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A Talk With Stan!A 30th Anniversary Interview0Steven 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 (including The Dragons' Return which is available today). 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. Stan! is an interesting guy, one of those people who seems to be good at so many things all at once. He's not only a talented writer, but he works for The Game Mechanics as an art director. And he's an artist himself, focusing mostly on cartooning. You've probably seen his cartoons in Dungeon Magazine and his caricatures right here at montecook.com. He's also just a plain ol' fashioned nice guy. The kind of guy you go to when you need advice, someone to talk to, or just about any other kind of help. I think if you asked just about anyone else from our time at TSR and Wizards, they'd say the same thing. Plus, as you'll see, he's always got good stories to share. It's a privilege to be able to ask him some questions to commemorate the anniversary of Dungeons & Dragons. Monte Cook: How did you start playing roleplaying games? Stan!: My first RPG session was with a friend in junior high school. We both had just finished reading Lord of the Rings for the first time, and he told me about this cool game his mom had gotten him. There were only two of us (we hadn't yet managed to find other geeks like us), so I rolled up a character and he tried to run me through a mini-adventure of his own devising. I don't remember what he sent me up against, but it was certainly too much for a lone elf fighter/magic-user. We were both kind of disheartened by how quickly (and unsatisfyingly) the game went, so we put it aside and went back to reading comic books. That summer while away at camp, I met a guy who had a better idea what he was doing AND a copy of Tomb of Horrors. Every rainy day that summer (and thankfully there were quite a few) we played a modified version of that adventure. I say modified because once again I was the only player, but this time the DM was experienced enough to know how to tweak the scenario to give me a fighting chance. I was hooked. When I got home from camp I told my parents about the game and how I wanted that and nothing but that for my birthday. They were less than thrilled. My mother had read something somewhere about this being a game where people ran around in the sewers (though she has NEVER been able to actually cite her reference) and made me promise not to do that. Which I did. Promise, that is. Anyway, the problem was that, despite living in the suburbs of New York, we couldn't find the game anywhere. I'm sure we were just looking in the wrong places because a) I didn't know about hobby stores, and b) my parents weren't keen to help me figure it out. The only D&D product I could find was the Official Dungeons & Dragons Coloring Album -- an oversized coloring book with florid text by Gary Gygax. (This was during the period when coloring books for adults were all the rage. No, really.) At the center of the book was a D&D-lite board game, which I played over and over for months. Finally, for Hanukkah that year, my parents finally got me the D&D Basic Set -- the one with the purple Erol Otus dragon on the cover -- and I was off to the races.
Stan!: I was working in Japan as an EFL teacher when first one then another of my college gaming buddies, Ed Stark and Bill Olmesdahl, got hired on staff at West End Games. They encouraged me to apply for a position as a staff editor, which I did -- repeatedly. Unfortunately, the powers that be at WEG often took the path of least resistance, and being half-way around the world made it difficult for me to start a job with only two weeks' notice. I also wound up in competition with some very talented people who COULD start nearly immediately, so I came in second in the running for two or three different editorial positions. Eventually, I got a call from the WEG art director saying that I was qualified to be a graphic designer. Would I consider coming on staff in that capacity and then being free to transfer over to the editorial pool when a position opened up? And that's how I came to work full-time in the game industry -- in a job I didn't know I was trained for, and I was reasonably sure I wanted to transfer out of at my first opportunity. Monte: When was this? Stan!: I started applying to WEG in 1992 and I finally wound up joining them in the fall of 1994. In the meanwhile, I did a little freelance work for them (most notably a short story called "The Sands of Change" for a TORG anthology called Mysterious Cairo) and stayed in touch with their products and their upcoming needs. It certainly helped to have two guys on the inside both feeding me information and putting a good word in for me with the bosses. While I waited I founded an English-speaking roleplaying network in Japan. It was called JIGG (Japan's International Gamers Guild), and I think it's still active to this day. Mostly it provided a venue for English-speaking gamers to find one another, but we had a bi-monthly newsletter which was edited, laid out, and produced by me (which is what qualified me for the graphic artist job at WEG). We also hosted one convention which had Peter Adkison and Richard Garfield as guests and featured the first Wizards-sponsored Magic: the Gathering tournament in Japan. About three months after I arrived at WEG, Ed Stark took a job at TSR and moved to Wisconsin. He immediately began calling us back in Pennsylvania to tell us how much better it was, and encouraging us to submit our resumes to TSR, too. A bunch of others did, but I had only just arrived at WEG. I really wasn't sure I had what it took to work for "the big boys" in Lake Geneva. I was content to put in a little time and learn a little more before climbing the industry ladder. TSR was having a year of big employee turnover, though, and soon about half of the editorial staff had left WEG. Despite this fact, I was NOT allowed to transfer over to the editorial pool. In fact, they hired three new editors without even advertising for a new graphic designer. It seems that the owners of WEG were convinced that I was going to be leaving any day, so they decided just to get as much graphics work out of me as they could. Faced with this, I finally DID decide to send my resume to TSR. And, after a tense few months, I was offered a position as editor for the Ravenloft line. Monte: How long did you end up working at WEG, then? Stan!: I started in October of 1994 and I went to TSR in September of 1995, so about 11 months.
