Instruct: Given a question, retrieve relevant passages that answer the question.
Query: Who created the Forgotten Realms campaign?
The Seven Sisters—fictional characters of the "Forgotten Realms" campaign setting of the "Dungeons & Dragons" Role Playing Game. The sisters are epic level characters (characters possessing nearly super-human levels of skill and power) of differing abilities, most of which involve some form of spellcasting and use of magic. Created by Ed Greenwood, they have been featured in multiple novels, games, and officially created scenarios by an equally large number of authors/game-designers.
Relic Entertainment was founded in Vancouver, Canada, on June 1, 1997, and began work on "Homeworld" as their first title. Relic co-founders Alex Garden and Luke Moloney served as the director and lead programmer for the game, respectively, while Erin Daly was the designer and Aaron Kambeitz the lead artist. Garden was 22 years old when he founded the company. Writer David J. Williams is credited with the original story concept, while the script itself was written by Martin Cirulis and the background lore was written by author Arinn Dembo. Cirulis and Dembo, credited jointly as "Marcus Skyler", were selected by the publisher, Sierra Studios, partway through development to expand the story concept of Relic and Williams. Sierra agreed to publish the game early in development based on, according to Garden, "two whiteboard presentations and no demo". The development of the game took over two years; the game systems were largely complete by the final eight months, which Relic spent polishing and improving the game, including adding the whole-map Sensors Manager view. The game was initially expected to be released at the end of 1998; Garden stated in a 1999 interview that the team found creating the core game itself much easier than getting it to the quality level they wanted, and that if they had known how difficult it was going to be they may have chosen not to do the project. Several ideas for the game, including ship customization, convoy routes, and different unit types for the Kushan and Taidann fleets were cut during development as they could not be done well enough for the project.
World of Warcraft (WoW) is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) released in 2004 by Blizzard Entertainment. It is the fourth released game set in the "Warcraft" fantasy universe. "World of Warcraft" takes place within the "Warcraft" world of Azeroth, approximately four years after the events at the conclusion of Blizzard's previous "Warcraft" release, "." The game was announced in 2001, and was released for the 10th anniversary of the "Warcraft" franchise on November 23, 2004. Since launch, "World of Warcraft" has had seven major expansion packs released for it: "", "", "", "", "", "", and "".
Fury was a player versus player (PvP) competitive online role-playing game and massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) developed by Auran. The game was published by Gamecock Media Group on October 16, 2007, and was the first game they published. Less than two months later, the developer announced it had laid off all employees. The game switched to a free-to-play model, but in October 2008 Auran shutdown the game servers meaning the game would no longer be playable.
World of Warcraft: Rise of the Horde is a novel by Christie Golden set in the Warcraft Universe. It was published in December 2006. Golden also has a commitment with Blizzard Entertainment and Simon & Schuster to write a StarCraft trilogy. Originally presumed to be the sequel to her previous 2001 book, , it depicts the draenei's escape from Argus and the rise of the Horde, following their shift from a shamanic race to a warmongering one. The book features major Warcraft characters, such as Durotan, Ner'zhul, Gul'dan, Orgrim Doomhammer, Kil'jaeden, and Velen. The story tells of how the orc clans and the noble draenei slowly become enemies due to deception and arrogance, and shows the downward spiral into which the orcs are thrown, and explores the role that demonic forces play in the Horde. It also expands on the origin of the Burning Legion, and the events preceding the first game of the Warcraft series.
"World of Warcraft" was first announced by Blizzard at the ECTS trade show in September 2001. Released in 2004, development of the game took roughly 4–5 years, including extensive testing. The 3D graphics in "World of Warcraft" use elements of the proprietary graphics engine originally used in "Warcraft III". The game was designed to be an open environment where players are allowed to do what they please. Quests are optional and were designed to help guide players, allow character development, and to spread characters across different zones to try to avoid what developers called "player collision". The game interface allows players to customize appearance and controls, and to install add-ons and other modifications.
Adventures are often political, military, or spiritual in nature, rather than dungeon crawls, and are often presented as taking place congruently with events from Arthurian legend. An important part of the game is the time between adventures, during which player characters manage their estates, get married, age, and have children. Typically, the characters will have one adventure per year, and campaigns often carry over across generations, with players retiring their character and taking the role of that character's heir. This is quite different from most role-playing games, where one set of characters is played fairly intensively, and there is typically little consideration made of what happens to their family or descendants. The influence of this idea can be seen in the "Ars Magica" RPG, which also encourages stories taking years or decades to unfold (and which is also set in medieval Europe).
