Curated playlist
Dungeons & Dragons game designers
- Tom MoldvayThomas Steven Moldvay was born on the 5th of November 1948 in Ohio. He attended Kent State University during the early 1970s while writing for a science fiction fanzine called Infinite Dreams. This publication served as his first creative…
- Ed StarkEd Stark is a game designer whose name appears on some of the most recognized titles in tabletop role-playing history. He began at West End Games writing for lines like TORG and the Star Wars roleplaying game. From there he helped shape…
- Harold Johnson (game designer)Harold Johnson was born in Evanston, Illinois, and went on to help shape some of the most enduring products in the history of tabletop gaming. He played his first game of Dungeons and Dragons in 1976 while still a student, and within a few…
- F. Wesley SchneiderF. Wesley Schneider's design work earned three separate nominations in the same year. It was nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Game Writing and the 2023 Diana Jones Award for Excellence in Gaming. It also picked up 2023 ENNIE Award…
- Jeremy CrawfordJeremy Crawford has spent much of his career shaping the rules of Dungeons & Dragons. In 2018, The Mary Sue pointed to one consequence of that work. The outlet reported that 40 percent of Dungeons & Dragons players were women, up "from…
- Steve Winter (game designer)Steve Winter was born on the 8th of December, 1957, in Dubuque, Iowa, with his heart set on becoming a journalist. He covered murders, presidential campaign stops, and the Mass Transit Board for the Peoria Journal-Star before a single…
- Chris Perkins (game designer)Christopher Perkins was born on the 29th of February 1968, which means his birthday falls on the calendar only once every four years. That quirk of timing fits a career defined by patience and long games. For 28 years, Perkins shaped the…
- David Noonan (game designer)David Noonan joined Wizards of the Coast in 1998, stepping into one of the most ambitious redesigns in the history of tabletop gaming. At the time, Dungeons and Dragons was preparing to reinvent itself from the ground up. The question…
- Peter AdkisonPeter D. Adkison grew up playing strategy games and wargames, and in 1978, a friend introduced him to Dungeons and Dragons. The game, by his own account, "blew him away." That moment planted a seed that would eventually reshape an entire…
- Mike MearlsMike Mearls helped shape the game that tens of millions of people play today. His name appears in the credits of Dungeons and Dragons Fifth Edition, the most popular version in the game's history. He co-led the design of that edition…
- Gary GygaxGary Gygax grew up close enough to Wrigley Field that he could hear the roar of the crowds from his bedroom window. That detail matters, because it tells you something about the world that shaped him: a world of crowd noise, neighborhood…
- Aaron AllstonAaron Dale Allston was born on the 8th of December 1960 in Corsicana, Texas, and by the time he died on the 27th of February 2014, he had shaped two worlds that rarely overlapped: the world of tabletop role-playing games and the universe…
- Dave ArnesonDave Arneson was the co-creator of Dungeons and Dragons, and he spent two days watching monster movies, reading Conan books, and doodling on graph paper before an idea took hold that would change games forever. That moment of restless…
- David Cook (game designer)David Cook was born in East Lansing, Michigan. He grew up on a farm in Iowa where his father worked as both a farmer and a college professor. Junior high school found him playing wargames like Avalon Hill's Blitzkrieg or Afrika Korps.…
- Frank MentzerFrank Mentzer, born Jacob Franklin Mentzer III, stood in the White House gardens in 1972. The National Park Service had hired him to play a concert for inner-city children. Pat Nixon walked over to listen, trailed by national news crews.…
- James Wyatt (game designer)James Wyatt was writing adventures for Dungeon magazine while serving as the minister of two small United Methodist churches in southeastern Ohio. That is not the biography most people expect from the designer of the fourth-edition Dungeon…
- John Eric HolmesJohn Eric Holmes spent his career mapping the human brain, but the worlds that consumed his imagination lay far beneath the earth's surface, in forgotten realms populated by weresharks and warlords. Born on the 16th of February 1930, he…