One of the people responsible for pioneering the miniatures wargaming hobby has died.

Bruce Seifried – often known as Uncle Duke – was involved with organising some of the first wargaming gatherings and newsletters, before having a hand in the emergence of Dungeons & Dragons and the roleplaying genre in the 1970s as executive vice president of TSR.

Seifried is widely credited with coining the term ‘adventure gaming’ and bringing together of historical and fantasy gaming on the tabletop. He was ultimately inducted into the Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts & Design Origins Award Hall of Fame by the organisation built on his phrase in recognition of his influence and impact on the hobby.

The Historical Miniatures Gaming Society honoured Seifried in 2010 with a Lifetime Achievement Award, as well as renaming its Game Master of the Year Award to The Duke Seifried Game Master of the Year Award. The same year, Seifried announced his retirement from hosting events due to a diagnosis of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis five years before and his declining health, with 2010’s Historicon intended to be his last. He returned to the event two years later.

As well as creating some of the first widely available miniatures for the tabletop in the early 1970s, Seifried designed and produced dioramas and displays featuring figures and scenery – both historical and fantastical – for museums throughout the US and the rest of the world.

Seifried passed away on September 29th 2018 as the result of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. He was 83.

Bruce “Duke” Seifried ’57 is a giant in the world of historical and fantasy miniatures. Affectionately known in the adventure gaming community as Uncle Duke, the master miniature-maker has created more than 10,000 figurines to replay hundreds of battles, from the American Civil War all the way back to 1300 B.C. Egypt.

This self-described “very old soul” enjoys breathing life into history and introducing new generations to his old-school style of play at major gaming conventions. At this summer’s Gen Con, the largest tabletop-game convention in North America, he moderated three games of his creation with 2,500+ miniatures.

“With today’s video games, it has widened the audience tremendously,” said the 80-year-old showman, who was named Industry Insider Guest of Honor at Gen Con 2015. With more than 61,000 attendees and 15,000 events, the four-day convention in Indianapolis set new records in the show’s 48-year history, according to Gen Con’s website.

To the younger digital generation, whose speedy thumbs nimbly navigate hand-held gaming controllers, Seifried is one of the gaming pioneers who began rolling dice to settle tactical issues.

Miami’s Armstrong Institute for Interactive Media Studies (AIMS) gives a nod to Seifried (pronounced Zy-freed) because of his many accomplishments, albeit he graduated long before the university offered digital game studies.

“He has a huge name in tabletop role-playing,” said Bob De Schutter, the C. Michael Armstrong Professor in Miami’s College of Education, Health and Society and AIMS. Miami’s gaming program ranked 12th recently among U.S. public universities and colleges by Animation Career Review.

In addition to his huge name, Seifried also had a large hand in creating the 3-D elements of Dungeons & Dragons, such as Dungeon Tiles and terrain for 3-D setups. A publicist for Wizards of the Coast — a major publisher in the hobby game industry that acquired TSR in 1997 and is now part of Hasbro — confirmed Seifried, a former executive vice president of TSR, as one of the originators of D&D and his part in the 3-D aspect of it. A fantasy game set in an imaginary world based loosely on medieval myth, D&D is commonly recognized as the beginning of the modern role-playing game and its industry.

For many video games, D&D served as “the blueprint,” De Schutter said. “It really set in motion this tabletop role-playing, and there are a whole bunch of other games that came out of it that spawned their own computer games, so the influence is absolutely huge.”


Creating extravaganzas
D&D is only one of many games Seifried has been involved with. He estimates he has built about 80 dioramas — models representing historic scenes using 3-D figures — on 45 different topics. Some of his elaborate interactive “extravaganzas” have sold for thousands of dollars and are owned by patrons around the world.

He calls them interactive museum displays because hobbyists can play with them in adventure games set on man-made terrain. His largest display was a 30-by-30-foot Jolly Roger featuring 24 brigantines, sloops, schooners, Spanish men-of-war, and frigates from what he calls the golden age of piracy (1680–1720).

“You walked in the water as if you were Gulliver in Gulliver’s Travels,” said Seifried, who created the display inside a convention booth filled with waist-high water.

Despite his age and health issues that require him to be on oxygen “off and on” during the day, he strives to take on one new project each year at his home in Janesville, Wis.

