That History Book

[shannon_a]

With April closing up, I'm thinking increasingly about the RPG history book, and how I'm going to make sure I finish it up in time. This weekend I'm going to be finishing up my other big RPG project, an elf book for Mongoose (which has about 18,000 words of formatting and editing left), and afterward the history book becomes my only freelance project (thankfully). I'll then have three months to finish it, as my publisher says she needs all the text by the start of August to get the book out for Thanksgiving, like we wanted.

Though I didn't exactly intend it, this month I wrote all about really old-school companies:

1. Avalon Hill (1958-1999)
2. TSR (1973-1997)
3. Fantasy Games Unlimited (1975-1998)
4. Games Workshop (1975-Present)
5. SPI (1969-1982)
6. Yaquinto (1979-1983)

They varied widely in size from 900 words on Yaquinto (which I just wrote) to 16,000 words on TSR (which needs some expansion). I actually hit another very old company, Flying Buffalo in the last week in March, meaning I've been in the 1970s and 1980s for a while now.

I've got my remaining articles split primarily into two categories. First there are the mid-age companies who weren't in the RPG field from the start, but were around for quite a time. They are:

• West End Games
• Palladium Games
• R. Talsorian Games
• Mayfair Games

Then there are the new-school, d20 companies that I've decided to cover:

• Green Ronin
• Goodman Games
• Mongoose Publishing

. I was originally planning to hit the mid-age companies in May, the d20 companies in June, then do my final editing in July, but given that the mid-age companies will generally be hard and the newer companies much easier, I should probably mix them up.

I'm hoping to have more time for both history and relaxing starting next week, when I have one fewer project on my desk.

Comments

[cwricheson.livejournal.com]

Very cool, Shannon! I'm looking forward to the West End and Palladium articles in particular, both companies that have interesting histories from what little I've heard.