Women D&D authors

[johnsemlak]

I recently downloaded an ESD called the Dancing Hut of Baba Yaga, a 2e module from 1995. One of the first things I noticed about it was its author: Lisa Smedman. To my knowledge it's tthe first D&D product I ever bought solely authored by a woman. I got to thinking, what other female authors are there out there?

Of products I have or know about, the only others I can think of are Laura Hickman and Margaret Weis.
Of course, with the d20 explosion there must be many out there now. I was wondering who would be the most well known?

 

[Oni]

I'm not exactly sure, but the name Angel McCoy comes to mind, I know I've seen it on several RPG products, though not anything that happens to be in arms reach.

[edit: Her names on the cover of Magic of Faerun, and she's also done some stuff for WhiteWolf, if you want more detail check out her website: http://www.angelfire.com/ms/mccoy/ ]

 

[Piratecat]

Jean Rabe.
Teeuwynn Woodruff.
Gwendolyn Kestrel.
Penny Williams (?)

 

[jgbrowning]

my wife, suzi yee. she wrote 3/4 of A Magical Medieval Society: Western Europe. (please don't ask why i can capitalize that, but not i.... )

we're far from big names, but she deserves credit. from me at least, if from no one else...

and she knit me a homey hat and makes a great watercress soup...

joe b.

 

[Sniktch]

If we're just talking novelists, there's a huge number - also Elaine Cunningham for FR, Katherine Kerr (who used to edit Dragon) with her Deverry series, and many, many others (but those are the most closely connected to D&D I can think of that haven't been mentioned).

For designers and other important roles I'd have to page through my library to come up with more names, except Sue Cook springs to mind immediately for her editing work... I see Jennifer Clark Wilke's name mentioned in a fair bit of recent WotC stuff for editing and design work. Hard to say who the most well known would be.

 

[Viktyr Gehrig]

Not exactly D&D, but Diane Duane wrote several of the Star*Drive novels and a couple of Spider-Man novels that were worth the reading. Don't know if she's done any traditional fantasy or D&D-type stuff, though.

 

[Monte At Home]

Andria Hayday did a lot of great work with Ravenloft and Dori Watry/Hein did some work on Planescape (and probably others). Both of them, as well as Karen Boomgarten were all project managers at TSR. I worked a lot with Andria on Planescape. PS fans owe a lot to her (without her support, for example, I'm sure I could never have brought back Orcus in 2nd Edition, at least not while D&D was owned by TSR).

And if you're going to bring up editors, don't forget Michele Carter. She's great. And Julia Martin, one of the biggest experts on the Forgotten Realms--she's also done a little design work.

Anne Brown also did some design work at TSR.

Mary Kirchoff had some influence in the creation of Dark Sun, although she didn't do any actual game design.

And since you mentioned Sue already I will put in that she did a little design/writing on some Dragonlance stuff as well as a ton of editing on all sorts of products.

Edit: Added more.

 

[wighair]

Penelope Love wrote some good stuff for Chaosium in the Past. Particularly her stuff for Call of Cthulhu I enjoyed. She seems to have moved mostly onto fiction of late doing some stuff for Glorantha/RQ/Herowars/Heroquest/Whatever its called this week.

I seem to recall the old free adventure with the 2nd edition DM's screen "Terrible trouble a tragidor" was written by a woman which raised eyebrows at the time. Can't recall her name, but sure someone must know it.

A good resource for this kind of stuff is the RPG Database over at Pen and Paper....

http://www.pen-paper.net/rpgdb.php?op=creatorlist&letter=A

 

[diaglo]

did anyone include Barbara Young from Dungeon Magazine days?

 

[diaglo]

Jean Wells the original orange cover B3

Two other early adventures were cowritten by women: Palace of the Vampire Queen by Pete and Judy Kerestan (Wee Warriors, 1976) and Quest for the Fazzlewood by John and Laurie Van De Graaf (Metro Detroit Gamers, 1978). The latter was revised and published by TSR in 1983 as a one-on-one module (01. The Gem and the Staff).