Demons

Measured by the playing time we've got out of it over the years, this little game is right up there with Gunslinger as one of our best-value purchases of all time. It's set in medieval Armenia, and the players are individual sorcerers summoning demons to seek out and seize treasures from under the noses of various bishops, barons and bastards.

A Thunder of Dragons certainly owes a creative debt to this game, as we've been inspired by some of the mechanics (the troublesome NPCs, the limited resources, the terrain effects on magic) almost to the extent that Dragons could be called a Demons variant.

The most fun part of the game is that when you summon demons you usually get more of the buggers than you're able to hold, so you end up discarding most of them. (We say, "sent to the warp" for historical reasons.) This means anguish for everyone else as they watch the limited demonic resources being burned through by irresponsible wizards. 

Remind you of anything? Everybody was very aware of the planet's limited resources back in the late '70s, so maybe designer Jim Dunnigan meant it as a metaphor.