RW: You have a Masters Degree from the University of Cambridge, which you attended 1978 - 1982. What sort of things did you study while at the University? Were you looking for work after college? Did you actively seek out employment with TSR UK Ltd or did TSR contact you? Could you go into a little detail about that time-- the transition from college to TSR UK Ltd ?

I went up to Cambridge at the age of 18 in 1978. I'd signed up to study Russian and Persian because I had a vague notion of joining the "diplomatic service" (the UK equivalent of the State Department), and I thought a degree in (relatively) obscure languages from Cambridge might make that possible. I think I had fantasies of being a kind of James Bond (gorgeous women, exotic locations, and fast cars), without the dangerous thugs trying to kill me!

As an undergraduate, however, I spent more time acting, rowing, and playing D&D than I did studying. I also cultivated an image of being a left-leaning socialist sympathizer - partly to counter the large numbers of privileged, public-school educated, conservative types I encountered. As a consequence, I graduated with a mediocre degree - that, and my student politics, made me an unlikely candidate for the foreign office!

My dream after graduation was to direct my own, traveling theatre company. I'd spent a couple of summers on the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and was hooked on theatre. I still am. I probably do 2 or 3 plays every year, in semi-professional theaters in Baltimore - the nearest big city to where I now live.

Then, as now, however, there wasn't much money around for live theatre, and I was struggling to make ends meet when I saw a job advertised in White Dwarf for someone to join the design team at TSR UK. By luck, TSR UK were based a few miles way in Cambridge, and I thought "what the hell - might as well apply!" I think the title was something like "production coordinator". The application deadline was the next day or the one after - no time really to think about it - so, I just threw a resume together with a bunch of stuff from my own AD&D campaign, cycled to the other end of Cambridge and delivered it all by hand.

I was amazed to get an interview - with Tom Kirby and Graeme Morris - and even more surprised to be offered the job. Faced with a choice between being a starving, mostly out-of-work actor, or a paid lackey of TSR, I took the money!

The early days were a fantastic time. There were only a handful of people at the company in an old, converted mill. There was a team that produced Imagine magazine (including Paul Cockburn and Mike Brunton), a small sales force, accounting staff, IT etc. Tom was General Manager, and Don Turnbull was CEO and "uncle" to us all. Don had managed to persuade TSR Inc., the parent company, to allow the UK business to produce a small number of adventure modules each year, as well as publish Imagine. The US business had already published 2 or 3 modules from manuscripts submitted from the UK (the U series), but Don wanted greater autonomy and managed to get permission for us to do all the pre-production work - typesetting, lay-out, design, commission artwork, and so on. When I joined the business, UK2 was just being put to bed - it was a case of final proof-reading, sticking in the pictures and then shipping everything off to the US for printing.

It was my first "proper" job after university and I enjoyed it immensely. The people were all very friendly and welcoming, the offices pleasant, and I had money in the bank. I learned about word processing (we used wordstar on some kind of IBM terminals, I think, with 12" floppy disks!) ), and DOS, and photo-electronic typesetting, and page design, and paste-up - state of the art, technology it was!

RW: You are credited (with Jim Bambra, and Graeme Morris) on what many people consider the greatest Dungeons and Dragons modules ever produced-- B10 Night's Dark Terror. Did you feel like you were working on something "great" at the time? Did it take a lot of work to get "Night's Dark Terror" rolling and eventually produced? What was it like working with Jim and Graeme at TSR UK Ltd?

We were all pretty excited by the project, as I recall. Partly because we'd received permission to make a module that was bigger than anything we'd done up to that point, partly because we felt we could create something unique - a Basic-Expert crossover with an open-ended structure, different from the rather linear dungeon crawls that were around at that time. I was especially pleased to get a writer's credit on the front cover, since my name was usually buried inside!

It was easier than we thought it was going to be to get the project rolling, I think. Maybe there was some heavy persuasion exercised by Don Turnbull or Tom Kirby, but if so, we weren't aware of it. I think it helped that the three of us had been given the opportunity to visit TSR Inc's HQ in Lake Geneva, and we'd met all the creative staff over there and got on really well with the likes of Doug Niles, Zeb Cook, Tracy Hickman. I think the commercial success of the UK modules in the AD&D line had helped, and we were trusted as a team that would produce quality material on schedule.

