Ares (magazine)
''Ares'' was an American science fiction wargame magazine published by Simulations Publications, Inc. (SPI), and then TSR, Inc., between 1980 and 1984. In addition to the articles, each issue contained a small science-fiction-themed board wargame. Publication history Through the 1970s, SPI had specialized in military history wargames. But the 1977 publication of Metagaming Concepts's science fiction MicroGame titled ''OGRE'' proved enormously popular, and other publishers such as Task Force Games, Operational Studies Group, and Chaosium started to develop their own microgames. SPI also started to develop their own line of science fiction microgames, but went a step further, creating a new science-fiction magazine titled ''Ares'' in 1980 as a bi-monthly science-fiction/fantasy publication to complement their military wargame magazine '' Strategy & Tactics''.''Ares'', like ''Strategy & Tactics'', included a free game with every issue, complete with a foldout stiff paper map, ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Howard Chaykin
Howard Victor Chaykin (; born October 7, 1950) is an Americans, American comics artist, comic book artist and writer. Chaykin's influences include his one-time employer and mentor, Gil Kane, and the mid-20th century illustrators Robert Fawcett and Al Parker (artist), Al Parker. Early life Howard Chaykin was born in Newark, New Jersey, to Rosalind Pave and Norman Drucker, who soon separated. Chaykin was initially raised by his grandparents in Staten Island, New York City, until his mother married Leon Chaykin in 1953 and the family moved to East Flatbush and later to 370 Saratoga Avenue, Brownsville, Brooklyn. At 14, Reprinted in Chaykin moved with his now divorced mother to the Kew Gardens, Queens, Kew Gardens section of Queens, New York, Queens. He said in 2000 he was raised on Welfare spending#United States, welfare after his parents separated and that his absent biological father eventually was declared dead, although Chaykin, as an adult, located him alive. Chaykin's "nutty a ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Dragon (magazine)
''Dragon'' was 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 replaced ''Dragon'' magazine, was launched in 2015. It was created by the advertising agency 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 Strate ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Galac-Tac
''Galac-Tac'' is a closed-end, science fiction, play-by-mail (PBM) wargame, first published by Phoenix Publications in 1982. By 1990, the publisher had changed its name to Delta Games, and then later to Talisman Games. In 2010, Talisman Games changed ownership and transitioned Galac-Tac to a web-based game. It is still available for play by postal mail or email for those with web access challenges. The game has been updated as well as reviewed multiple times in its 40 years of active play. Various reviews in the 1980s and 1990s provided both positive and negative comments as well as potential areas for the game to improve. The game has been featured numerous times in the modern PBM magazine, ''Suspense & Decision''. During gameplay, players begin in one of hundreds of star systems in a 100 × 100 grid map with money and some basic ships, expanding to other star systems in search of resources. Players can establish colonies to enable further expansion. Military conflict is a sign ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Perfidious Albion (magazine)
''Perfidious Albion'' was a British board game and wargame magazine, published and edited by Charles Vasey and Geoff Barnard. History In the early 1970s, Charles Vasey, a chartered accountant and wargames hobbyist, began to write reviews of the games that he played for small games magazines such as ''Military Modelling'' and ''Strategy & Tactics''. Vasey and his acquaintance Geoff Barnard, came to believe that other reviews being published at the time were either too deferential to the major game publishers such as SPI, or were written for game designers and publishers, not for the consumers who were buying the games. When the 1975 publication of the popular wargame ''Tobruk'' by Avalon Hill resulted in more shallow reviews, Barnard convinced Vasey that they should create a zine dedicated to in-depth, objective and critical reviews of wargames. The result was ''Perfidious Albion'', a small self-published zine focussed on miniatures and board wargames. It was intermittent in fre ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Greg Costikyan
Greg Costikyan (born July 22, 1959), sometimes known under the pseudonym Designer X, is an American game designer and science fiction writer. Costikyan's career spans nearly all extant genres of gaming, including: hex-based wargames, role-playing games, boardgames, card games, computer games, online games, and mobile games. Several of his games have won Origins Awards. He co-founded Manifesto Games, now out of business, with Johnny Wilson in 2005. Personal life and education Greg Costikyan was born in New York City, the son of attorney and politician Edward N. and Frances (Holmgren) Costikyan. He and game designer Warren Spector were friends since high school. He is a 1982 graduate ( B.S.) of Brown University. (subscription required) He married Louise Disbrow (a securities analyst), September 4, 1986. They have three children. He is a frequent speaker at game industry events including the Game Developers Conference and E³. Career Greg Costikyan has been a game designer since ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Fantastic (magazine)
