L. Ross Babcock III is a

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

Jordan Weisman Jordan Weisman is an American game designer, author, and serial entrepreneur who has founded five game design companies, each in a different game genre and segment of the industry. Biography Weisman graduated from Francis W. Parker High School, ...

asked his friends in 1980 if anyone else would join him in starting a company to publish adventures and deckplans for '' Traveller'', and L. Ross Babcock III had the money so together they formed

FASA FASA Corporation was an American publisher of role-playing games, wargaming, wargames and board games between 1980 and 2001, after which they closed publishing operations for several years, becoming an IP holding company under the name FASA In ...

. Weisman and Babcock printed a few hundred copies of these early adventures by Weisman, and sold these copies to a local store in Chicago; shortly they began sending samples to distributors who in turn were soon selling copies to nationwide retailers. Babcock and Weisman knew of

William H. Keith Jr. William H. Keith (born August 8, 1950) is an American author mainly contributing to military science fiction and military fiction and related game design, who writes also under several pen names, such as Ian Douglas, Robert Cain and H. Jay R ...

and Andrew Keith as freelancers who had their writing and art published in products by

Game Designers' Workshop Game Designers' Workshop (GDW) was a Board wargame, wargame and role-playing game publisher from 1973 to 1996. Many of their games are now carried by other publishers. History Game Designers' Workshop was originally established June 22, 1973. ...

, and they brought the Keith brothers into FASA as its first recruits in 1980. FASA agreed in August 1981 to publish the magazine ''

High Passage ''High Passage'' was a gaming magazine first published in 1981, written and produced by Christopher Kupczyk, Scott Walschlager, Jim Cunningham and Craig Johnson. Contents ''High Passage'' was a magazine that was approved to be used with '' Trav ...

'', for which Weisman and Babcock did both the layout and editing. Babcock helped design the role-playing game '' Behind Enemy Lines'' (1982). Weisman and Babcock obtained the license to create a ''Star Trek'' role-playing game, and looked outside the company for a ''Star Trek'' design team, and freelance group Fantasimulations Association ultimately created '' Star Trek: The Role Playing Game'' (1983) for FASA. Babcock and Weisman went to work for Microsoft when FASA Interactive became FASA Studio for that company. Babcock became the final president of FASA in early 2000, overseeing the company as it was prepared to exit the tabletop publishing industry. Mort Weisman (father of Jordan) and Ross Babcock announced on January 25, 2001 that FASA would be closing down after publishing its last few products.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Babcock, L. Ross III Living people Role-playing game designers Year of birth missing (living people)