The Oracle: Magazine of Fantasy Gaming was a magazine published by Horizon International, Inc.
The Oracle was an amateur or semi-professional magazine that focused on fantasy role-playing games. [1] The magazine published one year, between 1982 and 1983.
The first issue appeared in July 1982. [2] The founder was a teenager and the magazine was based in Salt Lake, Utah. [3] It ceased publication in 1983. [3]
Ian L. Straus reviewed The Oracle in The Space Gamer No. 63. [1] Straus commented that "It had impressive graphics and artwork and competent editing, which made it superior to most amateur 'zines. Much of the artwork consisted of excellent reproduction of photographs. Some of the content was done by well-known professionals in the hobby [...] To sum it up: bad management and no marketing judgement." [1]
A play-by-mail game is a game played through postal mail, email, or other digital media. Correspondence chess and Go were among the first PBM games. Diplomacy has been played by mail since 1963, introducing a multi-player aspect to PBM games. Flying Buffalo Inc. pioneered the first commercially available PBM game in 1970. A small number of PBM companies followed in the 1970s, with an explosion of hundreds of startup PBM companies in the 1980s at the peak of PBM gaming popularity, many of them small hobby companies—more than 90 percent of which eventually folded. A number of independent PBM magazines also started in the 1980s, including The Nuts & Bolts of PBM, Gaming Universal, Paper Mayhem and Flagship. These magazines eventually went out of print, replaced in the 21st century by the online PBM journal Suspense and Decision.
Fighting Fantasy is a series of single-player role-playing gamebooks created by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone. The first volume in the series was published in paperback by Puffin in 1982.
Games Workshop Group is a British manufacturer of miniature wargames, based in Nottingham, England. Its best-known products are Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000.
Crash, stylized as CRASH, is a magazine dedicated to the ZX Spectrum home computer, primarily focused on games. It was published from 1984 to 1991 by Newsfield Publications Ltd until their liquidation, and then until 1992 by Europress. It was relaunched as a quarterly A5 magazine in December 2020 with the backing of the original founders.
Ares was an American science fiction wargame magazine published by Simulations Publications, Inc. (SPI), and then TSR, Inc., between 1980 and 1984. In addition to the articles, each issue contained a small science-fiction-themed board wargame.
The Space Gamer was a magazine dedicated to the subject of science fiction and fantasy board games and tabletop role-playing games. It quickly grew in importance and was an important and influential magazine in its subject matter from the late 1970s through the mid-1980s. The magazine is no longer published, but the rights holders maintain a web presence using its final title Space Gamer/Fantasy Gamer.
Metagaming Concepts, later known simply as Metagaming, was a company that published board games from 1974 to 1983. It was founded and owned by Howard Thompson, who designed the company's first game, Stellar Conquest. The company also invented Microgames and published Steve Jackson's first designs, including Ogre, G.E.V. and The Fantasy Trip.
Grenadier Models Inc. of Springfield, Pennsylvania produced lead miniature figures for wargames and role-playing games with fantasy, science fiction and heroic themes between 1975 and 1996. Grenadier Models Inc. is best known for their figures for TSR, Inc.'s Advanced Dungeons & Dragons game, collectible Dragon-of-the-Month and Giants Club figures, and their marketing of paint and miniature sets through traditional retail outlets.
Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective is a game originally published by Sleuth Publications in 1981. Multiple expansions and reprints of the game have since been released.
Bushido is a Samurai role-playing game set in Feudal Japan, originally designed by Robert N. Charrette and Paul R. Hume and published originally by Tyr Games, then Phoenix Games, and subsequently by Fantasy Games Unlimited. The setting for the game is a land called Nippon, and characters adventure in this heroic, mythic, and fantastic analogue of Japan's past.
Ian Marsh is a British writer, magazine editor, and entrepreneur.
The Warlock of Firetop Mountain is an action game published by Crystal Computing in 1984 for the ZX Spectrum home computer. It is loosely based on the adventure gamebook of the same name written by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone, and published by Puffin Books in 1982.
House on Hangman's Hill is an adventure for fantasy role-playing games published by Judges Guild in 1981.
The Tower of Indomitable Circumstance is a 1981 fantasy role-playing game adventure published by Judges Guild.
Heroic Fantasy is a computer-moderated, dungeon crawl play-by-mail game. It has been active since 1982 when it was published by Flying Buffalo. The initial edition involved nine dungeon levels. Flying Buffalo published subsequent editions due to challenging gameplay initially, eventually limiting the game to four dungeon levels with a fifth outdoors level where players can assemble an army and capture one or more castles. The game is open-ended; gameplay continues until players decide to stop.
The Compleat Alchemist is a generic role-playing game supplement first published by Bard Games in 1982.
DragonLords, subtitled "Yet Another Fantasy & Sci-Fi Roleplaying Magazine", is a British role-playing game fanzine from the late 1970s and early 1980s. Self-published originally by Marc Gascoigne, Mike Lewis, and Ian Marsh, DragonLords produced 22 issues from c. 1978 to 1985.
Dicing with Dragons is a book written by Ian Livingstone and published by Routledge & Kegan Paul in 1982 that explains what role-playing games are.
Star Explorer is a science fiction-themed board game published by Fantasy Games Unlimited in 1982.