His story
Ic. 1980
The spark
Stephan Michael Sechi, "SMS" on the Talislanta site, grew up on comics: Green Lantern and the Justice League first, then early Marvel and above all Doctor Strange, alongside fantasy and science fiction4. He was a working musician before he ever designed a game, and he kept putting off his first session of Dungeons & Dragons because his band kept him busy4.
Around 1980 a younger cousin visiting from Seattle finally sat him down at the table. Sechi played a single session the day before his cousin left and, in his words, was "hooked after the first 15 minutes"5. He started his own group, began writing his own material, and within about a year was wondering whether he could publish a game himself4, 5.
II1982 to 1983
Bard Games
In 1982 Sechi and two friends, Steven Cordovano and Vernie Taylor, each put $600 into a small company. All three were musicians, so they called it Bard Games1, 2, 6. Its books gave a post-office box in Greenwich, Connecticut, as its address7, 9. The plan was to publish fantasy supplements that worked with any game, D&D above all1, 6.
The first books were the Compleat handbooks: The Compleat Alchemist, then The Compleat Adventurer and The Compleat Spell Caster6, 8. Sechi remembers that The Compleat Strategist in New York bought the very first Bard Games book, and that a friend helped get their titles onto Waldenbooks shelves, where for a time they were the only role-playing books there besides D&D2, 4.
III1984 to 1986
Atlantis
The Atlantean Trilogy grew out of the research for The Compleat Alchemist. After reading so deeply into alchemy and magic, Sechi wanted a setting to hold it all. "That's when I thought of Atlantis," he said5. He led the three-year project: The Arcanum in 1984, revised in 1985, The Lexicon in 1985 and The Bestiary in 1986. He co-wrote The Arcanum with Vernie Taylor and also directed its art, laid it out and drew some of its illustrations1, 9.
The Arcanum's introduction sets out what they were reaching for: books that worked as one complete game or as parts to borrow from, rules kept lean because "the object of the game is role-playing, not rule-playing", and a believable world before the Flood built from Plato, Cayce, Spence, de Camp, Churchward and legend9. The games historian Shannon Appelcline later wrote that the trilogy "would really put Bard on the map", and credited it with bringing skills and point-based character creation to its players8.
IV1986 to 1990
No elves
After the trilogy the partners fell out. Sechi sold his share to Cordovano, banked the money and spent about three months writing the first Talislanta books. When Cordovano no longer wanted to run Bard, Sechi bought it back and took on his friend Joel Kaye as a partner1, 4. He was single, living in a cheap apartment and driving a $150 Volkswagen4.
Talislanta appeared in 1987. Inspired by Jack Vance, Lovecraft and Marco Polo, Sechi set out to build a fantasy world not rooted in European myth, which gave the game its famous slogan: "No Elves"13. The worlds are linked: The Arcanum's Druas walk in Talislanta too, and Sechi kept the rights to them when he later sold The Arcanum3, 15. In 1988 he gathered the Atlantis material into Atlantis: The Lost World, but an oversized Waldenbooks order came back as returns, and around 1990 he paid off the company's debts and closed Bard Games1, 4, 16.
V1992 to 2010
Music, and a gift
Talislanta went on without Bard: a 1992 edition with Wizards of the Coast, made with Jonathan Tweet, then editions from Shooting Iron and Morrigan Press12. The settlement Wizards of the Coast paid when it dropped the line bought Sechi a small digital studio, and music became his living. For more than twenty-five years he has composed for film, television, sport and advertising, and he released albums of his own music of Talislanta2, 4, 17.
In 2010, rather than license another print edition, he made the old Talislanta books free to download as a thank-you to the fans who had stayed with the game4, 21, 22. "I've never regretted that," he said in 20242.
VI2012 to today
The worlds live on
In 2012 Sechi sold The Arcanum to K. David Ladage, a fan who had bought the book in 1985. Ladage published a 30th Anniversary Edition in 2019 and keeps the 1985 second edition in print today15, 20, 23. The Lexicon and The Bestiary passed through Morrigan Press to Khepera Publishing, whose Atlantis: The Second Age carries the setting forward1, 19.
Sechi returned to Talislanta with the prequel The Savage Land in 2017 and a sixth, "final" Epic Edition in 2023 and 20242, 5, 12. In 2024 he was finishing a novel2. Forty years on, the worlds he built in the 1980s are still being played.
