Black Keep of Serpent Lake

One of the few published Phantasm Adventure modules. The only other official module was called the Maldake Adventure. The Black Keep of Serpent Lake was published in 1988 by Dai Nippon Kaiga, the Japanese publisher of the game.

I cannot remember much about the game, and sadly the English version has been lost in time. It do remember writing a number of module packs for the game, but do not remember having a lot of contact with Dai Nippon Kaiga after the game was published.

I am still in negoitations with the Dai Nippon Kaiga and another Japanese game company about re-printing the game. If you would like to see another print, I ask you to write Dai Nippon Kaiga and express your interest: takagim@kaiga.co.jp

Check out my latest addition to the TRPG section

Take a look at the newest game to be uploaded to the Emerald Tablet.  A game design from 1997, the Realms of Ardaan is full of playable races, classes, skills, adventure ideas, gods, equipment, and rules for combat and further adventuring. This game is looking for a home with a small gaming group, and I am more than willing to support the product with updates, Q&A, and additional development with feedback.

 

http://emeraldtablet.wordpress.com/rpg/

Phantasm Voyage Preview

Phantasm Voyage is the story of Aaron “Amish” Johnson, a student of the twenty-second century, and his rather exciting journey into a virtual world fraught with danger.  Aaron is content to live on his family’s wind farm, but is forced into going to school in the ultra-tech burgeoning city of New Detroit.  With reluctance, he attends the new high school in the Kamen Tower, a one hundred and eighty-six story skyscraper on the outer rim of New Detroit.  There Aaron meets up with Bruce Greene, a kid who is as opposite to him as any of the other twelve hundred students at the school.  Aaron is accustomed to the simple life on the farm, while the city kids have lived their lives within the steel and glass towers have lost all connection to the natural world.  Bruce has the nickname of Cirrus, for he lives within the clouds of the megalopolis, befriends Aaron and introduces him to his pals Qin, Jack, Addison, and Chloe.

Although shy and awkward, Aaron tries to become part of the gang.  By accident, he obtains a secret code to the Pegasus Chamber, a virtual simulation so real that participants cannot tell reality from fantasy. What was meant to be a party in a virtual beach in paradise suddenly becomes a tooth-and-nail fight for survival.  The kids find themselves in more danger than any back alley of New Detroit. Forging together, the gang head off on the wildest adventure they could ever imagine.  As Aaron tries to discover why the simulation has not ended, he is determined to convince his new friends that the virtual world is just as real as their lives in New Detroit.

Along the way, Aaron meets up and falls in love with Anne, a mysterious girl that for all practical purposes should not be in the simulation.  As the group of kids comes to grip with their own mortality, they experience breathtaking vistas, savage beasts, and ancient ruins filled with danger.As the gang fights their way to a beacon of hope, they unravel a great mystery on who and why they are trapped within the virtual world.  From the confines of an ancient ruin, a maniacal scientist conspires to somehow bridge the gap between the real world and the simulation. The demented scientist believes the sacrifice of the children will allow him to return to reality. The doctor captures the kids and with the help of bloodthirsty priests prepares to sacrifice the kids one by one, until the mana needed to bridge the gap is sustainable to open a doorway back to his laboratory.

Aaron must overcome his shy and introverted temperament to battle the mad scientist, freeing his friends.  Does Aaron and his friends ever escape the simulation?

Aaron returns in the sequel of the Pegasus Chamber, in the Leprechaun’s Legacyto once again battle the evil Dr. Morgan, this time to save his young brother’s life.  Relying on both virtual and real friends, he battles the mad scientist this time in a world of the fey.

 

Looking for an agent and publisher for this book:

Contact me for more information

troy@virginworlds.com

 

Another 3rd Edition Advance Phantasm Adventures Character Sheet

Digging through all of my old notes and boxes of APA stuff, I came across a very detailed character sheet. This baby has it all, but it is 4 pages in length — if you taped it up correctly, it would be a nice double-sides 11 x 17 sheet!

This character sheet is provided as a PDF here: PA4_Csheet

Phantasm Fandango

Very early last year I wrote a simple little game of monster vs. monster, I called Monster Fandango. It wasn’t a very complicated set of rules, but it did have some varying strategies. I am revising the rules to a 3rd edition and renaming the game to “Phantasm Phandango” to commemorate some recent events with the game Advanced Phantasm Adventures.

I will hopefully be posting some updates to the new game, which in some ways will be streamlined and in other ways will see additional development.

