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Richard "Rich" Dansky | |
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| Alma mater | Wesleyan University |
| Occupation(s) | Writer Game Designer and Narrative Director |
| Website | http://www.richarddansky.com |
Richard "Rich" Dansky is a writer and a designer of both computer games and role-playing games. [1]
Richard was born in Brooklyn, New York, but moved to Cheltenham, Pennsylvania outside of Philadelphia before his 5th birthday. He grew up there and attended Cheltenham High School. In the late 1980s and early 1990s Dansky attended Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. He graduated with Honors, then received a MA with Distinction from Boston College.
Dansky is an enthusiast of cryptids, and in particular of Sasquatch or Bigfoot. [2] He is also known for his extensive scotch collection and library of horror novels. He is a devotee of progressive rock and the Southern rock band the Drive-By Truckers.
After staring as a freelancer on books including Haunts and Changeling: The Dreaming , Richard Dansky worked in-house for four years as a game developer for White Wolf, Inc. where he was the line developer on games such as Wraith: The Oblivion and Vampire: The Dark Ages . [3] He also had stints as a developer on the Mind's Eye Theatre , Kindred of the East , and other game lines, and wrote and/or designed for all of the World of Darkness lines as well as Exalted and Trinity. He has written, designed, or otherwise contributed to well over a hundred role-playing sourcebooks. [3] Among his most notable works were the original Laws of the Night rules for live-action Vampire, Wraith: The Oblivion 20th Anniversary Edition, and the sourcebook Charnel Houses of Europe: The Shoah . Since leaving White Wolf he has occasionally contributed to various White Wolf and Onyx Path products, as well as games such as Prince Valiant , Solemn Vale, Alas Vegas, Star Trek , and Nevermore. As a result of his work on the Star Trek RPG, he was briefly the world's leading expert on Danebian Slime Devils.
He lives in Durham, North Carolina. For 23 years he worked for Red Storm Entertainment, first as a game designer, then as Manager of Design, and then as the Central Clancy Writer for Ubisoft (Red Storm's parent company). His credits include Tom Clancy's The Division and Tom Clancy's The Division 2, Splinter Cell: Blacklist and Splinter Cell: Conviction, Rainbow Six: Raven Shield, Ghost Recon Future Soldier, Far Cry, Assassin's Creed: Nexus and many others. He served as a central narrative resource for the larger Tom Clancy's franchise, and also was a key worldbuilder for the revived Might and Magic franchise. In 2023 he left Red Storm and joined Crytek to work as the Franchise Narrative Director on the game Hunt: Showdown. He departed Crytek at the end of 2024.
Dansky has published four media tie-in novels through White Wolf, including Clan Novel Lasombra and the Trilogy of the Second Age for Exalted . He also wrote a tie-in novel for Ghost Recon: Wildlands entitled Dark Waters (Ubisoft, 2017). His original fiction includes the novella Shadows In Green (Yard Dog Press, 2004); the novels Firefly Rain (Wizards of the Coast Discoveries, 2008), Vaporware (JournalStone, 2013), and Ghost of a Marriage (Crossroad Press, 2022); and the short story collections Snowbird Gothic (Crossroad Press, 2018) [4] and A Meeting In The Devil's House (Twisted Publishing, 2023). His short fiction has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies including PseudoPod, Dark Faith, Cosmic Horror Monthly, and Madness on the Orient Express. His writing has consistently garnered praise for its versatility and power.
Richard's first non-fiction publication came in the academic journal Lovecraft Studies. [5] He has since published widely in magazines and books including Green Man Review , Studies in Weird Fiction, The 100 Greatest Games series from Green Ronin, the sports blog Off-Tackle Empire, and the collection of essays on slasher movies entitled Butcher Knives and Body Counts.
Richard is widely regarded as a senior expert in video game narrative and writing. In 2009 he was identified as one of the top 20 video game writers in the world by Game Developer. [6] A former executive of the IGDA Game Writing Special Interest Group, he has served on the advisory board on the Game Narrative Summit [7] at GDC for well over a decade. He also adjudicates the annual Student Game Narrative Analysis Competition [8] at GDC, helping the winning students to present poster sessions at the conference. For many years, he curated the Narrative track at East Coast Game Conference in Raleigh, North Carolina. He has also contributed to numerous books on game narrative, including Game Writing: Narrative Skills for Videogames and On Writing Horror, and speaks frequently at schools, conferences, and other venues.
His namesake, Rich Dansky, appears as a player character in the scenario "And I Feel Fine," by Geoffrey C. Grabowski, which was published in the One Shots sourcebook for Unknown Armies . He has also been referenced in numerous novels and video games, including Alan Wake and Far Cry 5 , which features an extended side quest for a missing Bigfoot researcher named Dansky.
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.
Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell is a series of stealth action-adventure video games, the first of which was released in 2002, and their tie-in novels that were endorsed by Tom Clancy. The series follows Sam Fisher, a highly trained agent of a fictional black-ops sub-division within the NSA, dubbed "Third Echelon", as he overcomes his adversaries. Levels are created using Unreal Engine and emphasize light and darkness as gameplay elements. The series has been positively received, and was once considered to be one of Ubisoft's flagship franchises. The series had sold 19 million units by 2008. No further installments have been released since 2013. A remake of the first game was announced in December 2021.
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.
A campaign setting is a setting for a tabletop role-playing game or wargame campaign. Most campaign settings are fictional worlds; however, some are historical or contemporary real-world locations. A campaign is a series of individual adventures, and a campaign setting is the world in which such adventures and campaigns take place. A campaign setting is typically designed for a specific game or a specific genre of game, though some come from existing media. There are numerous campaign settings available for purchase both in print and online. In addition, many game masters create their own, which are often called "homebrew" settings.
Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon is a series of military tactical shooter video games published by Ubisoft. In the series, the player is in charge of a fictional, newly conceived squad of U.S. Army Special Forces soldiers from Delta Company, 1st Battalion, 5th Special Forces Group stationed at Fort Bragg. Except for the "1st Battalion, 5th SFG" designation, this reconnaissance unit is entirely fictional, as Special Forces Battalions currently only support three Companies. They are often referred to as "the Ghosts". Their role is like other real world special operations forces, in that their operations are kept highly classified. In Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Future Soldier, it is shown that the Ghost's unit has multiple designations and is part of JSOC; they are also known as the Group for Specialized Tactics, much like real JSOC units such as Delta Force and SEAL Team Six. Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon has also been novelized by Grant Blackwood under the pseudonym David Michaels.
Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Jungle Storm is an expansion of Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon released for the PlayStation 2, Nokia N-Gage, and mobile phones. It contains the content of Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Island Thunder along with eight new single-player missions set in Colombia and additional multiplayer maps.
David Niall Wilson is an American writer primarily known for his works of horror, science fiction, and fantasy fiction. He is also the founder and CEO of Crossroad Press, a publishing house for horror and science fiction/fantasy. He is the former President of the Horror Writers Association of America and a two time Stoker Award winning author.
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.
Ubisoft Divertissements Inc., doing business as Ubisoft Montreal, is a Canadian video game developer and a studio of Ubisoft based in Montreal.
Tom Clancy's is a branding used by video game company Ubisoft for several video games, some of which feature the works of American author Tom Clancy, while others do not. Various sub-series are often unrelated to each other with a few exceptions, although most are shooters set in modern or near-future military settings.
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. He was described as the "guiding force" of the first edition.
Bruce Baugh is a game designer who has worked primarily on role-playing games.
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.
Clanbook: Lasombra is a tabletop role-playing game supplement originally published by White Wolf Publishing in June 1996 for use with their game Vampire: The Masquerade, and released in an updated version in 2001.
Wraith: The Oblivion – Afterlife is a virtual reality survival horror video game developed and published by Swedish studio Fast Travel Games, released in 2021. It is based on White Wolf Publishing's 1994 tabletop role-playing game Wraith: The Oblivion, and is part of the larger World of Darkness series. The game was released for Oculus Quest & Rift, Steam VR, PICO 4 and PlayStation VR, with support for the VR headsets HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, Oculus Quest, PlayStation VR, and Valve Index.
Wraith: The Oblivion – The Orpheus Device is an audio-based adventure video game developed by Earplay and published by Paradox Interactive on October 29, 2020 for Android, iOS, and smart speakers, and is played using the virtual assistants Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant, or the Earplay mobile app. It is based on White Wolf Publishing's tabletop role-playing games Wraith: The Oblivion (1994) and Orpheus (2003), and is part of the larger World of Darkness series.
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.
Charnel Houses of Europe: The Shoah is a supplement published by the Black Dog imprint of White Wolf Publishing in March–April 1997 for the horror role-playing game Wraith: The Oblivion, itself part of the series of horror role-playing games known as World of Darkness.
Necropolis: Atlanta is a tabletop role-playing game supplement released in 1994 by White Wolf Publishing for use with their games Wraith: The Oblivion and Vampire: The Masquerade, and is part of the larger World of Darkness series. It covers the city of Atlanta as it is portrayed in the series, with descriptions of its supernatural population and its history and geography.
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