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Brian Blume
Brian John Blume (January 12, 1950 – March 27, 2020) was an American game designer and writer, principally known as a former business partner of Gary Gygax at TSR, Inc., original publishers of the fantasy role-playing game ''Dungeons & Dragons''. Biography Early life Brian Blume was born January 12, 1950, in Oak Park, Illinois to Melvin and Kathleen Blume, and grew up in Wauconda, Illinois with four brothers and three half-brothers. Blume began playing chess at age seven, and '' Gettysburg'' at age nine. He was fascinated by history in junior high school and was involved in miniature wargaming in high school. After graduating as class valedictorian, Blume attended Wabash College, but left to become a tool and die making journeyman for his father's company for five years. ''Dungeons & Dragons'' and TSR Blume met Gary Gygax at the Gen Con game convention in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. Gygax and his friend Don Kaye had recently formed Tactical Studies Rules in Lake Geneva ...
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Oak Park, Illinois
Oak Park is a village in Cook County, Illinois, adjacent to Chicago. It is the 29th-most populous municipality in Illinois with a population of 54,583 as of the 2020 U.S. Census estimate. Oak Park was first settled in 1835 and later incorporated in 1902, when it separated from Cicero. Architect Frank Lloyd Wright and his wife settled in Oak Park in 1889, and his work heavily influenced local architecture and design, including the Frank Lloyd Wright Home and Studio. Over the years, rapid development was spurred by railroads and street cars connecting the village to jobs in nearby Chicago. In 1968, Oak Park passed the Open Housing Ordinance, which helped devise strategies to integrate the village rather than resegregate. Today, Oak Park remains ethnically diverse, and is known for its socially liberal politics, with 80% or higher voter turnout in every presidential election since 2000. Oak Park is closely connected to Chicago with Chicago Transit Authority access via the Green Li ...
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Journeyman
A journeyman, journeywoman, or journeyperson is a worker, skilled in a given building trade or craft, who has successfully completed an official apprenticeship qualification. Journeymen are considered competent and authorized to work in that field as a fully qualified employee. They earn their license by education, supervised experience and examination. Although journeymen have completed a trade certificate and are allowed to work as employees, they may not yet work as self-employed master craftsmen. The term "journeyman" was originally used in the medieval trade guilds. Journeymen were paid daily and the word "journey" is derived from ''journée'', meaning "whole day" in French. Each individual guild generally recognised three ranks of workers: apprentices, journeymen, and masters. A journeyman, as a qualified tradesman could become a master and run their own business, but most continued working as employees. Guidelines were put in place to promote responsible tradesmen, who we ...
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Europe
Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a subcontinent of Eurasia and it is located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. Comprising the westernmost peninsulas of Eurasia, it shares the continental landmass of Afro-Eurasia with both Africa and Asia. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south and Asia to the east. Europe is commonly considered to be separated from Asia by the watershed of the Ural Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian Sea, the Greater Caucasus, the Black Sea and the waterways of the Turkish Straits. "Europe" (pp. 68–69); "Asia" (pp. 90–91): "A commonly accepted division between Asia and Europe ... is formed by the Ural Mountains, Ural River, Caspian Sea, Caucasus Mountains, and the Black Sea wit ...
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Steve Jackson (UK Game Designer)
Steve Jackson (born 20 May 1951) is a British game designer, writer, game reviewer and co-founder of UK game publisher Games Workshop. History Steve Jackson began his career in games in 1974 as a freelance journalist with ''Games & Puzzles'' magazine. In early 1975, Jackson co-founded the company Games Workshop with school friends John Peake and Ian Livingstone. They started publishing a monthly newsletter, ''Owl and Weasel'', which was largely written by Jackson, and sent copies of the first issue to subscribers of ''Albion'' fanzine; Brian Blume, co-partner of American publisher TSR, received one of these copies and in return sent back a copy of TSR's new game ''Dungeons & Dragons''. Jackson and Livingstone felt that this game was more imaginative than anything being produced in the UK at the time, and so worked out an arrangement with Blume for an exclusive deal to sell ''D&D'' in Europe. In late 1975, Jackson and Livingstone organized their first convention, the first Gam ...
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Ian Livingstone
Sir Ian Livingstone (born 29 December 1949) is an English fantasy author and entrepreneur. Along with Steve Jackson, he is the co-founder of a series of role-playing gamebooks, ''Fighting Fantasy'', and the author of many books within that series. He is also one of the co-founders of prominent games company Games Workshop. Early life Livingstone attended Altrincham Grammar School for Boys, where, according to him, he only earned one A-level, in Geography. He has kept his close links with the school and has visited it on numerous occasions, including to donate money for a refurbishment of the ICT suite, and to present awards to GCSE recipients in 1998. Career Games Workshop Livingstone co-founded Games Workshop in early 1975 with flatmates John Peake and Steve Jackson. They started publishing a monthly newsletter, ''Owl and Weasel'', and sent copies of the first issue to subscribers of the recently defunct fanzine ''Albion''; Brian Blume received one of these copies, and ...
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Games Workshop
Games Workshop Group (often abbreviated as GW) is a British manufacturer of miniature wargames, based in Nottingham, England. Its best-known products are '' Warhammer Age of Sigmar'' and '' Warhammer 40,000''. Founded in 1975 by John Peake, Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson, Games Workshop was originally a manufacturer of wooden boards for games including backgammon, mancala, nine men's morris and Go. It later became an importer of the U.S. role-playing game '' Dungeons & Dragons'', and then a publisher of wargames and role-playing games in its own right, expanding from a bedroom mail-order company in the process. It expanded into Europe, the US, Canada, and Australia in the early 1990s. All UK-based operations were relocated to the current headquarters in Lenton, Nottingham in 1997. It started promoting games associated with ''The Lord of the Rings'' film trilogy in 2001. It also owns Forge World (which makes complementary specialist resin miniatures and conversion ...