My hopes is that the simple little board game can be used prior to TRPG game days, while waiting for all the players to assemble — an always fractious period where people often can splinter off into other games or waste considerable amount of time not gaming.

Phantasm Adventures Character Sheet

Just a working template for a character sheet. This sheet provides all the basic entries needed to be filled out for a character in Phantasm Adventures.

Character Sheet

Character Sheet

Character Sheet (Word document)

Development of New Game Ideas

With the recent flushed success of Phantasm Adventures, I am back into writing some new ideas for the long dormant game. I am hoping that I can get some feedback from anyone interested in playing the game again.

I still think the game needs a more comprehensive description of the lands of Monokan, as well as a thorough timeline. I am also thinking of creating more creatures & monsters to flush out the limited bestiary.

What thoughts do anyone have on TRPG (table-top Role Playing Games)? How many still play? How often?

Old Archives of Game Ideas

After discovering my spoils of original 3rd edition manuscripts, I also found a box of a dozen other rules that I had been working on from 1987 to 2000. Most of these games are half complete, and often in such a chaotic order that even when I looked at them I could not make heads or tails out of them.

I also found startling enough, some royalty free artwork which I planned to use as covers to my games. They all look very nice and must have come from a single artists — I am unsure who, but I do remember either buying or finding them with the condition that they were royalty free.

In the coming months, I am hoping to resurrect some of these games and put them up. It will be a challenge to support them, and even more so interesting to see if anyone even takes a look at them.

The internet can be such a great audience, but it is also like trying to find one person in a Colosseum of 200,000 people — shouts and waves are simply lost in the sea of bodies and indiscriminate voices.

I ask everyone who comes visit here to spread the word and to find use for these little treasures. I am more than willing to answer questions.

Write me a question, comment, or note at: tchristensen616@gmail.com

Phantasm Adventures Lives

I am always continually amazed at the fortune I have had with my first role-playing game, Phantasm Adventures. And, even more so, all the wild experiences I have had with it. I have met so many wonderful people over the years, and I have been to so many incredible places just because of the simple game I started writing back in 1980.

It has been more than 30 years and just as I think that I have reached the end of the rope with the Phantasm, something wonderful happens and the game is brought back to life.

I have not done much with the game in over 10 years. It just seemed like I never have any time to play games any longer, and the friends that used to come over each week slowly faded away. For years the game sat in a pile at the base of my bookshelf, just collecting dust.

I tried desperately several times to start writing for the game. I tried making a simplified version, a complicated version, even a 4th edition to the classic game. Each time, however, it slowly dwindled to a stand still and ended back on the pile in my study.

I thought another year would go by, just as it has done for the last 10 years, but all of a sudden a spark has caused the game to come back to life. It is still far from being off life-support, but I am getting the feeling to write for it again.  I can hear the slow rhythmic beating of its heart…slow but steady. I can feel like it wants to jump up again and run for a couple of years, growing in strength with each passing day.

Even more startling, I found some friends in Japan who are still interested in the game and they have contacted my old publisher. Perhaps something will come of this? I am truly hoping that maybe they will want to publish the game again, which would stoke my fires to go back to writing full time.

If nothing else, I am just so happy to see life back into my old game. I don’t know where this will all go, because I cannot even fathom how this interest even came about. I would never have thought that in this year that my old fantasy rpg would have a revival.

I will take each day as it comes. But I am getting excited about the game again, and that always brings a smile to my face!

Cover of Book IV

Phantasm4

I have linked the original 4th book in the 3rd Edition rules from Phantasm Adventures.  This was never meant to be the final product, but more of a manuscript that I would have presented to a publisher perhaps in the United States or in Japan.  I have taken some liberties within this book, with style and presentation, that I would never allow to be published.  As a reference materials this works well.

I hope to push out the entire 3rd edition via PDF and hope others will find use of it in either gaming, or just have a fun couple of hours looking through the rules.

If anyone would ever want to contribute to the game, such as artwork, stories, ideas, programming, or just inspiration, please post a reply and I will sure make contact with you.

Bloodbath & Phantasm Highlighted at the House of Sorcery

I was pleasantly surprised this morning to find that Bloodbath and Phantasm Adventures were highlighted in an Italian gamers’ website.

you can visit the site here: http://addsecondaedizione.blogspot.com/

I am always so proud and happy when I see gamers from all over the world reading and playing my games. As always, I invite anyone to ask questions about the many different games I have had over the years.

I am so proud of my work.

Direct URL: http://addsecondaedizione.blogspot.com/2010/10/phantasm-adventures.html