Who are the most inventive game designers?

[BryonD]

With the specification of "inventive", I'd go with Steve Kenson.
He takes the D20 system apart and puts it back together like nobody else.

I'd give honorable mention to Mearls for sheer volume of cool stuff and to Ben Durbin for ability to recognize the best stuff and pull it together into one system (which makes the OGL work for gamers more than anything else)

 

[DMH]

With the specification of "inventive", I'd go with Steve Kenson.
He takes the D20 system apart and puts it back together like nobody else.

Okay, what has he written?

 

[BryonD]

Okay, what has he written?

Mutants and Masterminds
The Psychics Handbook
The Witches Handbook
The Shamans Handbook

http://members.aol.com/talonmail/rpgs.html

 

[Maliki]

How about the men who started it all? Gary and Dave.

 

[Arbiter of Wyrms]

Of course, Gary, the father of D&D, should be given his due here.

I'll say right off that I'm not the biggest Gygax fan around. Monte or Bruce or even Sean K Reynolds or Ray Vallese or Colin McComb or Skip Williams would be higher on my list. . . but. . .

that said, Dave Arneson and Gary Gygax displayed wonderful creativity in coming up with D&D. The PHB, the first starter boxed sets, the MM, and the original Unearthed Arcana were marvelous leaps foreward.

 

[Krieg]

Ken Hood:
The Sleeping Imperium
Grim N Gritty rules
Skills & Feats Psionics AND Martial Arts
Gun nut's Firearm Mechanics

...and he did it before most folks even had a handle on the system.

 

[Dragonhelm]

With the specification of "inventive", I'd go with Steve Kenson.
He takes the D20 system apart and puts it back together like nobody else.

Steve Kenson is one of my favorite RPG designers, creating some of the best books out there.

Being the Dragonlance fan I am, though, I'm going to go with Tracy Hickman.

Need examples?

Dragonlance
Ravenloft
Pharaoh
Rahasia

And so on and so forth.

While more commonly associated with being an author, Tracy Hickman was one of the old greats when it comes to game design. He's come up with two great classic TSR settings (Dragonlance and Ravenloft), and written a ton of modules to boot. Dragonlance completely reinvented how we look at RPGs, changing the focus from dungeons to dragons, from dungeon crawling to epic role-playing.

Add to the fact that many (if not all) of his old modules are considered classics, and that Dragonlance and Ravenloft have been around for years (20 years for DL!).

Game designers like Monte Cook, Bruce Cordell, Steve Kenson, etc. etc. are all quite good and quite inventive in their own right. Yet it takes someone truly inventive to make you look at RPGs in a new light.

 

[John Q. Mayhem]

I'd probably have to say Monte Cook. Arcana Unearthed and the Books of Eldritch Might spring to mind; I'm not familiar with his early Planescape stuff.

EDIT: I was meaning to mention the EoM and EoM(R) people before, but didn't know who they were...

 

[Thanee]

Bruce is hands down the best adventure writer D&D ever had.

Hmm... Admittedly, I know only one of his adventures (Heart of Nightfang Spire), but that one is extremely horrible. One of the worst adventures I've ever seen.

I guess the others are not very much like it.



Steve Kenson certainly has done some remarkable stuff!

Bye
Thanee

 

[Darkness]

I like Monte Cook and Skip Williams.

I also like Matt Blakeley (Elements of Magic).