Jim Bambra

Last updated
Jim Bambra
Born1956 (age 67–68)
Nationality British
Occupation Game designer

Jim Bambra (born 1956) [1] is a British designer and reviewer of fantasy roleplaying games (RPG), and a former company director. He is particularly known for his contributions to Dungeons & Dragons , Fighting Fantasy , Warhammer , and Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game which was based on the Star Wars films. Later he became head of design at MicroProse, then managing director of Pivotal Games, a publisher of video games including Conflict: Desert Storm .

Contents

Career

Jim Bambra worked on game design and materials for various companies during the 1980s and early 1990s, including TSR (publisher of Dungeons & Dragons), Games Workshop (Warhammer), [2] and West End Games (Star Wars RPG).[ citation needed ]

In 1983, Bambra wrote "The Beginner’s Guide to Roleplaying Games" (with Paul Ruiz), published in Imagine magazine Issue 6 (Sept 1983), [3] explaining what an RPG is and accompanied by a comic strip, "The Adventures of Nic Novice". He was a reviewer and writer for Imagine magazine 1983-1985, [4] and reviewer for White Dwarf and Dragon magazines during the late 1980s and early 1990s.[ citation needed ]

In 1989, Bambra co-wrote the Fighting Fantasy gamebook Dead of Night for Puffins, a Penguin inprint, with Stephen Hand.

During the 1990s he was Head of Design at MicroProse, where he worked on projects including Fields of Glory , Grand Prix , Special Forces , various X-COM products, and Gunship . [5]

In 1996 Bambra founded Pumpkin Studios, which achieved success with Warzone 2100 , a computer game with a post-nuclear scenario. This company closed in 2000 after Eidos Interactive cancelled its then current project, Saboteur, a PlayStation video game. [6]

In 2003 he became managing director at Pivotal Games Ltd, [5] a videogame development company based in Bath and owned by SCi Ltd. During his period at the firm it published the series of Conflict: videogames, the most successful of which was Conflict: Desert Storm . [7] He remained as director until 2008, when SCi closed down the company. [8] Between 2005 and 2009 he was also a board member of The Independent Games Developers Association Ltd. [9]

Gamebooks and materials

Jim Bambra produced the following gamebooks and materials for roleplaying games, many in collaboration with other authors:

For Dungeons & Dragons

Other

Testimonial

Echoes of the Jedi: Episode IV of Star Wars: Dawn of Defiance was dedicated to "Jim Bambra and all the unsung authors of the early Star Wars Expanded Universe". [13]

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References

  1. ↑ Jim Bambra: Director Summary, Company Check Ltd
  2. ↑ The Enemy Within, Again, Graeme Davis, 1 March 2012
  3. ↑ Imagine Magazine: Issue #6, Grognardia Games, 11 December 2012
  4. ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20141023203709/http://www.philsp.com/homeville/FMI/s376.htm#A6208. Archived from the original on 2014-10-23.{{cite web}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
  5. 1 2 Pivotal Games website as at 2 June 2006
  6. ↑ Jack Schofield, Games watch, The Guardian, 23 March 2000
  7. ↑ "Conflict: Desert Storm - About Sim Games". Archived from the original on 2014-11-02.
  8. ↑ Staff at Conflict series developer notified of closure today; small team of specialists will be kept by SCi, Develop, 14 July 2008
  9. ↑ TIGA website as at 15 July 2007
  10. ↑ Retrospective: Night’s Dark Terror, Grognardia Games, 29 September 2010
  11. ↑ The Legacy: Realm of Terror at MobyGames
  12. ↑ Joris Dormans, On the Role of the Die: A brief ludologic study of pen-and-paper roleplaying games and their rules, Game Studies, volume 6 issue 1, December 2006. ISSN   1604-7982
  13. ↑ Abel G. Peña & JF Boivin, Echoes of the Jedi: Episode IV of Star Wars: Dawn of Defiance, p. 2, Lucasfilm Ltd., 2008
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