How'd you find it? Where did you buy it?

I'm curious to hear from folks about their favorite game stores, and how in those game stores they came across Atlas products and ultimately wound up here reading this message.

(Or, if you've been getting our stuff by some means other than a game store, I'd be curious to hear about that, too...)

It's in Calgary, AB. Called "The Sentry Box." I've moved since, but still go in when I'm in town. There's a wide selection, and even source books for specific (read: FS) game lines are hard to find at times.

Perhaps I'll stick to i-net shopping, depending on what shape the books arrive in.

v.

But thats not how I found Atlas Games. I found Atas because they bought Ars Magica (and I bought that because of a review in Dragon back in 1987).

No, thats not true. My first Atlas product had to be 1st editon Once on a Time. You remember the green box with the cards with no art.

And I don't remember why I bought that, it was so long ao.

No wait, maybe I bought an Ars Magica supplement from Atlas first. One of those old modules. They came out before Once Upon a Time, right? Lets see, South of the Sun, Trial by Fire, I'm sure there are others I'm missing.

Heh, speaking of memory lanes, when is Salengrid (is that the name?) coming out?!?

Jere asks about Stalenric. Hmm. Well, I have about 20,000 words of manuscript on a hard drive at home, I think. But...uh...other things keep taking priority. Funny how that's been happening for ten years now...

If I get back into it, what I'd probably do is make Stalenric a Coriolis ArM/D20 book, these days. But who knows if I'll do that...

I'd been a fan of Ars Magica for a few years when Atlas got the rights, and I loved the idea of an edition with an index that actually worked.

My current game store is The Underworld in Ann Arbor, Michigan, but it didn't exist when I first came upon On The Edge. That was due to the now-defunct Rider's Hobby on Liberty Street (also in Ann Arbor).

As for I started playing Atlas stuff, well...

There was a time when _On the Edge_ was _the_ game to play on the Carleton college campus, well-overtaking Magic.

And I, like many of my cohorts, were pushers...("Here, take the Starter Deck and mark it up. No really! Yes, we destroy the speculative value of the cards to play this variant...it's called Omni League. Who's Rigor Kwasek and Burford Slystick, you say? Oh, nobody important...")

From there, it went all downhill. Picked up Feng Shui during the Daedalus era when a friend got into Shadowfist, and am now in my second year of a campaign that's taken my players to the Netherworld, future, the far future, the other side of the Netherworld (on the far side of the Sunless Sea) and fighting Nazis and Stephen Alzis (aka The Bad Man) alongside Rabbi-Lieutenant David's Fightin' Nephilim in 1935.

I found Over the Edge at a game store in Pittsburgh, back when I went to Carnegie Mellon.  I don't remember exactly why I bought it... I think I just wanted to buy a new game, and Over the Edge had been tempting me by the ad copy on the back.

I did buy it, though, and it was brilliant.  I soaked in the brilliance, and furthermore have soaked in a lot of the supplements' brilliance.  (Which includes the last book, whose name has completely dropped from my mind.)

Since then I've continued to enjoy Atlas games, including Feng Shui and the Penumbra products.

Daniel

Then, a couple years later, John Nephew auctioned off odd lots of random Ars Magica and Over the Edge books -- amazingly gratifying, since a dozen books showed up at once; amazingly frustrating, since after winning two or three of those auctions I couldn't find one that was over half books I already owned. But that got me started on Over the Edge.

About this time, while in graduate school, I found the Space-Crime Continuum, in Northampton, Massachusetts. Chris and Deb, the owners, are evil tempters in the guise of mild-mannered shopkeepers. They tortured me and forced me to buy Unknown Armies and Once Upon a Time, as well as various Ars Magica and Over the Edge supplements.

And I found the forum because I wandered over to the Atlas Games website and there was a large, friendly announcement posted.

Charlton

In fact, if I didn't have more valuable things to do with my time, I'd get more of them underway, to clear out damaged merchandise at bargain-basement prices.

Did your duplicates find good homes? (I was hoping that people who took multiple auctions and got dupes would auction them in turn, saving me the effort of tracking more auctions than necessary...)

Fast forward to a couple of years ago. The D&D game I was in crashed when the GM bought a house and had to work more hours to pay for it (nobody here would understand that particular freelancer curse ;). I'd heard that WOTC had bought Ars Magica and had put it back in print. I get the books, and to my surprise they are by some other company I'd never heard of. Eventually I checked out the website, and my wife notices "Once Upon a Time", which she'd played a long time ago and had been looking for at one time (we eventually see it at the FLGS and pick it up).

Then one of my Ars players decides to start a second game of Over the Edge. We only played on session, but I'm hooked. And lastly, while looking through OTE stuff online and start reading about Unknown Armies. I hear good things about it and pick up the 1st edition cheap off of a friend. I just bought the 2nd edition yesturday after I heard all of the good buzz about it (I am promising myself that I'll actually run it as soon as I find the time).

