Curated playlist
Origins Award winners
- Sid Meier's Gettysburg!Firaxis Games made its very first game about the Civil War's bloodiest battle, Gettysburg. It came out in 1997.
- Star Wars: X-Wing (video game)Star Wars: X-Wing sold out its first 100,000 copies before the weekend was over.
- Star Wars: The Roleplaying GameLucasfilm sent author Timothy Zahn a box of Star Wars game books and told him to treat them as canon.
- Dungeons & DragonsDungeons & Dragons got its name from a two-year-old girl. Gary Gygax's daughter Cindy picked it from a list of options.
- Monster ManualGary Gygax wrote every entry in the 1977 Monster Manual, a 108-page book of more than 350 monsters.
- Forgotten RealmsUntil 2000, the Forgotten Realms logo hid tiny runic letters. They read "Herein lie the lost lands."
- Birthright (campaign setting)Birthright asked Dungeons and Dragons players to rule a nation. Earlier settings sent heroes adventuring through one.
- RavenloftIn the D&D setting Ravenloft, each domain traps its ruler behind mist they can never cross.
- Final Fantasy VIIFinal Fantasy VII skipped the Nintendo 64 after one big enemy slowed it down.
- Dragon (magazine)Dragon magazine began in 1976 because Dungeons & Dragons outgrew wargaming.
- Dungeon (magazine)Dungeon magazine put an adventure on every page. It had no reviews, editorials or letters when it began in 1986.
- Warhammer 40,000Warhammer 40,000 carries a tagline that sounds like a trailer voice-over: "In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only war." That single line gave a whole genre of bleak speculative fiction its name, grimdark. The line belongs to…
- GURPSA 1990 Secret Service raid on the makers of GURPS helped inspire the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
- Vampire: The MasqueradeVampire: The Masquerade asked players to be the monster. The 1991 tabletop game put them inside a vampire's skin.
- World of DarknessWorld of Darkness made players the vampires instead of the vampire hunters. The 1991 game was built on guilt and horror.
- Magic: The GatheringMagic: The Gathering began on a hiking trail near Multnomah Falls.
- Call of Cthulhu (role-playing game)Call of Cthulhu is a tabletop game where the characters are doomed. Sandy Petersen made sanity a resource players spend.
- Chivalry & SorceryChivalry & Sorcery began in 1977 because its creators found Dungeons & Dragons not realistic enough.
- BattlesystemThe 1989 Battlesystem second edition dropped all the counters. One miniature now stood for ten soldiers.
- EberronEberron, a Dungeons and Dragons world, won its creator $100,000 in a contest. It was one of more than 11,000 entries.
- PlanescapePlanescape's logo began as a sketch nobody asked for. Artist Dana Knutson drew a woman with blades for hair.
- Player's HandbookDungeons & Dragons' Player's Handbook was rewritten five times, yet its 2024 version set a sales record.
- Risk (game)The board game Risk was invented by a French film director. It first appeared in 1957 as La Conquête du Monde.
- Star Wars Roleplaying Game (Fantasy Flight Games)In the Star Wars Roleplaying Game, a character can fail a task but still help an ally.