In 2004, Blizzard Entertainment moved the series away from the real-time strategy genre and released "World of Warcraft", a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG). Requiring a subscription fee to be paid to play, it also introduced regular additional content to the series in the form of patches. "World of Warcraft" gained popularity worldwide, becoming the world's largest subscription-based MMORPG in 2008. The game reached a peak 12 million subscribers worldwide in October 2010. "World of Warcraft" has had seven expansions as of 2018. During the production of "", Blizzard co-founder Frank Pearce stated that "If there's a team that's passionate about doing another "Warcraft" [real-time strategy], then that's definitely something we would consider. It's nothing that we're working on right now, we have development teams working on "", "", "Diablo III", and when those teams are all off the projects they're working on, they'll be intimately involved in the discussions about what's next".
Dragon Quest is the first role-playing video game (RPG) in the "Dragon Quest" media franchise. It was developed by Chunsoft for the Family Computer (or Famicom for short) and published by Enix in Japan in 1986 as "Dragon Quest" and by Nintendo in 1989 in North America for the Nintendo Entertainment System (or NES) as Dragon Warrior. "Dragon Quest" has been ported and remade for several video game platforms, including the MSX, PC-9801, Super Famicom, Game Boy Color, Nintendo 3DS, PlayStation 4 and mobile phones. In play, players control a hero character who is charged with saving the Kingdom of Alefgard and rescuing its princess from the evil Dragonlord. "Dragon Warrior"s story became the second part in a trilogy. Several more anime and manga series, which revolved around this overarching plot were created.
Discworld, the fictional planet of a fantasy series by Terry Pratchett, exists at a point near the very edge of universe's reality spectrum. From here, the fabric of the fictional universe's reality is gossamer-thin, and excessive pushing can and often does break holes into other, often far less hospitable, domains. The most dangerous of these domains are the Dungeon Dimensions, a region beyond the narrative's reality itself, whose inhabitants (inspired by the formless horrors of H. P. Lovecraft) wait to swamp our reality with all the force "of an ocean warming itself against a candle". A number of minor fictional universes attach themselves tangentially to the Discworld universe, particularly Death's Domain, the home of the Disc's Grim Reaper, from which he descends to do his job, and the parasite universe of Fairyland, home of the sociopathic and vicious Elves. Additionally, the Dark Desert is a region that, according to the Discworld's Omnian religion, souls cross to pass into the next world. The Discworld character Death frequently takes souls here, and in recent books, it seems to have become the afterlife of choice for most Discworld characters, not just Omnians.
One of the primary features of "Cataclysm" is the redesign of the continents of Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor introduced with the launch of "World of Warcraft" in 2004. While the initial game design did not allow for the use of flying mounts in 'old-world' zones, those zones have been completely redesigned with flight in mind for "Cataclysm". Flight is still unavailable for Burning Crusade starting zones for the blood elves and the draenei.
"The Legend of Zelda" is considered a spiritual forerunner of the modern role-playing video game (RPG) genre. Though it is often not considered part of the genre since it lacked key RPG mechanics such as experience points, it had many features in common with RPGs and served as the template for the action role-playing game genre. The game's fantasy setting, musical style and action-adventure gameplay were adopted by many RPGs. Its commercial success helped lay the groundwork for involved, non-linear games in fantasy settings, such as those found in successful RPGs, including "Crystalis", "Soul Blazer", Square's "Seiken Densetsu" series, "Alundra", and "Brave Fencer Musashi". The popularity of the game also spawned several clones trying to emulate the game.
Halo: Cryptum is a military science fiction novel by Greg Bear, based on the "Halo" series of video games. The book was released in January 2011 and is the eighth "Halo" book (the seventh novel) and the first in the trilogy of novels focusing on the Forerunners, called "The Forerunner Saga". "Cryptum" was released in hardcover, e-book, and audiobook following 2009's "", a collection of "Halo" short stories. It is succeeded by "", published in January 2012, and "", in March 2013. Bear was given little restriction on the story of the novel; the "Halo" universe had not yet been explored in that time period.
