Issaries, Inc. was a game publisher incorporated in

California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

in 1999 by Greg Stafford to control and manage products using Stafford's fictional world of

Glorantha Glorantha is a fantasy world created by Greg Stafford. Overview 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 ''RuneQ ...

. It partnered with

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

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 (game designer), Gre ...

'' trademarks from

Hasbro Hasbro, Inc. (; a syllabic abbreviation of its original name, Hassenfeld Brothers) is an American multinational corporation, multinational toy manufacturing and entertainment holding company founded on December 6, 1923 by Henry, Hillel and Herma ...

, 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

Greg Stafford founded Issaries as a company to hold on to the trademarks and copyrights for

after obtaining them from

Chaosium Chaosium Inc. ( ) is a publisher of tabletop role-playing games established by Greg Stafford (game designer), Greg Stafford in 1975. Chaosium's major titles include ''Call of Cthulhu (role-playing game), Call of Cthulhu'', based on the horror fic ...

. To deal with funding difficulties, Chaosium issued a press release in August 1997 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 design the new game, which became known as ''Hero Wars'', and was the first release 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'', is an adventure board game created by Milton Bradley Company, Milton Bradley in conjunction with the British company Games Workshop in 1989, and re-released in 2021. The game is loosely based around archetypes of fantasy role-pl ...

'' and Issaries published several supplements for the game. 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