So that, boys and girls, is the story of why Atlas Games owns my soul.
Kevin

You could send it all to me and I could... um... auction it for you ... or something. ;)

Kevin

I discovered gaming wayyy back in the 6th grade (6 years ago), when a friend in one of my classes introduced me to the high school D&D and "Magic: The Gathering" clubs. They kept talking about "Ancient Wonders". Eventually, I found out it was a gaming store. However, I didn't know where it was. Finally, one day, when I was sick, on the way back from a Doctor's appointment, I saw it. I had passed it many times, but I didn't know the name. I only knew it had Spiderman and Storm in the front window. This time I knew what it was and where it was, and I had money to burn. So, I asked my mom if we could stop there. On the outside, it looked like a very small place. I didn't know it extended into the building behind it.

When I walked in, it was like a choir of angels started singing, and a light from heaven shone down upon me. I was in awe. I didn't know so many gaming book *existed*. Before I walked in, all I knew about was D&D. There I saw GURPS, Shadowrun, Vampire: The Masquirade, and many other games. I've tried to go to Ancient Wonders once every fiscal quarter, at the very least, and I'll be the very, very first to tell you to support your local game store.

Now, how to explain how I discovered Atlas Games. Well, I'd heard alot in the past about Feng Shui, and had read reviews of the game, and heard that it was good. This day, I walked in. I wanted to buy a Role-Playing book. I was considering Call of Cthulhu, but the only copy they had was the D20 edition, for $37. I was going to pick CoC, on account of I knew a group that was playing CoC. I had $30. So I started to browse.

There were 3 games I was interested in getting: All Flesh Must Be Eaten, Decipher's Star Trek RPG, and Feng Shui. I looked at each book. AFMBE seemed too much like it would be dark, and not as Cinematic as I would like. Also, I had not seen any of the source material for the game. The majority of my knowledge of Zombie Survival Horror was of Resident Evil. Decipher's Star Trek RPG didn't appeal that much because it was two volume game (To GM, you needed two books instead of just one like for AFMBE and many other RPGs). Finally, I came to Feng Shui. I knew the sourse material already. I'd seen The Matrix, and I'd seen various Hong Kong Martial Arts films. Plus I knew a group that I thought I would enjoy the game. I bought it.

I have not played with that group, but I will be playing with it tommorow (8/9/2002). I'm doing a trial, practice, solo run through the sample adventure to get the hang of the rules. Tommorow will be my Trial By Fire (doesn't that sound like a good adventure title?).

And that's my Favorite Game Store, and how I bought Feng Shui. Sorry if I was so long winded.

One day, they got a copy of Ars Magica 4th Ed (Hardback!). Through some massive Creo Mentem ritual which continues to baffle me, I was seized with the general notion that I had heard favorable reviews of Ars Magica somewhere, although to this day I have *no clue* when or where I heard these reviews, nor what they actually said, but I bought Ars Magica as my Lark of the Week.

I now have a whole shelf of Ars Magica books, which includes nearly everything Atlas has published in its brown trade dress...and some it hasn't. I've done a lot of auction hunting for Ars books...

Sadly, after 9/11 no one in Winchester, VA wanted to play games anymore, and the store sank into oblivion. So now I have no place to go but online.

Just to drive everyone crazy, even after the many years I've owned the books, I've yet to play any kind of Saga...no one around here is interested. But my main attraction to RPGs is that I'm a munchkining rules lawyer by habit, so that's probably a good thing. I (literally) have read parliamentary procedure for pleasure. Robert's Rules of Order, how I love thee...

Yeah, that probably destroys any credibility I had in the "Ars 5th?" thread.

https://www.scifigenre.com/

20% off RPG games.

Well , my current FLGS is http://www.sydneygamescentre.com/

Got started on Ars Magica 3rd Ed at a local Gaming Club.
For whatever reason , it has been hard to get enough people together to maintain a Saga.

Just going by the Berk-list , i think there are about 04 australians subscibed to it and we are all in different States.

02 years ago i ended up with enough spare cash to buy all the 4th Ed Ars Magica books in one go (i had Core Rules and Grimoire).

Guess i have the idea that there is no such thing as a bad Ars Magica supplement.

Im even more a fan of 5th Ed Ars Magica , but i still cant find enough players here in Sydney , everyone seems to want to do D20 or White Wolf.

Having asked staff at the 03 main Games stores here in Sydney , Ars Magica has always been a low volume product (much like Harn from Columbia Games).

I know about the Demo Games and support from Atlas for Ars Magica , but Gaming Conventions in Sydney have died off so much they are more like House Cons or run by Clubs at local Universities.

Hope this waffle is of some help anyways.

Graham.