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Geoffrey C. Grabowski | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1973[ citation needed ] |
| Nationality | American |
| Occupation | Game designer |
Geoffrey C. Grabowski is a role-playing game designer and writer, known primarily as line developer for the 1st edition of the Exalted RPG for White Wolf games from 2001 through 2006. [1] He was described as the "guiding force [2] " of the first edition.
Geoffrey C. Grabowski was also the founder of "Project Redcap" in 1994, an early directory of Ars Magica resources on the www. [3] Grabowski subsequently contributed to the Fourth Edition of Ars Magica published by Atlas Games, and published two co-authored books for Jonathan Tweet's Everway RPG with Nicole Lindroos and Greg Stolze, the Realms of the Sun. His scenario included in One Shots, published by Atlas for the Unknown Armies RPG, featured fictionalized versions of RPG designers Richard Dansky and Jenna K. Moran; he also contributed fiction to John Tynes' Delta Green anthology, Alien Intelligence, for Pagan Publishing.
In the late 1990s Grabowski became increasingly central to the game lines published by White Wolf, writing books for Hunter: The Reckoning , Kindred of the East , Vampire: The Masquerade , and Wraith: The Oblivion game lines. [4] Subsequently, he moved from freelance author to line developer, working on the Exalted property. Alongside John Chambers, he developed the first edition of the Exalted RPG and became solo line developer for the remainder of its initial run, setting the direction and publishing schedule of the line. In this role Grabowski outlined, commissioned and developed about three dozen books published for the first edition of Exalted, from 2001 through 2006. [1]
In 2004, two supplements were nominated [5] for Ennie Awards: the Exalted Players Guide, [6] and Exalted: Sidereals, [7] although neither won.
Following successful Kickstarter campaigns, Grabowski wrote and published The Dreams of Ruin, an "old school RPG sourcebook", and contributed to the third edition [8] of Exalted, which raised over $600,000 in 2014, [9] a record at the time.
Contemporary reviewers noted that Grabowski's work on Exalted moved the genre of fantasy roleplaying games forwards: [10]
White Wolf's Exalted is a major step forward in their game design, and the attention paid to the mechanics and playtesting shows. Exalted is a truly different setting, operating on different principles and a different power level than anything I’ve seen.
Gaming critic Ken Hite noted in a review in his regular Out Of The Box column at the time that Grabowski's work seemed to be aggressively resisting the traditional tropes of fantasy gaming: [11]
At every turn, one can sense developer Geoff Grabowski tearing out fugitive Tolkienisms and un-Middling the Earth as best he could. The attempt is to create a wuxia (or anime) Xothique, and if you just went "Wha?" then Grabowski has you where he wants you, at the door to his world with a sense of curiosity, if not wonder. The world is ornate, almost Orientalist, with that quasi-decadent feeling that Clark Ashton Smith and Gene Wolfe do so well; mingled with computer-game kung fu mechanics to replicate figures out of heroic myth. It's a tribute to Grabowski's aesthetics that it mostly works.
This impression was backed up by colleague Ethan Skemp: [12]
Geoff is really sick of medieval fantasy, so there's none of that in there (except swords and armour and stuff, which are hardly limited to medieval-style fantasy settings).
White Wolf Entertainment AB, formerly White Wolf Publishing, was an American roleplaying game and book publisher. The company was founded in 1991 as a merger between Lion Rampant and White Wolf Magazine, and was initially led by Mark Rein-Hagen of the former and Steve Wieck and Stewart Wieck of the latter. White Wolf Publishing, Inc. merged with CCP Games in 2006. White Wolf Publishing operated as an imprint of CCP hf, but ceased in-house production of any material, instead licensing their properties to other publishers. It was announced in October 2015 that White Wolf had been acquired from CCP by Paradox Interactive. In November 2018, after most of its staff were dismissed for making controversial statements, it was announced that White Wolf would no longer function as an entity separate from Paradox Interactive.
