Dave Arneson's Adventure Games (Company) 1979-1985

[Havard]

Adventure Games was a gaming company established by Dave Arneson.

Owner: Dave Arneson
Known Employees: Jeff Berry, Ken Fletcher(?)
Established: ca 1979 (?)
Sold: 1985 to Flying Buffalo Games

Games Published

• Adventures in Fantasy (1979) - Roleplaying Games
  
• Harpoon (1981) - miniatures Game, by Larry Bond
  
• Rails Through the Rockies (1981) - Board Game by John C. Luecke
  
• Barker, M.A.R. The Armies of Tékumel Volume 1: Tsolyánu (1981)
  
• Barker, M.A.R. The Armies of Tékumel Volume 2: Yán Kór and Allies (1981)
  
• Smith, Craig(?): The Northwest Frontier Maps 1979. At least three printings (1979, 1981, 1982).
  
• Barker, M.A.R. Deeds of the Ever-Glorious (Histories of the Tsolyáni Legions) 1981
  
• Barker, M.A.R. The Tsolyani Language 1981
  
• The Complete Brigadier (1982) - miniatures game by J. F. Grossman
  
• Johnny Reb (1983) - miniatures Game
  
• Pentantastar (1983) - board game by David Megarry
  
• Harpoon II (1983) - miniatures game

Wikipedia has the following:

In the early 1980s Dave Arneson established his own game company, Adventure Games – staffed largely by Arneson's friends, most of whom were also members of a Civil War reenactment group – that produced the miniatures games Harpoon (1981) and Johnny Reb (1983), as well as a new edition of his own Adventures in Fantasy role-playing game (1981).[1]:39[2] The company also put out about a half-dozen Tékumel related books, due to Arneson's friendship with M. A. R. Barker.[1]:39 Adventure Games was profitable, but Arneson found the workload to be excessive and finally sold the company to Flying Buffalo.[3] Flying Buffalo picked up the rights to Adventure Games in 1985; because Arneson owned a portion of Flying Buffalo, he let them take care of the rest of the company's stock and IP when he shut the company down.[1]:39

Inaccuracies in the Wikipedia article:
I believe the edition of Adventures in Fantasy was published in 1979 rather than 1981. This edition was identical to the 1978 edition published by Excalibre Games. A true 2nd edition of AiF was announced for a 1981 release, but this never happened. I would need to get these dates confired though.


Chirine has also related some stories about his days working for Adventure Games in this thread.

Does anyone have more information about Adventure Games?


Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adventure_Games
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgamepubl ... ture-games
https://www.tekumel.com/about_productlist.html


-Havard

[Yaztromo]

No information from me: I didn't even really know it existed... :oops:

[Havard]

No information from me: I didn't even really know it existed... :oops:

Yes, it wasn't very well known. When I started getting interested in Dave Arneson's work, one of the questions that bugged me was "what did Dave Arneson do after he left TSR?".

The answer, as it turns out is "Lots of things!". So this was at least one chapter in his life related to game design.

You may note that several of the people listed as game designers and employees played in the Blackmoor campaign at various times: Jeff Berry, Larry Bond, MAR Barker, David Megarry etc.

-Havard

[Yaztromo]

A very remarkable bunch of people... 8)

[gsvenson]

I didn't work there, but Dave Arneson lived in the second floor of the building it was in, while the company was on the first floor. My family and I stayed with Dave several times when we came back to visit Minnesota between 1779 and 1983.