Fantasy Games Unlimited
Fantasy Games Unlimited, often referred to as just FGU, is a role-playing game company which, though technically still in existence, was mostly active during the late 1970s and 1980s.
Founded in 1975 by Scott Bizar, the company's first publications were the wargames Gladiators and Royal Armies of the Hyborean Age. Upon the sudden appearance and massive popularity of Dungeons & Dragons from TSR, the company turned its attentions to role-playing games, seeking out and producing systems created by amateurs and freelancers. Rather than focusing on any one line and supporting it with subsequent supplements, FGU instead produced a continuous stream of new games. In its time, FGU published dozens of different role-playing games, more than any other company.
A reasonable generalization of the games produced by FGU would be to say that most were clearly derivative of more popular designs produced by other comapanies (usually TSR), made distinctive only by being inevitably more detailed and complicated. For instance, FGU's Aftermath! vs TSR's Gamma World or FGU's Space Opera vs GDW'sTraveller. However, FGU also produced many unique games, some of which were very elegent and unusual, such as Starships & Spacemen, possibly the first Star Trek inspired role-playing game, Odyseuss, an rpg of epic Homeric Greek adventures, Bushido, the first RPG set in medieval Japan, and Bunnies and Burrows, a game about semi-intelligent rabbits inspired by the novel Watership Down. Despite (or perhaps because of) their complexity, many FGU games are remembered with affection and still played with enthusiasm by many old fans.
Though FGU stopped publishing in 1987, the company still officially exists and maintains copyright over its titles. FGU has been very vigorous in defending any perceived threat to its intellectual property, sometimes taking what many consider to be unjustified umbrage at other publishers for even barely perceptible infringements. For instance, FGU has twice threatened legal action when other companies publishined role-playing games with the term "Space Opera" in the titles, even though the term predates FGU's game as a genre label by several decades. FGU has also earned a bad reputation for holding their games in limbo, replying to requests from new companies even for simple reprint rights with demands for exorbitant liscening fees.
Publications
- Aftermath!
- Bushido
- Bunnies and Burrows
- Chivalry & Sorcery (1st & 2nd editions)
- Daredevils
- Down Styphon
- Fire, Hack & Run
- Flash Gordon & the Warriors of Mongo
- Flashing Blades
- Frederick the Great
- Freedom Fighters
- Gangster!
- Gladiators
- Land of the Rising Sun
- Lands of Adventure
- Merc
- Odysseus
- Other Suns
- Privateers & Gentlemen
- Psi World
- Royal Armies of the Hyborean Age
- Skull & Crossbones
- Space Opera
- Star Explorer
- Starships & Spacemen
- Swordbearer
- Tyrannosaurus wrecks
- Villains & Vigilantes
- Wargaming magazine
- Wild West
- Wizards' World
- Year of the Phoenix
External links
- interview of Scott Bizar.
- FGU website : mirror page before the closing of the official site.
- www.fantasygamesunlimited.net : NEW official site - online and active July 2006.fr:Fantasy Games Unlimited
