A Talk With Andy Collins

A 30th Anniversary Interview

I remember when Andy Collins joined the Roleplaying R&D staff at Wizards of the Coast (although he was no newbie -- he started working at Wizards of the Coast before the buyout of TSR). It didn't take long at all to see that he was a good addition to the team. He didn't come into the job with a lot of preconceived notions or attitude, but he was clearly full of good ideas as well. I've always thought that was the perfect tactic with which to approach a new job, particularly a creative one. I've seen people come into a job with the attitude that they could do everything better than the people they were joining, and I've seen people too cowed to reveal their own ideas.

Andy wasn't like that, though. He was happy to voice his opinion, but also was happy to listen to experienced voices like Jonathan Tweet's or Skip Williams'.

So, I was really happy to work with him on the Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil (he was my editor -- I'll let him tell you about his experience in the initial playtest session). In my time working on D&D at Wizards, I saw Andy really come into his own as a game designer and develop into one of the lead voices in the department. He played in one of the various Ptolus campaigns that I've run. And after I had left the company, when I learned that he would be working on the revision to the D&D rules, I felt that he was a very good choice for that role.

Andy still works at Wizards of the Coast, and I have no doubt that we'll continue to see even more cool stuff from him in the future. It was my pleasure, in commemorating the 30th Anniversary of Dungeons & Dragons, to discuss a few of these topics with Andy Collins.

Monte Cook: How did you come to start playing D&D?

Andy Collins: I received the D&D "brown box" as a birthday present in 1981 from my uncle Ralph. (I'm very certain that he had no idea what he was starting.) Though I'd never heard of the game and knew of no one else who played, I could see that this was something very cool. After teaching myself the rules, I DM'ed Keep on the Borderlands for my brother Greg and our friend Kurt. That first game lasted about nine hours -- we didn't even remember to stop for lunch.

Monte: What were you doing before you started at Wizards of the Coast?

Andy: Before I started working at Wizards I was an unemployed college graduate with an English degree. I'd worked in a couple of short-term jobs, but nothing with real career options. I also helped out at my mom's toy store, keeping the gaming section well stocked.

Monte: How did you get your initial job at the company?

Andy: When Wizards of the Coast's fledgling Organized Play division recruited local stores to test-run their new store-based league program (which would become the Arena League), I took on the responsibility of running Magic league play at the store. Later, I volunteered to keep track of all league play in the Olympia area to save the Wizards staffers the driving time required to round up results and the like. When the league program got the go-ahead to add staff, I got a call to join the team in charge of running the league. That was April 1st, 1996.

Monte: What were your impressions of Wizards, both as a new hire and as you got to know your way around?

Andy: As a lifelong gamer, being hired by a game company was a dream come true. Working with other energetic twenty- and thirty-somethings who shared a love of games was (and remains) an incredibly rewarding experience. Even through the worst of times, I could always remind myself that I was getting paid to work at a game company.

Monte: You didn't start out working with roleplaying games. Tell us about what you did before at Wizards and how you ended up in the Roleplaying R&D department.

Andy: I spent the first two years of my employment at Wizards working on various programs in the Organized Play department, which is responsible for all the leagues and tournaments for our games. I started with the Arena League, helping to get the program off the ground. When Sideboard Magazine became fully operated by Organized Play (rather than by the Duelist [magazine] team), I took over that magazine for several months to guide it through the transition. It was exactly that editing experience that helped get me the job as editor on the Alternity team in April of 1998.

Monte: Although you've worked at Wizards for a long time, when you think back, what's the most memorable period (so far)?

Andy: There have been a lot of very memorable times for me at Wizards, most of them good.

I remember visiting the office to accept the first job offer. They were very careful to tell me that it was only a six-month contract, and that I shouldn't assume that a full-time job was waiting for me (reasonable, since only one member of the five-person team was a full-time employee). Of course, I knew what they didn't -- that once I was in, they wouldn't be able to get rid of me. : )

I remember walking into the office one summer day in 1997, when co-worker and fellow D&D player Joe Hauck told me that I had to check my email RIGHT NOW. That's because Peter Adkison's announcement that Wizards was acquiring TSR was waiting on the company's email network. I'm only slightly embarrassed to admit that I started updating my resume that morning.

I remember sitting in on one of the earliest 3rd Edition discussions, mere weeks after joining R&D in spring of 1998. There I was, the juniorest of junior staffers, listening to industry titans discussing the future of the game I loved. I might have even ventured a comment, but if so I don't remember what I said (which is probably for the best).

I remember finding out on my honeymoon in September 2002 that a third of RPG R&D had just been laid off -- the third set of layoffs we'd endured in less than two years. The next few days saw some long conversations about what our future might be like if this trend continued. Thankfully, none of those possibilities have come to pass, as 2003 saw a strong rebound for the company.