I can't remember much of the day-to-day details of working on the project, now. I don't think there were any particular problems - maybe they were just so horrendous my subconscious has blocked them from my memory! As a team we brainstormed the plot outline, and carved up the work between us, without too much difficulty. Jim worked especially hard to coordinate the adventure elements, Graeme and I obsessed over the language and grammar, I took charge of the lay-out and design, and we all wrote stuff and swapped it back and forth between us. I'm sure we all had minor gripes with each other and occasionally muttered under our breath, but essentially we just worked really well together.

When the thing was first published, it was BX1 - and it was a little disappointing to see it relabeled as B10. Still, it has clearly achieved something of a reputation (in the positive sense) and that's obviously very pleasing!

RW: You and Jim Bambra left to join Games Workshop in the mid 80s. It sounds like a troubling time for working at TSR UK Ltd. Gary Gygax separated from TSR back in the states and Lorraine Williams took control. Could you give the readers some insight into what was happening at TSR UK Ltd at that time?

Well, it's all a very long time ago, now, so I don't want to dwell on this too much; I'll probably get the facts wrong after all this time and I don't particularly want to indulge in any "muck-raking", either!

I can say this, however. Lorraine's "take over" of TSR, Inc preceded the departure of Jim, Mike Brunton, and I from TSR UK. Gary Gygax - RIP - gave a brief version of the events that led to his departure in an interview which you can still find online at http://pc.gamespy.com/articles/538/538820p1.html While all that was going on, Graeme, Jim, and I knew nothing of any changes. The first inkling we had that all was not well was when Don Turnbull (TSR UK's Managing Director) announced that Imagine Magazine was being shut down and all its staff were to be let go (that was 5 people, I think, including the editor, Paul Cockburn). The truth is that I don't know what the reasons for the closure were. But it was unsettling, to say the least.

Imagine was closed and the staff left, leaving a big empty office in the downstairs of The Mill, where TSR was based.

I'm not sure how long it was after that before I moved to GW. It might have been a few weeks, possibly a few months.

But a key event which led to the decision to move was when Tom Kirby announced he was leaving to go work for Bryan Ansell at Games Workshop.

This hit us like a bombshell. The hierarchy, I think, was that Don was the Managing Director, and Tom reported to him, as General Manager, and Graeme reported to Tom, as head of the design team, and Jim and I reported to Graeme. I think that was how it was. In practice, Tom's office had a door directly into the design office and he was often in and out, offering advice, commentary, an extra bit of editing here and there, and generally being a calming buffer between us temperamental, arty-fatty designers and the US-UK politics. We all liked him. All our work had to have Don's seal of approval before it was shipped for printing to the US, and submitting stuff to him was a bit like being summoned to the Headmaster's office! Tom would help us prepare, and smooth our ruffled feathers afterwards when Don insisted on nit-picky changes.

So, with Tom's departure, it felt like the whole business was about to crash and burn. Gygax had gone, no one had anything good to say about Lorraine - rightly or wrongly - the magazine had gone and a bunch of colleagues been let go, and the best guy on the management team (Tom) had also left. It just felt like the writing was on the wall.

By this time, Paul Cockburn had also moved to Games Workshop. I think he may even have started working there before Tom. I called Paul to ask if GW wanted any roleplaying game designers. Shortly thereafter, Graeme, Jim, Mike, and I were being interviewed by Bryan and being shown the sights of Nottingham, and the wonders of the design studio there. Bryan told us about his plans for a major publishing drive - Warhammer battle was in its boxed form, work on WFRP was well advanced, but more material was needed, and there were plans afoot for a "Warhammer in space". I remember thinking, "Orcs and Elves and Dwarfs in space?! How uninspiring!" (Fortunately, for all the 40K fans out there, I had no say in the decision to publish it!)

Graeme decided he wanted to stay in Cambridge, but Jim, Mike, and I all packed up and moved to Nottingham to work on WFRP and what became the Enemy Within campaign.

For me, it wasn't about being seduced by GW (we certainly weren't "poached" - it was I who initiated things by calling Paul), but rather about getting away from TSR UK, which was no longer the happy placed I'd joined. In fact, my thinking was that I'd stay with GW only as long as it took me to find a "proper" job… Nineteen years later, I was still on the payroll!