Thomas A. Dowd is a

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

Thomas Dowd was one of the writers who supported

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 ...

's role-playing game, ''

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 ''

Shadowrun ''Shadowrun'' is a science fantasy tabletop role-playing game set in an alternate future in which cybernetics, magic and fantasy creatures co-exist. It combines genres of cyberpunk, urban fantasy and crime, with occasional elements of conspir ...

'' 2nd Edition rules from

FASA Fasa ( fa, فسا, Fasā, also Romanized as Fassa) is a city and capital of Fasa County, Fars Province, Iran. At the 2016 census, its population was 110,825, in 33,379 families. Fasa is the fourth most populous city of the province. The city date ...

, by Dowd with Paul Hume and

Bob Charrette Robert N. Charrette (born 1953) is an American graphic artist, game designer, sculptor and author. Charrette has authored more than a dozen novels. His gaming materials have received many Origins Awards. Charrette was inducted in the Origins Hall o ...

, won the

Origins Award The Origins Awards are American awards for outstanding work in the game industry. They are presented by the Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts and Design at the Origins Game Fair on an annual basis for the previous year, so (for example) the 1979 aw ...

for Best Roleplaying Rules of 1992. In 1990, Dowd met

Peter Adkison Peter D. Adkison is an American game designer and businessman who is the founder and first CEO of Wizards of the Coast (1993–2001). During Adkison's tenure, Wizards of the Coast rose to the status of a major publisher in the hobby game indust ...

, who was trying to figure out how the gaming industry worked, and Dowd told Adkison to go to the Gama Trade Show. After

Jonathan Tweet Jonathan Tweet (born 1965) is an American game designer who has been involved in the development of the role-playing games ''Ars Magica'', ''Everway'', ''Over the Edge (game), Over the Edge'', ''Talislanta'', the third edition of ''Dungeons & Dra ...

left

White Wolf Publishing White Wolf Publishing was an American roleplaying game and book publisher. The company was founded in 1991 as a merger between Lion Rampant

for

Lion Rampant The lion is a common charge in heraldry. It traditionally symbolises courage, nobility, royalty, strength, stateliness and valour, because historically the lion has been regarded as the "king of beasts". The lion also carries Judeo-Chr ...

Mark Rein-Hagen Mark Rein-Hagen, stylized as Mark Rein•Hagen (born 1964), is an American role-playing, card, video and board game designer best known as the creator of '' Vampire: The Masquerade'' and its associated ''World of Darkness'' games. Along with ...

turned to Dowd for his new game about vampires. Dowd refined the dice pool system from ''Shadowrun'' for White Wolf's '' Vampire: The Masquerade'' (1991). Dowd worked with Rein-Hagen to adapt the core mechanics from his previous game success to use d10 instead of d6 for calculating probability.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Dowd, Tom Living people Role-playing game designers Year of birth missing (living people) White Wolf game designers