Designers & Dragons: The Lost Histories is Feature-Complete

Five years and one month ago, I sat down at my computer with a simple goal: expand Designers & Dragons with new histories. On the one hand, I wanted to write some of the “lost histories” that I’d played around with following the publication of Designers & Dragons 2e, but never had the time to fully write up. On the other hand, I wanted to cover the ’10s, a decade that had just ended at the time.

A funny thing happened along the way. I wrote This is Free Trader Beowulf (2024), my system history of Traveller, now available from Mongoose; I revised 200+ of my DnDClassic product histories to produce a four-book series on OD&D, BD&D, and AD&D 1e, which is in editorial at Evil Hat as Designers & Dragons Origins; and I finally wrote my Elf Pack on the Gloranthan Aldryami, which is now in the RuneQuest queue at Chaosium. But in the process, I also put together 398,000 words of new company histories, intended to be published as Designers & Dragons: The Lost Histories I, Designers & Dragons: The Lost Histories II, and Designers & Dragons: The ’10s. (The last could easily be two volumes as well, as it’s going extra length to offer a comparative amount of content to each of the other decades, now extended with Lost Histories content.) That represents the full set of companies that I plan to talk about in the new books. So, they’re now feature-complete.

This isn’t the end: it’s just the first major milestone. I need to next figure out my organizational structure for each of the books, as all of the Designers & Dragons 2e books have chapters that contain several related company histories. Then I need to update every Lost History to 2025, as some were written up to five years ago, and particularly for the content of The ’10s, plenty has been going on. Finally, I’ll need to do a final edit to get the books and their interlinks as tight and consistent as possible. But the goal is to meet those additional milestones by the end of the year.

Doing this work raised some questions about what to do with the existing Designers & Dragons 2e histories since they’re now 10+ years out of date and several years out of print (physically). No plan survives first contact with the enemy (publication!), but our current plan is this: put out the three volumes of Lost Histories and The ’10s as PDF + POD releases, mainly as a thank-you to extant readers who want to complete out their set. I’m hoping that’ll be next year. Then start in on work on a massive update of everything to a third-edition, with all the older histories to some extent re-sourced and re-written, and definitely updated. I told Evil Hat that’s at least a couple of years of work. Hopefully we’ll get lots of new readers in for that new edition, which I’m tongue-in-cheek calling the Encylopedia RPGica.

We’ll see how it all shakes out.

In the meantime, here’s the new histories you’ll see in the Lost Histories + The ’10s when they appear. (As always, years are year of first roleplaying publication, an artifact that made sense to me, but has caused confusion over the years and will probably disappear down the road when 3e appears.)

Lost Histories: The 1970s

1. Balboa Game Company (1975)
2. Ral Partha Enterprises (1975)
3. Wee Warriors (1975)
4. Grenadier Models (1976)
5. Little Soldier Games (1976)
6. Tyr Gamemakers (1977)
7. Phoenix Games (1978)
8. Martian Metals (1978)
9. Rider Fantasy Creations (1978)
10. Fantasy Art Enterprises (1978)
11. Ragnarok Enterprises (1979)

Lost Histories: The 1980s

1. Timeline Ltd. (1980)
2. Paranoia Press (1980)
3. Adventure Games (1981)
4. The Armory (1981)
5. The Companions (1981)
6. Games of Fashan (1981)
7. High Passage Group (1981)
8. Patrick Stephens Limited (1981)
9. Reston Publishing (1981)
10. Tri Tac (1982)
11. BTRC (1987)
12. Reaching Moon Megacorp (1989)

Lost Histories: The 1990s

1. Marquee Press (1990)
2. Shield Games (1990)
3. Non Sequitur (1991)
4. Pariah Press (1993)
5. Biohazard Games (1995)
6. Scapegoat Games (1995)
7. Wingnut Games (1995)
8. Archangel Entertainment (1997)
9. Dynasty Presentations (1998)
10. Brittania Game Designs (1998)
11. Moon Design Publications (1999)
12. Obsidian Studios (1999)

Lost Histories: The 2000s

1. Malhavoc Press (2001)
2. QuickLink Interactive (2001)
3. Savage Mojo (2003)
4. Firefly Games (2006)
5. First Edition Society (2006)
6. Goblinoid Games (2006)
7. Pied Piper Publishing (2006)
8. Samardan Press (2006)
9. Rogue Games (2007)
10. Mythmere Games (2008)
11. Black Blade Publishing (2009)
12. Buried without Ceremony (2009)

New Histories: The 2010s

1. Frog God Games (2010)
2. North Wind Adventures (2010)
3. Sine Nomine Publishing (2010)
4. Nocturnal Media (2010)
5. Independence Games (2011)
6. Sage Kobold (2011)
7. Magpie Games (2012)
8. Modiphius Entertainment (2012)
9. Necrotic Gnome (2012)
10. Onyx Path (2012)
11. Monte Cook Games (2013)
12. Järnrïngen (2015)
13. Fria Ligan (2014)
14. Critical Role Productions (2015)
15. Schwalb Entertainment (2015)
16. Ulisses (2016)
17. The Arcane Library (2017)
18. Darker Hue Studios (2017)
19. Grim & Perilous Studios (2017)
20. River Horse (2017)
21. Riotminds (2017)
22. Rowan, Rook, and Decard (2017)
23. Helmgast (2018)
24. Hit Point Press (2018)
25. MCDM Productions (2018)
26. Renegade Game Studios (2018)
27. Tuesday Knight Games (2018)

There’s some chance that I’ll add a history or two to The ’10s, depending on what happens in revision. Basically, I want 180,000 words or so for The ’10s, which will roughly equal the content of each other decade (adding together the original histories and the Lost Histories) and I’m at 156,000 words for The ’10s at the moment. My guess is that I’ll make up the difference when I update everything to 2025, but if not, the next few companies that didn’t quite make my cut-off for The ’10s step up.

For now I have 74 new company histories, to add to the 82 (I think) from the original. That’s 156 company histories for the final iteration of Designers & Dragons 2e.