Thomas A. Dowd 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

Thomas Dowd was one of the writers who created supporting material for the '' Villains and Vigilantes'' role-playing game from Fantasy Games Unlimited. The ''

Shadowrun ''Shadowrun'' is a science fantasy tabletop role-playing game set in an alternate future in which cybernetics, magic in fiction, magic and fantasy creatures co-exist. It combines genres of cyberpunk, urban fantasy, and crime fiction, crime, wit ...

'' 2nd Edition rules from

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 ...

, by Dowd with Paul Hume and Bob Charrette, won the

Origins Award The Origins Awards are American awards for outstanding work in the gaming industry. They are presented by the Game Manufacturers Association (GAMA) at the Origins Game Fair on an annual basis for games released in the preceding year. For example, t ...

for Best Roleplaying Rules of 1992. Dowd was working at FASA in 1990 when he met

Peter Adkison Peter D. Adkison is an American game designer and businessman who is the founder of Wizards of the Coast, where he held the role of CEO from 1993 to 2001. During Adkison's tenure, Wizards of the Coast rose to the status of a major publisher in ...

, who was trying to understand how the gaming industry worked, and Dowd advised him to attend the next Gama Trade Show in March 1991.

Mark Rein-Hagen Mark Rein-Hagen, stylized as Mark Rein•Hagen (born 1964), is an American role-playing game, role-playing, card game, card, video game, video and board game designer best known as the creator of ''Vampire: The Masquerade'' and its associated '' ...

turned to Dowd to design his new game about vampires, because Jonathan Tweet was his expert in game mechanics but left Lion Rampant in 1989. Dowd refined the dice pool system from ''Shadowrun'' to repurpose it for '' Vampire: The Masquerade'' (1991) from White Wolf. Dowd worked with Rein-Hagen to adapt the core mechanics from his previous game success to use d10 instead of d6 for calculating probability.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Dowd, Tom American role-playing designers Living people White Wolf game designers Year of birth missing (living people)