Blacksburg Tactical Research Center (BTRC) is an American game publishing company best known for the TimeLords, Macho Women with Guns, and EABA role-playing games. They have produced a variety of role-playing games, card games, and board games. Since 2003, they have published exclusively in PDF.
History
While a student at Virginia Tech in the early 1980s, Greg Porter designed several role playing and board games as part of the school's wargaming club. He approached numerous game companies about publishing his designs, but after multiple rejections decided to start his own company. He founded BTRC in 1985, in Blacksburg, Virginia. Greg decided early on that he did not want the company to take on large amounts of debt to release or promote products, so the first games saw very limited releases. Its first product was a board game, Concrete Jungle, a modern tactical game of small-unit military and police actions. TimeLords was its first role-playing game product, released in 1987. It did not initially sell well, but maintained a cult following that allowed a second edition to be published in 1990, followed by a number of supplements. The 1988 release of Macho Women with Guns saw unexpected success and several printings, and allowed the company to continue and expand its line of role-playing game products.
In the 90s, the company shifted its focus to generic role playing game systems, first with CORPS, followed by their flagship system EABA in 2003. With the creation of EABA, they moved to release games exclusively in PDF format, either through online download or print on demand. This allowed BTRC to produce more games and continually update them without reprinting new versions every time, but also limited their reach into game stores and slowed sales. The move to PDF only also allows their games to use many of the built in features of the PDF format across any platform, such as automated dice rolling, live links, and mapping. BTRC's work has been called "the bleeding edge of PDF game development",
Published games
Role Playing Games TimeLords, 1987 SpaceTime, 1988 Macho Women with Guns, 1988 CORPS, 1990 Warp World, 1991 Epiphany: The Legends of Hyperborea, 1996. Experimental diceless open-sourced system and setting. EABA, generic roleplaying system, 2003 Hollyworld, 2005 Purgatory Bay, 2011 EABA v2, 2012 Epiphany 2e, 2021. Reworking of the original Epiphany system, no longer diceless.
Game Supplements Guns! Guns! Guns!, 1991. Firearms design rules for any role-playing game. More Guns!, 1993. Follow up to the Guns! Guns! Guns! supplement, with additional rules and over 500 sample weapons for 10 different game systems. Stuff!, 2006. EABA-based item design tool for any role-playing game. Nominated for the 2006 Ennie award,
Board Games Concrete Jungle, 1985 The Con Game, 1989 Black Death, 1993 Slag!: Combat on the High Frontier, 1995 End of Days, 2008 Soft Landing, 2009 Hunted, 2017 Black Death 2.0, 2021
Card Games F*CK This!, rude and crude card game, 2004 Dumbass!, less rude card game, 2006 Infinite Armies, 2005, winner of 2006 Origins Vanguard award Footsteps of the Prophet, 2008 Alien Zombie Tentacle Apocalypse, 2010 Donner Party, 2016 Killing Lee Garvin, 2019 Badass Zombie Killers, 2020 Artistes Miserables, 2022
Experimental Games Posturing and Pretentions, 2002. Satirical roleplaying game EBON, 2006. A complete role-playing game that fits on a single sheet of paper. Tag!, 2020. Intended for game conventions, each player's convention name tag is their game piece.
References
Gamewyrd: Interview with Greg Porter, retrieved November 27, 2006 e23: Publisher Information: BTRC, retrieved November 27, 2006 Blacksburg Tactical Research Center web site