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Who are we? |
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| What do we do? | |
| Phalanx
Games Design has been designing role playing games and supplements for
the discerning public since 1977 or so – in the sense that its CEO,
CFO, Chief Cook and Bottlewasher, and Head Designer, Phil McGregor, has
been designing them since then. |
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| Who is this guy? | |
| My first
game design project was to luck into a chance at assisting in the design
of the well known (if you’re old enough) SF role playing game, Space
Opera, from Fantasy Games Unlimited. The project was co-ordinated by Ed
Simbalist (author of Chivalry and Sorcery) and Mark Ratner and I
assisted him. |
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| What has he done? | |
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The
next several projects I had a hand in were also for FGU – a couple of
Staratlases and an adventure for Space Opera, a supplement for Chivalry
and Sorcery and two Campaign Packs for Aftermath. At
the time FGU more or less self-destructed (it’s a long story), I was
working on a historical background supplement for Chivalry and Sorcery
based on Republican and Imperial Rome, tentatively entitled SPQR (“Senatus
Populusque Romanus” = Senate and People of Rome). Since
then the main project that I was involved in that has been published was
Rigger Black Book #1 for FASA – which was fun. However, the subsequent
RBBs have virtually nothing I wrote included in them – mainly because
of the changed rule systems. When
Chivalry & Sorcery 3rd Edition was released by Highlander Games, I
was asked to redo SPQR for the new game system and had done so just
about the time that Highlander also self-destructed. With the appearance of Chivalry & Sorcery: The Rebirth (effectively Chivalry & Sorcery 4th Edition) the folks at Britannia Games approached me to rewrite SPQR for the new edition – and, at present, they have the completed first draft of the manuscript (and have had for a couple of years) and it is being desultorily proof-read and playtested. The
Secret Service Connection
Somewhere
in there, I had submitted a proposal for a Cliffhangers campaign
supplement to Steve Jackson Games, and I received a letter from them
saying that a contract would follow “in a few days” … dated,
literally, less than a week before they were raided by the US Secret
Service. That disaster caused them to reassess their publication policy
and they decided that they didn’t make enough money out of adventures
… so there went my chance at doing work for SJG! |
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| Recent Developments | |
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Still,
I tried again with an early version of what finally developed into Road
to Armageddon,
but, sadly,
they also decided that it didn’t meet their requirements either. One
of these days I’ll try again with something they’ll consider to be
more mainstream and, who knows, maybe I’ll get lucky? Anyway,
not giving up on Armageddon, I eventually added a lot of material and
worked up my own game system – Standard Roleplaying – and for the
last several years it has been available through Hyperbooks ( www.hyperbooks.com)
as an eBook. The
very latest
However, most recently, the publication (in eBook form) of EABA by Greg Porter of BTRC (which I had a small hand in playtesting) impressed me so much with the simplicity and expansiveness of the system that I abandoned a complete update of Armageddon to completely rewrite the core elements of the game to work with the EABA rules as Road to Armageddon. |
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| mailto: aspqrz@pacific.net.au | |