I remember the pride I felt at being asked to lead the development of the Player's Handbook for version 3.5 of D&D. Though only a few years had passed since I joined the department, the managers trusted me with the most important title in the game, and that felt pretty darn good.

Monte: You met your wife Gwendolyn while at Wizards, and now you both work together on roleplaying games. Tell us about how that all first happened, and what it's like now.

Andy: Appropriately enough, we met while gaming.

[Game designer] Mike Selinker was running a game based on Alan Moore's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen comic book. Gwendolyn played Mina Harker, I played Allan Quatermain. I remember noticing this very interesting woman who was really enjoying getting into her character (even to the point of including some minor costume details). At that time, Gwendolyn still worked for Wizards' convention arm, Andon, so our paths didn't really cross much.

Months later, however, she had moved to R&D as an RPG editor working primarily on licensed products. By then, I was working as an editor and designer on the D&D team, so even though we were both in R&D we didn't interact much. But we caught each other's eye again at a New Year's Eve party at [your house], and not long after Gwendolyn asked me out. The rest, as they say, is history.

Some people think that being married to someone who works in the same office would be weird. From my perspective, anything else would seem strange. We drive to and from work together every day, often talking about what's going on for each of us in the office. I love the fact that she knows what I'm going through, and vice versa. And I can't recommend highly enough marrying a fellow gamer!

Monte: You were at Wizards of the Coast as the people from TSR were first coming over during the transition. What was that experience like from your end?

Andy: I couldn't believe it was actually happening. I'd often thought that I'd like to work for TSR (ever since I realized that real people actually wrote those books), but getting in the door seemed pretty impossible. When I joined Wizards, I figured that that experience might make my resume more attractive to TSR. I was even willing to move from my beloved Pacific Northwest to the frozen tundra of Lake Geneva. I never imagined that the opposite would actually happen.

For me, the TSR staffers were like celebrities. Meeting them for the first time at GenCon that year was a little like hobnobbing with movie stars. I confess that I spent way too much time at the convention hanging around at various D&D events, trying to get to know them better. I particularly remember Michele Carter and you being very patient with this big-time Planescape fan.

Monte: Gamers all over the world would love to have your job, or at least know more about it. Give us some insight into what your work environment is like day to day at Wizards. What's a typical day like in the life of Andy Collins, game designer/developer?

Andy: There's almost no such thing as a "typical" day around here, but here's a reasonable facsimile.

I arrive at the office between 9 and 10 am. There's no clock to punch, and as long as we're all getting our work done, managers are very flexible about schedules. I start the day by checking my email and visiting a few websites and message boards.

I usually have a development team meeting from 10 to 12, dedicated to discussing whichever D&D project I'm leading development on. There, we'll go over some section of the book -- maybe prestige classes, or some feats, or a new rules mechanic -- talking about its pros and cons, any mechanical issues that it presents, and so forth. Unlike design, which is often a very solitary task, development is extremely team-oriented. No one person's opinion is more important than anyone else's, so consensus-building is crucial. In a development meeting, we might propose fixes for problems we spot, or just delegate whose job it'll be to handle those, but, regardless, there's a lot of talking. If you can't handle yourself in a debate, you can't hack working on a development team.

I see the lunch hour as an important time to "get away" from the office for a while. That said, much of lunch is often spent talking about the same things as at the office -- the latest projects, upcoming ideas, or the crazy things that happened in last weekend's D&D games.

The afternoon usually holds another development meeting (we typically have at least three projects in development at the same time, two of which I'll be working on simultaneously). It's also when I get the bulk of my actual development work done, usually in chunks of 15 to 30 minutes at a time.

There are also plenty of impromptu chats and meetings between developers, as well as between developers and the rest of the staff. Even out of meetings, the dev team talks a lot (something that I'm sure doesn't help the nearby designers and editors focus, but that's what headphones are for), whether about current projects or thoughts for the future of the game. Editors come by with questions about projects we've turned over to them, and we pester designers with questions about the work they've given us. We might grab a room to run a couple of encounters to test a new monster or new character class. It's fairly chaotic -- one of the things you learn pretty quickly around here is the ability to prioritize your time so that you get everything done on schedule.

Around about 6, I start thinking about leaving for home. It's not unusual to spend the drive home talking about whatever projects Gwendolyn and I are working on; similarly, it's rare that an evening goes by without me thinking about my current projects. Sometimes I even dream about them, which makes this truly a 24/7 kind of job.

Monte: Do you have any funny stories about your time working on D&D?