The development of "Vampire: The Masquerade – Redemption" began at Nihilistic Software in April 1998, shortly after the developer's founding in March that year. Its development was publicly announced in March 1999. Intending to move away from the first-person games the team members had worked on with previous companies, Nihilistic prepared a design and story for a futuristic RPG with similar themes and gothic aesthetics to those of the "" series. After publisher Activision approached the team using the White Wolf license, they adapted parts of their original design to fit the "Vampire" series, which became the original design for "Redemption". Endorsement by Id Software founder John Carmack helped Nihilistic decide to work with Activision. The Nihilistic team developed "Redemption" over twenty-four months; the team expanded to twelve members by the end of development. The development team included Nihilistic President and CEO Ray Gesko, lead programmer Rob Huebner, world designer Steve Tietze, level designer Steve Thoms, lead artist Maarten Kraaijvanger, artist Yujin Kiem, art technician Anthony Chiang, and programmers Yves Borckmans and Ingar Shu.
In an interview with MacGamer, an online magazine dedicated to gaming on Mac PCs, game designer Chris Taylor had this to say about "Supreme Commander 2" and its spiritual link to his previous Total Annihilation series: "I think they are indeed the spiritual successors, because of the way I approach RTS Real-time strategy design. I don’t like a lot of rules, and I like big, open worlds. Some might say the economy systems play a role in that, but I think it goes much deeper than that. I think many folks will see our upcoming Kings and Castles game as a continuing extension of those previous RTS titles."
Game of Thrones is an American fantasy drama television series created by David Benioff and D. B. Weiss. It is an adaptation of "A Song of Ice and Fire", George R. R. Martin's series of fantasy novels, the first of which is "A Game of Thrones". It is filmed in Belfast and elsewhere in Northern Ireland, Canada, Croatia, Iceland, Malta, Morocco, Scotland, Spain, and the United States. The series premiered on HBO in the United States on April 17, 2011, and its seventh season ended on August 27, 2017. The series will conclude with its eighth season premiering on April 14, 2019.
Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice is a dark fantasy action-adventure game developed and published by the British video game development studio Ninja Theory. Self-described as an "independent AAA game", it was created by a team of approximately twenty developers led by writer and director Tameem Antoniades. It was released worldwide for Microsoft Windows and PlayStation 4 in August 2017, with an Xbox One version in April 2018. The game features support for virtual reality, which was added in an update in 2018.
Typically action RPGs feature each player directly controlling a single character in real time, and feature a strong focus on combat and action with plot and character interaction kept to a minimum. Early action RPGs tended to follow the template set by 1980s Nihon Falcom titles such as the "Dragon Slayer" and "Ys" series, which feature hack and slash combat where the player character's movements and actions are controlled directly, using a keyboard or game controller, rather than using menus. This formula was refined by the action-adventure game, "The Legend of Zelda" (1986), which set the template used by many subsequent action RPGs, including innovations such as an open world, nonlinear gameplay, battery backup saving, and an attack button that animates a sword swing or projectile attack on the screen. The game was largely responsible for the surge of action-oriented RPGs released since the late 1980s, both in Japan and North America. "The Legend of Zelda" series would continue to exert an influence on the transition of both console and computer RPGs from stat-heavy, turn-based combat towards real-time action combat in the following decades.
Relic was started in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada by Alex Garden and Luke Moloney in 1997. Their first title, "Homeworld", was released on September 28, 1999 to critical acclaim and successful sales. Though they did not immediately continue working on the franchise (Sierra Entertainment, the game's publisher, owned the rights), the game did have a spin-off, "", developed by Barking Dog Studios and published by Sierra.
The game was originally announced as a title for mobile phones and the PSP called It was directed by Hajime Tabata, who took up the project after completing "". Initially designed to provide players with easy access to the "Fabula Nova Crystallis" universe, the mobile version was eventually cancelled and the game's title was changed to distance it from the subseries' flagship title "Final Fantasy XIII". Releasing to strong sales, it received praise for its story and gameplay, but was criticized for its camera control and artificial intelligence. Further games related to "Type-0" have also been developed, including a high definition remaster that released internationally in March 2015.
