I got this picture from an e-bay listing. It is an example only and is not intended to infringe on anyone's rights.
Divine Right picture gallery (pictures may take some time to download)
I started playing Divine Right in late 1985. I was 16 years old and had recently met a group of friends who were into various types of gaming. We played a dice game of our own invention, which we simply called "Dice" and a variant (and very simplified) D&D type-game called "Improv" - and Divine Right. One of the guys, a fellow named Chris Croda (who I've subsequently lost track of) owned the game Divine Right. His mom had found it at a flea market and thought it looked interesting. Chris lived on a houseboat in Fisherman's Wharf (in Victoria BC Canada, not San Francisco!), and his mom was often away for weeks at a time on business, and left him in charge of the boat.
So we'd all gather down there on Friday nights and play, sometimes marathon games that went past 4 a.m. Some of the counters were missing, but not enough to affect the game's playability. (We'd made replacement counters for some.)We played using the "advanced" rules - with a few extra rules of our own, which unfortunately I don't remember. I do remember we had a couple of variant special mercenaries, one of which was Conan the Barbarian. (I believe he was a Special leader for the Barbarian units). Most of us were interested in amateur theatre and acting, so we had a way of improvising on the fly when we needed to, and also liked to come up with funny twists to the game not originally intended. One of these was to alter the names of things in the game, so we had constructions like "Hack Bland", "Knack Blight", and of course "Gonad the Librarian". Perhaps you had to be there to understand why this was funny.
Well we all grew up, graduated from high school, and generally moved on. Chris moved to Vancouver and took the game with him. He'd come back to visit once in a while though and we'd get the gang together to play Divine Right for as long as possible. Unfortunately sometime in 1989 or 1990, his car was broken into and the game was stolen.
Ten years went by, I got involved with many other things - C.B. radio, computers, and the emerging Internet - as well as pursuing my career and various girlfriends before finding the right one. I'd all but forgotten about Divine Right until trying to describe it to my wife one day. Then I got the idea of poking around on the Internet to find some information about it. My first searches were pretty fruitless, but I've checked back over the last couple of years and found more and more information out there - but not nearly enough to (a) reconstruct the game from scratch, or (b) find a playable copy for under $100, U.S., for sale. I'm not even sure I could find any of the old gang to play it with.
I am hoping that the game will someday be re-published, along with all the great background information written for it. The game could be the basis for more - like a complete role-playing world, for instance. Perhaps even novels, like the Dragonlance series issued by TSR. (but better!). This web page is dedicated to that dream.
Thanks for reading!
Ian Campbell
The Divine Right Page: http://members.aol.com/divright/, has some variant rules for the game
The Unofficial Divine Right Page/ Minarian Legends (by Vramin): http://www.oocities.org/TimesSquare/Corner/1113/ includes a current e-mail address for Glenn Rahman, the author of the game.
Michael Gemmell's Divine Right Variant rules: http://home.istar.ca/~mgemmell/black.html
Wargame on-line modules - for distance-playing: http://www.transportlogic.com/~semerson/wgp/modules.html, they have a computer program (compatible with Windows 95/98/NT) that allows you to make your moves on an electronic board, and then send the file to an opponent via e-mail. Both players need to have hard copies of the game and the rules for it to work, however, and it is a bit complicated to set up and use. Still worth a look. They have many other games available, too.
