Lost Worlds
Encyclopedia
1983 in games
This page lists board and card games, wargames, miniatures games, and table-top role-playing games published in 1983. For video and console games, see 1983 in video gaming.-Game awards given in 1983:* Spiel des Jahres: Scotland Yard...
by Nova Game Designs. The game has had many publishers, including Chessex, Emithill, Flying Buffalo
Flying Buffalo
Flying Buffalo Incorporated is a Scottsdale, Arizona game company that publishes role playing games, card games, gaming materials, and runs Play-by-mail games....
and Greysea. In 1984, Lost Worlds won the Charles Roberts
Charles S. Roberts Award
The Charles S. Roberts Awards are given annually for excellence in the historical wargaming hobby. It is named after Charles S. Roberts the "Father of Wargaming" who founded Avalon Hill. The award is informally called a "Charlie" and officially called a "Charles S...
/Origins Award
Origins Award
The Origins Awards are American awards for outstanding work in the game industry. They are presented by the Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts and Design at the Origins Game Fair on an annual basis for the previous year, so the 1979 awards were given at the 1980 Origins.The Origins Award is commonly...
for Best Fantasy Boardgame of 1983.
In 1999 Pyramid
Pyramid (magazine)
Pyramid is a gaming magazine, publishing articles primarily on role-playing games, but including board games, card games, and other sorts of games. It began life in 1993 as a print publication of Steve Jackson Games for its first 30 issues, though it has been published on the Internet since March...
magazine named Lost Worlds as one of the Millennium's Best Games. Editor Scott Haring described the game as a "great, short, take-to-a-con and kill a couple minutes kind of game."
Resurgence
A minor resurgence in published books occurred in 2004, with five new titles published in 2004 (four of them by a new licensee, 1% Inspiration Games), a further two published in June 2005 (both with photo illustrations rather than graphics), and others early in 2007 and 2008. Many of the older books are now out of print, although Flying Buffalo say that they have a license to reprint all of them, and are merely held back by issues of volume.Gameplay
Play requires two players and at least two "visual combat booksGamebook
A gamebook is a work of fiction that allows the reader to participate in the story by making effective choices. The narrative branches along various paths through the use of numbered paragraphs or pages...
", with each player choosing a character (i.e., a book) from those available. At the start of play, each player removes the character sheet
Character sheet
A character sheet is a record of a player character in a role-playing game, including whatever details, notes, game statistics, and background information a player would need during a play session. Character sheets can be found in use in both traditional and action role-playing games...
for that character from their book and hands the book to his or her opponent. The character sheet lists the various combat actions which the character can take during the battle. The combat book lists the effects of the attacks in tables, and serves as a visual reference for what the other player is doing. Hence, each player views entries in the book from a first-person perspective, seeing only their opponent and not themselves.
During each turn or combat phase, players secretly select an action from those shown on their card, possibly influenced by the results of previous turns. Players then simultaneously reveal their intended action, by number, to each other. Using the character sheet to cross-reference their action with that of their opponent, players then turn to a specific entry in the book they are holding in order to determine the results. These effects may include hit point loss (i.e., a wound), as well as any restrictions on the opponent's next move (which is read aloud to them). The first character to reduce their opponent to zero hit points wins.
To add complexity and variety, certain characters have special abilities—the Cave Troll and the Unicorn, for example, can Regenerate; several characters (beginning with the Fighter-Mage) can use Magic Spells (although there are now 3 different spell systems, formulated by different publishers); several can infect an opponent with either poison or disease, which then cause damage automatically in every round of combat. Some characters can fly; others have magic weapons.
In addition to Magic (represented by cards), there are also cards for Tactics and Luck, with characters having differing access to these, depending on their statistics.
Spinoffs
There is also a further series of books, of emphatically female fighter-types, under the collective title of Queen's BladeQueen's Blade
is a series of visual combat books published by Hobby Japan based on the licensed works from Flying Buffalo's Lost Worlds. First published in 2005, it features sexually suggestive depictions of an exclusively female cast of characters. The overall plot of the game revolves around a tournament...
, published from late 2005 by Hobby Japan
Hobby Japan
HobbyJAPAN CO. is a Japanese hobby magazine and publishing company, specializing in roleplaying, war, and tabletop games, as well as action figures, toys, and artbooks for successful anime, manga and light novel franchises.- Role-playing games :...
. With more than 20 books the books are generally new illustrations for existing combat matrices, rather than "new" characters (although at least one doujin has utilised what appears to be a "new matrix", and one or two of the latest Hobby Japan volumes are said to be original matrices). As of December 2007 a second series, Queen's Gate, was introduced, featuring characters from Japanese visual media, and in October 2008 Hobby Japan announced four further characters in a sub-set of the original series (Queen's Blade Rebellion
Queen's Blade Rebellion
is a series of visual combat books published by Hobby Japan. The sequel to Queen's Blade, it features an all-new cast of characters as well as remakes of characters from previous Queen's Blade books. Like Queen's Blade before it, Rebellion is also compatible with Flying Buffalo's Lost Worlds...
).
The Leonardi move-matrix system has also been "borrowed" by other publishers, notably BattleBooks and Games Workshop
Games Workshop
Games Workshop Group plc is a British game production and retailing company. Games Workshop has published the tabletop wargames Warhammer Fantasy Battle and Warhammer 40,000...
as the engine to drive their own combat picture book games.
External links
- Flying BuffaloFlying BuffaloFlying Buffalo Incorporated is a Scottsdale, Arizona game company that publishes role playing games, card games, gaming materials, and runs Play-by-mail games....
's home page for the game - Gamebooks.org description of the game and list of available game books
- Queen's Blade official site and secondary site (Japanese)