John Peake is a game designer who has worked primarily on board games.

Career

In early 1975, John Peake and his school friends – Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson, who shared a flat in London's

Shepherd's Bush Shepherd's Bush is a district of West London, England, within the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham west of Charing Cross, and identified as a major metropolitan centre in the London Plan. Although primarily residential in character, i ...

with him – decided that they wanted to make games; they chose the name "

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 (gam ...

" for their company because it reflected the fact that they would be crafting their games by hand. Peake was a craftsman and started out making backgammon games with inlaid mahogany and cherry veneer and soon expanded into crafting sets for mancala, nine men's morris, go, tower of Hanoi and other games. To support their newfound games business, Jackson, Livingstone and Peake started publishing a monthly newsletter, ''

Owl and Weasel ''Owl and Weasel'' was a newsletter for Board Game, board gamers, role-playing gamers and Wargaming, wargamers, published in London, England, by Games Workshop. A total of 25 issues were published from February 1975 until April 1977; it was edite ...

'' (1975–1977). In 1976, Peake, who had no interest in the new

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 ...

industry, saw that Games Workshop was getting more involved with RPGs and decided to leave the company.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Peake, John Board game designers British retail company founders Living people Year of birth missing (living people)