Karen Kistler<\/p>\n
karen.kistler@salisburypost.com<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
SALISBURY \u2014 Ancient Egypt first captured Matt Balent\u2019s attention as a teenager when his mother took him to a history museum. For the man who has also been involved in role-playing games from a young age, it seemed only natural to combine the two.<\/p>\n
Balent, of Salisbury, authored several role-playing game books in the 1980s and 90s, which were published by Palladium Books, and now has a new RPG to his credit.<\/p>\n
His 280-page game book was published in December of 2024. Titled \u201cThe Valley of the Pharaohs 40th Anniversary Edition,\u201d it is a fantasy role-playing game based in the New Kingdom of Ancient Egypt around 1450 BC, \u201cduring a time that Egypt was an empire and they were expanding their area of influence,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
It was during his college years that role-playing games started to become very popular, he said, with Dungeons and Dragons being the most famous.<\/p>\n
He attended Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan, which had a game club, and it was there that he got involved and wrote a book, he said, \u201cabout different kinds of medieval weapons and armory that they used in medieval times because that\u2019s what the game was based on. It was based in a medieval fantasy setting.\u201d<\/p>\n
He worked with a friend, who he said, started a small game company in 1981 and the two published a book called \u201cWeapons and Armor,\u201d which was about the various weapons and armor used during medieval times.<\/p>\n
They published an entire series of these books over the next five years, which Balent said were very popular.<\/p>\n
He continued working as a contributing author back in those days with his friend at Palladium Books, which his friend continues to run.<\/p>\n
In 1983, he made a game called The Valley of the Pharaohs, which, he said, was a role-playing game based in ancient Egypt.<\/p>\n
They decided to box it up and include a rule book and map for people to buy; however, it wasn\u2019t very successful, for multiple reasons, Balent said.<\/p>\n
Time went by and he began a career as a computer programmer and while he remained in contact with his friend, he said, \u201cI kind of fell out of role playing. I didn\u2019t continue it as a hobby.\u201d<\/p>\n
That was until his now grown children, first a daughter who was in high school at the time, got involved with playing Dungeons and Dragons with a group of friends.<\/p>\n
Balent said he dusted off his boxes of old RPG material from earlier days, and she \u201cwas pretty interested in that and my son a little bit as well.\u201d<\/p>\n
This got him to start thinking about RPG once again and decided to meet up with someone he knew who was a big Dungeons and Dragons player. Balent learned that he even had one of his games, which he said, \u201cis pretty astounding to me because we sold less than 1,000 copies back in the 1980s. So for him to have one was pretty rare.\u201d<\/p>\n
This all rekindled his interest in role playing and in 2023, he once again started to work on his RPG project.<\/p>\n
After talking with his friend in Michigan and being encouraged by him to \u201cdo whatever you want to with the title because it\u2019s long out of print as far as he\u2019s concerned,\u201d he worked on it and at the end of 2024 he had a fundraising campaign to raise money to help offset printing costs and was able to publish the book in December.<\/p>\n