Monte: What were your impressions of TSR and the staff, both as a new hire and as you got to know your way around? Stan!: Well, I was lucky in that I already knew several of the members of Creative Services very well (from WEG and before), so I very quickly found myself pulled into the social circle. Because the staff was so large, though, we worked in teams, and I only really got to know the people who were on the teams I worked on. I became really close with the people on my team (William W. Connors, Miranda Horner, Harold Johnson, Duane Maxwell, Steve Miller, and Sue Weinlein [soon-to-be-Cook]) but only got to know others when our paths crossed professionally. Probably a lot of that had to do with my insecurity about my skill set -- at heart I still wished I'd been able to build up a bigger body of work before joining TSR, and I was a little uncertain about whether or not I BELONGED in this group. As I recall, and this may come as a surprise to you, Monte, I was VERY intimidated by you and Ray Vallese. I just thought, "These guys are too sharp," and felt like I had to always be on my toes and say really intelligent things when you were around. Still, I'm a pretty sociable guy -- and once I had an excuse (or worked up the nerve) to talk to different members of the staff, I was able to be charming enough to hide that basic insecurity and develop some of the best friendships of my life. Monte: How was TSR different from West End? Stan!: The work was similar, but the deadlines were luxurious! At WEG, you had four weeks to work on a book. No matter what your job was, no matter how big the book was, no matter what, you had four weeks. Edit a 250-page book? Four weeks. Lay out a three-book boxed set? Four weeks. It was crazy. At TSR we had four weeks for every 32-page segment of a product. At first I didn't know what to do with all that time. Then I realized, "Oh! I should make the book as GOOD as possible! I don't have to just 'get it done'." WEG was also a really small operation (which is why all the work was so compressed). There were 11 people TOTAL making all those products. At TSR there were something like 40 people in Creative Services alone, another 10 in the Art Department, another five in the Layout Department. At WEG we all had to know the basics of all the jobs, but at TSR we were able to really sharpen our skills in a specific area. Monte: Although you worked with TSR/Wizards for a long time, when you think back > what's the most memorable period? Stan!: Wow. That's hard. I had a series of different jobs -- editor, designer, creative director, personnel manager -- and I feel like there's a "most memorable period" for each job. But if I had to pick just one period it would be when I first transferred from being an editor to being a designer. It was also the time that straddled the buyout of TSR and the move to Washington. I was working on the Dragonlance: Fifth Age game with Sue Weinlein Cook, Miranda Horner, and Steve Miller. We were developing the newly released card-based SAGA System, working with the book department on fleshing out this new era for a New York Times best-selling series, and just enjoying a wild rush of creativity that happens when you get the right people together. I think we all produced some of the best work of our careers together, and I'm certain it's because we were such a tightly-knit group. Monte: Since you experienced it first hand, how about a funny or interesting story involving the buyout of TSR or the move to Washington?
