The Design Team Behind Blackmoor Age of the Wolf

We are now learning more about the people behind the upcoming Dave Arneson's Blackmoor Age of the Wolf.  As I reported back in March, this 15 years in the making project is finally being released at GenCon 2024 and will become available in a free digital format. An exclusive interview with the lead designer was posted on this blog last month, but we now have more information:

(Illustration taken from lead designer C.A.Suleiman's website)

The credits presented for the book will be the following:

Dave Arneson's Blackmoor: Age of the Wolf

Publisher: Studio Ink Bat

Developer and Project Lead: C.A. Suleiman 

Writers: Jamie Chambers, George Holland, Rhiannon Louve, Ari Marmell, Harley Stroh, and C.A. Suleiman 

Art Director: Denise Robinson

That is a pretty talent specked list of people. I am not familiar with all of them, but Jamie Chambers is perhaps best known as former vice president of Sovereign Press and Margaret Weis Press, having done considerable game design on Dragonlance, The Serenity RPG and much more. 

Ari Marmell is a well known fantasy author and game designer and he has worked on multiple projects with C.A. Suleiman. Most notably the two worked on Blackmoor in the time before Zeigtgeist Games (ZGG) lost the license to publish Blackmoor from WotC, right before Age of the Wolf was to be published 15 years ago. 

Harley Stroh is another name that should be familiar to Blackmoor fans, making several contribitions to the d20 Blackmoor line including the ZGG version of City of the Gods. He later went on to become a widely published by companies like Wizards of the Coast and Goodman Games. 

Rhiannon Louve has multiple credits for design and translation work for White Wolf, including the Scarred Lands Setting. 

George Holland is a game desgner who has done game design work for  RPGs such as Overlight, Mothership and Cy_Borg. 

C.A Suleiman, the project lead, is  another well known name in the industry, having done considerable game design work for Wizards of the Coast, White Wolf and many other publishers. He is credited for six d20 Blackmoor books, including the upcoming Age of the Wolf sourcebook. See full credits here.

With this team, I have great hopes for the Age of the Wolf sourcebook finally seeing the light of day after all this time. It is such a shame when completed manuscripts end up never being shared with the fans, like Jeff Grubb's Mystara sourcebook for AD&D 2nd Edition. I am very happy that Age of the Wolf will become available to fans this August. 

Dave Arneson's Blackmoor: Age of the Wolf will be published under a lisence from Wizards of the Coast. 

Note: I have written this article, not based on a press release, but on my own research, so I apologise that the information is incomplete. No disrespected intended towards anyone mentioned. I will expand on the article as I learn more about each designer!

Discuss this article on The Comeback Inn

-Havard

Game Designer Jamie Chambers' Meeting with Dave Arneson

Jamie Chambers with Felicia Day (left)

 Game Designer Jamie Chambers is perhaps best known for creating the Cortex RPG system for Margaret Weis Press (MWP) and for his other work with MWP including Sovereign Stone, Serentiy RPG, Dragonlance etc. 

Jamie only met Dave Arneson once in the mid 2000s at RockCon in Rockford, Illinois, but it did leave an impression. Jamie was one of the organizers of the small convention at the time. He wasn't sure about the exact year but it would have been 2006 or 2007:

I got to meet Dave Arneson just the once when I was helping manage a little convention in Rockford, Illinois. It was the last con season he was up for traveling. Nothing earthshaking was revealed, but I remember being jealous I couldn't go back and experience what it was like during those early days as wargaming evolved in to tabletop RPGs and we understand them today.

Source.

I think Jamie's comments well reflect how many of us feel when learning about Dave Arneson and his players. This hobby means so much to all of us and the talking to the people who were there at the beginning feels like being in direct contact with history. Understanding where the hobby came from can also help us gain a deeper understanding of what the game has developed into today. Extremely useful for those who are interested  in game design!

RockCon is still a successful convention today and takes place Nov 3.-5. This year will mark the 50th anniversary of the convention and TSR's Harold Johnson will be among the honored guests. 

-Havard