Game Designer's Workshop was a company that made Tabletop Games from its founding in 1973 to its closing in 1996. Their most well-known products are the role-playing games Traveller, 2300 AD and Twilight: 2000. They were also notable for their sheer volume of products, shipping something new on the average every twenty-two days.
Not to be confused with Games Workshop, but the latter did produce material for Traveller back in the day.
An incomplete list of games produced by GDW:
- Command Decision: A World War II wargame
- Combined Arms: A Gaiden Game set in the modern era
- Both were supported by Command Post Quarerly, part 'Zine, part Splatbook, it had articles on 20th Century warfare, unit tables of organization and stats for vehicles.
- En Garde! (1975), GDW's first RPG. Swashbuckling dueling in 17th century Paris. It was often played by mail.
- Harpoon (1982), the pen and paper simulator of Modern Naval Warfare, that started the long running computer game series.
- Triplanetary (1975), A space combat wargame game set in the solar system.
- Imperium (1977), A board game about a war between an old, decaying Empire and a bright upstart Federation. It was incorporated into the backstory for Traveller.
- Traveller (1977), one of the first science-fiction RPGs, and related projects:
- Mayday (1978), Expanded starship combat rules for Traveller, quite similar in some ways to Triplanetary.
- Azhanti High Lightning (1980), Personal combat aboard the eponymous Cool Starship. Included rules for using them in the Traveller RPG.
- Dark Nebula (1980), A version of Imperium set during the border wars between the Imperium and Aslan.
- Fifth Frontier War (1981), A board game of the war between the Imperium and Zhodani, very similar to Imperium and Dark Nebula but set in the main campaign setting of the RPG, the Spinward Marches.
- Striker (1984), Additional rules for miniatures combat.
- And several more versions of the Traveller RPG and war games set in the same universe, until GDW's demise in 1996. Traveller was one of their most popular lines.
- Twilight: 2000 (1984), Soldiers surviving in post-nuclear Europe. This was probably GDW's second-most popular line, with two editions of the RPG and lots of adventures and sourcebooks.
- Merc 2000 (1991), an alternate timeline version of Twilight 2000, where World War III didn't happen.
- 2300 AD (1987), A hard science fiction roleplaying game. Originally advertised as Traveller:2300 which made it sound like a spinoff of Traveller, though they had very little to do with each other. It was set in the same background as Twilight 2000, though the two rules systems were not compatible.
- Star Cruiser (1987), Extended space combat rules and scenarios for Traveller: 2300.
- Space 1889 (1988), An early Steampunk RPG, along with related board games:
- Sky Galleons of Mars (1988), A board game of combat between fleets of Victorian airships. Often on Mars.
- Cadillacs and Dinosaurs (1990), RPG based on Xenozoic Tales using rules based on Twilight: 2000.
- Dark Conspiracy (1991), A horror RPG set in a Scavenger World near future. It shares the 2nd edition Twilight 2000 rules, along with some of the background of Merc 2000.
- Dangerous Journeys (1992), A short-lived fantasy RPG created by Gary Gygax after he left TSR. The legal entanglements with TSR over this game mean that it didn't have much of a chance at attracting an audience.
