I attended Quincon, a small tabletop gaming convention in
Quincy Illinois, this past weekend and had the opportunity to reconnect with
Lester Smith, a prolific game designer during the 80s and early 90s, who has gotten
back into the game, so to speak, in the past few years. Since we had time, I
wanted to find out how he got involved in the gaming industry and what he had
in the works now.
Smith entered the gaming industry in the fall of 1984,
submitting what was called at the time a “capsule review” of Wizard’s Realm to
Steve Jackson Games’ Space Gamer magazine. Emboldened by his success, he then
submitted a full game, Mind Duel, for inclusion in the magazine. Unfortunately,
SJG sold off Space Gamer just then and Mind Duel instead appeared in the first of
the renamed VIP of Gaming magazine, which folded after only a few issues.
Moving forwards a few years, now pursuing an English degree
in Bloomington Il., Smith landed a proofreading job at Game Designer’s
Workshop, nee GDW. While proofreading, Smith developed the habit of making
marginal notes, suggesting corrections or improvements to the material. The
higher-ups at GDW noticed this and, rather than getting annoyed, Mark Millar,
the designer of Traveller, asked if Smith would write the first adventure
module for the company’s new Traveller 2300 RPG. He did and then wrote a memo
to GDW’s head, Frank Chadwick with suggestions to improve the realism of
Traveller 2300 when the company reprinted the game. Chadwick agreed with his
suggestions, then turned the situation about by asking Smith to do a complete
revision of the game, now called just 2300. Then, when GDW decided it wanted to
do an ecologically themed horror RPG, it handed that to Smith too. The
result: Dark Conspiracy. By the end of
the 80s, Smith was line manager for both Dark Conspiracy and 2300, as well as
working on other games for the company such as Test of Arms and Space 1889.
A good friend, Tim Brown, had left GDW for TSR and let Smith
know that TSR need designers immediately so Smith sent in a resume. Apparently “immediately”
at TSR at the time meant something different than it does to most people as
Smith heard nothing for a year. A callback for an interview resulted in another
year’s wait. A third interview, this time with Jim Ward, who was vice-president
of Creative Services, resulted in a tour showing where Ward’s desk had b0een
during previous TSR layoffs and a job offer with several conditions that Smith could
not accept, including a requirement that
all of his writing would belong to TSR. Smith passed, resulting in a fourth
callback a year later, with a similar tour and Ward and TSR meeting all of
Smith’s conditions. In fact, when he didn’t respond immediately, just
processing the size of the salary offer, which was larger than expected, Ward responded
by bumping the salary offer up another 20%. Just shows that silence can be
profitable.
During his tenure at TSR, Smith wrote Bug Hunters for the
Amazing Engine system, developed Dragon Dice, and worked on Red Steel,
PlaneScape and an unpublished followup to the DragonStrike game.
Leaving TSR about 1995, he joined Brown at the comic
publisher Comico, which had them develop a collectable card game based on the
company’s characters. Nothing ever came of it though and in 1998, he went to work
for Sebranic, formerly known as The Write Source, a publisher of educational
textbooks, where he has remained since, writing poetry and short stories is his
spare time, only designing a few gaming products, notably Chaos Progenitus and
the Zero RPG.
About 2012,,the game design bug bit him again and, in quick
succession, he developed and sold through DriveThruCards the games Invasion of
the Saucer People, Monster Con, Clashing Blades and Wolfman’s Curse. His
current project is the d6xd6 CORE RPG, which arose out a discussion with
another game designer as to whether it is possible to develop a RPG with only
one statistic d6xd6 CORE is the result with the character sheet fitting on a
business card. In addition, when published, the d6xd6 CORE rulebook will include
“setting chapters” from 30+, novelists, giving players basic information on
venturing into each writer’s world and directing them to the novels for more
information.
In addition, for several years, Smith has published an
annual anthology of Halloween poetry and short stories and is looking for contributors
to this year’s edition. Interested writers can go to www.popcornpress.com for more
information.
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