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I met Gary Gygax at a book store. He told me he had a game where I could play Conan and fight Set. Just like that I was hooked. I went over to his house and rolled up a wizard character in D&D...
You won't be surprised to know that the highly creative people at TSR often did amazing things in their game playing. I can distinctly remember having a fun lunch with Gary Gygax and he told me...
Alignment is, on some level, the beating heart of Dungeons & Dragons. On the other hand, it’s sort of a stupid rule. It’s like the hit point rules in that it makes for a good game experience...
Jon Peterson has shared some images of Dave Arneson's Origins 1977 D&D tournament, in the form of twelve pre-generated characters (which include a werewolf!), the tournament's event description...
Let me give you a little background. I became the Director of Creative Services at TSR. Upper management wanted me to have that title so when I tried to manage the editors and designers my words...
My best friend Rob Heinsoo was the lead designer on 4th Ed, and one of his jobs was to fix things that 3rd Ed hadn’t fixed. Multiclassing was on that list of systems that needed work. At one point when playing 3rd Ed, Rob was running a 3rd level barbarian-fighter-ranger. Given the way multiclassing worked, why not?
First, let me correct a mistake I made when I wrote that Zeb Cook thought up the 'Baatezu' & 'Tanar'ri' demon and devil new names. My friend Jim LaFountain quite rightly pointed out that he was...
On the Third Edition design team, we were tasked with rationalizing the game system, but there were some big elements of the system that we didn’t question. We inherited a system in which...
Let me start by saying that I believe Gary Gygax was a gaming genius. That genius included a lot of skills in crafting D&D designs. I have experienced literally hundreds of DM styles. Gary's style...
As the neutral DM I was positioned to see how the opposition to Bob Burman had manifested, especially among two primary players in my campaigns and games, James Goodfellow and Eric Shook. Where does this animus derive from?
What do you call a D&D cleric who can’t heal? A 1st-level 1970s cleric. The original first-level cleric could turn undead but had no spells. Skip Williams says that the original conception of the...
In 1997, I attended the TSR RPG Writer’s Workshop, in Seattle, WA. In 2000, I applied for job at Wizards of the Coast, and was hired to be part of the RPG R&D team, working on Licensed Products...
This week in Ben Riggs' podcast, he interviews Ed Greenwood, father of the Forgotten Realms, about his 1987 agreement with TSR wherein he sold the rights to the Realms for $5,000. "We also discuss...
Every game club or group has one. A person who stands out from the rest mostly due to some recurring oddity, a facet of their unchanging personality if you will, and their sublime belief in their...
In 1996, TSR, the company that birthed Dungeons & Dragons, was in trouble. TSR was millions of dollars in debt to Random House. Budgets were so tight that employees were being told that they had...
Life at TSR was very good and very bad. It started out in 1983. TSR had 386 employees and nepotism had raised its ugly head. You couldn’t throw a rock anywhere in the TSR offices without hitting a...
Like so many TTRPG writers, I got where I am now by standing on the backs of giants. But it’s easier to stand on a giant’s back after you meet them, and I am a depressive socially-awkward...
GECON IX, Baby! It was happening. TSR was on a roll. The last supplement for OD&D had just been released, Empire of the Petal Throne was a reality, and Fritz Leiber’s board game, Lankhmar...
With 3rd Ed, our main goal was to return D&D to its roots, such as with Greyhawk deities and the return of half-orcs. By staying true to the feel of D&D, we helped the gaming audience accept the sweeping changes that we made to the rules system.