''Fantastic'' was an American digest size, digest-size fantasy fiction magazine, fantasy and science fiction magazine, published from 1952 to 1980. It was founded by the publishing company Ziff Davis as a fantasy companion to ''Amazing Stories''. Early sales were good, and the company quickly decided to switch ''Amazing'' from pulp magazine, pulp format to digest, and to cease publication of their other fantasy/science fiction pulp, ''Fantastic Adventures'', which was merged with ''Fantastic''. Within a few years sales fell, and Howard Browne, the editor, was forced to switch the focus to science fiction rather than fantasy. Browne lost interest in the magazine as a result and the magazine generally ran poorer-quality fiction in the mid-1950s, under Browne and his successor, Paul W. Fairman. At the end of the 1950s, Cele Goldsmith took over as editor of both ''Fantastic'' and ''Amazing Stories'', and quickly invigorated the magazines, bringing in many new writers and making ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Phoenix (wargaming Magazine)
''Phoenix'' was a magazine primarily focussed on board wargames. It was published in the UK in the 1970s and 1980s by Simpubs Ltd., the British subsidiary of American game company Simulations Publications, Inc. (SPI). History In 1974, SPI started to ship some of their wargames to J.D. Bardsley in the UK, who acted as a sales representative using the name SP/UK. Bardsley sold the games either via mail order or face to face at games conventions. Sales increased rapidly, and by March 1976, SP/UK had sold 25,000 units. To handle the increased sales, SPI formed a formal British subsidiary, Simpubs Ltd. in June 1976. In much the same way that SPI published their own house magazine '' Moves'', Simpubs immediately created the bi-monthly periodical ''Phoenix'' with J.D. Bardsley as managing editor. In the first issue (June/July 1976), Bardsley editorialized that "''Phoenix'' is not envisaged as a 'house magazine'", and foresaw a publication of "game reviews, play strategy, game reports wi ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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The Game Of Planetary Assault
''The'' is a grammatical article in English, denoting nouns that are already or about to be mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The'' is the most frequently used word in the English language; studies and analyses of texts have found it to account for seven percent of all printed English-language words. It is derived from gendered articles in Old English which combined in Middle English and now has a single form used with nouns of any gender. The word can be used with both singular and plural nouns, and with a noun that starts with any letter. This is different from many other languages, which have different forms of the definite article for different genders or numbers. Pronunciation In most dialects, "the" is pronounced as (with the voiced dental fricative followed by a schwa) when followed by a consonant sound, and as (homophone of the archaic pronoun ''thee' ... [...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'', '' Illuminati'', 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, science fiction, and gothic horror. It also published the book ''Principia Discordia'', the sacred text of the Discordian ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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The Space Gamer
''The Space Gamer'' was a magazine dedicated to the subject of science fiction and fantasy board games and tabletop role-playing games. It quickly grew in importance and was an important and influential magazine in its subject matter from the late 1970s through the mid-1980s. The magazine is no longer published, but the rights holders maintain a web presence using its final title ''Space Gamer/Fantasy Gamer''. History ''The Space Gamer'' (''TSG'') started out as a digest quarterly publication of the brand new Metagaming Concepts company in March 1975. Howard M. Thompson, the owner of Metagaming and the first editor of the magazine, stated "The magazine had been planned for after our third or fourth game but circumstances demand we do it now" (after their first game, '' Stellar Conquest''). Initial issues were in a plain-paper digest format. By issue 17, it had grown to a full size bimonthly magazine, printed on slick paper. When Steve Jackson departed Metagaming to found h ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Star Frontiers
''Star Frontiers'' is a science fiction role-playing game produced by TSR from 1982 to 1985. The game offers a space opera action-adventure setting. Description ''Star Frontiers'' is a space opera role-playing game that is set near the center of a spiral galaxy (the setting does not specify whether the galaxy is our own Milky Way). A previously undiscovered quirk of the laws of physics allows starships to jump to "The Void", a hyperspatial realm that greatly shortens the travel times between inhabited worlds, once they reach 1% of the speed of light. Four races — Dralasite, Humans, Vrusk, and Yazirian — have independently discovered this way of travelling vast distances, and in "The Frontier Sector", they form the United Planetary Federation (UPF). A large number of the star systems shown on the map of the Frontier sector in the basic rulebook are unexplored and undetailed, allowing the gamemaster to put whatever they wish there. Players can take on any number of possibl ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Marvel Super Heroes (role-playing Game)
''Marvel Super Heroes'' (''MSH'') is a licensed role playing game set in the Marvel Universe, first published by TSR, Inc., TSR in 1984. The game lets players assume the roles of Marvel superheroes such as Spider-Man, Daredevil (Marvel Comics character), Daredevil, Hulk, Captain America, the Fantastic Four, and the X-Men. The game was designed to be easily understood, and this approach proved popular. TSR published an expanded edition, ''Marvel Super Heroes Advanced Set, Marvel Superheroes Advanced Game'' in 1986. System Attributes Players resolve most game situations by rolling percentile dice and comparing the results against a column of the colorful "Universal Results Table". The attribute (role-playing games), attribute used determines which column to use; different tasks map to different attributes. All characters have seven basic attributes: Fighting determines hit probability in and defense against hand-to-hand attacks. Agility determines hit probability in and defen ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |