default header

Roleplaying

James M. Ward

Moderator: JC Denton

James M. Ward

Unread postby icycalm » 17 Jan 2023 07:08

https://www.enworld.org/threads/who-in- ... ard.666192

JamesWard on March 15, 2019 wrote:Who in the World is James M. Ward?

When Morrus emailed me that EN World would like to start running articles on my memories of TSR I was very pleased and honored. EN World consumers have a reputation for being very knowledgeable in the hobby market which is good and bad for an old dude like me. I am still a bit hesitant to enter this arena as I consider myself a very “Old Guard” designer and GM and many of my ways are considered obsolete by the players of today. Let me take a few paragraphs to explain who I am and what I intend to do in these articles in the hopes of sparking the interest of the readers of EN World.

Image

Note from Morrus -- James Ward, after whom the wizard "Drawmij" was named, is a game designer who worked for D&D's original pubisher TSR for many years. Amongst other things, he was behind titles like Deities & Demigods, Greyhawk Adventures, Gamma World, and Metmorphosis Alpha. He has agreed to write a column here on EN World recounting his memories of those years, which you can follow here.

In 1974 “young” James M. Ward had just graduated from college with a teaching degree and knew nothing about hobby gaming. One day this “young” dude met E. Gary Gygax in a book store when without talking to each other, we selected the exact same seven novels. In the weeks that followed, Gary taught me how to play D&D and the “game was on.”

I learned about gaming as Gary and his 8th grader son Ernie crushed me in board games like Alexander, Dunkirk, and the Dungeon board game. I told Gary if his company ever had enough cash to pay my salary (9,700 at the time) I would be happy to come and work at his company.

While playing a D&D game on Gary's side porch, I told Gary he absolutely had to have a science fiction version of his game. He was kind enough to tell me he didn't have the time to write a game like that. To my surprise he asked if I was interested in trying to write such a game. I was happy to give it a try and Metamorphosis Alpha was created. From there I wrote Gods, Demi-gods, & Heroes with a lot of help. I worked on Deities and Demigods and that was a success. The writing bug bit me hard and I was writing Strategic Review articles, Dragon articles, RPG polyhedron articles, DUNGEON pieces, and lots more product, but all of that writing was a bit in my future.

Finally, in 1980 Gary said he could afford me. I went to work at TSR and it was a little bit of heaven on Earth. I started in the sales department as the inventory controller and was in charge of ordering all the books and boxes for the TSR products. From there I helped develop the education department and helped design three adventure modules geared to classroom situations. I also wrote many articles in Dragon magazine. I went from that department to the Novel department and contracted authors to write for TSR.

In 1984 TSR had 386 employees and the banks, TSR management worked with, said the company had to cut back on their employees. In five ugly purges the company went from 386 people to 86 people. I was laid off in the third purge of 55 employees on April 4th, 1984.

For 18 months I designed products for TSR and others. I designed the Great Shakes Charlie Brown dice game for Western Publishing. I put together four He-man Golden Books. I did a host of other things, including writing lots of TSR game books and Pick-a-Path books. The One-on-One TSR books and the Catacomb books were created and published at that time. After 18 months a clever accountant at TSR figured it would be cheaper to hire me full time and pay me a salary to do design work, than to keep giving me contracts for products and I was hired back at TSR.

I started working on the Laser Tag products for TSR. I advanced in the ranks of the company until I was the Director of the designers and editors. Finally, I became the Vice President of the Design division. My group got the product line on schedule and in the last two years, that I was there, the company set records for gross dollars in sales based on the product schedule my trademark groups put together for those years.

It became clear to me that the new upper management didn't care a bit about the hobby or the traditions of TSR when they started trying to finance everything but hobby product. When asked to fire twenty editors and designers so that the bottom line of the company finances would look better I said no. I was given an either/or choice and I left the company I loved, never designing products for TSR or Wizards (its buyer) again.

Since 1997 I have worked for other game companies. I worked at Precedence helping to produce the Tomb Raider, Babylon 5, and the Wheel of Time collectible card games. I designed the Dragon Ball Z card game for Score Entertainment and helped a bit on the Buffy the Vampire Slayer CCG. Over the years I have designed game products for Troll Lords, Goodman Games, and Fire Side Creations.

This bring us up to today. I have had a bit of fun talking about the history of TSR, using my Facebook page as a stage for my writing. Morrus became interested in my stories and thought the readers of EN World would like to know more about the history of TSR. I will do my best to remember the important details and show you the fun and creativity of TSR. I need to state up front that I could get some facts wrong, but I will try hard not to. I could be a few months off when it comes to dates because I didn't write all of these experiences down when they happened. However, I think you will find there are a lot of amusing and bonehead things that happened at TSR that you as the fans of role-playing might find interesting.

Off the top of my head I plan to write the following about the company and my experiences:

  • Meeting Gary Gygax and being taught how to play D&D
  • Designing Metamorphosis Alpha, the first science fiction role-playing game
  • The Origin of Monty Haul
  • The TSR Dice Story
  • The TSR Dragon Dice Story
  • The creation of Deities & Demigods
  • Palace of the Silver Princess Release
  • SSI and TSR's entrance into the computer game industry
  • Theon's Underwear

And if there are topics that the readers of EN World would like more information on, if I know the answer and EN World management deems the topic worthy, I will write on your suggested topics.



https://www.enworld.org/threads/james-m ... d-d.666226

JamesWard on April 3, 2019 wrote:James M Ward: Meeting Gary Gygax and Learning D&D

Thank you all for the very kind welcome onto the EN World pages. A writer always glories in the kind words of his readers. Also I want you to know I will be very responsive to the interests of the EN World group. From the notes already left for me [in the first article, Who In The World is James M, Ward?] I can see you want to hear about the design of Deities & Demigods and Gamma World. I promise that will happen in the months to come.

Image
Jim Ward (right) gaming with Gary Gygax (left) on Gary's front porch. Image from Goodman Games.​

The time is July of 1974 and I am fresh out of college with a teaching degree in History and English. Every Tuesday I would go to the Lake Geneva Smoke Shop because they would get in new novels. In those days they charged $.95 so even on a substitute teacher's salary I could afford a few.

On that Tuesday the store had quite a few new books from different series I liked to read. There was an L. Sprague DeCamp Conan novel; a Michael Moorcock Elric book; I think there was a Robert Heinlein in the batch. Anyway, as I picked up the seventh novel, a rough looking dude was grabbing books as well. As I selected the last book of the seven he took a copy of the same book.

We looked at each other and smiled. He had sort of a biker air about him. He was wearing an old pair of jeans and a ratty blue-jean jacket. As we looked at each other's stack of books we realized we had picked the exact same novels. We got quite a laugh out of that.

Then we got into a discussion on the merits of Robert E. Howard or L. Sprague DeCamp's version of Conan. During that discussion he hit me with the fact that he had a game where I could play Conan fighting against the priests of Set. Gary had set the hook and I was being pulled in like a ten pound trout. He gave me his phone number and told me the game was every Saturday.

I came to Gary's house and was introduced to the family. They were extremely friendly. I'm embarrassed to say that I thought Mary, Gary's wife, was his daughter she looked so young and fresh. On his side porch were a few young folks including Ernie, his son in eighth grade. Brian Blume was his business partner who had given him the $5,000.00 dollars to make the first 1,000 brown box sets. Brian offered to sell me a box for $10.00 but I didn't have any cash on me at the time. It wasn't until a few months later that I could scrape together the ten to own my set.

All of the other players on the porch were third and fourth level as they had been playing for months. Brian helped me roll up a character. With a 17 in intelligence and a 16 in wisdom I was told the natural choice was to be a wizard, which was fine by me.

I'm ashamed, 45 years later, to admit that it took me literally months to figure out the dice and when to roll them. In those days you rolled a six-sider and on a four, five, or six you added ten points to a twenty sided die with two sets of 1-10 for numbers. I kept reading the wrong side of the four-sider. I was never sure when to roll the eight or twelve-sided dice. I was a dice rolling mess. However, Gary and his group were always very supportive. Eventually I figured things out.

I am a person who lives by the written word, but there are no words for the amazing skill of Gary Gygax as he wove the story for the group that day, or any other game day. He brought all five senses into his story telling and I had no problem imagining myself walking from Greyhawk city into Greyhawk dungeon with the rest of the crew.

That first game I had the choice between a light spell or a sleep spell and I took the light spell. I brought my equipment from the merchant's quarter of Greyhawk city. I bought lots of throwing daggers and several quarts of lamp oil. I was thinking flaming bottles of oil, even in that stage of my development. The adventure was magical.

Into the dungeon we boldly walked. The others were old hands and had hand drawn maps of several levels. Mapping looked like a lot of fun. Brian Blume taught me how to trail map so I was recording our turnings as Gary called out the distances. We went into a new section of the dungeon and suddenly everyone in the group was tense and I had no idea why.

“You come upon three doors and each one is a bit strange,” Gary described. “The left one has the picture of an island in the middle of the door (it was the Isle of the Ape in playtest). The middle door has the picture of a walrus on a beach. The right one has a picture of an odd looking humanoid with a strange cap and in its hand is a strange crossbow pistol.”

I wasn't about to say anything. The group chose the door with the island image. We walked through and found ourselves at night with an ocean breeze coming from the west. We moved by moon light and decided not to mark our presence with a torch or lantern. Gary perfectly described the hilly area. We came to a village with no one moving about. I couldn't see anything in the window of the large hut I was looking at so I cast my light spell into the hut. BIG MISTAKE! It seems I woke up ten warrior natives. The magic spooked them and they grabbed their spears and ran for the door.

My group made nasty grunts about the new guy and throwing spells, and we ran into the night for our lives. In seconds spears were hurtling past us. Before I could even think about ducking or diving, Gary informed me that two spears pierced my back and killed me. My D&D career was cut brutally short. Others were cut down in the night and each of the other players looked daggers at me as their characters were killed.

I went home extremely happy, even in death. I couldn't wait to get back the next Saturday and roll up a new character. When I got over there next week I was over joyed to hear that Ernie had used the last wish on a three wish ring to bring the dead of our group back alive and safe and sound. Lidabmob, the Wizard, was back in business.
User avatar
icycalm
Hyperborean
 
Joined: 28 Mar 2006 00:08
Location: Tenerife, Canary Islands

Return to Roleplaying