Atlantis is a fantasy role-playing game (RPG) originally published by Bard Games, set in the ancient world before Atlantis sank. It first consisted of three books: The Arcanum, The Lexicon, and The Bestiary, and for this reason was originally called The Atlantean Trilogy or The Atlantis Trilogy. Atlantis was one of the many fantasy RPGs that followed the rise of the popular Dungeons & Dragons RPG in the late 1970s. However, instead of featuring a fictional fantasy world such as D&Ds Greyhawk or Runequests Glorantha, Atlantis is based on a pseudo-historical version of the Earth and features historical mythology and creatures from myth. Setting The world setting is Earth, but in a fictionalized Antediluvian Age (a quasi-historical/mythical interpretation of the ancient past). Geography The geographic regions and real-world influences are: Mediterranea (Europe) Eria (North America) Tamoanchan (South America) Turan (Arabia) Gondwana (Africa) Jambu (Asia) the Nether Realm (Antarctica) Anostos and Jotunland (Iceland and Greenland). Mythical continents are also added: Atlantia (Atlantis), Antilla, Hyperborea Lemuria Mu and others Publication history In the 1980s a group of friends — Vernie Taylor, Steven Cordovano, and Stephan Michael Sechi — who played a highly customized version of Dungeons & Dragons with new, specialized character classes and magic spells, decided to publish their improvements to the game. Each of them put up $600 to form Bard Games. The Compleat Series In 1983 the new company published three books known as the "Compleat Series": The Compleat Adventurer by Sechi, The Compleat Spell Caster by Taylor and Sechi, and The Compleat Alchemist by Cordovano and Sechi. No specific role-playing system rules were mentioned, the unwritten assumption being that players would use the popular Dungeons & Dragons rules. First edition: The Atlantean Trilogy The following year, the books of The Compleat Series were combined with a new role-playing system into one central rulebook, The Arcanum, a 156-page softcover book by Sechi and Taylor. This was followed in 1985 by The Lexicon, a 128-page softcover book by Sechi, Taylor and Ed Mortimer that provided the setting, and The Bestiary in 1986, a 132-page softcover book written by Sechi and J. Andrew Keith that provided the creatures. As a result, the role-playing game became known as The Atlantean Trilogy; later versions with fewer than three books were simply titled Atlantis. Sechi would go on to produce the role-playing game Talislanta, also published by Bard Games in 1987. In the 2014