I spent two weeks rummaging through offices, cubes, closets, and various other work spaces. Among the things I found were still-in-the-shrink-wrap boxed sets dating back to 1981, 1st Edition hardcover books that had once been office copies for Gary Gygax and other first generation employees, two complete runs of Dungeon Magazine, a near-complete run of Dungeon magazine, original maps by various cartographers, and original art by Jeff Easley, Larry Elmore, and other classic TSR artists. I was able to fill a 10 x 10 work space with all the material I gathered. And THAT was limiting myself to one copy of any given product. That's right, a standard D&D dungeon room FILLED with abandoned products! One of the best things about the assignment was that they told me I could KEEP anything I found that was NOT needed by Wizards (and anything after the first copy of a product was not considered "needed"). My personal game collection grew quite a bit during those two weeks. Of course, I also took only one copy of everything, which means that even after I was done "looting" there were still shrink-wrapped copies of the World of Greyhawk boxed set, the 1st Edition Deities & Demigods book, and just about EVERY adventure every published by TSR. (When I think what all that would be worth on eBay, I wish I had been a little more covetous.) While I was doing this scavenging, others were setting about the work of dismantling the cubes and office fixtures. Their discoveries were not nearly as wonderful as mine. They generally were pretty disgusting -- moldy food, dead vermin -- but one day they discovered something SO horrendous that you could hear them shrieking all over the building (and the TSR offices had previously been a Q-Tip factory). When I rushed over to see what was causing the ruckus, it turned out that one member of the TSR staff was cultivating a garden of "magic nose goblins" underneath his or her desk and had amassed quite a collection. THAT did NOT get sent to Washington. In fact, it was quickly (and with heavy gloves) taken to the back dumpster, never to be mentioned again -- until now.
Stan!: The most immediate difference was the physical space. As I said before, the TSR office used to be a factory. It was huge, and every member of the staff had a large work space. We even had a free-standing second story -- my cube had a balcony! Wizards is in a standard office building, and the space allotted to each individual is much smaller. Also, Wizards was MUCH noisier than TSR had been. (Quite natural with the closer quarters.) I think the biggest difference, though, was in the attitude of the REST of the company toward our work. At TSR, pretty much all we did was make roleplaying products. At the very least, that was the biggest source of revenue. Dungeons & Dragons was king. At Wizards, D&D was second fiddle to Magic: the Gathering. Not only that, there were some factions in the Wizards of the Coasthierarchy that wanted to treat the RPG staff exactly the same as the card design staff. There was reluctance to accept the fact that two different types of games required different types of production processes. At the same time, the TSR designers and editors were hesitant to accept ANY changes, even ones that turned out to be for the good of the game and the staff. We always felt under attack, and I'm sure the rest of the company thought we were just clinging to outmoded processes for no logical reason. That particular difference took a LONG time to sort out, but it eventually happened. I think the game and the people are stronger and better for it. But it wasn't any fun to go through at the time. Monte: You transitioned from being an editor/designer to having a managerial position. What were the up sides and down sides of that change? Stan!: The fact of the matter is that I became an editor because I was still so new to the game industry that I didn't understand what a "designer" was. In my interview I was asked if I would be interested in a job as a designer and I said no. In my head, "designer" was the job of thinking up new games and writing them from scratch. I wanted to be a "writer," the person who wrote additional material for the game, and until that job came along I was happy being an editor. Boy, did I kick myself when, very shortly afterward, I realized my mistake! The transition to being a manager was more "organic" (as the kids like to say). As I became more confident in my knowledge of both the industry and the game worlds I was working on, I asked for greater responsibility in developing products, line vision, and other parts of the production process. Little by little, I was helping more and more. When we moved to Washington all the various responsibilities were reassigned. Sue became a brand manager and she asked if I wanted to be her assistant brand manager. I said I would as long as I could continue to be a designer as well. Then, when she moved on to work on [Amazing Stories magazine], I got the chance to step up again. I think it all worked out very well. My interests in design were much more along the world-development and adventure plotting lines, and there was less of that work to be done with the advent of 3rd Edition D&D. Meanwhile, I learned that my communication skills and broad background in the various production processes made me a fairly effective manager. So the up side was that I was good at the job and all the various people I worked with expressed confidence that things would run smoothly. The down side was that I didn't get to do as much writing during the day, but the fact of the matter was that there were fewer products on the schedule that I WANTED to write. I was able to fulfill my creative needs by taking freelance work. I guess the BIG down side was that eventually my job was eliminated and I was let go by Wizards. Of course, even that has a silver lining, because it has enabled me to focus my time working on writing and cartooning projects instead of just squeezing them into my evening and weekends.
