Jeff Dee is an American artist and

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 ...

. He was the youngest artist in the history of pioneering

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 ...

company TSR when he began his work at the age of 18. He also designed the ''

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 ...

'' superhero game. He was a co-host on '' The Atheist Experience'' and Non-Prophets atheism advocacy podcasts.

Biography

In the late 1970s, while Dee was still a teenager, he and Jack Herman created ''

'', the first complete superhero role-playing game. The game was published by Fantasy Games Unlimited in 1979. Dee and Herman persuaded Scott Bizar to produce a second edition, which was published in 1982. Dee came up with the idea of creating a role-playing game based on cartoons when he,

Greg Costikyan Greg Costikyan (born July 22, 1959), sometimes known under the pseudonym Designer X, is an American game designer and science fiction writer. Costikyan's career spans nearly all extant genres of gaming, including: hex-based wargames, role-playing ...

, and other designers were discussing which genres had no role-playing game systems yet; although they agreed that it would be impossible for such a game to be designed, a few years later Costikyan designed '' Toon'' as a full game with the assistance of

Warren Spector Warren Evan Spector (born October 2, 1955) is an American role-playing and video game designer, director, writer, producer and production designer. He is known for creating immersive sim games, which give players a wide variety of choices in how ...

. Dee was the youngest artist in TSR history when he began working for them at the age of 18. In 1997, with his partner 'Manda, Dee founded UNIgames, a publisher of role-playing,

board Board or Boards may refer to: Flat surface * Lumber, or other rigid material, milled or sawn flat ** Plank (wood) ** Cutting board ** Sounding board, of a musical instrument * Cardboard (paper product) * Paperboard * Fiberboard ** Hardboard, a ...

, and

computer game A video game or computer game is an electronic game that involves interaction with a user interface or input device (such as a joystick, controller, keyboard, or motion sensing device) to generate visual feedback from a display device, mo ...

s. Dee designed a new superhero role-playing game originally titled ''Advanced Villains and Vigilantes'', which was ultimately published as ''Living Legends'' in 2005. In 2009, he co-founded Nemesis Games, developers of an MMO named ''Gargantua''. Dee has long been an advocate for the role-playing game industry.

Advocacy of atheism

In addition to his artistic and game-related work, Dee is an outspoken

atheist Atheism, in the broadest sense, is an absence of belief in the existence of deities. Less broadly, atheism is a rejection of the belief that any deities exist. In an even narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there no ...

and

transhumanist Transhumanism is a philosophical and intellectual movement that advocates the human enhancement, enhancement of the human condition by developing and making widely available new and future technologies that can greatly enhance longevity, cogni ...

. He has been the host of a bi-weekly

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the Global network, global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a internetworking, network of networks ...

podcast called ''The Non-Prophets'' and a former host of a live, weekly,

public-access television Public-access television (sometimes called community-access television) is traditionally a form of non-commercial mass media where the general public can create content television programming which is Narrowcasting, narrowcast through cable tele ...

program, '' The Atheist Experience''.

References

External links

* *
A Jeff Dee art gallery
including most of his AD&D work
''What Worries Jeff Dee?''
Dee's blog {{DEFAULTSORT:Dee, Jeff American atheism activists American fantasy artists American game artists American role-playing designers American role-playing game artists American transhumanists Atheist Community of Austin people Living people Year of birth missing (living people)