Flying Buffalo

Flying Buffalo Inc. was founded in January 1970. That year, Rick Loomis invented a game called Nuclear Destruction, a play-by-mail game, for which he moderated multiplayer games. Nuclear Destruction started the professional PBM industry. He soon had more than 200 players involved across multiple games, and asked fellow soldier Steve MacGregor to write a computer program to help moderate the games; they started renting time on a computer near Fort Shafter, using the name Flying Buffalo devised by Loomis. The name came from Flying Eagle pennies and Buffalo nickels.

Loomis published the first issue of his bi-monthly magazine in September 1971—one two-sided page. Initially called The Flying Buffalo's Favorite Magazine, Loomis eventually renamed it to Flying Buffalo Quarterly.

After leaving the military in 1972, Rick Loomis incorporated his PBM company as Flying Buffalo, Inc., or FBI. Loomis used his savings to purchase a Raytheon 704 minicomputer to run turns for the PBM games. According to Loomis in 1971, the computer cost $15,000 and had "4000 words of memory... a teletypewriter, and a paper [tape] reader/punch".

By 1972, Loomis was running over 70 games of Nuclear Destruction, noting some game delays due to challenges with customer communications. Interest continued in Loomis's games with him stating that he was "starting many games a month", including Battle Plan. At this time, there were seven "official, licensed" Nuclear Destruction moderators outside of Flying Buffalo. Also in 1972, Loomis acquired and published Nuclear War; it soon became one of Flying Buffalo's best sellers.

By 1974, Flying Buffalo had added two PBM games—Board of Directors and Moon Base—while offering multiple other tabletop games for sale. These included Alien Space, Battle of Britain, Battle of Chickamauga, and Imperialism. In 1975 they published Tunnels & Trolls, a fantasy role playing game generally similar to Dungeons & Dragons, and Viva!: Revolution in Mexico, a board wargame. Later products included background materials for fantasy role playing games, which became the "Catalyst" series. In 1976 the company started running a space exploration/conquest PBM game titled Starweb. In 1978 they purchased a board wargame titled Schutztruppe from game designer Jim Bumpas. Also in 1978 the company began publishing Sorcerer's Apprentice. The company's gross sales in 1978 was $125,000 with expenses at $130,000. 1979 brought some additional changes. Flying Buffalo's Vice President, Dave Slight, died, slowing PBM operations. The company purchased another Raytheon computer from a local doctor's office, which promised to speed printing by an order of magnitude (although it initially was missing some key required equipment).

In 1980, the company stated that it had more than 3,000 players worldwide. The staff reached its largest size of over 21 employees in 1983. The company also ran a gaming store at various locations in Tempe, Arizona until 1985. In 1985, Flying Buffalo reached a milestone, assigning its 10,000th account number. The company noted that, although account No. 1 went to its founder, Rick Loomis, account No. 10,000 went to a customer from Athens, Alabama.

In 1992, the fiction book Mage's Blood and Old Bones: A Tunnels & Trolls Shared World Anthology was published by Flying Buffalo.

In July 2021, Webbed Sphere purchased Flying Buffalo Inc. Prior to the acquisition, Flying Buffalo was the oldest pen-and-paper role-playing game publisher still in operation (following the dissolution of TSR in 1997). The PBM games were not included in the sale. A separate company, Rick Loomis PBM Games, continued to run nine PBM games originally published by Flying Buffalo, including Heroic Fantasy, Nuclear Destruction, Starweb, and others.

Play-by-mail games

Flying Buffalo noted in their 14-years history to 1985, some of their PBM games had been run hundreds of times each, including over 870 games of Starweb, 930 of Battle Plan, and 720 of Nuclear Destruction. The company was also up to No. 50 in its print run of Flying Buffalo Quarterly, its company magazine. The company published various play-by-mail games.

Other products

The company produced a range of unusual dice such as Runedice, as well as a set to determine which toppings to order on pizza, and currently hold the printing rights to the Ace of Aces and Lost Worlds flip book systems.

The company also produced a beta version of a video game called Buffalo Tales.