Marcus Rowland (author)

Marcus L. Rowland (born 1953) is an English retired laboratory technician and an important figure in gaming, particularly with regard to games with Victorian era content.^[1]

Biography

Rowland is the author of the Forgotten Futures, Diana: Warrior Princess and Original Flatland role-playing games, and numerous scenarios for other RPGs including Call of Cthulhu, Space 1889, and Games Workshop's Judge Dredd and Golden Heroes RPGs. In the 1990s, he also wrote some short stories, "Frog Day Afternoon", "Playing Safe", and "The Missing Martian", published in the Midnight Rose collective's anthologies, which are now available online, and fan fiction. He usually writes as Marcus L. Rowland. He has also written for various computer magazines, 2000 AD, and New Scientist. Rowland contributed the article on gaming in the second edition of Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and co-wrote the entry on gaming in the Encyclopedia of Fantasy.

He was a frequent contributor to early issues of White Dwarf (issues 23 onwards) and is often credited as the first tabletop RPG designer to publish games as shareware (Forgotten Futures, 1993 onwards) and one of the first to publish games material as charityware. As source material for this RPG he has put numerous copyright-expired books on line for the first time, including works by George Griffith, Stanley G. Weinbaum, Rudyard Kipling, and William Hope Hodgson.

Works

• RPGs
  • Forgotten Futures (shareware release 1993 onwards)
    • Arcane Presents Forgotten Futures (Future Publishing 1997 - abridged version of rules)
    • Forgotten Futures (Heliograph Inc. 2000 ISBN 0-9668926-2-3 - expanded version of rules)
  • Diana: Warrior Princess (Heliograph Inc. 2003 ISBN 1-930658-13-3, PDF 2005)
  • The Original Flatland Role Playing Game (PDF 2006)

• Game Modules
  • Queen Victoria and the Holy Grail (Games Workshop 1985) - Golden Heroes
  • Trail of the Loathesome Slime (Games Workshop 1985) - Call of Cthulhu
  • Nightmare in Norway (Games Workshop 1985) - Call of Cthulhu
  • Do Troubleshooters Dream of Electric Sheep? (Games Workshop 1987) - Paranoia (2nd Edition)
  • Judgement Day (Games Workshop 1988) - Judge Dredd
  • Canal Priests of Mars (Game Designers Workshop 1990, abridged ISBN 1-55878-039-4) - Space 1889
    • Expanded as The Complete Canal Priests Of Mars (Heliograph Inc. 2009 ISBN 1-930658-11-7)
  • Log of the Astronef (Heliograph Inc. 2000 ISBN 0-9668926-4-X) - Forgotten Futures
  • Elvis: The Legendary Tours (For Diana: Warrior Princess, PDF publication 2006)

• Other works
  • Into the Detectives Casebook (Magellanica Company 1999) - card game
  • (ed) Stories of Other Worlds and A Honeymoon in Space by George Griffith (Heliograph Inc. 2000 ISBN 0-9668926-3-1)
  • (ed) Tsar Wars Episode One: Angel of the Revolution by George Griffith (Heliograph Inc. 2003 ISBN 1-930658-16-8)
  • (ed) Tsar Wars Episode Two: Syren of the Skies by George Griffith (Heliograph Inc. 2003 ISBN 1-930658-17-6)

• Contributions
  • The Judge Dredd Companion (Games Workshop 1987 - Judge Dredd)
  • The Great Old Ones (Chaosium Inc. 1989 - for Call of Cthulhu)
  • Blood Brothers (Chaosium Inc. 1990 - for Call of Cthulhu)
  • Fearful Passages (Chaosium Inc. 1992 - for Call of Cthulhu)
  • Blood Brothers 2 (Chaosium Inc. 1992 - for Call of Cthulhu)

References

External links

• Official website
• News on Rowland's game writing
• Marcus Rowland at RPG.net
• Marcus Rowland at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• Marcus Rowland at the RPG Database