I Almost Worked for Wizards

Way back, post-D&D 3.5, post-SBRPG, and pre-D&D 4.0, I filled out an employment application for a game designer at Wizards of the Coast. To my surprise, I got a reply, and a chance at a second round, sort of a hiring quiz. I wrote out my answers, and then rewrote them (much to my dismay, my first set was better - I was more honest). Needless to say, Wizards hired someone else for the position, which is cool, I love the company and what they do.

I could have kept pursuing jobs at Wizards, but another opportunity came along, a chance to work for the rock stars over at DAZ 3D. I jumped at the chance, and put aside my life as a roleplaying game designer for a couple years. Working in 3d was cool, and eventually my brother George came on board, and we changed the game at DAZ, and rewrote the rules on QA. Well, actually, we wrote the rules, 200+ pages of how you QA things in 3d. It was a first for the industry, and still shapes how things are done in the entire Poser-verse. So in a way, we were still designing systems and how things should be done.

I wonder what things would be like if I were hired over at Wizards, and had a chance to work on D&D 4? Working there has always been a dream of mine, and having my name on a piece of gaming history would have been really cool. To this day I still wonder if they managed to get a copy of our game and read it, again, that would have been cool.

I made up for the karma-loss a little bit by running the in-house D&D games at DAZ 3D during the weekends. DAZ is a cool place to work for, they let us use the conference rooms, tables, and whiteboards on the weekends. For a large group, having the building to ourselves was gamer heaven. Officially, it was our 'team building exercise' on the weekend, getting co-workers to know each other and work as a team better. For those involved, it was a chance to share what we loved doing the most.