Short answers, pulled from the story.
David Cook was born in East Lansing, Michigan, and spent his childhood on a farm in Iowa playing wargames like Avalon Hill's Blitzkrieg and Afrika Korps. This early hobby of strategizing complex battles led him to the University of Iowa gaming club where he encountered Dungeons and Dragons in 1977.
David Cook received the nickname Zeb while teaching high school in Milligan, Nebraska. The moniker originated from his signature featuring a prominent stroke resembling the letter Z and his striking resemblance to James Arness who played a character named Zeb Macahan on the television series How the West Was Won.
David Cook designed the Expert Set to allow characters to progress beyond the third level and created the original Oriental Adventures setting of Kara-Tur. He also invented Planescape which became one of the most beloved settings in the history of Advanced Dungeons and Dragons.
After leaving TSR in 1994 David Cook worked on the game Fallout 2 and served as the lead designer on the 2005 City of Villains computer game for Cryptic Studios. He later joined Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment as the lead systems designer for the video game Stargate Worlds.
David Cook was inducted into the Origins Hall of Fame in 2001 for his contributions to the gaming industry. In 2013 he worked as Content Designer at ZeniMax Online Studios on The Elder Scrolls Online and was credited as a Senior Product Owner for Bethesda.Net with the release of the Elsweyr expansion in June 2019.