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Torg
''Torg'' is a cinematic cross-genre tabletop role-playing game created by Greg Gorden and Bill Slavicsek, with art by Daniel Horne. It was first published by West End Games (WEG) in 1990. Game resolution uses a single twenty-sided die, ''drama cards'' and a logarithmic results table, which later formed the basis for WEG's 1992 sci-fi RPG '' Shatterzone'' and 1994 universal RPG '' Masterbook''. WEG produced over fifty supplements, novels and comics for the first edition. A revised and expanded core rule book was produced in 2005, with a single adventure. After WEG closed in 2010, ''Torg'' was sold to Ulisses Spiele, who, after a successful crowdfunding campaign, published a new edition called ''Torg: Eternity'' in 2018. Overview ''Torg'' takes place in a near future setting, known officially as "the near now". At the starting point in the game setting, Earth has been subjected to an inter-dimensional invasion by a series of "High Lords", who have changed the natural laws of ...
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West End Games
West End Games (WEG) was a company that made board, role-playing, and war games. It was founded by Daniel Scott Palter in 1974 in New York City, but later moved to Honesdale, Pennsylvania. Its product lines included ''Star Wars'', ''Paranoia'', '' Torg'', ''DC Universe'', and '' Junta''. History Scott Palter received a JD from Stanford in 1972 and joined the New York State Bar before he began work at the family firm, Bucci Imports. Drawing on this financial connection, Palter was able to found West End Games, named after the bar in which the meeting that finalized its founding occurred: the West End Bar near Columbia University. Initially a producer of board wargames, In 1983, Palter hired Ken Rolston, Eric Goldberg and Greg Costikyan as game designers, and WEG's focus turned away from traditional wargames. Costikyan's 1983 game '' Bug-Eyed Monsters'' brought WEG into the science-fiction and fantasy genres. Then Costikyan and Goldberg brought Palter a manuscript fo ...
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Bill Slavicsek
Bill Slavicsek (born October 6, 1971) is an American game designer and writer who served as the Director of Roleplaying Design and Development at Wizards of the Coast. He previously worked for West End Games and TSR, Inc., and designed products for ''Dungeons & Dragons'', ''Star Wars'', ''Alternity'', '' Torg'', ''Paranoia'' and ''Ghostbusters''. Biography Early life Bill Slavicsek was born and raised in New York City. Slavicsek was a comic book, horror, and science fiction fan as a boy: "Some of my earliest memories involve looking at issues of Marvel Comics, drawing my own comics, and watching old SF and horror movies on TV". Interested in gaming from an early age, Slavicsek was introduced to role-playing games in 1977 when he discovered ''Dungeons & Dragons''. Originally intending to pursue a career as a comic book artist, Slavicsek switched to journalism and communication at St. John's University. West End Games After working for a year at a community newspaper, Slavicsek w ...
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Greg Gorden
Greg Gorden is an American game designer who has worked primarily on role-playing games. Career Greg Gorden has worked for several gaming companies: * For Victory Games he participated, during the early 1980s, in the design of the '' James Bond 007'' role-playing game (1983). * For Mayfair Games he was in 1985 the main designer on the ''DC Heroes'' role-playing game. Also for Mayfair Games, partnering with White Wolf, he designed ''D.O.A.'', but the game was not published. * For West End Games Gorden brought help to Greg Costikyan and the WEG team in the design of all the editions of '' Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game'' (1987, 1992 and 1996). For the same game, in the supplements' list, he was the main author of ''The Star Wars Rules Companion'' (1989) and the ''Imperial Sourcebook'' (First Edition: 1989, Second Edition: 1994Greg Gorden, ''Imperial Sourcebook, Second Edition'', West End Games, New York, June 1994, Editor: Bill Smith, Hardcover, p. 144, ). Also for West End Games ...
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Tabletop Role-playing Game
A tabletop role-playing game (TTRPG or TRPG), also known as a pen-and-paper role-playing game, is a kind of role-playing game (RPG) in which the participants describe their characters' actions through speech and sometimes movements. Participants determine the actions of their characters based on their characterization, and the actions succeed or fail according to a set role-playing game system, formal system of rules and guidelines, usually involving randomization (such as through dice). Within the rules, players have the freedom to improvisation, improvise, and their choices shape the direction and outcome of the game. Neither pen and paper nor a table are strictly necessary for a game to count as a TTRPG; rather, the terms ''pen-and-paper'' and ''tabletop'' are typically used to distinguish this format of RPG from role-playing video games or live action role-playing games. Online play of TTRPGs through videoconferencing has become common since the COVID-19 pandemic. Some common e ...
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Shatterzone
''Shatterzone'' is a space opera role-playing game by West End Games. The game went out of print in 1997 after the company went bankrupt. The game is now back in print, owned and published by Precis Intermedia. The universe of ''Shatterzone'' shares some structural similarities to the ''Star Wars'' expanded universe including an intergalactic government called the Consortium (like the Republic from ''Star Wars'') run from a central region of space known as the Core Worlds, large megacorps that run galactic affairs (a theme common in the cyberpunk genre of storytelling), and a super-industrialized capital world, called Centaurus, but similar to ''Star Wars Coruscant. Likewise, there is a sentiment of xenophobia in the setting similar to that of the Empire in ''Star Wars''. Humans, Glahns, and Ishantras, the three ruling races of the Consortium and a few others are given full citizen status while other races suffer under prejudice and second-class-citizenship. In an interview ...
