Dave Morris (game designer)

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Template:Short description Template:BLP sources Template:EngvarB Template:Use dmy dates Template:Infobox writer David John Morris (born 19 March 1957) is a British author of gamebooks, novels and comics and a designer of computer games and role-playing games.

Education

Dave Morris graduated from Magdalen College, Oxford,<ref>Biography at Magnum Opus Press Template:Webarchive</ref> where he read Physics from 1976 until 1979.

Writer

Morris began his writing career in 1984 by writing the fantasy adventure gamebook Crypt of the Vampire, part of the Golden Dragon series published by Grafton Books in the UK and Berkley Books in the US.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

The following year, Morris and Oliver Johnson created the Dragon Warriors role-playing game.<ref name="WD74">Template:Cite magazine</ref> Dragon Warriors was an attempt at releasing a role-playing game in a series of paperback books.<ref name="designers">Template:Cite book</ref>Template:Rp In a 1996 reader poll conducted by Arcane to determine the fifty most popular roleplaying games of all time, Dragon Warriors was ranked 48th.<ref name="Arcane14">Template:Cite journal</ref> In 2008, the game was licensed by Morris to James Wallis of Magnum Opus Press, and Serpent King Games acquired the Dragon Warriors license afterwards.<ref name="designers"/>Template:Rp

In 1987, Morris and Johnson created the Blood Sword series, five adventure gamebooks published by Knight Books.

In 1990, Morris and Jamie Thomson wrote The Keep of the Lich-Lord for the popular Fighting Fantasy series of adventure gamebooks.

Fabled Lands

In 1995, Morris and Jamie Thomson wrote the first of several adventure gamebooks in the Fabled Lands series.<ref name="designers"/>Template:Rp It received positive reviews, including 20 years later.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Although well-received, the books were published when, as Sylvio Konkol noted, "the golden age of adventure gamebooks was actually over."<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Morris and Thomson originally envisioned twelve books in the series, but various publishing problems, including underpricing the expensive books and a shrinking market, meant the series was curtailed after only six volumes.<ref name=martin>Template:Cite web</ref>Template:Rp

As Massively multiplayer online games (MMOs) became popular in the early 2000s, Morris and Thomson hired the French firm Eidos to convert their books into an MMO. However, Eidos ran out of money before the project was completed.<ref name=martin/>Template:Rp

Twenty-five years after the Fabled Lands books were published, Morris and Thomson granted a license to Prime Games to develop a Fabled Lands computer role-playing game.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>Template:Better source needed<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Other works

Morris also co-authored a number of other books, including Virtual Reality: Necklace of Skulls with Mark Smith (1993), Blood Sword: The Battlepits of Krarth with Oliver Johnson (1987), the Golden Dragon series, and a number of TV and movie novelisations.

His original novels include Knightmare (a historical fantasy adventure series set in the early 13th century that ties in with the television series of that name), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and the contemporary horror novel Lost Souls.Template:Citation needed Another horror novel, Florien, was published as an ebook in 2010.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> In 2008 his episodic comic strip Mirabilis<ref>Mirabilis The Year of Wonders blog</ref> began weekly publication in Random House's subscription-based magazine The DFC.<ref>Mirabilis comic book</ref> Working with artist Leo Hartas, Morris founded electronic publisher Mirus Entertainment and published Mirabilis for the iPad in December 2010.<ref>Mirabilis comic book reader app</ref>

In addition to his more than seventy published books,<ref>Published works of Dave Morris at Library Thing</ref> Morris is a leading developer of the Empire of the Petal Throne gaming system (created by MAR Barker and published by TSR), creating a playable rules system (Tirikelu) and editing a fanzine.<ref>The Eye of All-Seeing Wonder</ref>

Morris also co-authored a book on the computer gaming industry,<ref>Game Architecture and Design, by Andrew Rollings and Dave Morris, 2003, New Riders, Template:ISBN</ref> having worked as a game designer for Eidos and Microsoft, and is a former mentor in the American Film Institute's Digital Content Lab.<ref>Law & Order: Motive, Means, Opportunity at the AFI</ref> In April 2012, he published an interactive reworking of Frankenstein in which the reader is able to give advice to the first-person narrator of the story.<ref>'The Divided Self: Remaking Frankenstein as an Interactive Novel' in the Huffington Post</ref>

Bibliography

Dave Morris's published works include:

Blood Sword series

Chronicles of the Magi

Crystal Maze

  • The Crystal Maze (with Jamie Thomson, 1991)
  • Crystal Maze Challenge! (with Jamie Thomson, 1992)

Dragon Warriors series

Fabled Lands series

Fighting Fantasy series

Golden Dragon series

Heroquest series

Knightmare series

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series

Virtual Reality series

Vulcanverse series

Other works

References

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