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Owl And Weasel
''Owl and Weasel'' was a newsletter for board gamers, role-playing gamers and wargamers, published in London, England, by Games Workshop. A total of 25 issues were published from February 1975 until April 1977; it was edited by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone. It was superseded by ''White Dwarf''. Title The reasoning behind such a "cultishly-monikered" choice of title has been stated to be a mystery by the co-editors, although anthropomorphism may have been a factor. In a 2009 interview, Steve Jackson stated that "it represented the characteristics you need to be a good games player: wise like an owl and crafty like a weasel", although this explanation had not been given in any previous editorial or interview. History The publication was initially launched to complement Games Workshop's business of producing hand-crafted wooden board games. The magazine issued a challenge to British game producers to match the efforts of U.S. and German game producers. Copies of early iss ...
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Wired (magazine)
''Wired'' (stylized as ''WIRED'') is a monthly American magazine, published in print and online editions, that focuses on how emerging technologies affect culture, the economy, and politics. Owned by Condé Nast, it is headquartered in San Francisco, California, and has been in publication since March/April 1993. Several spin-offs have been launched, including '' Wired UK'', ''Wired Italia'', ''Wired Japan'', and ''Wired Germany''. From its beginning, the strongest influence on the magazine's editorial outlook came from founding editor and publisher Louis Rossetto. With founding creative director John Plunkett, Rossetto in 1991 assembled a 12-page prototype, nearly all of whose ideas were realized in the magazine's first several issues. In its earliest colophons, ''Wired'' credited Canadian media theorist Marshall McLuhan as its "patron saint". ''Wired'' went on to chronicle the evolution of digital technology and its impact on society. ''Wired'' quickly became recognized ...
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Warriors Of Mars (game)
''Warriors of Mars'' is a 1974 miniatures wargame rule book, written by Gary Gygax and Brian Blume and published by Tactical Studies Rules. It simulates combat in the fantasy world of Barsoom, originally imagined by Edgar Rice Burroughs in his series of novels about John Carter of Mars. It is a 56-page booklet in the same style as the original ''Dungeons & Dragons'' books, even sharing the same artist Greg Bell.Steve Zieser"Warriors of Mars" ''Iron Rationales'', August 28, 2010 Gygax and TSR published the rules without permission from Burroughs estate and soon after its release they issued a cease and desist order and the game was pulled from distribution. Because only a few copies were sold the book is now rare and sells for a high price.James Maliszewski"Retrospective: Warriors of Mars" ''Grognardia'', March 14, 2012. The same year ''Warriors of Mars'' was published (and then un-published), Gygax published the first edition of ''Dungeons & Dragons'', where he paid homage to Burro ...
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Dave Arneson
David Lance Arneson (; October 1, 1947Minnesota Department of Health. ''Minnesota Birth Index, 1935–2002'' atabase on-line Provo, UT, USA: The Generations Network, Inc., 2004. – April 7, 2009) was an American game designer best known for co-developing the first published role-playing game (RPG), ''Dungeons & Dragons'', with Gary Gygax, in the early 1970s. Arneson's early work was fundamental to the development of the genre, developing the concept of the RPG using devices now considered to be archetypical, such as adventuring in "dungeons" and using a neutral judge who doubles as the voice and consciousness of all characters aside from the player characters to develop the storyline. Arneson discovered wargaming as a teenager in the 1960s, and he began combining these games with the concept of role-playing. He was a University of Minnesota student when he met Gygax at the Gen Con gaming convention in the late 1960s. In 1970 Arneson created the game and fictional world th ...
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Tactical Studies Rules
TSR, Inc. was an American game publishing company, best known as the original publisher of ''Dungeons & Dragons'' (''D&D''). Its earliest incarnation, Tactical Studies Rules, was founded in October 1973 by Gary Gygax and Don Kaye. Gygax had been unable to find a publisher for ''D&D'', a new type of game he and Dave Arneson were co-developing, so founded the new company with Kaye to self-publish their products. Needing financing to bring their new game to market, Gygax and Kaye brought in Brian Blume in December as an equal partner. ''Dungeons & Dragons'' is generally considered the first tabletop role-playing game (TTRPG), and established the genre. When Kaye died suddenly in 1975, the Tactical Studies Rules partnership restructured into TSR Hobbies, Inc. and accepted investment from Blume's father Melvin. With the popular ''D&D'' as its main product, TSR Hobbies became a major force in the games industry by the late 1970s. Melvin Blume eventually transferred his shares to his ...
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Don Kaye
Donald R. Kaye (June 27, 1938 – January 31, 1975) was the co-founder of Tactical Studies Rules (TSR), the game publishing company best known for their ''Dungeons & Dragons'' (''D&D'') role-playing game. He and TSR co-founder Gary Gygax had been friends since childhood, sharing an interest in miniature war games. In 1972, Kaye created Murlynd, one of the first ''D&D'' characters, and play-tested him in Gygax's ''Castle Greyhawk'' campaign. Kaye and Gygax were convinced that ''D&D'' and similar games were an excellent business opportunity, and together they founded Tactical Studies Rules in 1973. However, only two years later, just as sales of ''D&D'' started to rise, Kaye unexpectedly died of a heart attack at age 36. Early life and early gaming Don Kaye was born on June 27, 1938. He grew up in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, where at age 8, he became friends with Gygax, who had moved there from Chicago, Illinois. The two young boys also often played with tomboy Mary Jo Powell, but lo ...
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