Vampire: The Masquerade is a tabletop role-playing game created by Mark Rein-Hagen and released in 1991 by White Wolf Publishing as the first of several Storyteller System games for its World of Darkness setting line. It is set in a fictionalized "gothic-punk" version of the modern world where players assume the role of vampires, who are referred to as "Kindred." and deal with their night-to-night struggles against their own bestial natures, vampire hunters, and each other.
Vampire: The Dark Ages is a tabletop role-playing game published by White Wolf Publishing in March 1996. It is a spin-off from Vampire: The Masquerade, also published by White Wolf, which is set in modern times. It was released in a new edition in 2002 as Dark Ages: Vampire, and in 2015 as Vampire Twentieth Anniversary Edition: The Dark Ages.
Jonathan Tweet is an American game designer who has been involved in the development of the role-playing games Ars Magica, Everway, Over the Edge, Talislanta, the third edition of Dungeons & Dragons and 13th Age, and the collectible miniatures game Dreamblade. In 2015 Tweet released Grandmother Fish, a full-color, full-sized book about evolution aimed at preschoolers. In 2018 Tweet released Clades and Clades Prehistoric, two card games for children and adults which demonstrate the concept of a clade.
World of Darkness is a series of tabletop role-playing games, originally created by Mark Rein-Hagen for White Wolf Publishing. It began as an annual line of five games in 1991–1995, with Vampire: The Masquerade, Werewolf: The Apocalypse, Mage: The Ascension, Wraith: The Oblivion, and Changeling: The Dreaming, along with off-shoots based on these. The series ended in 2004, and the reboot Chronicles of Darkness was launched the same year with a new line of games. In 2011, the original series was brought back, and the two have since been published concurrently.
Wraith: The Oblivion is a tabletop role-playing game designed by Mark Rein·Hagen. It is set in the afterlife of White Wolf Publishing's classic World of Darkness setting, in which the players take on characters who are recently dead and are now ghosts.
Kindred of the East is a tabletop role-playing game book and game line released by White Wolf Publishing in February 1998 for use with their horror game Vampire: The Masquerade. It is part of the World of Darkness series, and is the first and main entry in the Year of the Lotus line of Asia-themed books released throughout 1998.
Mind's Eye Theatre is a live action role-playing game (LARP) based on the White Wolf World of Darkness universe and shares the setting with the table-top role-playing game Vampire: The Masquerade, among others.
Mark Rein-Hagen, stylized as Mark Rein•Hagen, 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 Jonathan Tweet, he is also one of the original two designers of Ars Magica.
Richard "Rich" Dansky is a writer and a designer of both computer games and role-playing games.
Kenneth Hite is a writer and role-playing game designer. Hite is the author of Trail of Cthulhu and Night's Black Agents role-playing games, and lead designer of the 5th edition of Vampire: the Masquerade.
Greg Stolze is an American game designer, writer and novelist, whose work has mainly focused on writing for role-playing games and related intellectual properties.
John A. Nephew is an American game designer, who has worked primarily on role-playing games.
Ken Cliffe is a game designer who has worked primarily on role-playing games. He is known primarily as the author and developer for the third edition of Ars Magica, and as co-author and developer of the Trinity, Hunter: The Reckoning and "new" (2004) World of Darkness role-playing games.
Nicole Lindroos is a game designer who has worked primarily on role-playing games.
Bruce Baugh is a game designer who has worked primarily on role-playing games.
Robert Hatch is a game designer and writer who developed key role-playing game releases for White Wolf Publishing from 1993 to 2001. He is known primarily for three games he co-created: the science fiction game Trinity, the super-hero game Aberrant (1999), and the epic fantasy RPG Exalted (2001).
The Risen is a tabletop role-playing game supplement published by White Wolf Publishing in June 1996 for use with the horror game Wraith: The Oblivion. It adds the risen as playable characters: wraiths that inhabit dead bodies to become walking dead.
Haunts is a tabletop role-playing game supplement released in December 1994 by White Wolf Publishing for use with their game Wraith: The Oblivion, and is part of the larger World of Darkness series. It covers haunts – locations where the border between the lands of the living and the dead is particularly weak, allowing the player-character wraiths to take form in the human world – with instructions for creating new haunts for one's campaigns, and descriptions of ones already existing in the game's setting.
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