Eric Dott | |
---|---|
Born | Aaron Eric Dott |
Died | 4 April 2016 89) | (aged
Nationality | American |
Employer(s) | Monarch Avalon, Inc. |
Spouse | Esther Dott |
A. Eric Dott (c. 1927 - 4 April 2016) was a Baltimore, Maryland printer and publisher, who was involved primarily with tabletop games. He founded or purchased dozens of printing and game publishing companies under the Monarch Avalon, Inc. umbrella, including Avalon Hill. He was also owner of the Sands Hotel and Ricky's Chinese restaurant in Ocean City in the 1960s, and Peerce's Plantation restaurant. [1]
Eric Dott was the president of printer company Monarch Services. [2] : 175 One of his clients was the wargaming company Avalon Hill, and when founder Charles S. Roberts left the publishing business in 1963 over financial problems, he handed the company to Monarch and the Smith Box Company, its two biggest creditors. [3] [4] Under Dott, who was making most of the key decisions, Monarch Services ultimately became the sole owner of Avalon Hill, and he revived the companies fortunes. [5] [2] : 175 Dott oversaw Avalon Hill when it published the third edition of RuneQuest in 1984, referring to the game as the "Cadillac" of the Avalon Hill game line. [2] : 177
Dott was the owner of The Avalon Hill Game Company before going public as Monarch Avalon, Inc. and later sold it to Hasbro.
Dott was not a game player himself. [6] When asked about his political philosophy, as a maker of war games, Dott replied "We're pretty much all conscientious objectors here." Dott added, "the FBI and the Secret Service have come around asking questions several times". [7]
Dott died at Gilchrist Hospice on April 4, 2016, at age 89. [1]
RuneQuest is a fantasy tabletop role-playing game originally designed by Steve Perrin, Ray Turney, Steve Henderson, and Warren James, and set in Greg Stafford's mythical world of Glorantha. It was first published in 1978 by The Chaosium. Beginning in 1984, publication passed between a number of companies, including Avalon Hill, Mongoose Publishing, and The Design Mechanism, before finally returning to Chaosium in 2016. RuneQuest is notable for its system, designed around percentile dice and an early implementation of skill rules, which became the basis for numerous other games. There have been several editions of the game.
Avalon Hill Games Inc. is a game company that publishes wargames and strategic board games. It has also published miniature wargaming rules, role-playing games and sports simulations. It is a subsidiary of Hasbro, and operates under the company's "Hasbro Gaming" division.
Strategy & Tactics (S&T) is a wargaming magazine now published by Decision Games, notable for publishing a complete new wargame in each issue.
Starship Troopers is a board wargame by Avalon Hill based on the 1959 novel of the same name by Robert A. Heinlein. It was originally released in 1976 and designed by Randall C. Reed. Twenty years later, Avalon Hill redesigned and re-released a "movie" version in 1997 to coincide with the movie's release.
Simulations Publications, Inc. (SPI) was an American publisher of board wargames and related magazines, particularly its flagship Strategy & Tactics, in the 1970s and early 1980s. It produced an enormous number of games and introduced innovative practices, changing the course of the wargaming hobby in its bid to take control of the hobby away from then-dominant Avalon Hill. SPI ran out of cash in early 1982 when TSR called in a loan secured by SPI's assets. TSR began selling SPI's inventory in 1982, but later acquired the company's trademarks and copyrights in 1983 and continued a form of the operation until 1987.
Charles Swann Roberts was a wargame designer, railroad historian, and businessman. He is renowned as "The Father of Board Wargaming", having created the first commercially successful modern wargame in 1952 (Tactics), the first wargaming company in 1954, and designed the first board wargame based upon an actual historical battle (Gettysburg). He is also the author of a series of books on railroad history, published by the small publishing firm, Barnard, Roberts, and Company, Inc.
PanzerBlitz is a tactical-scale board wargame published by Avalon Hill in 1970 that simulates armored combat set on the Eastern Front of World War II. The game, which was the most popular board wargame of the 1970s, is notable for being the first true board-based tactical-level, commercially available conflict simulation wargame. It also pioneered several concepts that would become industry standards.
1914 is a board wargame published by Avalon Hill in 1968 that simulates the first few months of World War I on the Western Front.
The General (1964–1998) was a bi-monthly periodical devoted to supporting Avalon Hill's line of wargames, with articles on game tactics, history, and industry news. It was the first professionally produced wargaming magazine for the nascent cardboard and hex-map wargaming hobby. Over the years the magazine was variously called The Avalon Hill General, Avalon Hill's General, The General Magazine, or simply General. It was headquartered in Baltimore, Maryland. With the sale of Avalon Hill to Hasbro in 1998 the magazine ceased. Its unofficial heir was Operations Magazine published by Multi-Man Publishing to support the line of Avalon Hill games that remained in print, but that too went out of print in 2010, replaced by Special Ops magazine in 2011.
Tactics is a board wargame published in 1954 by Avalon Hill as the company's first product. Although primitive by modern standards, it and its sequel, Tactics II, signalled the birth of modern board wargaming for the commercial market. Tactics is generally credited as being the first commercially successful board wargame.
Guidon Games produced board games and rulebooks for wargaming with miniatures, and in doing so influenced Tactical Studies Rules, the publisher of Dungeons & Dragons. The Guidon Games publishing imprint was the property of Lowrys Hobbies, a mail-order business owned by Don and Julie Lowry. About a dozen titles were released under the imprint from 1971 to 1973.
John Evans Hill was an American designer of military board wargames, as well as rules for miniature wargaming. He is best known as the designer of the Avalon Hill board game Squad Leader and the American Civil War miniatures game Johnny Reb. He was inducted into the Charles Roberts Awards Hall of Fame.
Operational Studies Group, also known as OSG, is a publisher of board wargames.
Redmond Aksel Simonsen was an American graphic artist and game designer best known for his work at the board wargame company Simulations Publications, Inc. (SPI) in the 1970s and early 1980s. Simonsen was considered an innovator in game information graphics, and is credited with creating the term "game designer".
Avalon Hill's Squad Leader is a 2000 turn-based strategy video game developed by Random Games and published by Hasbro Interactive under the MicroProse label. It is a tie-in to Avalon Hill's board wargame Squad Leader.
A board wargame is a wargame with a set playing surface or board, as opposed to being played on a computer or in a more free-form playing area as in miniatures games. The modern, commercial wargaming hobby developed in 1954 following the publication and commercial success of Tactics. The board wargaming hobby continues to enjoy a sizeable following, with a number of game publishers and gaming conventions dedicated to the hobby both in the English-speaking world and further afield.
Timothy James Kask is an American editor and writer in the role-playing game industry. Kask became interested in board games in his childhood, and later turned to miniatures wargames. While attending university after a stint in the US Navy, he was part of a group that playtested an early version of the new role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) for game co-designer Gary Gygax. Gygax hired him as the first employee of TSR, Inc. in 1975. After editing some of TSR's early D&D publications, Kask became editor of The Strategic Review, which later became The Dragon, and then Dragon Magazine.
S. Craig Taylor Jr. was an American game designer who has worked primarily on board games and wargames.
Kevin S. Zucker is an American wargame designer, historian, author, and musician.
Operation Crusader is a 1994 computer wargame developed by Atomic Games and published by Avalon Hill.
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