Annette Baker, his wife of 24 years, calls him “a true Renaissance man, excelling in design, construction, painting, sculpturing, and rule writing for games of almost every period in history.”

He feels compelled to keep creating, he said. “All my life I’ve been making little tin soldiers in one way or another. I seem to have an imperative to do it.”

He chuckles at a boyhood memory of making plaster molds and pouring metal into them before they were dry. “They would explode. That didn’t go over very well.”
Outmaneuvering disease
Seifried, a Dayton native, majored in speech/radio-television at Miami, but his love of music took center stage. He performed with the a cappella choir and also played string bass and guitar with the Campus Owls swing band.

He paid his way through college by giving string bass and guitar lessons and performing at all the local hot spots, including Mac & Joe’s on Tuesdays and the Purity on Thursdays.

After graduation, he returned to Dayton, where he worked for a TV station and then an advertising firm, writing jingles for Frigidaire among others. Before joining TSR, he was a driving force behind three creative manufacturers of adventure gaming products, Der Kriegspielers, Custom Cast, and Heritage USA.

Music is still a big part of his life. In 1992, he started returning to Miami’s Oxford campus every June to perform with the Campus Owls at reunions. He also plays guitar with the Jack Farina Big Band, a 40-piece swing band, and in a Jazz for Jesus group at churches. He makes solo appearances as Cool Jazz, featuring his own computer-oriented arrangements.

He believes staying active is the secret. “I am 80 but I look 60, I act 50, and I think 40.”

About five years ago doctors diagnosed him with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. They gave him six to 18 months to live. “I am four years over my expiration date,” he said.

He expected his 2010 appearance at Historicon would be his last, so he ran 14 of his extravaganzas with other gamemasters assisting him.

Then he went home to die.

“Only I didn’t die, I was a Brett Favre,” he said, punctuating with a hearty laugh his comparison to the resilient, retired Green Bay Packers quarterback. “That happens in Wisconsin. We got on this treatment and here I am.” This summer he returned to Historicon in Fredericksburg, Va.
Bridging the gap
Gerald Swick, former president of Historical Miniatures Gaming Society MidSouth, a hobby club that covers most of the South, credits Seifried for bringing historical and fantasy gaming together.

“Duke was unusual in that he had a foot in both camps,” Swick said. “He thought, ‘We can use this to introduce younger gamers into historical miniatures gaming,’ which was for a long while a graying hobby.”

Seifried’s glad he crossed that bridge.

“The historical people sometimes turn their noses up at the fantasy people. The fantasy people sometimes turn their noses up at what they call the hysterical people. I find no difference, and so I have done mostly blending. I don’t want to see people divided.”

Baker said some of her husband’s popularity with the fantasy gamers stems from six massive displays of beloved writer J.R.R. Tolkien’s adventures.

“He was acquainted with J.R.R. Tolkien and was a guest in his home,” she said. “He created hobbits for J.R.R.’s children when they were young.”

Perhaps his greatest regret was turning down an invitation to have lunch at Tolkien’s home with the Inksters, a group of writers. He had to attend a meeting in London and later learned that among the Inksters that day was Chronicles of Narnia author C.S. Lewis, a close friend of Tolkien’s.


Taking on a starring role
This summer Seifried starred in War Room, a pilot episode of the fantasy web series Chaldea, part graphic novel, part live action film posted at worldofchaldea.com. He played a toymaker of miniature war-game figurines. One of his dioramas is featured in that episode, and he said plans call for featuring others of his in future episodes.

Peter Adkison, chief executive officer of Hostile Work Environment, which produced Chaldea, has known Seifried for about a decade. Adkison, who co-founded Wizards of the Coast, cast Seifried in Chaldea “to honor his legacy.”

As for honors, Seifried has earned many including the Callie from Origins, which his wife calls the “Oscars of the gaming world," and the Scruby from the Historical Miniatures Gaming Society (HMGS). He also has been inducted into the HMGS Legion of Honor.

For Seifried, there’s always a next project. These days he’s working on Alexander the Great, another diorama set in ancient times — his favorite historical period. While he paints miniature figurines in a high-contrast way so they can be seen from as far as 3 feet, he enjoys letting his mind drift back in time.

“Back then, a trip that took in several hundred miles took you to entirely different cultures, entirely different attitudes, entirely different ways,” he said. “I find it fascinating. I have a great thirst for that.”