Jack Herman is an

American American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, pe ...

game designer Game design is the art of applying design and aesthetics to create a game for entertainment or for educational, exercise, or experimental purposes. Increasingly, elements and principles of game design are also applied to other interactions, in ...

who has worked primarily on

role-playing game A role-playing game (sometimes spelled roleplaying game, RPG) is a game in which players assume the roles of player character, characters in a fictional Setting (narrative), setting. Players take responsibility for acting out these roles within ...

Career

In the late 1970s, Jack Herman and

Jeff Dee Jeff Dee is an American artist and game designer. He was the youngest artist in the history of pioneering role-playing game company TSR when he began his work at the age of eighteen. He also designed the ''Villains and Vigilantes'' superhero gam ...

co-created ''

Villains and Vigilantes ''Villains and Vigilantes'' (abbreviated as ''V&V'') is a superhero-themed role-playing game which competed primarily with ''Champions'' and ''Superworld'' in the early to mid-1980s. Origin ''Villains and Vigilantes'' was the first role-playi ...

'', the first complete superhero role-playing game.Jebens, Harley (September 21, 1995). "Game central", ''

Austin American-Statesman The ''Austin American-Statesman'' is the major daily newspaper for Austin, the capital city of Texas. It is owned by Gannett. The paper prints Associated Press, ''New York Times'', ''The Washington Post'', and ''Los Angeles Times'' internation ...

'', p. 38. The game was published by

Fantasy Games Unlimited Fantasy Games Unlimited (FGU) is a publishing house for tabletop and role-playing games. The company has no in-house design teams and relies on submitted material from outside talent. History Founded in the summer of 1975 in Jericho, New York b ...

in 1979. Dee and Herman convinced

Scott Bizar Scott B. Bizar is the founder of Fantasy Games Unlimited, a game publisher which contracts writers and artists that work primarily on role-playing games. Career Scott Bizar, dissatisfied with TSR's ''Dungeons & Dragons'' (1974) and '' Warriors ...

to produce a second edition, which was published in 1982. When Bizar began publishing a number of original PDFs for ''Villains and Vigilantes'' for free through his website in 2010, Dee and Herman contended that they had contracted with FGU Inc., not Bizar, and that this means that Bizar no longer had the rights to publish ''V&V''. The two sent Bizar a cease-and-desist letter in June 2010, instructing him that he was no longer allowed to sell their games. As of early 2011, Bizar had refused a license that would give him the right to continue publishing ''Villains & Vigilantes'' material and had also refused arbitration with Dee and Herman, although Dee and Herman have stated it is required by their contract. Dee and Herman published version 2.1 of ''Villains & Vigilantes'' (2010) under their new brand,

Monkey House Games Monkey is a common name that may refer to most mammals of the infraorder Simiiformes, also known as the simians. Traditionally, all animals in the group now known as simians are counted as monkeys except the apes, which constitutes an incomple ...

, founded to recover ''Villains and Vigilantes'', and the company is a partner of

Cubicle 7 Cubicle 7 Entertainment Ltd is an Irish games company that creates and publishes tabletop games. Best known for its ''Doctor Who'' and ''Lord of the Rings'' games, Cubicle 7 offers titles covering a range of licensed and self-developed properties ...

References

External links

Jack Herman
at Pen & Paper RPG Database rchived {{DEFAULTSORT:Herman, Jack Living people Role-playing game designers Year of birth missing (living people)