Dave

Lead Class Designer

He hails from the tabletop gaming industry where he spent a decade creating and developing award-winning and best selling games for Alderac Entertainment Group and Wizards of the Coast. He’s best known for creating Legend of the Five Rings®, and a ludicrous number of other collectible card games, including Doomtown®, Warlord®, and most recently the City of Heroes® CCG. David’s games received numerous Game of the Year awards, and he himself was named “Designer of the Year” by Inquest magazine. When he’s not logged into one of his many electronic fantasy lives, David studies kenjutsu, baseball box scores, and his navel.

Q: What was your childhood dream job?
A: I’m living the dream, baby! I’m not kidding. My mom loves to tell the story of when I was six years old, and she asked me what I wanted to do when I grew up: “I wanna make games.”

Q: Any unusual hobbies?
A: I’ve studied kenjutsu for about 15 years—the martial art of the Japanese samurai sword (the katana). I started doing it as research for a samurai game I was working on and just generally being a fan of swords (Highlander ftw!), but I quickly found myself fascinated by the philosophies of bushido and kenjutsu specifically.

Q: What was your big break that got you into the industry?
A: Finding a recruiter that played tabletop games. It can actually be fairly tough to break in from tabletop, but I was fortunate that I’d made some contacts in the electronic industry when I made the City of Heroes ccg. One of them introduced me to these guys he knew who were starting up a new MMO studio… the rest is history. I still owe that guy a steak dinner, to be honest.