Colin McComb (born May 1970) is an American writer and game designer, who is best known for his work designing the Planescape setting for the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game, and as the creative lead for the role-playing video game Torment: Tides of Numenera. He is the co-founder of 3lb Games, a virtual reality gaming studio. [1]
Immediately after his commencement, McComb took at a job at TSR, Inc., where he produced numerous role-playing game supplements and magazine articles relating to those games. He won an Origins Award for Best Game Adventure in 1993 for Dragon Mountain , [2] and another for New Role-Playing Supplement for the Birthright Campaign Setting in 1995. [3] He is primarily known for his work on the Planescape line, [4] for which he and Monte Cook were the primary designers after the departure of David "Zeb" Cook from TSR.
In 1996, McComb left TSR to take a job at Interplay Entertainment's roleplaying division, later called Black Isle Studios. While there, he had a small role in the design of Fallout 2 and a far more significant role in the design of Planescape: Torment . [5] [6] McComb left Black Isle in 2000, and moved to Detroit, Michigan with Robin Moulder, who would become his wife in 2001. [7] Together, they founded 3lb Games in 2008.[ citation needed ]
In addition to his gaming work, McComb contributed interviews, album reviews, and concert reviews to the underground magazine Outburn . In 2004, he reunited with his Planescape cohorts in the Malhavoc Press book, Beyond Countless Doorways, which received an Honorable Mention for Best Writing at the 2005 ENnie Awards. He and his wife also designed and wrote the manual for the MMORPG RYL in 2005.
McComb taught at the International Academy of Design and Technology.[ citation needed ]
On August 10, 2012, it was announced that McComb joined Wasteland 2 team as writer, reuniting with his Planescape cohorts once again. [8]
McComb was the creative lead for inXile's 2017 RPG Torment: Tides of Numenera . [9]
McComb works for the game studio Drop Bear Bytes as the Creative Lead on their upcoming title Broken Roads , an RPG set in a post-apocalyptic Australia. [10]
Ravenloft is a campaign setting for the Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying game. It is an alternate time-space existence known as a pocket dimension or demiplane, called the Demiplane of Dread, which consists of a collection of land pieces called "domains", brought together by a mysterious force known only as the Dark Powers. Each domain is tailored to and mystically ruled by a being called a Darklord who is forever trapped and surrounded by magical mists surrounding the domain. Strahd von Zarovich, a vampire in the original AD&DRavenloft I6 module released in 1983, became the first Darklord, both ruler and prisoner of his own personal domain of Barovia. The story of how Count von Zarovich became Darklord of Barovia was detailed in the 1993 novel I, Strahd: The Memoirs of a Vampire. As originally established in the Ravenloft: Realm of Terror boxed set known as "the Black Box" released in 1990, the Ravenloft campaign setting was located in the Ethereal Plane. As a physical manifestation of that plane, lands, monsters and even people were created out of the mysterious mists, and the realm acted as a prison where one could enter or be transported, but means of escape were few. Other Ravenloft Domains and Darklords were eventually added in various AD&D 2nd edition products establishing a core continent attached around Barovia which could be traveled to by others if their respective lords allowed entering or leaving their borders; while some Domains remained isolated in the mists and were referred to as Islands.
Planescape is a campaign setting for the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game, designed by Zeb Cook, and published in 1994. It crosses numerous planes of existence, encompassing an entire cosmology called the Great Wheel, as developed previously in the 1987 Manual of the Planes by Jeff Grubb. This includes many of the other Dungeons & Dragons worlds, linking them via inter-dimensional magical portals.
Planescape: Torment is a 1999 role-playing video game developed by Black Isle Studios and published by Interplay Entertainment for Windows. The game takes place in locations from the multiverse of Planescape, a Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) fantasy campaign setting. The game's engine is a modified version of the Infinity Engine, which was used for BioWare's Baldur's Gate, a previous D&D game set in the Forgotten Realms.
Monte Cook is an American professional tabletop role-playing game designer and writer, best known for his work on Dungeons & Dragons.
Chris Avellone is an American video game designer and comic book writer. He worked for Interplay and Obsidian Entertainment before becoming a freelance designer and writer. He is best known for his work on role-playing video games such as Planescape: Torment, Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords and the Fallout series.
Richard Baker is an American author and game designer who has worked on many Dungeons & Dragons campaign settings.
The flexibility of the Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) game rules means that Dungeon Masters (DM) are free to create their own fantasy campaign settings. For those who wanted a pre-packaged setting in which to play, TSR, Wizards of the Coast (WotC), and other publishers have created many settings in which D&D games can be based; of these, the Forgotten Realms, an epic fantasy world, has been one of the most successful and critically acclaimed settings. Many campaign settings include standard sword and sorcery environments, while others borrow Asian, Central American, swashbuckling, horror and even space-travel themes.
James Daniel Lowder is an American author, anthologist, and editor, working regularly within the fantasy, dark fantasy, and horror genres, and on tabletop role-playing games and critical works exploring popular culture.
Masque of the Red Death and Other Tales, subtitled "Terror in the 1890s", was published by TSR in 1994 as an alternate campaign setting for the horror role-playing game Ravenloft, which itself uses the rules from Advanced Dungeons & Dragons.
Bill Slavicsek is an American game designer and writer who served as the Director of Roleplaying Design and Development at Wizards of the Coast. He previously worked for West End Games and TSR, Inc., and designed products for Dungeons & Dragons, Star Wars, Alternity, Torg, Paranoia and Ghostbusters.
Die Vecna Die! is an Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (AD&D 2nd edition) module released in 2000 by Wizards of the Coast. The module is divided into three sections, each taking part in a different campaign setting: Greyhawk, Ravenloft, and Planescape. It was one of the last official adventures released for the 2nd edition of Dungeons & Dragons.
Timothy B. Brown is an American game designer, primarily of role-playing games. He has been a designer at Game Designers' Workshop, an editor at Challenge magazine, and the director of product development at TSR.
Sigil is a fictional city and the center of the Planescape campaign setting for the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game.
Torment: Tides of Numenera is a role-playing video game developed by inXile Entertainment and published by Techland Publishing for Microsoft Windows, macOS, Linux, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. It is a spiritual successor to 1999's Planescape: Torment.
Masque of the Red Death and Other Tales, subtitled "Terror in the 1890s", was published by TSR in 1994 as an alternate campaign setting for the horror fantasy role-playing game Ravenloft, which itself uses the rules from the 2nd edition of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons.
Bruce Nesmith is a game designer who has worked primarily on role-playing games. He was Creative Director at TSR, working on a variety of games including Dungeons & Dragons, and is a senior game designer at Bethesda Game Studios, where he has worked on AAA titles such as Fallout 3, Fallout 4 and Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, and was lead designer on Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.
John Dollar is an American artist best known for his contributions to a number of RPG settings during the mid-to-late 90s.