Stan!: The funniest thing to ME is that I've done such little work on D&D. Besides editing a series of Ravenloft adventures, and writing a couple of entries for the Children of the Night series, I didn't work on D&D until well after 3rd Edition came out. I mostly worked on SAGA System products (both for Dragonlance: Fifth Age and the Marvel Super Heroes Adventure Game). When I took a break from that, it was to work on Pokémon Jr. or other introductory games. I think my first creative involvement with 3rd Edition was to be the developer for Bastion of Broken Souls -- the last of the "adventure path" modules. Even now, I do MUCH more work with d20 Modern than I do with D&D. Monte: Okay, fair enough. How about just a good story from any time back at TSR or Wizards, then? Stan!: Well, when I first got to TSR I had a very nice cube/office but terrible chairs. Of the two chairs in my office, one was broken so that if you didn't sit in it with your weight distributed just so, it wobbled and tried to throw you onto the floor. The other one wasn't even actually a "chair" anymore -- it was more like a footrest with pretensions. Anyway, it made for a pretty uncomfortable work day, and I was always on the lookout for a better chair that was not being used. In fact, this was a problem around the office. MANY people were unhappy with their seating conditions, and chair swapping was a fairly common occurrence. Anyway, one day [editor] Cindi Rice and I were searching through a rarely-used storage room and we came across a small herd of brand new, still in the shipping plastic, beautiful maroon office chairs. We were very excited about this and ran off to [Vice President] Jim Ward's office to ask if we might partake of this obviously forgotten treasure trove. Jim leaned back in his plush, comfortable chair and said, "Stan! ... Cindi ... let me tell you why you cannot have those chairs." It turned out that those were "executive chairs" that had been ordered as spares for the board room -- they were special ordered from a special catalog and cost $2,000 apiece. "Do you think your editorial behinds deserve $2,000 chairs?" Jim asked. "I don't have a $2,000 chair." We agreed that it was a shame that his executive behind could not have a $2,000 chair, but at least he had a comfortable chair. Couldn't HE take one or two of the stored chairs and pass his less-than-$2,000 office chairs down to us? The answer was, naturally, no. The chairs had been bought as spares and spares they would remain, locked in the storage closet until such time as they were needed in the board room. "Well, our chairs are broken, Jim," we said. "Can we get spare editorial chairs?"
Monte: You left Wizards of the Coast a few years ago. What have you been doing since? Stan!: I've been freelancing full-time. I continue to do a lot of work with Wizards of the Coast, but I've spent more of my time with my own company, The Game Mechanics. TGM was started when JD Wiker, Rich Redman, and I were all sitting in the same out-placement training class after being laid off by Wizards. We realized that between us we had almost twenty years of experience with TSR/Wizards games and we could make a really top-notch design studio -- so we did. In the two years since we've started, we've been nominated for four major awards and taken at least second place in them all. I've also been doing more fiction writing and cartooning than I had done while in-house at Wizards. As you know, I've just completed my second short story for Malhavoc (the first appearing in Children of the Rune and the second in The Dragons' Return). I also have written a young-adult novel for Wizards' new Mirrorstone Books imprint. It's called Dragon Day, and it's part of the Dragonlance: The New Adventures line. Dragon Day ought to be in stores this coming March. And while I somehow fell out of the habit of doing Bolt & Quiver cartoons for Dungeon Magazine, I have done a series of holiday cartoons and other assignments for the Dungeons & Dragons website, including a series of D&D Coloring Albums, more or less bringing a nice symmetry to my career. Of course, I hope there's a LOT more of my career to come. So maybe that just means I'm at the start of "phase two." Related Articles
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30th Anniversary Interview Series |