Andy: Well, there was this one time, shortly after I'd joined the D&D team as an editor, when a really viciously cruel DM running a playtest of his just-written D&D superadventure killed my halfling rogue in the first round...of the first encounter...of the first session of the playtest. All poor Laddy Bristerbuck got to do was fail a Move Silently check and roll poorly on initiative and then CHOMP! he was blue dragon chow. Here I was, eager to be learning from one of the veterans of the industry, and that's the ignominious welcome I get.

In hindsight, I guess I can see why everyone else at the table was laughing. Luckily, Laddy's cousin Paddy (with surprisingly identical stats and equipment) was already on his way to Hommlet to visit his now-dead relative, but believe you me, Paddy never let his new comrades forget how they'd let his cousin down.

Monte: You were instrumental in the creation of D&D v. 3.5. What kinds of insights or perspectives did that experience give you, both as you looked back and as you look ahead to the future?

Andy: One thing I learned in working on D&D v. 3.5 was the importance of looking at a game rule not just to find out how it works, but how it impacts player behavior. There are plenty of game rules in the world that work just fine mechanically, but that influence players to do things that aren't in the best interests of the game experience (i.e., that make the game less fun). I think that sort of insight will help me better develop game rules for future products, to ensure that not only will the rules work, but that they'll also encourage a fun gaming experience.

Related Articles

Sue's TSR Scrapbook During my years at TSR/Wizards, I took a lot of pictures. If there was an event, I was there with my camera. And as much as I loved the books and games that we produced, I loved the people even more. So, as my contribution to Monte's D&D anniversary series, I thought it would be fun to wrap things up with a photographic look at the many faces of D&D during my Wisconsin years with TSR.	A Talk With John D. Rateliff I don't actually remember first meeting John D. Rateliff. He'd already been at TSR for quite a while before I got there, and I remember hearing people refer to "Dr. John," and not knowing what they were talking about (John will explain). In early conversations with him, I remember feeling a bit intimidated by his knowledge of, well, a good many things. John's very well read, very literate, and a very knowledgeable guy. He's got a good eye for detail and minutiae -- all of which makes him a great editor.
A Talk With Jesse Decker I met Jesse Decker when he was the editorial assistant for the Dragon and Dungeon magazines. I'd been in a few meetings with him and discussed articles or whatnot and found him to be not only a real devotee of the game but a really nice guy. So, when a vacancy opened up in my Ptolus campaign, I suggested to the (Black Lantern) group that he might be a good addition and other members agreed.	A Talk With Steven Schend Steven Schend was one of the very first people at TSR that I interacted with. My first freelance job from TSR was working on the Marvel Super Heroes line, and Steven was more or less the in-house shepherd of the whole line, being the comics expert of the comics experts in the office. We talked on the phone a lot, and when -- about two years later -- I was hired as a full-time designer, he even offered to let me stay in the guest room of his house.
A Talk With Douglas Niles I never had the pleasure of working directly with Douglas Niles. He left TSR before I came to work there. Still, his legacy was clear. Though he was no longer in the office, his presence was still felt -- everyone still talked about Doug, and he had parties at his home and invited the whole TSR crew, even the newbies.	A Talk With Cindi Rice I can remember Cindi Rice's first days at TSR very well. It was a period when the company was hiring a lot of new creative staff, and it was sometimes hard to keep them all straight. I remember Cindi seemed to fit in really well, and really fast -- which is to say that she figured out quickly how to have a lot of fun.
A Talk With William W. Connors Bill Connors was one of the few people I already knew when I got to TSR in 1994. We had a mutual friend, and I'd met Bill at a previous Gen Con. (I remember that he was wearing a really cool suit and I was in a T-shirt and shorts. In one brief evening he changed my opinion about the mystique of being a game designer -- that they didn't have to be dorks, they could be really cool -- and I immediately wanted to be him.)	A Talk With Skip Williams Skip Williams hardly needs any introduction from me. When I started at TSR, I looked on him as the voice of experience. If I had a rules question, I went to Skip. The cool thing about Skip was, when you went to him with a question, he didn't speak from on high. Most of the time, he'd tell you what a good question it was, and that there wasn't an easy answer. Often, we'd end up having a good discussion about the rules....
A Talk With Stan! Steven Brown, a.k.a. "Stan!", is a good friend of mine. Although we both were at TSR and Wizards of the Coast at the same time, we never actually worked together on any projects, although he has since written a couple of short stories for Malhavoc fiction collections. Stan! always seemed to be working on other things. And in truth, I never really got to know him until after the move to Washington and Wizards of the Coast.	A Talk With Sean K Reynolds Sean Reynolds came to TSR right as the company was preparing to have a big 25th anniversary celebration. It was a pretty lavish affair with a big tent outside, lots of food, and a big display of TSR products. My first memory of Sean was when Sue and I met him and kind of dragged him to the celebration...