Issaries, Inc. was a game publisher incorporated in

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

in 1999 by

Greg Stafford Francis Gregory Stafford (February 9, 1948 – October 10, 2018), usually known as Greg Stafford, was an American game designer, publisher, and practitioner of shamanism. Stafford is most famous as the creator of the fantasy world of Glorantha ...

to control and manage products using Stafford's fictional world of

Glorantha Glorantha is a fantasy world created by Greg Stafford. It was first introduced in the board game '' White Bear and Red Moon'' (1975) by Chaosium and then in a number of other board, roleplaying and computer games, including ''RuneQuest'' and ''He ...

. It partnered with

Moon Design Publications Moon Design Publications are publishers of tabletop role-playing game books set in Greg Stafford's world of Glorantha. They were founded in 1998 by Rick Meints and Colin Phillips in the UK. History In the 1990s, American expatriate Rick Meints was ...

to develop the flagship roleplaying game '' Hero Wars''. In 2003, it acquired the ''HeroQuest'' and ''

RuneQuest ''RuneQuest'' (commonly abbreviated as RQ) is a fantasy tabletop role-playing game originally designed by Steve Perrin, Ray Turney, Steve Henderson (game designer), Steve Henderson, and Warren James, and set in Greg Stafford's mythical world of ...

'' trademarks from

Hasbro Hasbro, Inc. (; a syllabic abbreviation of its original name, Hassenfeld Brothers) is an American multinational conglomerate holding company incorporated and headquartered in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. Hasbro owns the trademarks and products of ...

, which led to the licensing of a new edition of ''RuneQuest''. The company's last statement was in 2013 and is now listed as Dissolved.

History

founded Issaries to hold the trademarks and copyrights for

after obtaining them from

Chaosium Chaosium Inc. is a publisher of tabletop role-playing games established by Greg Stafford in 1975. Chaosium's major titles include '' Call of Cthulhu'', based on the horror fiction stories of H. P. Lovecraft'', RuneQuest Glorantha'', ''Pendragon'' ...

. To deal with funding difficulties, in August 1997 Chaosium issued a press release to offer shares of Issaries for $100 each, planning to start the company after raising $50,000 so that a new Glorantha-based RPG could be produced. Stafford approached

Robin Laws Robin D. Laws (born October 14, 1964 in Orillia, Ontario, Canada) is a Canadian writer and game designer who lives in Toronto, Canada. He is the author of a number of novels and role-playing games as well as an anthologist. Career Robin D. Laws ...

to create a new game, which became known as ''Hero Wars'', and was published by Issaries in 2000. The original run of ''Hero Wars'' sold out in 2003, so Stafford published the second edition of his game again based in Glorantha as ''

HeroQuest ''HeroQuest'', sometimes written as ''Hero Quest'', is an adventure board game created by Milton Bradley in conjunction with the British company Games Workshop. The game was loosely based around archetypes of fantasy role-playing games: the ...

''. Stafford moved to Mexico in 2004, at which point Issaries stopped publishing RPGs, and when he came back to the US in 2005 he used Issaries to license the Glorantha rights to other companies such as

Mongoose Publishing Mongoose Publishing is a British manufacturer of role-playing games, miniatures, and card games, publishing material since 2001. Its licenses include products based on the science fiction properties '' Traveller'', ''Judge Dredd'', and ''Parano ...

and

References

External links

Issaries official website (archived in 2012)
1999 establishments in California 2013 disestablishments in California Publishing companies based in California Role-playing game publishing companies {{rpg-stub