"Final Fantasy Type-0" is an action role-playing video game in which the player controls the 14 members of Class Zero, who are sent on missions across Orience. Outside environments such as the Vermillion Peristylium (Class Zero's home base) and dedicated missions, the game world of Orience is navigated via a scaled-down world map. Class Zero are sent on missions across Orience during the course of the game. The player initially travels to preset destinations in the world on an airship supplied by the Peristylium, but gains their own airship to freely navigate the world map with after defeating a powerful enemy guarding it. The main gameplay is presented in a mission-based structure. The two types of missions encountered are story-based missions, and "Practice" missions, which act as side-quests. During missions, optional orders are issued which can be obeyed or ignored as the player chooses. Should they be accepted, the characters receive a temporary power boost, and completing the objectives yields rewards. Players can also engage in real-time strategy battles on the world map, with the player taking control of allied military divisions. Missions involve liberating cities and towns from enemy forces. Timed aerial missions are also available where the characters shoot down attacking dragons using their airship's weapons.
GMT Games is a California-based wargaming publisher founded in 1990. The current management and creative team includes Tony Curtis, Rodger MacGowan, Mark Simonitch, and Andy Lewis. The company has become well known for graphically attractive games that range from "monster games", of many maps and counters, to quite simple games suitable for introducing new players to wargaming. They also produce card games and family games. "The Washington Post" called GMT "the modern hobby's highest-profile wargame publisher".
The "Dungeon Master's Sourcebook of the Realms" describes how to set up and run a campaign in the Forgotten Realms. A pair of miniscenarios is included, and information is provided on wilderness terrain and movement, important personalities, rumors, and significant and magical books. Written from the perspective of Elminster the sage, the book introduces the campaign setting, explains how to use it, and offers adventure resources. Large areas were set aside to be developed for house campaigns, and no published materials were intended to be printed to exploit those areas, while one area detailed in this package was intended to have no subsequent publications use that area. The package covers only the western half of a single continent, with the eastern half reserved for future publication of Kara-Tur. Two complete dungeon-style adventures are provided: "Halls of the Beast-Tamers", a dungeon with many unconventional problem-solving exercises, and "Lashan's Fall", a dungeon with a mystery and an opportunity to parley with a monster. The "Books of the Forgotten Realms" section is a treatment of several magical tomes that suggests a variety of adventures, with a description of the appearance, history, and contents of each book.
The Forgotten Realms Interactive Atlas was developed by ProFantasy Software, the creators of Campaign Cartographer for Wizards of the Coast, who publish the Forgotten Realms RPG setting. The developers created vector version of the published maps for the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting and included many new maps, including a globe of the entire Forgotten Realms world, Abeir-Toril. There have been three updates published for the application that deliver over 800 maps. The maps were hyperlinked within a customised viewer, or could be accessed via an interactive globe. The product was discontinued after selling through its entire print in its first year.
Oghma appears as one of the major deities of the Forgotten Realms setting again, in "Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting" (2001), and is further detailed in "Faiths and Pantheons" (2002).
Oghma appears as one of the major deities (or "Greater Gods") of the Forgotten Realms setting again, in "Forgotten Realms Player's Guide" (2008), and is further detailed in "Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting" (2008). He plays largely the same role in the setting as in previous editions, and is still associated, for the most part, with the same gods. His alignment under the new system is Unaligned.
Ed Greenwood began writing stories about the "Forgotten Realms" as a child, starting around 1967; they were his "dream space for swords and sorcery stories". Greenwood came up with the "Forgotten Realms" name from the notion of a multiverse of parallel worlds; Earth is one such world, and the Realms another. In Greenwood's original conception, the fantastic legends of Earth derive from a fantasy world, the way to which has been lost. Greenwood discovered the "Dungeons & Dragons" game in 1975, and became a serious role-playing enthusiast with the first "AD&D" game releases in 1978. The setting became the home of Greenwood's personal campaign. Greenwood began a Realms campaign in the city of Waterdeep, then started another group known as the Knights of Myth Drannor in Shadowdale. Greenwood felt that his players' thirst for detail made the Realms what it is: "They want it to seem real, and work on ‘honest jobs’ and personal activities, until the whole thing grows into far more than a casual campaign. Roleplaying always governs over rules, and the adventures seem to develop themselves." Greenwood has stated that his own version of the Forgotten Realms, as run in his personal campaign, is much darker than published versions.