Welcome to Day 11 of #RPGaDay2015, and today’s topic is another tough one: Favorite RPG Writer. Now, after yesterday’s pains to avoid setting one group of friends above any others, you’d think that I’ve have similar difficulty with this topic — and even more so, since it requires that I name ONE person. Well, funny enough, that’s not actually true. I thought it would be the case, but when I thought about my answer, I realized that none of the other game writers that I know would feel slighted or give me any push-back on this choice at all. I’m pretty sure that upon hearing my choice, almost everyone working in the business would nod their heads and say “yeah, fair enough.”
My favorite RPG writer is Ken Hite. I’ve known Ken for about 20 years or so, first through his work with Steve Jackson Games on various GURPS titles and his absolutely brilliant SUPPRESSED TRANSMISSIONS online column and collected editions. From then, up until recently, with his work for Pelgrane Press (notably TRAIL OF CTHULHU, and supplements like SHADOWS OVER FILMLAND and BOOKHOUNDS OF LONDON, to his spies-vs-vampires game NIGHT’S BLACK AGENTS), Ken has never failed to impress the hell out of me with his sharp mind, inventive concepts and erudite prose. The stuff that he casually tosses out as mere conversation, never to revisit, is the kind of stuff that most writers would kill to have come up with. I am reminded of something that Robert Rodriguez once said about Quentin Tarantino, which I feel definitely applies here: Being friends with him is like being friends with Clark Kent… He’s just like any one of your other friends… and then you see something he’s created and get reminded: Oh yeah, he’s also Superman.
So that’s my answer. Let’s check in with Dave Chapman to see his…