Who We Are
We are a small-press publisher currently focusing on support of Labyrinth Lord™, OSRIC™, and GORE™. We will begin support for Mutant Future™ following its release in the summer of 2008. These systems have (or will have, in the case of Mutant Future™) free non-exclusive licenses for third-party publishers to create compatible products. The basis of these game systems is described in more detail below, but very quickly each system seeks to reproduce game rules from the following systems:
OSRIC™ emulates game rules from advanced first edition fantasy games (1e) of the 80s.
GORE™ emulates popular percentile-based systems from the 80s through the present day.
Labyrinth Lord™ gets "back to the basics" by emulating game rules from simple fantasy games of the late 70s and early 80s.
Mutant Future™ is based on the Labyrinth Lord system, but is retooled in the spirit of classic nuclear post-apocalypse science fantasy games.
What is a Retro-Clone Game System?
If we speak in terms more common to video games, retro-clone systems are essentially system emulators. The systems mentioned above are produced under the Open Game License (OGL) and use Open Game Content (OGC) heavily for text, and probably most importantly, to make reference to a compilation of terms provided by OGC under the OGL for the express purpose of making legal derivitive works.
What we have then are game systems that take material and terms from OGC and combine them with game algorithms from other systems in such a way to create a "system emulator" of the original system, but without infringing on the copyright of the owners of the original system. Game rules, or algorithms, may not be copyrighted.
The primary goal of retro-clone game systems is to provide a basis for publishers to create game materials for out of print game systems. Effectively, these efforts make the algorithms themselves in print again. Another significant goal of the retro-clone systems mentioned above to to create "brand recognition." Each game emulates the system of another game, but provides new presentation of those rules. Due to the terms of the OGL, no publisher may indicate that their product is compatible with another trademark product without express permission by the trademark holder. So, OSRIC™, GORE™, and Labyrinth Lord™ serve as trademarks for which express permission has been given by the trademark owners for use by third-party publishers (if they follow certain criteria, which are a little different for each license). It is hoped that a community of game players will recognize and support the systems for what they are, and brand recognition can be built so that when someone sees a reference to OSRIC™, for instance, she or he understands that OSRIC™ also means compatibility with advanced fantasy (1e) games.
Latest News
02/16/08
Mutant Future in playtest! Check out our forums for details!
Our publishing partners
