Rob Heinsoo

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Rob Heinsoo
Rob Heinsoo.jpg
Born1964 (age 57–58)
OccupationGame designer
NationalityAmerican
Genre Role-playing games

Rob Heinsoo (born 1964[ citation needed ]) is an American tabletop game designer. He has been designing and contributing to professional role-playing games, card games, and board games since 1994. [1] Heinsoo was the lead designer on the 4th Edition of Dungeons & Dragons (2008), and is co-designer of the 13th Age roleplaying game along with Jonathan Tweet. He has also designed and contributed to role playing, miniatures and card games, and a computer game.

Contents

Career

Heinsoo began playing Dungeons & Dragons in 1974 at age 10, using the original edition. [2] His interest in games informed his interest in science fiction and fantasy, and vice versa. [2] Heinsoo was hired by Jose Garcia for Daedalus Games to work on the RPG Nexus ; [3] : 256  some of his work for Daedalus Games' Feng Shui RPG was later published by Atlas Games.[ citation needed ] Chaosium hired Heinsoo in 1996 to oversee their licenses for Glorantha, [3] : 359  but he was laid off the following year. [3] : 361 

Heinsoo joined Wizards of the Coast (WotC) as part of the "D&D Worlds" team, where he focused on the third-edition version of Forgotten Realms . [3] : 289  With WotC, Heinsoo was involved with a number of Dungeons & Dragons game products. Other Forgotten Realms works include the sourcebook Monsters of Faerûn . He also helped write the third edition Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting , which reached the top 50 of the non-fiction bestsellers in Canada in 2002 [4] and won an Origins Award for best roleplaying supplement of 2001. [5] He is the designer of Three-Dragon Ante , a card game.

While at Wizards of the Coast, he also led and contributed to various miniatures gaming projects. Heinsoo playtested the Chainmail game and so he became a member of the Chainmail team, and contributed to the Chainmail column in Dragon magazine writing about tactics and rules. [3] : 289–290  Subsequent to the release of the Dungeons & Dragons Miniatures Game, he took over as lead designer on that project. [6] He was also one of three designers of Dreamblade , for which he was nominated for an Origins Award in 2007. [7]

Early in 2005, Bill Slavicsek organized a team to begin some early designs for a fourth edition of D&D, which was headed up by Heinsoo and also included Andy Collins and James Wyatt, with Heinsoo leading the teams working on the design and development in 2005 and 2006. [3] : 297  The Player's Handbook for this edition was nominated for an Origins Award for Best Roleplaying Game in 2009. [8] His teammates referred to his role on the 4th Edition team as the "mad genius". [9] His book Monster Manual 2, co-written with Chris Sims, was a Wall Street Journal bestseller in 2009. [10] Heinsoo was laid off by Wizards in 2009. [3] : 301 

After Wizards, Heinsoo designed the 13th Age RPG. [11] He designed 13th Age with Jonathan Tweet, the lead designer of 3rd Edition D&D. [11] Heinsoo and Tweet are close friends who have played tabletop games together for years. [11]

Rob Heinsoo also contributes to Alarums and Excursions .

Tabletop roleplaying games

3rd Edition D&D

4th Edition D&D

13th Age

Card games and board games

Miniatures games

Computer games

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References

  1. ↑ ""Rob Heinsoo" game credits". Pen & Paper. Archived from the original on April 18, 2003.
  2. 1 2 "Interview". Guys Lit Wire. June 23, 2008.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Shannon Appelcline (2011). Designers & Dragons. Mongoose Publishing. ISBN   978-1-907702-58-7.
  4. ↑ (September 2002). "Bestsellers Lists", Books in Canada31 (6): 11.
  5. ↑ "2001 Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts & Design". Archived from the original on March 3, 2008.
  6. ↑ "Spotlight interview". Archived from the original on December 20, 2010.
  7. ↑ "Google Groups". groups.google.com.
  8. ↑ "Nominees for 35th Origins Awards announced". April 29, 2009.
  9. ↑ "Rob's definitely the mad genius of the group, particularly when it comes to mechanical design." Kobold Quarterly, Summer 2008, page 32.
  10. ↑ (May 29, 2009). "Wall Street Journal Best-Sellers", Connecticut Post .
  11. 1 2 3 "13th Age: The New Tabletop Game From The Lead Designers Of 3rd And 4th Edition Dungeons And Dragons". Forbes . Retrieved June 9, 2013.
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