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Cairo
Cairo ( ; , ) is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Egypt and the Cairo Governorate, being home to more than 10 million people. It is also part of the List of urban agglomerations in Africa, largest urban agglomeration in Africa, List of largest cities in the Arab world, the Arab world, and List of largest metropolitan areas of the Middle East, the Middle East. The Greater Cairo metropolitan area is List of largest cities, one of the largest in the world by population with over 22.1 million people. The area that would become Cairo was part of ancient Egypt, as the Giza pyramid complex and the ancient cities of Memphis, Egypt, Memphis and Heliopolis (ancient Egypt), Heliopolis are near-by. Located near the Nile Delta, the predecessor settlement was Fustat following the Muslim conquest of Egypt in 641 next to an existing ancient Roman empire, Roman fortress, Babylon Fortress, Babylon. Subsequently, Cairo was founded by the Fatimid Caliphate, Fatimid dynasty in 969. It ...
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Player Characters
A player character (also known as a playable character or PC) is a fictional character in a video game or tabletop role-playing game whose actions are controlled by a player rather than the rules of the game. The characters that are not controlled by a player are called non-player characters (NPCs). The actions of non-player characters are typically handled by the game itself in video games, or according to rules followed by a gamemaster refereeing tabletop role-playing games. The player character functions as a fictional, alternate body for the player controlling the character. Video games typically have one player character for each person playing the game. Some games, such as multiplayer online battle arena, hero shooter, and fighting games, offer a group of player characters for the player to choose from, allowing the player to control one of them at a time. Where more than one player character is available, the characters may have distinctive abilities and differing style ...
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Lost World (genre)
The lost world is a subgenre of the fantasy or science fiction genres that involves the discovery of an unknown Earth civilization. It began as a subgenre of the late- Victorian adventure romance and remains popular into the 21st century. The genre arose during an era when Western archaeologists discovered and studied civilizations around the world previously unknown to them, through disciplines such as Egyptology, Assyriology, or Mesoamerican studies. Thus, real stories of archaeological finds inspired writings on the topic. Between 1871 and the First World War, the number of published lost world narratives, set in every continent, increased significantly. The genre has similar themes to "mythical kingdoms", such as Atlantis and El Dorado. History '' King Solomon's Mines'' (1885) by H. Rider Haggard is sometimes considered the first lost world narrative. Haggard's novel shaped the form and influenced later lost world narratives, including Rudyard Kipling's '' The Man Who ...
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Pulp Magazine
Pulp magazines (also referred to as "the pulps") were inexpensive fiction magazines that were published from 1896 until around 1955. The term "pulp" derives from the Pulp (paper), wood pulp paper on which the magazines were printed, due to their cheap nature. In contrast, magazines printed on higher-quality paper were called "glossies" or "slicks". The typical pulp magazine had 128 pages; it was wide by high, and thick, with ragged, untrimmed edges. Pulps were the successors to the penny dreadfuls, dime novels, and short-fiction magazines of the 19th century. Although many respected writers wrote for pulps, the magazines were best known for their lurid, exploitation fiction, exploitative, and sensational subject matter, even though this was but a small part of what existed in the pulps. Digest magazines and men's adventure magazines were incorrectly regarded as pulps, though they have different editorial and production standards and are instead replacements. Modern superhero Su ...
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Ancient Egypt
Ancient Egypt () was a cradle of civilization concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile River in Northeast Africa. It emerged from prehistoric Egypt around 3150BC (according to conventional Egyptian chronology), when Upper and Lower Egypt were amalgamated by Menes, who is believed by the majority of List of Egyptologists, Egyptologists to have been the same person as Narmer. The history of ancient Egypt unfolded as a series of stable kingdoms interspersed by the "Periodization of ancient Egypt, Intermediate Periods" of relative instability. These stable kingdoms existed in one of three periods: the Old Kingdom of Egypt, Old Kingdom of the Early Bronze Age; the Middle Kingdom of Egypt, Middle Kingdom of the Middle Bronze Age; or the New Kingdom of Egypt, New Kingdom of the Late Bronze Age. The pinnacle of ancient Egyptian power was achieved during the New Kingdom, which extended its rule to much of Nubia and a considerable portion of the Levant. After this period, Egypt ...
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Scandinavia
Scandinavia is a subregion#Europe, subregion of northern Europe, with strong historical, cultural, and linguistic ties between its constituent peoples. ''Scandinavia'' most commonly refers to Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. It can sometimes also refer to the Scandinavian Peninsula (which excludes Denmark but includes a part of northern Finland). In English usage, Scandinavia is sometimes used as a synonym for Nordic countries. Iceland and the Faroe Islands are sometimes included in Scandinavia for their Ethnolinguistics, ethnolinguistic relations with Sweden, Norway and Denmark. While Finland differs from other Nordic countries in this respect, some authors call it Scandinavian due to its economic and cultural similarities. The geography of the region is varied, from the Norwegian fjords in the west and Scandinavian mountains covering parts of Norway and Sweden, to the low and flat areas of Denmark in the south, as well as archipelagos and lakes in the east. Most of the population ...
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Fantasy Fiction
Fantasy is a genre of speculative fiction that involves supernatural or Magic (supernatural), magical elements, often including Fictional universe, imaginary places and Legendary creature, creatures. The genre's roots lie in oral traditions, which later became fantasy literature, fantasy literature and drama. From the twentieth century onward, it has expanded into various media, including film, television, graphic novels, manga, animation, and video games. The expression ''fantastic literature'' is often used for this genre by Anglophone literary critics. An archaic spelling for the term is ''phantasy''. Fantasy is generally distinguished from the genres of science fiction and horror fiction, horror by an absence of scientific or macabre themes, although these can occur in fantasy. In popular culture, the fantasy genre predominantly features settings that reflect the actual Earth, but with some sense of otherness. Characteristics Many works of fantasy use magic (paranorma ...
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