Jack Herman is an

American American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, p ...

game designer Game design is the process of creating and shaping the mechanics, systems, rules, and gameplay of a game. Game design processes apply to board games, card games, dice games, casino games, role-playing games, sports, Wargame (video games), war ga ...

who has worked primarily on

role-playing game A role-playing game (sometimes spelled roleplaying game, or abbreviated as RPG) is a game in which players assume the roles of player character, characters in a fictional Setting (narrative), setting. Players take responsibility for acting out ...

Career

In the late 1970s, Jack Herman and

Jeff Dee Jeff Dee is an American artist and game designer. He was the youngest artist in the history of pioneering role-playing game company TSR when he began his work at the age of 18. He also designed the ''Villains and Vigilantes'' superhero game. He ...

co-created ''

Villains and Vigilantes ''Villains and Vigilantes'' (abbreviated as ''V&V'') is a superhero-themed role-playing game which competed primarily with '' Champions'' and ''Superworld'' in the early to mid-1980s. Origin ''Villains and Vigilantes'' was the first role-playin ...

'', the first complete superhero role-playing game.Jebens, Harley (September 21, 1995). "Game central", ''

Austin American-Statesman The ''Austin American-Statesman'' is the major daily newspaper for Austin, the capital city of the U.S. state of Texas. It is owned by Hearst Communications. The distribution of the following ''The New York Times'', ''The Washington Post'', '' ...

'', p. 38. The game was published by

Fantasy Games Unlimited Fantasy Games Unlimited (FGU) is a publishing house for tabletop and role-playing games. The company has no in-house design teams and relies on submitted material from outside talent. History Founded in the summer of 1975 in Jericho, New York b ...

in 1979. Dee and Herman convinced

Scott Bizar Scott B. Bizar is the founder of Fantasy Games Unlimited, a game publisher which contracts writers and artists that work primarily on role-playing games. Career Scott Bizar founded his game company Fantasy Games Unlimited (FGU) after being dissa ...

to produce a second edition, which was published in 1982. When Bizar began publishing a number of original PDFs for ''Villains and Vigilantes'' for free through his website in 2010, Dee and Herman contended that their contract was with FGU Inc., and not with Bizar, so that Bizar did not have the rights to publish ''V&V'' without FGU. Dee and Herman sent a cease-and-desist letter to Bizar in June 2010 to inform him that he was not permitted to sell their games. Bizar was offered a license for the right to continue publishing material for ''Villains & Vigilantes'' but he had refused this license as of early 2011, and Bizar also refused to enter into arbitration with Dee and Herman, although they have stated that their contract requires arbitration. Dee and Herman published ''Villains & Vigilantes'' version 2.1 in 2010 using their new brand

Monkey House Games Monkey is a common name that may refer to most mammals of the infraorder Simiiformes, also known as simians. Traditionally, all animals in the group now known as simians are counted as monkeys except the apes. Thus monkeys, in that sense, const ...

, which they founded to recover the rights to ''Villains and Vigilantes'', and the company is a partner of

Cubicle 7 Cubicle 7 Entertainment Ltd is an Ireland, Irish games company that creates and publishes tabletop games. Best known for its ''Doctor Who'' and ''Lord of the Rings'' games, Cubicle 7 offers titles covering a range of licensed and self-developed p ...

References

External links

Jack Herman
at Pen & Paper RPG Database rchived American role-playing designers Living people Year of birth missing (living people) {{rpg-bio-stub