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Lester W. Smith is a game designer who has worked primarily on role-playing games.

Career[]

Early work and GDW[]

Lester Smith began his game-design career in 1984 with Mind Duel, a science-fiction board game submission to Space Gamer magazine.[1] In 1985, he joined the staff at Game Designers' Workshop.[1] Marc Miller, Frank Chadwick, Lester Smith, and Timothy Brown of GDW designed the new game Traveller: 2300 (1986) as an expansion of the original Traveller role-playing game.[2]:58 He designed the Temple of the Beastmen board game.[1] Smith's game Dark conspiracy (1991) for GDW used the new "house system" created for the second edition of Twilight: 2000.[2]:60 Smith designed the Minion Hunter board game.[1]

TSR and Dragon Dice[]

Smith later left GDW to work for TSR.[2]:63 He was hired by TSR in 1991, and contributed to the AD&D and Amazing Engine role-playing game lines.[1] Smith and Wolfgang Baur co-designed the Planes of Chaos boxed set.[3] He designed the Origins Award-winning Dragon Dice.[1] Smith designed Chaos Progenitus (1996), also marketed as Demon Dice.[4] Smith then worked for Imperium Games.[2]:63 Smith later worked for Ken Whitman's Archangel Entertainment, and then joined Don Perrin in the design of the Sovereign Stone roleplaying game.[2]:351 He has also done work for FASA, Flying Buffalo, West End Games, and others, acquiring two other Origins Awards in the process.[1] Timothy Brown, James Ward, Smith, John Danovich, and Sean Everette founded the d20 company Fast Forward Entertainment.[2]:351

Later work[]

Smith worked as an educational writer and technologist for a Houghton Mifflin design house and for a time served as the president of the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets.[1] As of today, Smith is officially retired.[5] Since 2011, Smith has launched 13 successful funded campaigns on the crowdfunding platform kickstarter.[5] These projects include books, role-playing games and card games that Smith has designed himself.[5]

Personal life[]

Lester Smith is an alumnus of Illinois State University.[5] He married his wife Jennifer and had four daughters together.[5] In 2015, Smith and his wife moved to Loma, Nebraska to live closer to family.[5]

References[]

{{#vardefine:numCol|2}}

  1. 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 Smith, Lester (2007). Hobby Games: The 100 Best. Green Ronin Publishing, 168–171.
  2. 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 Shannon Appelcline (2011). Designers & Dragons. Mongoose Publishing.
  3. Swan, Rick (February 1995). "Role-playing Reviews". Dragon. Lake Geneva, Wisconsin: TSR (#214): 39.<templatestyles src="Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css"></templatestyles>
  4. https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/4058/chaos-progenitus
  5. 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 Banner-Press, ERIC SCHUCHT The. "Loma resident thinks outside the box to design game masterpieces". Columbus Telegram. Retrieved 2018-10-27.<templatestyles src="Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css"></templatestyles>

External links[]

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