Legendary RPG Designer Breaks Media Silence- Ep. 59

I can't believe I got these two on the show together! First, Kevin Crawford is a TTRPG design legend. My favorites from his work are Stars Without Number, and Worlds Without Number, both of which have been tremendously successful and influential as paragons of sleek game design and peerless GM tools. Stars was what I ran during the pandemic, and Worlds I read, and since the birth of my son, I read about one RPG every six months, but I had to put Worlds in that rotation just to see what Kevin did in it. To give just a taste of Kevin’s influence, Blades in the Dark creator John Harper said that the origin of Blades in the Dark was a Stars Without Number campaign. And Blades, which is itself an epochal piece of design, birthed an entire universe of games using its system. 

Second, we have D&D icon Steve Winter. It is possible that Steve has the longest D&D career of anyone in the history of the game. He began working on D&D back at TSR in downtown Lake Geneva, and once even broke into the offices by climbing in a second storey window. He was a vital voice on 2nd edition AD&D. He was one of the first people to work on 3rd edition D&D, even though that project then passed on to other hands, and he followed D&D from Wisconsin to Renton, Washington where he continued to produce work for D&D through 5th edition.

Check out Kevin's work here!

On July 15th, Patrons of our pod will get a special treat! We will be doing a book club on Shoah for Wraith: The Oblivion. The conversation will include the book's developer, Richard Dansky, and Earthdawn developer Lou Prosperi. Patrons can participate live, and even ask questions! If that sounds good, hie thee forth to our Patreon to subscribe!