARPs at AmberCon NorthWest starting in 1999, and came up with the name Evil Hat for themselves. While on a trip to Lake Tahoe, friends Hicks and Donoghue developed a new game based on a conversation about running another ''Amber'' game and fixing some problems with ''FUDGE''; the result was ''Fate'' which Hicks and Donoghue would publish under the name Evil Hat. Donoghue and Hicks released a complete first-edition of ''Fate'' through Yahoo! Groups (January 2003) then cleaned up the technical writing and slightly polished the system for a second edition (August 2003). Hicks and Donoghue began work on the licensed '' Dresden Files Roleplaying Game'' in 2004, but publication was held up because they decided to use ''Spir ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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David Dorman
David W. Dorman (born 1954) is an American Telecommunications executive and founding partner of Centerview Capital Technology Partners. Dorman is currently Non-Executive Chairman of the Board of CVS Health Corporation and serves on the boards of PayPal Holdings, Inc., Yum! Brands, Inc. and the Georgia Tech Foundation. Dorman was a board member of Motorola, Inc. since 2006, was elected Non-Executive Chairman of the Board in 2008 and retired from his board position in May 2015. Dorman also was a board member of Scientific Atlanta until the company was acquired by Cisco Systems in 2006. Early life and education Dorman was born in Georgia, and graduated from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 1975 with a bachelor's degree in industrial management. Early career Dorman joined a company that was to become Sprint Communications in 1981 as employee number 55. He climbed the corporate ladder to become President of Sprint Business - with 10,000 employees and revenues of $4.5Bn by t ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Dragon (magazine)
''Dragon'' is one of the two official magazines for source material for the ''Dungeons & Dragons'' role-playing game and associated products, along with ''Dungeon (magazine), Dungeon''. TSR, Inc. originally launched the monthly printed magazine in 1976 to succeed the company's earlier publication, ''The Strategic Review''. The final printed issue was #359 in September 2007. Shortly after the last print issue shipped in mid-August 2007, Wizards of the Coast (part of Hasbro, Inc.), the publication's current copyright holder, relaunched ''Dragon'' as an online magazine, continuing on the numbering of the print edition. The last published issue was No. 430 in December 2013. A digital publication called ''Dragon+'', which replaces the ''Dragon'' magazine, launched in 2015. It is created by Dialect in collaboration with Wizards of the Coast, and its numbering system for issues started at No. 1. History TSR In 1975, TSR, Inc. began publishing ''The Strategic Review''. At the time ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Rick Swan
Rick Swan is a game designer and author who worked for TSR. His work for TSR, mostly for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, appeared from 1989 to 1995. Swan also wrote ''The Complete Guide to Role-Playing Games'' (1990), published by St. Martin's Press. He was a regular columnist for InQuest Gamer. Publications *"Monstrous Compendium: Dragonlance Appendix", 1989 *"Monstrous Compendium: Kara-Tur Appendix", 1990 *" The Complete Wizard's Handbook", 1990 *"Marvel Super Heroes The Uncanny X-MEN Adventure Book", 1990 *"The Complete Ranger's Handbook", 1993 *"The Complete Paladin's Handbook", 1994 *"The Complete Barbarian's Handbook", 1995 *" The Complete Book of Villains", 1994 *"In the Cage: A Guide to Sigil", 1995 (with Wolfgang Baur) *"The Great Glacier", 1992 *"Nightmare Keep (Advanced Dungeons & Dragons/Forgotten Realms module FA2)", 1990 *" Dragon Magic", 1989 *"The Complete Guide to Role-Playing Games", 1990 *"The Heart of the Enemy", 1992 *"Ronin Challenge (Advanced Dungeons and Dra ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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TSR (company)
TSR, Inc. was an American game publishing company, best known as the original publisher of ''Dungeons & Dragons'' (''D&D''). Its earliest incarnation, Tactical Studies Rules, was founded in October 1973 by Gary Gygax and Don Kaye. Gygax had been unable to find a publisher for ''D&D'', a new type of game he and Dave Arneson were co-developing, so founded the new company with Kaye to self-publish their products. Needing financing to bring their new game to market, Gygax and Kaye brought in Brian Blume in December as an equal partner. ''Dungeons & Dragons'' is generally considered the first tabletop role-playing game (TTRPG), and established the genre. When Kaye died suddenly in 1975, the Tactical Studies Rules partnership restructured into TSR Hobbies, Inc. and accepted investment from Blume's father Melvin. With the popular ''D&D'' as its main product, TSR Hobbies became a major force in the games industry by the late 1970s. Melvin Blume eventually transferred his shares to his ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Role-playing Game Supplements Introduced In 1991
Role-playing or roleplaying is the changing of one's behaviour to assume a role, either unconsciously to fill a social role, or consciously to act out an adopted role. While the ''Oxford English Dictionary'' offers a definition of role-playing as "the changing of one's behaviour to fulfill a social role", in the field of psychology, the term is used more loosely in four senses: * To refer to the playing of roles generally such as in a theatre, or educational setting; * To refer to taking a role of a character or person and acting it out with a partner taking someone else's role, often involving different genres of practice; * To refer to a wide range of games including role-playing video game (RPG), play-by-mail games and more; * To refer specifically to role-playing games. Amusement Many children participate in a form of role-playing known as make believe, wherein they adopt certain roles such as doctor and act out those roles in character. Sometimes make believe adopts an oppo ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |