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Stephen R. (Steve) Marsh is an American game designer and lawyer best known for his contributions to early editions of TSR's Dungeons & Dragons fantasy tabletop role-playing game (RPG). Some of the creatures he created for the original edition of D&D in 1975 have been included in every subsequent edition of the game.
While attending high school, Marsh began to play military boardgames. His interest led him to attempt to design what would now be called a roleplaying game based on his board games and using The Golden Bough as the basis for a magic system. [1]
Marsh also suggested a new character class, the mystic, that could teleport to various planes of existence via mental powers. Although the character class concept was not published, some of the mental abilities of the mystic were altered and then published in the Eldritch Wizardry supplement the following year as the first psionic powers for D&D. [2] Marsh was not paid for his creative contributions to either of these rules supplements. [3]
Marsh claimed that when Gary Gygax was developing Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, he convinced Gygax to add a Good and Evil axis to D&D's character alignment system. (Originally, characters could only be Lawful, Chaotic or Neutral. By adding a second axis, the number of possible alignments based on combinations of Law, Chaos, Good, Evil and Neutral grew from three to nine.) [4]
In 1977, most of Marsh's aquatic creature creations were converted to the new AD&D game system by Gary Gygax for use in the Monster Manual ; in the preface Gygax credited Marsh "for devising the creatures for undersea encounters which originally appeared in BLACKMOOR, as I have radically altered them herein." [5]
During the 1980 summer break, he worked at TSR, where he was lead writer on the 1981 version of Dungeons & Dragons Expert Set . [6] [7] [8] He also reviewed and approved licensed Judges Guild products, and helped create the minigame Saga, [1] for which he received one royalty payment — the only time he received compensation for creative work other than his salary. [9]
Steve Marsh completed law school and was admitted to the bar in 1982. He continued to correspond with Gygax in the hopes of creating a hardcover book for which he would be paid royalties, and he convinced Gygax that a rule book about travel to different planes would be worthwhile. Together, Marsh and Gygax started to develop a new AD&D rulebook, The Planes of Existence, which Gygax mentioned in his column in the March 1980 issue of Dragon. [10] A color cube illustrating how their planes would interface appeared in the May 1983 issue of Dragon. [11]
In 2008, several previously unpublished Lovecraft-inspired monsters created by Marsh for his home campaign were published in Monsters of Myth, an e-book published by the First Edition Society. [12]
In 2017 he ran 3 scenarios including the City of the Revenant, an OD&D scenario and one other. [8]
He was first cited in the Code of Federal Regulations circa 1999. [13]
Greyhawk, also known as the World of Greyhawk, is a fictional world designed as a campaign setting for the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy roleplaying game. Although not the first campaign world developed for Dungeons & Dragons—Dave Arneson's Blackmoor campaign predated it by over a year—the world of Greyhawk closely identified with early development of the game beginning in 1972, and after being published it remained associated with Dungeons & Dragons publications until 2008. The world itself started as a simple dungeon under a castle designed by Gary Gygax for the amusement of his children and friends, but it was rapidly expanded to include not only a complex multi-layered dungeon environment, but also the nearby city of Greyhawk, and eventually an entire world. In addition to the campaign world, which was published in several editions over twenty years, Greyhawk was also used as the setting for many adventures published in support of the game, as well as for RPGA's massively shared Living Greyhawk campaign from 2000–2008.
David Lance Arneson was an American game designer best known for co-developing the first published role-playing game (RPG), Dungeons & Dragons, with Gary Gygax, in the early 1970s. Arneson's early work was fundamental to the development of the genre, developing the concept of the RPG using devices now considered to be archetypical, such as adventuring in "dungeons" and using a neutral judge who doubles as the voice and consciousness of all characters aside from the player characters to develop the storyline.
Fiend Folio is any of three products published for successive editions of the fantasy role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons (D&D). All three are collections of monsters.
Expedition to the Barrier Peaks is a 1980 adventure module for the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game written by Gary Gygax. While Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) is typically a fantasy game, the adventure includes elements of science fiction, and thus belongs to the science fantasy genre. It takes place on a downed spaceship; the ship's crew has died of an unspecified disease, but functioning robots and strange creatures still inhabit the ship. The player characters fight monsters and robots, and gather the futuristic weapons and colored access cards that are necessary for advancing the story.
Palace of the Silver Princess is an adventure module for the Dungeons & DragonsBasic Set. It was recalled on the same day it was released, then rewritten and re-released some months later. The original version, with an orange cover, was written in 1980 by Jean Wells. When the orange version was recalled, the module was rewritten by Tom Moldvay and released with a green cover. Writing credit on the second version was given to both Moldvay and Wells, although there was very little of Wells' original content in Moldvay's version.
Tiamat is a supremely strong and powerful 5-headed draconic goddess in the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game. The name is taken from Tiamat, a goddess in ancient Mesopotamian mythology. She is the queen and mother of evil dragons and a member of the default pantheon of Dungeons & Dragons gods. Her symbol is a five-headed dragon.
Mordenkainen is a fictional wizard from the World of Greyhawk campaign setting for the Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying game. He was created by Gary Gygax as a player character, only months after the start of Gygax's Greyhawk campaign, and is therefore one of the oldest characters continuously associated with D&D.
Iggwilv is a fictional wizard from the Greyhawk campaign setting for the Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying game. She was created by Gary Gygax.
Jacob Franklin "Frank" Mentzer III is an American fantasy author and game designer who worked on early materials for the Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) fantasy role-playing game. He was an employee of TSR, Inc. from 1980 to 1986, spending part of that time as Creative Advisor to the Chairman of the Board, Gary Gygax. He also founded the Role-Playing Games Association (RPGA) during his time with TSR.
The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth is an adventure module for the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game. It was written by Gary Gygax and published by TSR in 1982 for the first edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (AD&D) rules. The 64-page adventure bears the code "S4" and is set in the Greyhawk campaign setting. It is divided into two parts, a 32-page adventure, and a 32-page booklet of monsters and magic items. The plot involves the player characters investigating rumors of lost treasure. After traversing a wilderness and two levels of dungeons, the players face Drelnza, the vampiric daughter of long-deceased archmage Iggwilv.
The lich is an undead creature found in the Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) fantasy role-playing game. Liches are spellcasters who seek to defy death by magical means.
In the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game, a vampire is an undead creature. A humanoid or monstrous humanoid creature can become a vampire, and looks as it did in life, with pale skin, haunting red eyes, and a feral cast to its features. A new vampire is created when another vampire drains the life out of a living creature. Its depiction is related to those in the 1930s and 1940s Hollywood Dracula and monster movies. In writing vampires into the game, as with other creatures arising in folklore, the authors had to consider what elements arising in more recent popular culture should be incorporated into their description and characteristics.
Tritons are a fictional species in the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game.
Lenard Lakofka was an American writer of material for the fantasy role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons. Although never a formal employee of TSR, the company that published Dungeons & Dragons, Lakofka was an influential voice in the development of the game. He was one of the playtesters of the game as it was being developed, an editor of early manuscripts, wrote a widely-read monthly D&D magazine column and two official D&D adventures, and had his home campaign setting of the Lendore Isles incorporated into Gary Gygax's World of Greyhawk Fantasy Game Setting.
Blackmoor is a supplementary rulebook of the original edition of the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game written by Dave Arneson.
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.
The Expert Set is an expansion boxed set for the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game. It was first published in 1981 as an expansion to the Basic Set.
The Wand of Orcus is a fictional magical weapon described in various Dungeons & Dragons media. Because of the popularity of Orcus as a villain within the Dungeons & Dragons universe, many different authors have written materials describing artifacts created by or associated with the character. The Wand of Orcus is consistently the most important and most described of these artifacts. Screen Rant has noted that "[t]he weapon that Orcus wields in battle is almost as famous as the demon lord himself".
Oeva Jean Wells Koebernick was an American writer, artist, and editor in the field of role-playing games. She was the first female game designer to be hired by TSR, Inc. Her career at TSR stalled after she wrote a controversial Dungeons & Dragons adventure module that was withdrawn on the eve of publication and subsequently rewritten.
In the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game, "monsters" are generally the antagonists which players must fight and defeat to progress in the game. Since the game's first edition in 1974, a bestiary was included along other game manuals, first called Monsters & Treasure and now commonly called the Monster Manual. Described as an "essential" part of Dungeons & Dragons, the game's monsters have become notable in their own right, influencing fields such as video games and fiction, as well as popular culture.