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Justin D. Jacobson | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1970 (age 51–52) Florida, U.S. |
| Education | Princeton University (AB) Duke University School of Law (JD) |
| Occupation | Board game necromancer |
| Children | 2 |
Justin D. Jacobson is an attorney and professional game designer.
Justin D. Jacobson is an attorney, [1] : 425 and was the owner and operator of Blue Devil Games, publishers of role-playing games and strategy games. He is best known as the designer of Poisoncraft: The Dark Art, Dawning Star , and Passages, and the winner of the About.com 2004 Shared Pieces Design Competition for Golem.
In 2004, Blue Devil Games was one of the seven companies working with Indie Press Revolution as a fulfillment house to serve small press publishers with their publications in terms of warehousing, selling, and shipping to customers directly. [1] : 408 Jacobson joined with Fred Hicks and Rob Donoghue of Evil Hat Productions and Chris Hanrahan in 2008 to form the game company One Bad Egg, intending to publish high-quality PDFs for fourth edition Dungeons & Dragons which encouraged storytelling in play; however, sales were bad, and Hicks announced in September 2009 that One Bad Egg would be closing down. [1] : 425
In 2016 Jacobson and Rob Daviau founded Restoration Games, a tabletop game publishing company, specializing in out-of-print mass-market games from the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. [2] Their company was announced at Gen Con 2016. After allowing people to send in suggestions for what games to restore through their website, Jacobson and his team decided on Stop Thief!, Downforce (an iteration of Wolfgang Kramer's Top Race series, and Indulgence (a recreation of the card game Dragonmaster). Stop Thief was actually funded on Kickstarter where it raised over $100,000. Jacobson's next foray into Kickstarter was bringing back the classic Fireball Island as Fireball Island: The Curse of Vul-Kar. On Kickstarter it raised over $2.8million with over 23,000 backers. The third game funded on Kickstarter for Jacobson and Restoration is their biggest to date. The game is called Return to Dark Tower which is a sequel to the legendary Dark Tower that was released in 1981. The sequel raised over $4million from over 23,000 backers. Restoration and Justin's most popular non kickstarter based game is called Unmatched which is based on the 2002 release Star Wars Epic Duels. They produce this game along with Mondo. To date there have been 30 characters released. These releases range from licensed 1 character boxes, such as Bruce Lee, to box sets with 4 public domain characters like Cobble & Fog, featuring Dracula, Invisible Man, Jekyll &Hyde, and Sherlock Holmes. The 2 most recent releases are part of a licensed deal with Marvel, with 2 more sets to come in the future. In 2020 Justin and Restoration held a contest for fans of the game to create their own characters. [3] These have yet to be released. Regarding Justin's future goals he said in a 2021 interview that his dream character for Unmatched is Muhammad Ali and his dream IP is James Bond. [4]
Chris Avellone is an American video game designer and comic book writer. He worked for Interplay and Obsidian Entertainment before working as a freelancer. He is best known for his work on role-playing video games such as Planescape: Torment and the Fallout series.
Palladium Books is a publisher of role-playing games (RPGs) perhaps best known for its popular, expansive Rifts series (1990–present). Palladium was founded April 1981 in Detroit, Michigan by current president and lead game designer Kevin Siembieda, and is now based in Westland, Michigan. The company enjoys the support of a small but dedicated fanbase who praise its various game series for their innovative settings and ease of adaptability to various personal preferences, play styles, and power levels.
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Fireball Island is a board game first published by Milton Bradley in 1986. The tagline is "The dimensional adventure game of pitfalls and perils!" It is set on an unexploited tropical island, the home of the ancient idol Vul-Kar. Players progress along winding paths around the island, avoiding fireballs and trying to steal Vul-Kar's jewel and carry it to the escape boat. The game concept was originally developed by artist / toy designers Bruce Lund and Chuck Kennedy. The game was licensed to Milton Bradley by Anjar Co., an international toy licensing company and co-licensor of the game.
Dawning Star is a science fiction role-playing game by Blue Devil Games built on d20 Modern and powered by d20 Future by Wizards of the Coast. It is the first full-scale campaign setting using the d20 Future ruleset. It is published under the Open Game License.
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Camelot Unchained is an in-development fantasy massively multiplayer online role-playing game from City State Entertainment which was partially funded through Kickstarter. Leading its production is Mark Jacobs, the former designer of Dark Age of Camelot. Its crowd funding campaign has raised US$4.5 million with Jacobs contributing an additional $5 million from his own assets, and raising an additional $7.5 million from investors, for a total of $17 million. The game is based on its own proprietary game engine engineered for server-side physics and large-scale battles, and as such will focus primarily on open World PVP rather than "theme park" instanced encounters or battlegrounds. Camelot Unchained entered Beta 1 phase on July 31, 2018. Currently there is no release date available for it.
Lee Hammock is a professional writer and game designer. Hammock has worked on numerous products for numerous companies, including NeoExodus: A House Divided RPG by Louis Porter Jr. Design, The Halo Graphic Novel and the Dawning Star Campaign Setting by Blue Devil Games.
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Durance is a science fiction role-playing game by Jason Morningstar, independently published by Bully Pulpit Games, who also released Fiasco. The game was a 2011 entry on the annual Game Chef game design competition, and went on to raise $27,458 of its $5000 goal on kickstarter in June 2012.
Fred Hicks is a game designer who has worked primarily on role-playing games.
Brawl in the Family is a gag-a-day webcomic written and drawn by Matthew Taranto. The comic is inspired by the Super Smash Bros. series and features characters from various video game franchises, such as Kirby, Super Mario, Pokémon, F-Zero, Metroid, Metal Gear, and many others. The webcomic concluded on October 3, 2014, having produced a total of 600 comics.
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Return to Dark Tower is a board game for one to four players, designed and published by Restoration Games. The game is a sequel to the 1981 board game Dark Tower, by Milton Bradley Company. Return to Dark Tower has players cooperate or compete as they rule over kingdoms surrounding the titular Tower, with their chosen "heroes" gathering resources, defeating monsters and enhancing their strength. As the game progresses, the Tower dispenses corruption across the land, which players must cleanse, while also looking to identify the foe inhabiting the Tower, so that they may defeat it, to win the game. Return to Dark Tower features a circular mat that is sectioned into quarters, to represent the kingdoms, with a Bluetooth-powered Tower at the center, which is connected to an app that runs the game.