James Wallis, "Godfather of Tabletop Indie Game Design"

Ice Cream for Everyone Podcast

For the fifth episode of the podcast, I met with James Wallis in London. James is a British designer and publisher of tabletop and roleplaying games. He began roleplaying games with the classic Dungeons & Dragons and Traveller in 1981 and worked on many games since. He also wrote for gaming publications and traditional ones like the Sunday Times. Now he has his own consultancy, Spaaace, A triple "A" company.

He also consults with brands to design gaming experiences, leads game design seminars and has successfully completed several crowdfunding projects. Game designer and podcast show host Robin Laws first called him the godfather of indie game design. The most known games he worked on extensively are probably Once Upon a Time and The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchausen. He is currently working on bringing Paranoia, a classic tabletop roleplaying game into the 21st century.

I met James at a conference called Playful several years ago and thought of asking to participate in the show. We had a fantastic conversation, James has amazing stories to tell about his career in game design and writing. I hope you have as much fun listening as I did having the conversation.

A few of the links mentioned:

• Follow James on Twitter
• James' consultancy, Spaaace
• Pelgrane Press
• The Dairy in Clapham, London
• Pantheon
• John Tynes
• Violence RPG by Designer X
• The Forge
• Empire of the Petal Throne
• TSR (original publisher of Dungeons & Dragons)
• Dungeons & Dragons
• Runequest
• Traveller
• Call of Chtulhu
• Richard Bartle - multi-user Dungeons - MUD & MUSHes
• JANET & ARPANET
• Dragon riders of Pern, Anne McCaffrey
• White Dwarf
• GenCon
• Hogshead Publishing
• Wizards of the Coast
• Magic the Gathering card game
• Pokemon card game