Daedalus Entertainment was a Canadian game company that produced role-playing games and game supplements.
In the early 1990s, while Jose Garcia was working in a video store in Toronto, he decided to start a games company. He talked to Peter Adkison and John Nephew about the games market, and attended the GAMA trade show to learn more. With his sister Maria, Garcia then set up Daedelus Games. [1] Robin Laws approached Garcia in 1993 with an idea for a Hong Kong Action Cinema RPG; Garcia liked the idea, but the role-playing game Nexus: The Infinite City was his first priority, and was published in 1994 with Garcia as the main designer and developer, with Laws, Bruce Baugh, and Rob Heinsoo as additional authors. [2] : 256
Daedalus Games was incorporated as Daedalus Entertainment in preparation for publishing the Hong Kong action game Laws had intended, but Garcia liked the setting that Laws was working on and decided to use it as a basis of a collectible card game (CCG) to take advantage of what seemed to be the strong (CCG) market. Daedalus published this CCG as Shadowfist (1995). [2] : 256 Daedalus Entertainment also published the role-playing game Feng Shui (1996), designed by Laws using a variant of the Nexus game system; Laws also designed supplements for Feng Shui. [2] : 256
Stephan Michael Sechi licensed Daedalus to publish the 4th edition of the role-playing game Talislanta , for which Laws would create the rules. [3] However, that project was never completed. When the CCG market crashed in 1997, Daedelus was left financially overextended due to their investment in Shadowfist cards. The staff of Daedalus, including Laws, were laid off or quit, leaving Garcia and his sister Maria as the only people working for the company. [2] : 256 Daedalus filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, and when the company sold off a few of its properties a few years later, Feng Shui went to Laws. [2] : 256
John Wick is an American role-playing game designer best known for his creative contributions to the tabletop role playing games Legend of the Five Rings and 7th Sea. He self-published Orkworld under the Wicked Press banner, and later co-founded the Wicked Dead Brewing Company with Jared Sorensen. His games under that company include Cat, Schauermärchen, Enemy Gods, and Thirty. He has won the Origins Award for Best Role-Playing Game and Best Collectible Card Game twice.
Robin D. Laws 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.
Feng Shui is a martial arts-themed role-playing game, designed by Robin Laws, published first by Daedalus Entertainment and now by Atlas Games. The game shares its setting with the collectible card game Shadowfist. The system is simple, with most detail being in the game's combat system. Combat is made to flow quickly, moving from one action scene to another very quickly. It was inspired and based on Hong Kong style action movies. The characters begin at a high level of skill, as appropriate for protagonists in the source films.
Green Ronin Publishing is an American company based in Seattle, Washington. Founded in 2000 by Chris Pramas and Nicole Lindroos, they have published several role-playing game–related products. They won several awards for their games including multiple Origins, ENnie, Pen & Paper, and Inquest Fan Awards.
Shadowfist is a card game created by Robin Laws and Jose Garcia. It was released in June 1995 as a collectible card game (CCG), but was shifted to a fixed distribution of cards as of 2013. It shares the same background as Feng Shui, a role-playing game created by Laws and Garcia and released the following year. In September 2018 ownership of Shadowfist transferred to Vetusta Games.
Fantasy Flight Games (FFG) is a game developer based in Roseville, Minnesota, United States, that creates and publishes role-playing, board, card, and dice games. As of 2014, it is a division of Asmodee North America.
Rob Heinsoo is an American tabletop game designer. He has been designing and contributing to professional role-playing games, card games, and board games since 1994. Heinsoo was the lead designer on the 4th Edition of Dungeons & Dragons (2008), and is co-designer of the 13th Age roleplaying game along with Jonathan Tweet. He has also designed and contributed to role playing, miniatures and card games, and a computer game.
Greg Stolze is an American game designer, writer and novelist, whose work has mainly focused on writing for role-playing games and related intellectual properties.
John Scott Tynes is an American writer best known for his work on role-playing games such as Unknown Armies, Delta Green, Puppetland, and for his company, Tynes Cowan Corporation. Under its imprint, Pagan Publishing, Tynes Cowan Corp. produces third-party books for the Call of Cthulhu role-playing game under license from Chaosium as well as fiction and non-fiction books under its imprint, Armitage House.
Mark Poole is an American fantasy artist, best known for working on the first set of Magic: the Gathering cards.
Z-Man Games is an American board game company, incorporated in 1999. It was named after its founder, Zev Shlasinger. The company is known for their Pandemic series of board games, as well as being the sole publisher for the English editions of popular Eurogames, such as Carcassonne and Terra Mystica.
Chris Pramas is an American game designer and writer, as well as a founder of Green Ronin Publishing. He is best known as the designer of the Dragon Age RPG, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, and Freeport: The City of Adventure.
Nexus: the Infinite City is a role-playing game published by Canadian publisher Daedalus Games in 1994 that is set in a meta-city made up of chunks of various realities of the megaverse.
Kowloon's Gate is a 1997 adventure video game published by Sony Music Entertainment. It was released for the PlayStation in Japan, but not in other regions.
A collectible card game (CCG), also called a trading card game (TCG) among other names, is a type of card game that mixes strategic deck building elements with features of trading cards. It was introduced with Magic: The Gathering in 1993.
Bard Games was an American game company that produced role-playing games and game supplements.
Jose Garcia is a game designer who has worked primarily on role-playing games.
Gareth-Michael Skarka is an author and game designer who founded Adamant Entertainment and has worked primarily on e-published role-playing games.
Bruce Baugh is a game designer who has worked primarily on role-playing games.
Blood of the Valiant is a 1998 role-playing game supplement for Feng Shui published by Ronin Publishing.