In the 1980s a group of friends who played a customized version of Dungeons & Dragons — Vernie Taylor, Steven Cordovano, and Stephan Michael Sechi — decided to publish details of their home campaign and each put up $600 to form Bard Games. 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 credited, the assumption being that players would use the popular Dungeons & Dragons rules.
The following year, these books were combined with a new role-playing system into one central rulebook, The Arcanum. This was followed by The Lexicon in 1985, which provided the setting, and The Bestiary in 1986, which provided the creatures. As a result, the role-playing game became known as The Atlantean Trilogy; later versions were titled simply Atlantis.
The Lexicon, a 136-page book with a removable two-color map, was written by Sechi, Taylor, and Ed Mortimer, with interior artwork by Joe Bouza, Ken Canossi, and Roy MacDonald, and cover art by Scott Lee.[3] It does not contain any role-playing rules, and can be used with any role-playing system.[1]
In 1988, following the publication of a second edition of The Arcanum, Bard Press combined The Lexicon and The Bestiary into a single book, Atlantis: The Lost World.[4]
Sechi would go on to produce the role-playing game Talislanta, also published by Bard Games in 1987.
In the 2014 book Designers & Dragons: The '80s, game historian Shannon Appelcline wrote that "Because of the success of their Compleat books, Bard Games decided to combine the best information from those supplements within a game system and a setting. The result — which would become known as "The Atlantis Trilogy" — would really put Bard on the map. Stephan Michael Sechi oversaw this new and daunting project — which took three years to complete. Eventually he produced three books: The Arcanum (1984), The Lexicon (1985), and The Bestiary (1986). The system was clearly derivative of D&D, but it also introduced character skills and point-based character creation. The setting was a bit more unique, as it portrayed an antediluvian world of myth (though it also contained some off-key elements including typical fantasy races of D&D and even druids). Some players embraced the new game as a more complex D&D with a uniquely textured setting."[5]: 186
Appelcline also noted that Morrigan Press later "licensed the Talislanta setting from Stephan Michael Sechi and also bought the rights to two of his Atlantis rules books — The Lexicon and The Bestiary."[6]: 110
